Splintered

I have a compound fracture in the second phalange of my left index finger. I mean, my knuckle is seriously busted. I tried to google an xray to give you a feel for it but I couldn't find anything fucked up enough. They may write it up as a case study -- that's how crazy this is. Fortunately, I have health insurance and a close friend working in orthopaedic surgery so I'm getting treated quickly and well -- by a hand surgeon for pro athletes. I go under the knife on Thursday. I'm hoping for positive outcomes and good drugs.

Also, anasthesia = wacked out dreams. That's a plus.

Sleeping by yourself at night can make you feel alone...

There is a difference between lonely and alone; but sometimes the choice to be alone can be lonely. Although I imagine there are those who feel quite lonely even though they have chosen not to be alone.

Choosing to be solitary does not necessarily mean loneliness nor being alone but sometimes it's just so daunting knowing you need to go home to an empty apartment. There are certain creature comforts that come with companionship. For example, having someone to cuddle with in bed. Of course, then that someone usually expects you to shave your legs on a regular basis, but still, it gets hella cold at this latitude and it is pleasant to have someone keep your feet warm.

So I bought some cozy socks and I still sleep on the couch because your bed doesn't seem so empty when you are sleeping on the couch. But then your bed accidently starts accumulating clothes and turns into a kind of express lane closet and then even if you find someone worthy of visiting your bed, you can't really invite them over for a cup of coffee at the end of the night due to the three or four mountains of clothing heaped on the bed and sorted by degrees of cleanliness.

So I think I'm going to clean my room. But I'm not shaving legs yet. This is a process, you see.

(Oh, and I took this image from George Lindmark's Fantasy Paintings site.)

Fall in...

Make Me

I joined a class run by this nurse who will make me quit smoking -- even if I don't want to. Even if the vapors and flavors of burning tobacco leaves are my own personal, private transcendental portal to Krishna's Holy Kiss, she promises to have us all off the nicotine in three weeks... or we don't get to watch the World Series.

P.S. There is homework. I have to go suck down a coffin nail now. Then I have to tell my smoke how much I'm going to miss it when we separate for good in a few weeks before I crush the dwindling butt under my sole. I have to start breaking up with my cigarettes -- that's this week's homework.

My love life has become some weird background pantomime from a Fellini film.

Hallelujah!

well, maybe there's a god above
but all I've ever learned from love

was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

it's not a cry that you hear at night

it's not somebody who's seen the light

it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

-- L. Cohen

(This link will take you to a nice live performance on youtube but you have to watch a tampax commercial first. Hallelujah!)

Reconsider Columbus Day

p.s.
The guy with the white shirt and the braids is very sexy.

La Colonia

In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Today marks 517 years of paradigm shifts, slavery, genocide, discovery, la raza, lies, biological warfare, manifest destiny, the first baby steps toward a global economy, etc., -- in other words, the Americas. Good and bad, bad or good; "God is change."

Harvest II

It is so chilly and gloomy these days. The cold concrete and the layers and layers of clouds and rain are sucking at my soul. (Okay, I tend toward the dramatic, at times.) I have been asked to attend 4 memorial services over 2 weekends -- memorials for good, kind, strong men who still had a sense of humor about the world.

Plus, I was at one of the state psychiatric hospitals for a couple of hours this week, trying to set up a referral service. (It pisses me off how many people can't get health care coverage.) I ran into an old client from my homeless mental health clinic days. I was happy to see her -- that she's still with us (pessimistic, I know, but there isn't much of a life expectancy for folks in that situation) and she was so happy to see me she about knocked the wind out of me. I haven't seen her in 10+ years, I didn't work with her for very long at the time and I was able to talk to her for 10 minutes but I had to go to another appointment and the poor dear is so entrenched in her own idiomatic logic that it was impossible to sit with her any longer than that. How can happy make you so damned sad?

Harvest

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

-- Willie

"I didn't come here and I ain't leaving."

-- Willie

Oooopps!

I fell face first into the sauce this weekend. Oh, beautiful booze, that numbs all anxiety and hyper-extrapolation. Forgot I love vodka, too. Good thing mermaids can breathe underwater and drink like fish! Sweet dreams...

(Go to the website listed below for the credits for this image.)

"There is no Sanctuary!"

Last night I dreamt that I was given access to view an archeolgical site in order to further my studies. I was permitted to fly -- without a machine -- over a kind of stone shelf with intricate carvings and pools. No one exaclty understood what they signified or who made them, but they were vast -- something like a Mayan city stretched flat, but Celtic in it's symbolism (and also somewhat influenced by the aesthetics of Logan's Run which I watched last night). I had to record everything mentally and take my findings to class...

...which was taught by the Franciscan Brother who was my extremely gifted high school philosophy/ theology teacher who was probably one of the most talented educators ever and whose lessons are still "exploding like a time bomb" in my mind twenty years later. He passed away in January. Brother Mc debriefed me before class and it was agreed that what I learned from the stone site was part of the lesson plan. But I was just a tool -- he knew the over-arching theme of the lesson and me and my stones were a mere instrument to be used to advance the lesson as he conceived it. I was to learn the lesson, too. It was like I was a secret weapon against ignorance, but my utility didn't lessen my own lack of awareness. Class was held. I came to realize that the point of this lesson would not be made clear in one class but would unfold slowly over the course of a year. My stones were not mentioned. I was confused.

Then the brother was informed by the mean, ignorant Department Chair (nun) that he would be required to use the syllabus she was handing out as a template. He had to turn it in for approval. He and I understood that the goal now was to continue the class as he designed it but to somehow disguise the plan to fit into the very rigid and useless construct being handed down so he could teach us undisturbed. I was scanning the sheets and helping him edit parts to look like a rubber-stamp approvable plan ... my shoulders ached and my vision blurred and then grew black...

...I was driving a pickup truck through the country. I pulled into a gravel drive between a trailer with an intricate walkway/ deck and a shelf of ancient stone carvings now covered with grass and weeds. About a dozen of my classmates were there playing ball and my task was to get instructions from inside of the trailer that would explain what formation and steps we should take to clear the stones and open them to their ancient, intended purpose. I had to do this before Brother Mc came and none of my peers could know that I knew this. I had to make it seem to happen organically. I climbed out of the truck and up the intricate walkway but every door and window was locked. Then Joey (a weird dream amalgamation character) came over to see what I was doing and I had to pretend nonchalant mischief. I had just figured out (mentally) the way into the trailer and felt urgency because Brother Mc would soon be coming. I heard and felt a rumbling and looked up over the trailer to see the Brother was a 25 foot giant dressed like Paul Bunyan -- he was both Paul Bunyan and Brother Mc. He flashed me the briefest sideways glance of acknowledgement while bellowing about those of us who were content to watch the shadows on the wall. Joey dashed over the walkway and into the field. I used this momentary distraction to enter the trailer from a back window but before I got in I noticed Brother Mc was carrying a hairless, purple rodent -- it looked like kangaroo babies (joeys) when they exit the birth canal and have to crawl unassisted into their mothers' pouches. I did not understand but I was unafraid and glad and then I woke up.

Last night I dreamt I walked into a storefront and ordered some sushi from the beautiful darkhaired woman behind the glass counter.

While she was fixing my meal, she nodded to the purple fliers on the countertop. They were advertising a special political fundraiser -- a chocolate making, bake sale, love fest being thrown by all of the witches in Chicago. She said we were going to infiltrate the party with decadent deliciousness. She asked me if I could make frosting from scratch. I told her I could; my grandma taught me.