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

Dream early night 5.22.07

i am working in the Bender offices (fake geography) and I decide to take a nap. I am sleeping in my boxers and a t shirt on a low twin bed that is clearly in the way of things. janet goes to get some paper or something by me while talking to someone else and accidentally grabs my junk, waking me up. We are both shocked and she walks away quickly. I go outside in the hall and talk to conan o brien about what to do, I keep saying I should ask for something even though i am not really bothered by the incident. Conan agrees. He is chewing little chicklets, a lot of them, and we roughhouse joke around for a while. Evnetually at 8:44 (I notice cause I look at my digital wristwatch after talking to conan for a while and say "Wow. Its late."), janet and Karen and everyone file out of the office. Janet doesn't look at me, Karen says "Oh my god. We should talk." and they both go to the elevator. I think they are holding it for me, but I don't go. The I am alone in the office hall. Dad comes out with one of those science fair poster board things with something about indian history, then the bender office doors swing open and tons of indian people singing march out. through the doors it is india. I run in dancing around and then start to get really into the music and start banging my head in time on the concrete ground with my eyes closed.

The I wake up with my head face down under a coffee table in a spare room in Jason and Melanies (fake geography). It is 645 pm on wednesday. I am worried to find myself under a table and deduce that I must have been sleep walking. I walk through the house to find Jason and ask him if he saw me, I think that someone walking by is what woke my up under the table...The remains of a pasta and rice dinner are on the kitchen table (strongsville kitchen). Jason is in the basement (strongsville basement) with a friend. They are laying out long white feather garland/streamer things, decorations that they are working on. His friend has brought two beige short legged (ein-ish) corgi dogs. Jason is holding one of them in his arms. He introduces me. Cosmo is laying on a blanket piled in a rocking chair. Jason asks me if I know an author who wrote about a lecture about the Crucifixion during the renaissance, Stein or Steinitz something. I presume he is talking about fiction for some reason...but am preoccupied cause i'm still worried about waking up under a table...i start to think i'm dreaming and then i realize that i can open my eyes cause they are closed...then I wake up for real.

Dream 5.4.07

trying to park old lexus sedan in strongsville house, driving too fast skid turning it, can't slow it down fast enough. snakes and snakes skins, tons o them coating the ground. bright green cobra snakes, maybe four to six feet long. I see Janet pull into the garage after me, driving a big SUV, she is driving fast as well, turns right by me to pull into our house garage, her tire runs over one of the snakes, ripping into its body and kicking it up into the air. I dodge it and walk down the street towards the Vash's. I look at all of the snakes and skins on the ground, they are coating it. In front of the house at the corner I talk to Leena and Dad who are standing in the drivewar. a snake falls on me from a tree, i freak for a split second then freeze and breath deep as the snake slides off my shoulders. jump to literature about snakes piled out, printed out packets everywhere. To "Boyle read" something ie read it only for information. one can boyle read things in twenty minutes. jump to A youngish lawstudent talks to her boyfriend about how no one likes her at Berkeley law, she cant' relate to anyone, they discuss the publication of her memoir, anonymously publsihed which is a huge hit.

before all that can't sleep cause dimitri is editing footage in the next room, i hear the same dialogue repeated again and again, he is watching the different takes. I go to the next room and he is editing on a laptop in bed, all the lights off. I stand at the door silent, I can see the screen. In the last shot of the sequence, Nilesh is in bed, he overacts excitment, he is shirtless, he hugs his pillow in large motioned rythmic hugs, then lays back, and kicks his limbs, again rythmically, makes staccato noises of barely contained excitment. the whole time his face is frozen in a fake smile that stays in one place, mouth partly open, eyes wide. I laugh and dimitri notices i am there.


before that I am shooting on a digital camera, something at LRA by betcher. on the back of the camera is a digital readout of how much hard drive space the footage is taking up 5mbs a min. it also shows how much space is left it was somewhere around 2800 mbs (there was a six in the last two digits as well) I had never noticed it before. I think how nice it would be to have an intern that could write down that information as I would call it out after each shot, and to write down what happened in each take.

Before Wise Blood:

"Wise Blood has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers are just sufficient to determine this, and I am gratified to be able to say it. The book was written with zest and, if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgre lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that rare any good must be about matters of life and death. Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes’ integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel’s integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean on will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen."

1962 - Flannery O'Connor