LIGHTNING.

Right now, I'm surrounded by lightning on four sides.  This seems to make my sick dog uncomfortable.  He now only eats when we've poured something wet over his dry food. 

This evening, after realizing I had all of the ingredients necessary to make portabello mushroom reubens for my family, I watched most of Lawrence of Arabia with my father.  We talked about how Lawrence loses a significant piece of himself every time he loses a significant person.  Easy Stages.  

WHO ARE YOU?

Earlier today the dirt line on my shins made it seem like I was wearing leggings.  My bike and I hadn't had any quality time together in a long time.  My brother turned back early.  He doesn't have quite the same relationship with his bike.   It felt a bit like an awkward double date, when I really just wanted us to be alone, out where no one would stop us.  

Last night, and the nights before that, there are so many questions that are not unanswered.  it's not that they've been answered, they simply haven't been given the dignity of words, so none of us know what is real and what is dreams and what is something on the tip of your tongue, not quite able to put a finger on--that feeling that your head is too big for your head, and if you don't scream or sprint to the Camponille or punch your best friend in the nose, you may soon become a puddle on the floor or a cloud of dust or some other substance with no form of its own.  And if this conversation isn't had soon, we will all have become too resigned to ever move forward.  

Everyone so esteems Ebenezer Scrooge for reinventing himself.  But really, all those around him would be asking, "why is he putting on such an elaborate act?  This personality doesn't suit him.  Stop being so fake, putting on airs, please, for crissake have a bit of dignity!"  We are very quick to spot changes in behavior and very slow to accept them.  

This is why we go away.  To Germany.  To Asia.  To Boulder.  To Chicago.  To Kansas City.  To Clinton Lake.  To New Orleans.  To India.  To St Louis.  To the ambiguous space in-between full of strangers and haircuts and languages and trains.

WARMTH.

I went over to my friend's house expecting a bonfire, as is the precedent for get-togethers there.  Instead, there was a small warm bedroom with one lamp.  And did you know that the rhythm of shadows created by a hand on guitar strings can be the same as those created by flames?  

As a prank, we swapped his room with his still-in-highschool sister's because she'd taken over the bigger one when he left for college.  Then we had a dance-countdown to the winter solstice.  She came home, became furious, then cooled off and warmed up with too many glasses of wine and we all danced some more.

Kansas City is so easy.  I could be a better friend to you here.  

This morning I went to the funeral of the father of a friend I'd forgotten to talk to all these years.

SPADES.

I'd forgotten what it was like to come home from smoke-filled rooms full of sound.  I'd like to give this another shot (maybe with the Alpha Squad).  Comparing last night with Hoyle's Rules of Games, the basic premise is the same, heavily peppered with house rules, concocted from forgotten standards.

SNOW.

(sno... oh yes, they go on and on!)

It's easy to forget how wonderful it is to be the first to walk in morning snow. I just wish I were with my boots in Kansas City.  Makes me think about snow days: I could have slept in, but instead woke up early to take my dog for a walk and be one of the first on Suicide. School--a block away--was too hard to get to, but no sidewalk conditions could keep us off that hill.

Thank god for radiators. How else would my toes have ever thawed?

Reviews are good for the following:

Last night I had a dream (a real dream).  Bicycle pirates were following me through the dead ends of overland park.  It was all alleys and unlistening houses set back on too much land to hear my wind-chapped yells.  They had jankity bikes spraypainted black, but knew their turf.  They wanted my bike and my booty.  After a cat-and-mouse game--in which they knew I was faster than them, but still managed to cut me off at every turn--a 24-hour Borders appeared out of nowhere.  I ran inside, trying to yell "POLICE," but it just came out "pol.."  "pol.."  The mile of cash registers was manned by an army of young women asking impatient christmas shoppers if they'd like to donate a children's book.  I didn't know how to begin to be a cog in that works.  But Ashley Banks appeared with Sunday's Time Magazine (the year in ideas, alphabetically listed).  The policeman wrapped me in a space blanket as we went outside to look at the scene of the crime.  For some reason, the pirates decided they couldn't have my whole bike so I was left with a rear wheel with slashed tire and a stripped frame.  We vowed to rebuild.

p.s. it's wintertime and you may not have seen your toes in a while, but don't forget to clip your toenails!

TUES(MONDAY).

dream1: It is tuesday.
dream2: My bed is full of mice.
dread: I missed my final presentation.
suspicion: a mouse died in our bathroom vent.


variations on a theme:
1. Firestation 2. Johnny on the Spot, Denver Museum of Art (tilt not exaggerated)


last night my brother called. We talked about dreams, lies and failures for over a half hour. We decided that whether you are seven or twenty-two, it is best to tell your mother that you broke the leg off a wicker-back chair right after it happens.

REREAD.

... an after-eating-pancakes activity in which I aimlessly (but somehow methodically) pull books off the shelf and write down bracketed passages.








(invisible man)
That is why I fight my battle with Monopolated Light & Power. The deeper reason, I mean: It allows me to feel my vital aliveness. I also fight them for taking so much of my money before I learned to protect myself. in my hole in the basement there are exactly 1,369 lights. I've wired the entire ceiling, every inch of it. And not with fluorescent bulbs, but with the older, more-expensive-to-operate kind, the filament type. An act of sabotage, you know. I've already begun to wire the wall.

(underground man)
How much better it is to understand it all, to be conscious of it all, all the impossibilities and the stone walls, not to resign yourself to a single one of those impossibilities and stone walls if ti disgusts you to resign yourself; to reach, through the most inevitable, logical combinations, the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting theme that you are yourself somehow to blame even for the stone wall, though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence sensuously to sink into inertia, brooding on the fact that it turns out that there is even no one for you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight-of-hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties, and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.





{p.s. where did the passion go? afternoons are long and are not for waiting around.}

MONDAY.

Some images I've been thinking a lot about:

These things seem to me very much a part of winter.

FRAN.

My dog is dying and I am inheriting family.


On Saturday night, Mr. J pulled me aside and said:



You are in a specialized field. It is okay to be frustrated. It is difficult because there are so few of you. You will feel like a fool being number 10 of 10. But every time this happens, remember that you can feel good about it all because 99.9% of the rest of the world is not doing what you are doing.




but I have become very tired while my self yearns finitely for some unplaceable nondescript entity.






My grandmother, when she was a young woman--about my age, longed to be a writer. She lived on Tracy St. in Kansas City. That area has hills so steep that when you drive to the top, it seems that there is nothing on the otherside but nighttime. She always hated the name Francis. said that if she ever published, her psudonym would be Tracy F. Hill.



She once told me this story and I'd like to write it down as it was told to me.



...and then one day, we had new neighbors. It was the depression and they had come off a Kansas farm because the father had gotten a job in Kansas City. But they had to look respectable. So the son washed with blue soap. Everyone knows the smell of this soap. This is a working-man's soap. He came around calling and I could tell he used that blue soap. He had pressed his collared shirt and had his hair well-combed. But when we danced, I could smell it!



...In those days, we sewed all of our own clothes, you know. (You should have seen some of those undergarments we made--you could turn them around in your hands for hours and still not know which way was up.) I got tired of these poor-woman's clothes. Oh sure, Mother waxed the floor and skirts twirled around and we had great dances, but I wanted a real store-bought dress. So after work one day, instead of catching the 5:11 streetcar back south, I walked into macy's. All real dresses were too much, but there on a mannequin, as pretty as any other dress in the place, was a nightgown in the foundations department. Six dollars.


...These dances at the young matrons' club, if boys didn't have enough cash to take a date, would have long stag lines. I'm telling you this so you can understand what happened. The nightgown I'd bought was cut on the bias and hung unevenly. So I sewed fishing weights into the hem. When the boy I was dancing with swung me around, those weights were--to him--rocks being thrown by boys in the stag line. He'd turn his head sharply and glare at the other boys and I never told them.


...You kids really should be dancing cheek to cheek. That's the way to meet them. Cheek to cheek.