perhaps we need to come to terms with the fact that our greatest work will not be done in our youth, that we are not a punk band, that being that uncompromising requires a lack of compassion.

Dream 10.31.10

have to go into town to have dinner with the cousins and the parents, decide to take the river, once in the river I am a giant white snake, or at least I appear to be a giant white snake. The other snakes, the crocodiles and sharks give me wide berth. The river turns into a concrete channel and once near the city, abutting the river I see a great white house, vertically big, like a wide tower, and halfway up, on a single balcony punctuating the side of the building, a balcony with a black wrought iron railing, is a woman with long black curly hair and a white dress. She is beautiful and I want to meet her, so I get out of the river and go to the road a little inland that will pass the building on its other side. But once on the road, there are many other buildings, and I cannot tell which one is the tower with the woman. I look for a place to walk back out to the river but cannot get my bearings. I walk into an area that looks like a university quad and I am distracted by games, giant legos building cars and trucks and buildings, and after playing for a moment I realize that I am late for dinner. A benevolent goddess that looks like Miranda July tells me she has built a water proof car for me and I take it and go further into the city. When I reach the dinner place I am too late to eat, mom and dad are already standing, though the cousins and leena are still seated. I ask to use the bath room, and I am directed to a door that looks exactly like a wall. I open it and as I go in another man, not paying attention, tries to walk in as well, he runs into me and apologizes, I apologize and close the door in his face, but it takes a long time for me to pee, and when I open the door he is gone. On my way back to the table I stop at the ice cream counter. I accidentally cut in line, because I didn't see it's shape, and when at the counter the attendant looks to the girl behind/in front of me and she says "its ok he can go first" I ask for a cup of vanilla to go, thinking that I will then ask for a variety of the delicious looking fresh fruits behind the glass to be added on top, but after first asking me to repeat my order multiple times he puts a large scoop of strawberry ice cream in a tub and after creating a little concave in the middle with his two fingers inserts two peeled orange slices. I walk around the line of people getting what they actually want to pay for the ice cream. The chubby blonde girl at the register asks me if I got enough ice cream, the tub is not all the way filled. I begin to tell her that this wasn't at all what I wanted, but she interrupts me saying that the guy has not been filling up the ice cream tubs properly. She opens up a bud light and pours me some beer in a small plastic cup. The man and woman to my left say "we want beer!" and she pours the remainder of the bottle into the plastic cups they are already holding. the ice cream costs 11 dollars and i tip her 2 totaling 13 dollars. I go back to the table and leena and I chat how we are going to be late for work the next day I imagine being back at my apartment, watching a movie,going upstairs to write a little. She tells me about the time she had to go to the dominican republic to argue a case, and she delegated all of her travel arrangements to a travel company and she got there just in time (during this talk the dream turns into a commercial where leena is played by a different chubby blonde). Suddenly I am out of my parents car (I assume they were taking me to my car) and entering a park by the beach, it is already night and I walk around the outside architecture of a gothic cathedral/mayan temple made of pitch black stone. I walk to the top of it and then decide to go down to the beach, when I am walking down I see a station wagon with nobody in it, but the radio on. I look around and see a man nearby taking pictures of the stars. I walk down to the beach and see some other people. I join the group and begin to explain my day to someone who will listen. I say that I don't really remember how I got out of my parents car, and now I will have to walk all the way back to the river to my car to get back home. We all realize that we need to get out of the park before they close it so we rush, happy, to the entrance. The guards are lined up there waiting to close the gates, one of them says "kids its almost nine" I look at my watch and it is close to 3 am. I jump the metal railing and slip out the gate, the rest of my group sticks to the defined path. Once outside the gate I am swallowed by a crowd of other kids. I look back to see if I can see my group but I don't so I wait a moment. There are so many people that I think they may have passed me, so I walk for a while, trying to reach the outside. Once in a bit of open space I look around and realize that I have no idea where I am now that it is so dark, no idea how to go back. I don't see the group I was with anywhere, and even though I don't need them, I feel obligated to tell them goodbye before I go try to find my way back to the river. There is a large wooden structure that I climb into and to the top of to try and get a better view. Once near the top I get lost in it. I see a pretty native american girl (she looks eskimo) sitting on the lip of a passage cut through the wall. She sees another native american, a boy, and calls out are you so-and-so, he says no, and she tackles him, and says that he looks just like so-and-so who she knew as a child. They laugh and roll around together. I come up to them and ask them if they know the way out. She says jokingly "spend ten years in (mythical indian place) and you will know the way out." I laugh nervously and try to climb out of the passage above them but my feet get caught. I feel them pushing my feet with their hands, trying to help me out, and they do push me up to the next passage where I must climb alone and get stuck immediately. The only way out is to wake up, so i do.

p.166 - "In his years at sea, Melville heard tales of lethal encounters between man and whale. Now, as Yankee whaling reached its peak, these incidents seemed to be becoming ominously more frequent. The whales were fighting back, breaking bones and boats, drowning men, turning on their assailants with a vengeful intelligence."

The goal should be the elimination of habit, to no longer picture one's life as a series of little circles, but rather as a straight line. In this way every event can be novel, when pictured in this way, it encourages one to live in the now, to embrace the present. So then the goal should be to find the novelty in every moment, to push one's own time wave down to zero, or as close to zero as possible. This is the zenish buddhist awareness, a present mindedness that is rare unless achieved with voluminous effort.

This living without habit requires some bravery, for it requires constantly engaging with the unknown whether imagined or actual.

Cigarettes and meals become the ways of delineating time and are the anchors of habit. Signposts that are endlessly identical and therefore bend ones life and time into loops.

I remember how resonant any object could be when I was young, the shape would chime with those things of my imagination and that was enough to spin a narrative that would last hours...pen cap space-ships.

From inside Melville's desk : keep true to the dreams of thy youth