aquasleep

In case you were thinking; oh wow, T--- did not write for a year, why the sudden post yesterday?
you are misled by my absence here; I wrote letters and even tried to write something for here, but was never satisfied somehow. here is one attempt (from my favorite place - my e-mail draft box):

11/16-17-2017 I woke up early this morning from restless sleep, for the third day in a row and I’m not sure why. I’ve been better about letting things go before bed and falling asleep, sleep through the night. I tell myself “Worrying about tomorrow is not going to help me now or tomorrow. Let it go. Sleep” and this works on some nights. But the last few nights I’m not sure what I’m hanging onto into my slumber which reaches up at four am to say “get up, now is the time. No, you are not rested. Your body wants to stay in bed, your mind wants to return to sleep, but wake up. Wake up” and I do. I spend the next two hours restlessly in bed, dipping my toes into the well of sleep but not being dropped down into the depths to fill up with energy like a bucket fills with water. Yanked up to the surface almost empty to thirsty lips.
after eating some of my pickled tomatoes I remembered: I do not like pickled tomatoes. As a child, I did not like mushrooms, but I told my parents (probably around age six) that I thought I would like them one day. I knew I had the capacity for change, and that is something I am trying to remind myself of now. I made pickled tomatoes, I still do not like them, but other things may change.
I wonder if it startles my mother when I respond to emails she sent me years ago. 48 emails in my inbox not yet responded to, mostly from her and her brother, with only five exceptions. At the crux of it it is because they send me information to review: long stories to read in Russian that I haven't gotten around to, authors to look into but I haven't checked out any books from the library by them, or even glanced at the Wikipedia link - sometimes, that is all the e-mail consists of. A heading and a link to Wikipedia. Sometimes I do get to them - the oldest ones are from 2014. Matt's inbox is the antithesis of this: only two e-mails that are ongoing, everything else archived in as far as I can tell, invisible.
____
I don't have a photo from when I wrote that, so here is some mint that I got to grow from the grocery store

Stock

A late Saturday afternoon - a hot mug of tea on my left, a vinyl of Shubert filling the room (99 cents well spent). I have some stock simmering on the stove and laundry being done in the basement. While it seems like this part of my day should have come a few hours ago, I am contentedly writing on the couch facing the (non functional but still pleasing) fire place.

I get way too much into cooking for my own good, but to the right: quick pickles I made this morning. I had grated too many carrots (on a food processor) for borscht I made earlier this week, added in a tomato and the pickling brew. Now I wait.

Below: collected all the vegetable scrapes I had made this week for a vegetable stock. Forgotten scallion and beet stalks: it'll be different every time. I don't eat meat and don't like buying stock or flavoring cubes so this is satisfying.

Dream: I was a passenger on a small plane, ten rows forty passengers plus the pilot and one or two crew members. We were dropping in altitude and I suddenly realized we were landing in a snowy mountain, in an area that looked like a not well kept ski trail. There were a couple of cars trying to drive down too, one we simply and passed over and the next fell off of the trail. A van did a full flip off the side into the woods. The stewardess was announcing to the pilot each time the stair-like trail made a dramatic dip "and DESCEND". Then there was a small red flag and sharp 90 degree turn to the left to a trail that went up slightly. Which we made, butt was terrifying because if we had not we would be dead. I think in the end we landed safely.

Under the Ocean

This was supposed to have posted a few weeks ago! anyway:

My dreams are rarely anything but nightmares, but I hadn't had any in so long. And even though they are often terrifying, it still feels like such an integral part of me that when I stopped dreaming as much for a while, I was pretty saddened by it. Dreaming the dreams I do makes me feel like my brain is always doing this wild creative work. When they dimmed, part of me felt like it meant my mind had dimmed.

Anyway, I'm happy to present to you my two most recent dreams, back to back:
One: Once I started my Yom Kippur fast and had fallen to sleep, I clung to the sharp edge where the beach met the cliff. I braced myself as a 200 or 300 foot tall wave crashed against the cliff. It kept pushing and pushing but I did not suffer it's impact. What I did have to do was wait. Wait for all the rushing water to stop going towards the cliff and start and to pull away. It was cold. I had a pocket of air I had somehow trapped in a crevasse of the cliff with my arm but the oxygen was thinning. I did not know how much longer I had to wait. And I knew that when the time came, I would have to hold on with all that was in me so I wouldn't get pealed into the deep sea. I was feeling weaker and hoped the air would last, and that I would be able to hold on; so trapped and so terrified of what was to come.  (I don't remember waking up but it was before the water pulled away, possibly I had run out of air)

Two: I remember waking up from a dream, but I wasn't sure it was a dream. I thought maybe it is reality. But I also thought: it was crazy, how could I believe it? Scared, unable to tell what was real from what wasn't as Matt brought my to the ER and I thought that my sanity had gone, that I was in the midst of a psychotic break.

stapler

I recently started working at a the front desk of a neurology office in Mt. Auburn hospital. I make packets to give to patients when they come in, call them to remind them of appointments coming up in a week, take vitals, call other offices for notes on new patients, scan some papers and fax others, check if insurance is active. I staple things a lot. It's dull but I won't get another concussion. As my former boss and family friend said "they pay you more for easier work, right?" - which is exactly the case. Do the paper shuffle till you drop.

In all this route work, I had this moment of child-like surprise when my stapler ran out. A second later I wanted to laugh out loud at the fact that I somehow expected the stapler to never cease stapling.

It really did feel like being a child: I suppose as you grow older there are fewer genuine surprises in store. I certainly didn't expect my surprise to be sourced in a stapler.

I remembered that in kindergarten we had a project were we had to bring in 100 of something (jelly beans, crayons, stickers...) I, inevitably doing it the night before, panicking in a way that seems almost humorously familiar now, having procrastinated on the project which we were likely given at least a month to do, stapled a piece of cardboard 100 times and brought that in. Not very aesthetically pleasing, but it did the job. It was for the 100th day of school. Now everything is counted in months, years, pages written, books read, places lived. 100 days. How quaint. How kindergarten.


(I had one of those flying dreams last night: put on warm clothes but couldn't track down warm socks for the high autumnal air. Was brought into the air by air sweeping up a kite which was held by a string which held me and carried me up until my arms spread out could hold me, along with magical powers, sand I was swept up by the current for hundreds of miles. Landed somewhere and something like a spy movie, or like His Dark Materials not quite clear. I love flying...)

false dream

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I went to the Cantab lounge for the third time. There, in the basement, people read their poems at an open mic (the second time I went and someone I had gone on an okay cupid date read), then an invited performer uses their slot (the first time I went it was Melissa Lozada-Oliva, whose poems I had already read) and then the slam poetry, which always happens too late for me to stay.

This time, it was me who read a poem at the open mic, followed by the drunken clapping of people who do not know my face and therefore are not as thrilled to see me. People who only understand poetry that burns, that competes as to who. is. the. most. miserable. I AM. if. I. speak. like. this. SEE MY RAGE. swallow my sadness i.am.shoving.it.down.your.throat. Who forget to value words and who just want to be heard by drowning out the rest of the screaming crowd. I am wrong to say these things. I was very excited to go there the first couple times, the idea of seeing some sort of active artistic scene, the odd good line in a mountain off poor attempts more than I would find otherwise. When I saw someone I had spoken to the first night working at a the coffee shop near me, I was thrilled at feeling like I knew people here who did words. But I haven't been able to go after the third time.

I read an old poem because I told myself "I will mourn. I will do it constructively, healthfully, watch me learn to mourn the way we are told we should". So I read a poem I had read for This Bardian Life, because it is something I can be grateful for - being told to speak my words aloud by Zappa, to let my voice be heard off of the page. Be glad for what he gave me. After I sat down I still wanted to disappear but then I got an e-mail and everything again seemed taken from under my feet is such a small pathetic way.

Hey Roomies,

I've decided to move out of the apartment. I found a place for mid-December. I know this is rushed but I'm positive you can find a roommate very quickly since this apartment has been extremely easy to fill in the past even during odd times. If someone else wants my room let me know before I post in the next day or two to Craigslist.

Thanks

The fighting that I had been ignoring had come to its apex. All three had talked to me at some point about it, and I just listened and waited for it to go away, for so many things to go away. About ten interviews later we have someone moving in, two weeks from now. I helped Therese move her things downstairs while her boyfriend just sat there. She told me to take a break and I said I was fine and she said "you're so stubborn" "when have I ever been stubborn with you?" "never! but I am stubborn too, so I can recognize it in other people" and we both smiled at that.
I helped Adrian move into Therese's old room - painting the walls, transporting carpet from home depot, cut by what seemed like robotic mice housed in a giant machine. I can hear the sigh of relief reverberating around the apartment. Hopefully everyone will be happier now.
 
I woke up this morning on Emily's house, from a dream in which Zappa was still alive.

He was slightly delusional, but I could still recognize him through that, having raced down elevators at the mall to find him and a bunch of his Bard friends at a cafe. He said "the first time I left this earth forever..." meaning that he thought he had killed himself twice, but he had returned, alive, and we had just lost track of him and he had thought he was dead and so that's how the misinformation surrounding his death (or lack thereof) happened. I ran towards him and jumped on him for a hug and he spun me around and then we all passed out Christmas or Return of Zappa gifts from him to us. I got a bunch of measuring spoons and a glittery golden pin. He folded up around my legs, lean and long, like a child and looked up thoughtfully. He said something and then added "but I guess that's considered to be an auditory hallucination", in an irritable tone, and we told him that that's okay, that that's not inherently bad, that we just want him safe and happy and taken care of.

I woke up and he was still dead. I had fallen out of touch and couldn't help. I had begun to morn before he had died because I assumed he was gone, not even taking into consideration the parts of him that were still there. I wanted to go back to sleep but I couldn't.


There are so many good things too but I'm afraid that if I pin them down on paper they will disappear, unable to exist without vibration, doubt and exhaustion. But I'll try again soon.

not a ghost

Months passed I had a dream - A boy I liked from high school but had lost touch with was dancing with me. It was in a building that used to be a psychiatric hospital years ago, by a lake with tall stone walls and hallways that echoed. Ghosts would pop up and then disappear just as suddenly. I've since wondered: if ghosts are usually freed to the spiritual world by resolving the issue that was tying them to the earth past their due, what do you do with a ghost of a paranoid schizophrenic? Are they more likely to get stuck here forever, unable to be brought clarity?

A week ago a friend I had in college killed himself. From my last communications with him, it was clear he had become increasingly disorganized and paranoid, overburdened with false guilt, annoyed by the lack of freedom. When Kelsey called I knew from her voice what she was going to talk to me about, I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.

He had been so sensitive, he was so bright - I can’t imagine what it is like to see yourself losing that, especially for a person to whom intellectual acuity is paramount - emotional sensitivity key - and he certainly felt that the medications blunted him in so many ways. 

At one point he had been one of the people I hung out with a fair amount, he came to a couple of my movie nights and I took photos for This Bardian Life, and we went out dancing, and he came to my 21st birthday party and numerous lunches and dinners together, he called wine vino and had a particular way he nodded his head, large bony hands, hair that had to be constantly swept to the side, low voice and eyes that paid attention when you talked; conversations not to be had in passing. 

I wish I had more I could find of him, it's a strange drawback of having communications in person, in vivo; you can't look over them later. I read something for TBL, he was thinking maybe I should expand it, I was concerned -- 
You mean you think the re-work would weaken it? I think that's reasonable. If you're interested in a remaster, go for it, although, with my bit of experience with creative work I was thinking your past self might have more to say. But it's up to you, of course. Send me the new version if you're comfortable; i'm also open to talking more about your process if you'd like.
 

We lost touch, he had started to lose something, and I was busy and attributed it to other things until we had stopped trying to speak to each other once I had graduated over a year ago now and only recently did I hear from him again, but not him, some other person. I miss the he who I knew, who he was, but both are entirely gone now. I know I can’t feel like I could have done something, but I wasn’t there, one of my last messages to him an apology for us not having maintained contact, and somehow I want to apologize for him being dead, to apologize to him for the sorrowful mix of genetics and environment that led him to not be here anymore, age 22 forever, for the world for having played such a cruel trick on him, that I couldn't do anything to stop it.

I don’t believe in restless ghosts: I have my memories of you on this side. 

script

A few months back with Karen, I put on red lipstick and we went out. I thought every woman should have a lipstick of a color so violent and true. We tried to go to a concert at the Middle East but we but never found the music, just scattered people. We wound up coming back to my apartment, and then two hours later drinking with my roommates at a bar in another part of town.

And then this Saturday, with Essie, at Great Scott. We got to dance but she told me a time that was 15 minutes earlier than when it officially started. The dancing happened an hour after that (we danced alone one the dance floor at first; we did what we came to do, sober and resilient)

Both times it felt like going out with friends in early high school. You have the means, you have good company, but waiting to be seated, sitting down, looking at the menu, ordering, eating, asking for more of whatever, getting the check, figuring out tipping and splitting the bill. This is all a script that comes seamlessly now but had to be learned at first. And I simply have not yet learned the script for going out to concerts and clubs. Come too early, try and persevere. I'll learn it eventually I suppose.

first ever dream about work, almost a year old: Lanauntylaunt and I had gone to a beach with all the patients. The waves beat gently against the shore, the sun was setting. Everyone was happy. They may not have been 'cured' of their ailments, but at least of a moment, the fog was lifted and the misery was gone.

no doubt summer

dinner on the balcony
Margo: Isn't this a great weather day? Can this day be any better?
Adrian: no, it can't be. It feels like the sun has been making out with you all day, you know? Especially around 3 or 4.

I had a dream this week in which I had cancer and was going to die in three days. A spot had been found on my lungs. I only told my family, and we didn't know what to do and they love me so much but I'm not sure we could even really cry. I still came in to work. I glared at a vacuous member of the administration, who was vapidly going on about the new colors of the walls and being a team. I did not want to die, but my lung was giving out.

Tuesday I followed three of my coworkers to Revere beach, drinking wine handed to me by Meils in the backseat on the way there. "Who is this person?" asked LauntyLaunt. The label read: RELAX. Towels, sand. Drunk sounds of the waves crashing. We drank every time we saw an airplane - and they did come, right out of Logan Airport. I said "guys, let's go swim! The ocean is beckoning us!" "beckoning? It's BECKONING us T---?" but they did come. World flipped me into the water, I pinched my nose so the salt wouldn't rush into my nostrils, joyously bobbing with the waves. I'm a terrible swimmer but that doesn't matter when the moon is full and you've had too much Corona.

blue tape white snow

I got paint at Pills Hardware store and somehow ended up with a VIP card, 10% off with a signature of the owner (I'm much friendlier when I'm tired.) I got Yosef to come and help me evacuate all my belongings, blue tape the floor, paint the walls. I took him out for pad-thai, so I don't think he regretted coming.

I also went with my family to New Hampshire. We went snowshoeing. Sima struggled to get up the mountain but then we slide down most of it on our butts, the longest snow-slide and excruciatingly fun.

Black Cat White Cat (1998, Yugoslavia, Emir Kusturica)

dream --
We had crash landed on another planet, our jar of human stem cells cracking in the process, the culture spilling all over, infecting the air. The creatures that lived in took on the form of what they touched, and so they looked human. But if they touched you, you turned into one of them: empty, imitative, reflectory. And so we were terrified: who is human and who is not? They moved and were watching us, slowly pretending not to hunt.

recent rain

I had a dream in which I found out I had an infant child. I thought "shit, how did I forget I had a kid? when was I pregnant? and how the hell am I supposed to take care of him with my current schedule?"
I woke up and was relieved, only to find out that I really did have a kid, just learning to hold his head.
When I finally really did wake up, I double guessed myself, touched my stomach to see if it felt like I had recently been pregnant.

My schedule really is strange: I work every other weekend, and my workday is either 7-3:30 or 3-11:30, depending on the shift. I've been tired a lot but hopefully once I adjust to the demands I will no longer come home and fall flat on my face. This job is exactly what I was looking for, out of the jobs available for my level of education and clinical aspirations. But it requires interacting with new people everyday, running around, being 'on' the entire time, and I've never been good at that.

The rest of my family is in Vegas until the 29th, so I have Potemkin for company. He's currently purring next to me in hopes of receiving some affection. Recent rain is dripping from the gutters.

infinite party people

I have been told I look like Lorde, Kate Winslet, Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Hathaway and Miriam Sekhon. But by far the closest anyone has gotten was my boss this morning, when he said I look like a Vrubel demon.

Mikhail Vrubel - Head of Demon

***

dream -- It was daylight but this party was being set up in a field in a city. On the other side of the field I could see people running around, young people, and others from their group were in other places as well. You could tell they were one of the same because there was something mystical about them, and they were so fervently happy and sharp. One looked straight at me (through me) with dark eyes.

But I went indoors and there was this strange creature, like a bird or a dog. Some of these people were there, and everyone was standing around chatting. I came up to the creature and petted it. I felt like there was some chance that it would bite my arm off (it was very large) but it was impressed by me, and I felt like a shock though my system, all my hairs were on end, goosebumps. It's feathers were bristly and it pretended to eat me up whole, because for some reason I needed to appear like this other group of people, and they were already dead.

One boy with a beautiful face and dark eyes whom I had seen earlier in the field had an intestine from someone else. They were like patchwork people, except that they remained youthful and beautiful and intact. Not quite zombies, flitting in and out of here and now [8:05 alarm, back to sleep]

 
Then I woke up in my bed in a room I was sharing with two other people. I was parched from all the drinking of the night, and I took an appetite suppressant because it was cheaper to eat those than to buy food. I was very poor. But I went out and met this woman who was also from the other plain, but not quite, still too attached to this one. A witch. She was trying to find the middle room in this large doll house, but it kept disappearing - it existed when you looked at the roof of the house, but the space contracted when you looked inside. Finally she found it, and there was a chicken inside wired up. She created a path back to the field, and then, to put the (dead, cold, featherless, headless) chicken out of its misery, she snipped just one wire. [8:15 alarm, back to sleep]

I was at this crazy party, no longer in the park, no longer in this world. We had kept walking and walking until I was only surrounded by dead people. The scavenged soul of Zeus was a glow the size of an elephant. People on stilts and in fantastic dresses through all different time periods. A band was playing on the stage, and the party went out and out forever into the dark, but it wasn't the dark of night. But then the band starting singing a song attacking the dead boy who led me there (the one from the field, except now blond instead of a brunette, and with an entirely different facial structure, shorter too. I was also now viewing from third person, so it felt...less). The band said that he was foolish to think he could let me be here, that he shouldn't have brought me. I tried defending him but turned into a cartoon.

Then I woke up in a hospital, wired into life support. Making the connection with the chicken and the immortals, I snipped on wire and hoped that I wasn't going to disappear, but die like they had died, the infinite party people. I started to feel light headed and someone I love, who is familiar (but whom I can't specifically remember) came in and I said good bye and [8:30 alarm] woke up.

voting in the flesh

The church where the vote is held in my town was pretty empty. The light in the tower was lit, the foggy moon hung over it. Inside, everyone looked grumpy. You would think having the "Green-Rainbow Party" on the ballot would cheer them up. Ah well. I filled out my sheet and let the machine gobble it up.

***

I drew for the first time in a while yesterday, finally executing a piece Sasha commissioned me to do when I was last in NYC. If you want a drawing by me, just ask (in the comments I guess?)

***

I had a dream in which people were shot and infected with this strange bug: their eyes would turn entirely blue and they would start attacking other humans. And somehow I figured out how to stop it, and the I started appearing in different places: space shuttles, huge rivers with candles and people floating around for some party. But then to save everyone, I turned into this octopus thing that filled up the sky and intercepted whatever was shooting people and turning them into blue eyed monsters. But there was a moral dilemma, because the shooters were The Fates, and the reason they were shooting was that humans were just living too long. I was up there in the sky, no longer human, and thinking that maybe The Fates were right, but I no longer had a way of communicating with humans.

I thought I'd share in light of this article about mice and reversing aging.

girl on ground

1) Yesterday, Yulka and I went to Vegi Galaxy (black bean burger for her, chickpea and mushroom for me) before wandering around Central Sq. and inevitably ending up at the Arts&Craftsman store. We indulged ourselves in calligraphy pens and ink.

3) We then watched The Double (2013, UK) though I should probably read the Dostoevsky short story. Also recently: Man on Wire (2008, UK).

Welch-Dickey Loop from a couple weeks ago

4) Karen and I met up for the first time in a long time at the beginning of the summer, ate at the Border Cafe in Harvard Sq, walked from there to Northeastern. We followed up last weekend with pizza and coffee. The distance between people vacillates.

5) I dreamed I was dancing on water. I had to make sure my weight was distributed equally on the soles of my feet and that I moved quickly not to fall through into the lake.

6) Our refrigerator broke over a week ago. The snow my brothers gathered and kept through the years melted. The oldest bag filled with water and small twigs is from winter 2008-2009.

7) Sima did not manage to keep it a secret when his tooth fell out. He was too excited, running up to Mama and me to show it before washing it, putting it in a sandwich bag and under his pillow to be replaced by a Sacagawea coin.

nicely

a little over I week ago I wrote to Eloosha "currently I just feel like I'm finishing another year and it's taking longer than usual - next September I won't be coming back but that hasn't sunk in yet. I've had two dreams involving housing for next year & dorms & subletting in the area" and he concurred.
last night I dremt someone offered me to go to Australia for a conference, so I guess I just want to leave.

I hung out with Max, he leaves for a road trip tomorrow (plane to Kansas, car from there possibly to Alaska). We drank white russians in the middle of the day while watching an episode of the Twilight Zone. Swung from hammocks and he told me that he recently attended the most posh and sleazy event of his life: black tie boxing at the Harvard club. Later that night, he and his brother listened to a a homeless man talk about his aspirations to get a famous person's skull and turn it into a bong.
After that I came home and made dinner and we celebrated Papa's birthday, and I can safely say that today was a day spent nicely.

aquacities of thought and language

Senior photo exhibit I, Alex's senior opera recital, the senior dance show, Dani's senior music recital. Pill for reduction of lyme disease by 80% if taken within 72 hours of being bitten (the bite itself swollen and itching.) My shoulders have browned and freckled from the sun. The picking of a stem of apple blossoms and putting them into a glass milk bottle. Kelsey said “Brooklyn is the Bard afterlife”. Jono got a bird and it screams at the birds outside. Text from Yulka, 11:59pm 10/3/13: It's ok, understand. I took a picture of the magnolia tree behind my house, after asking Sorrel and Hannah to stand in front of it. Found out that (wood) Sorrel is what I know as заячья капуста (bunny cabbage). Text from Hannah, 5:07pm 3/25/14: Between ny and philly: bleakest train ride ever. Nj a hellscape. Valley of ashes. we were making a film but we could do more complicated things, such as overlay ourselves into previous renditions (so that there could be two of each person in a scene). And we decided that we could each interact with the previous version as we wished, without planning out everything before hand. But then a couple of us started killing us off. And I was upset: not only because we were being murdered (it only half felt like it was only in the movie we were making) but because a horror flick didn't fit my artistic version for the film. I screamed in fear and woke up silent. I need to install my AC again because it's getting hot and humid and my room is right under the roof. I can hear it when the rains, which I like. I tried smiling at someone from class but it he looked away mournfully. Emma is to come around noon and we will walk to the burrito stand. She switched majors from psychology to photography, I never did a senior project for studio art, taking a drawing III class in my final semester. Text from Sasha, 10:48pm 4/21/14: (I know but one soul this romantically damned.) I watched The Garden State (2004 USA) last night alone, and found it irritating. Some say say happiness is the absence of sadness. Farm fest was 4$ chili with bread and rice and we left the music when we came around in the evening. Mass Text from Kelsey, 10:49pm, drunk and standing right next to me 5/2/14: I love you ;) Went to the klezmer concert at Two Boots, eating mediocre pizza with Hannah and Will before going to Kelsey's room to watch ParaNorman (2012 USA). Sang the last full chamber singers concert for the masters choral conductors (Sicut cervus – Palestrina; Trois Chansons – Debussy; Spirit Seeking Light and Beauty – Stuart; Pater Noster – Stravinksy; Agnus Dei – Hassler; Rest – Vaughan Williams; There will be rest – Techeli; No. 8 Wenn so lind dein Auge mir, No.16 Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe – Brahms; The last words of David – Thompson). “you can't make eye contact with half of campus” Emma said as we sat in the grass eating our burritos. This is the final truth. 

 

look cool

Smog: I was dancing and then went outside before the next song started. Amanda and Kelsey came outside to make sure I was okay and then left again when I verified that I was fine standing under the overhang. “Do you want a cigarette to look cool while you do it?” Kelsey asked. The rain looked like snow lite by sharp light. Two guys came out too:

“I drank way too much last night. I don't angry or anything like that, but I drank too much”
“why did you drink?”
“because it feels good!”

“but not for any reason like, to avoid an emotion or anything like that?”
“no, just for relief, to let off some steam”

We danced the rest of the night, laughing and closing our eyes to the shifting rhythms.

The next night I should have stayed in. Vessels have a frequencies that make them resonate, and the music the freshman boys played that night resonated in my stomach. The Milkshack (aka EMS house) had dj sets but it was just a bit too cold outside. Some people were gone and danced like puppets jerked by children; everyone else huddled in a swarming mass around the campfire, in varied states of sobriety. Faces where invisible as soon as one shifted away from the fire light; perhaps the total anonymity was good for some but my mouth was dry and there was nowhere to dance for those like me who did not look like marionettes and I had to talk to people I haven't spoken to in a while to avoid standing aimlessly on the frigid fringe of the crowd.

A couple nights ago I had a dream Eloosha and I went swimming in a pond which still had ice floating in it, his father and others were there too. The purpose was to increase Eloosha's literary acuity, though the people standing on the bank wouldn't understand. When I woke up my feet were freezing.

Yesterday Hannah B. and I went to get Chineese fast-food. It was delicious.

triscuits

NY, Ny. On the platform, a girl holding a basket of flowers; another wipes away her smudged mascara tears. On the 3 train, the adult man I sit down next to - white, bearded - promptly puts his finger up his nose and proceeds to eat his found treasure. The man about to take the seat between us, wide eyed and disgusted, pivots mid motion and walks away. He continues to look disdainfully at his smart phone for the remainder of the trip. After finally getting to my destination, Luisa, Sasha, and I eat goat cheese on triscuits. me - beer, Luisa - Budweiser margarita, Sasha - Smirnoff ice. That night I woke up to a cop shouting "put your hands on the hood of the car". In the morning I passed three men "¿cuándo?" one asked "a noche" the other responded, and Sasha texted me the details later: a drunk man had driven into a truck.

The 1 train had delays and so ran express from my stop at 137 to 96th, where I wanted to get off. I arrived at Grand Central early, and hungry enough to buy overpriced falafel at the dining concourse. A guy who works there was telling his philosophy of life to a patron. He looked like Adam Levine or Max Greenfield, going on about the regular homeless people who come by. They do: they go through the trash and find barely eaten burgers and left-over Chinese food. He was originally from Croton-Harmon (a stop on my commute) and is half Puerto-Rican. I fell asleep on the train next to an anxious businessman.
I spent 3.5 hours at the library today but still have not finished writing about pre-saccadic shifts in attention, retinotopic remapping & saccadic planning. I've had dreams about hanging out friends from home (Yulka and Eloosha). It's coming though, and tomorrow I will continue, and eventually it will be done.

she sleeps

There was a dusting of snow today. I was singing Verdi’s Requiem at the time, and now the wind aches against the ears of those outside.

I had ten dreams in two consecutive nights last semester and I wrote them all down.

1) worms from eating seafood coming out of my throat; parasites. This one is clearly influenced by watching the Tin Drum.

2) grandmother dying.  

3) grandfather undead: playing poker with my father and a red-headed mean version of a friend who has played poker in real life.

Last night I was at Hannah’s house. We ate soup and then I decided to treasure hunt in her house. The place has seen many students come through, and many of them have left strange things, beyond the simple furnishings. I found a nice glass jar and three tea pots and a book titled “Is Sex Necessary?” from which we read aloud as we drank tea from a new found teapot, with chocolate and ginger. 

4) a rooster who was harassing me, following me around; literally a cock being a dick.

5) a man who had no reflection and then was a scare crow. When I spoke to him he told me he got into the MIT engineering school, but never had a chance to go because he died. I told him “but you’re aging”; I did not believe spirits could age, and so I knew either I was incorrect, or he was wrong about him being dead.

6) a boy at my college, but he was Georgian instead of Indian. I talked past him to someone else.

Kelsey is coming over in an hour and we will watch The Science of Sleep (2006 USA) upon Zoe’s recommendation. We went to a consignment store that went out of business a few days ago, and now I have two skirts, leggings, a velvet shirt, a a small bag, and a necklace.

7) terrifying physics defying roller coaster with no clear safety measures

8) the dead undertakers traveling through eternity: dead cats

9) a TV series with two female leads. The main character is an uncharismatic and awkward leader, for whom everyone is waiting to fail. And at some point you see her through the eyes of her right-hand woman: Marlin Monroe smoking a cigar.

My housemates have arrived back to our home. I was going to go to NYC again on Wednesday but I felt like I was coming down with something; sleeping for 21 hours over a 48 hour period seems to have successfully mitigated the threat.

10) The merchants. Someone asked “What was here before?” and the merchant said “I don’t know, maybe hot dog stands, we didn’t set anything up” and then I came by and said “before this, Native Americans lived here, but we murdered them”. And then someone tried to destroy my computer data.

cat and wolf

Today after lunch I played squash with Dean.

[note to self: remember to ask Hannah for her squash racquet next time, tennis racquets are not kind to the wrist when it comes to swishy motions].

--

Around midnight on the first of this month, two students from Bard got killed in a hit-and-run. I did not know them. All I could do was be horrified for everyone who had witnessed it, grieve for those who knew them and be furious that this woman was intoxicated and had a previous conviction for drinking and driving, and that the college had previously tried to get the town to put in sidewalks in that area but had only achieved a slight reduction in speed limit.  Before the identities of the deceased came out, the campus was somber as everyone called their friends and family to assure that they are alive, and is everyone okay, and how are you doing, and do you need anything. There was a midnight vigil held and reporters tried to stealth their way around campus like cockroaches.

--

Dream: I was at a gas station and I found a fancy phone on the ground. I tried to give it to the guy who works at the Mart so that the lady who dropped it and drove off could pick it up later. But the phone started crumbling like a piece of cake and the guy at the Mart asked me what my name was and was suspicious of me. “I know what your people do” he said. He was Israeli and I didn’t know what was wrong. Later I was at my house and the police were over with the newspaper people because Yosef had refused to introduce a group at a public event. The group gave scholarships to underprivileged kids, but then was also leveraging them with the money, so that their public profile would look nice. My brother didn’t like their manipulations, and then the guy from the Mart came by to apologize for being suspicious of me. His name was Yaniv and he had a black ink tattoo on his inner forearm that looked like a wolf, about the size of a hand. Since the police where already there, they saw him, and his tattoo and mistook it for a cat. They took him in to custody since the cat symbolized some sort of cocaine dealing ring.

--

I went to Amanda’s and Jo’s double birthday party later that same weekend. Another party was thrown a couple weeks later by Kalena and I went to NYC this past Wednesday to work on my project. [insert metaphor of choice about life and death here].

--

Dream, cont.: I woke up from that dream into another, riding down a large hill on the back of a grocery cart, gaining speed and losing control. I finally managed to maneuver the cart onto another street, where I gave Sasha four cupcakes and told her about how I had dreamed of Yaniv, and how shitty it was that he was brought into custody. [I don’t know anyone named Yaniv, but the wolf and the cat hang in Hannah’s house].

--

About a year ago over winter break, one of the Bard security guards, Larry passed away from flu complications. I had talked to him on the last night before leaving for break, and he told us a few stories about his earlier days working here, when the students were more apt to have crazy parties which left some attendees [most none-students] filling up the hospitals in the neighboring counties. Larry was one of the first Bard non-professor people working at Bard I met, he was caring

Halloween: ¼

On the last Friday of October, Hannah and I went for a long walk through Red Hook. The leaves were crisp under our feet, and the wild cherries were covered in dew. We ate apple raspberry pie with whipped cream at the pie shop – one of the girls who works there is beautiful. On Saturday, my housemates threw a Halloween party --I saw half of “The Happening” while most of their guests played some board game. 

One night instead of working I listened to Eloosha read and ramble on his radio show.

Three nights ago I had a dream in which ten of my teeth fell out, and carried them around worried they would get lost – though many people have that dream. That wasn’t the central point. What had happened was a man had returned to my town and it was causing me to remember that, around age 11 or 12, I had assisted him in establishing a pattern of behavior in a boy age 15 or so. This helped the man to lure and murder the boy, and then I assisted him in covering it up. Now 21, with the man hanging around town again, the repressed memories were coming back up. I was trying to figure out what had really happened then, and how to tell the police. At first I thought perhaps it doesn’t matter, but then I realized that, while it wouldn’t change that the boy was dead, it would bring closure to the family, since they still didn’t know anything so many years later. I was worried about being arrested as an accomplice, and also very confused about how, even though I had been only 12, I had allowed myself to do anything that would lead to someone being in pain and death. And furthermore, the man was hanging around me (while my teeth were falling out) and I didn’t want him to know what I was thinking, fearing that he would kill me as well.