cheese jello

Jayson Black, and a combination of strangers that he embodies, and I are on our way to some small bayou town in Louisianna. We have a lot of trouble finding our way there because the roads are mapped for us on a napkin as a knotty oak tree. When we arrive, my father is the only person I recognize. Jason has even turned into someone I don't know. The party has an ala carte, self-service Thanksgiving feel. The Jello has, I think, cream cheese on it.

these arms know not what they do

A friend is getting married. All of my friends and family are going to the wedding, but none of us know what time it starts. We gather somewhere profane before the ceremony and worry that we are late, that we have missed the vows, but that the bride and groom will surely understand. We can't be the only ones who made that mistake. The wedding never happens.

My consciousness floats above my body, which is flirting with a foreign girl. I want to stop because she is not Aysenur, but the body obeys not. Forgive these arms, Lord, for they know not what they do.

metronome gasps

In a dark cafe or restaurant, Ahmet asks me how I like my Snickers bar. I tell him there must be something wrong with my head because I can't remember eating it, despite it's wrapper glaring back at me from the palm of my hand. My consciousness floats above my body, which is on the white-and-black-tiled floor, choking Aysenur. She doesn't seem to mind. She might even enjoy it. I want to stop, but can't, and it reminds me of when Neil socked Ryan when he dreamed a dark spirit-figure had flown into their bed and her body. I wake up, a gasping metronome my heart.

I Got Life

I was performing "Ain't Got No...I've Got Life" with an older, double-chinned Nina Simone in a basement-grey venue that was something like The Music Hall. Zach Ash was at center stage playing my Yamaha keyboard, and during the applause in between the first song and "Happy Birthday, Harvey" I noticed the levels on a soundboard, which were both very low and very high frequencies. Because of this and Nina's mid-song mood swings I said "It feels kind of bipolar up here." Zach gave me a worried look, and we started the next song.

nothing surreal, or real, or revelatory

I was in Bavaria near Neuschwanstein. My mother or some respected woman was there to guide me. It was raining. From the edge of a mountain trail the local tourist tavern was in view.

Ascension

You had been in France and for some reason come back to lead me to the basement and tell me how to clean it. It was full of surprising minutia. I vacuumed strings. Maybe we were looking for something.

Later, my father told me that the repairs couldn't be done, or received at least, without taking a computer to the shop. A laptop wouldn't do.

When I gained a hazy consciousness, I was standing in a bar, dark as the rest and peopled by shadows that yelped about this and that, but mostly that.

I was vaguely on Ascension.

Having heard of fireworks

From the high-fenced place we raced, having heard once or twice of fireworks. We made it to the sculpted basin made of clay, and by then it was day. We had just sat down at the green-blue reflecting pool and ate a hamburger when I heard an automated voice on my phone that said mum had died in surgery. After some wrinkle in the fabric of time, we saw Renny Bover in the snow. He said he'd be back from Chicago soon. People are better at driving in the snow there.

No one has to know all this, but someone will probably tell.

Jabberwocky on TV

It was Christmas and The Jabberwocky was on TV. I had just done thirty bench-presses of eighty pounds, twenty-nine more than I at first thought possible. I was feeling pretty good.

I called towards the kitchen to Mum to tell her what was playing next. The TV messed itself, and so I had to figure out how to get it back to The Jabberwocky. Mum said it was on negative one hundred-something.

I also had to find the channel that the VCR required. A few channels worked slightly. Parts of human figures shone through the fuzz. I gave up and looked down. I found another remote. This might just work, I thought. But I dropped everything when I saw that the floor underneath the "entertainment center" was crawling.

Bugs and the cutest rodent, more like a tiny kangaroo with opal eyes the size of its feet. I went to the kitchen to tell Mum. She said there wasn't any Raid, but that I could use the imitation 409. Giddy-up.

I went to the bathroom to look at my acne. There was a lot of it. I thought maybe the yellow moisturizer was making it worse.

Naturally I found it curious.

I'm in the den of my grandparents' house in Little Rock, and there's a photo album that says "Herman: 1924..." Naturally I found it curious that someone would have compiled album of photographs of my grandfather five years before his birth. I never opened it. Naturally I found it curious.

i would have slept with him

I was at a summer camp in the hills somewhere. I wasn't sure whether I was counselor or camper, but I didn't feel confused. Everybody hiked up into the mountains to see a black, plastic corpse. It was outfitted like a samurai from what I could tell.

Later I was on the street somewhere in Chicago or someplace like that, in front of a tall building of glass and steel. It's reflection of the sun wasn't blinding, it was pleasant like a sunset. Pretty soon people started pouring out of the building, and it became clear that there was some sort of protest going on. So I started making a sign on posterboard. One read "Keep Your Hands Off My Fucked Up Healthcare!" The other was something like "I would have slept with President Obama, but his change was too big and too fast." Reed, Alex, and some other cats were having a conversation of about a more "civil" version of libertarianism. Someone mentioned Jefferson. The image came to me at least. Then I realized that I was in between two enormous cement walls that were closing in on me and one another. I reached to the top and pulled myself up with one arm. I started thinking about what my Halloween costume would be this year.

Wait. Cormac McCarthy in the historical present. Grey. Cold to stop the heart.

Cormac McCarthy was kind enough to write a story about my dream last night:

Jim from Nostuoh is here. Frazier is here. Johnny Lowebow is here. His band.

Wait.

Flickerstick is here. He watches Flickerstick. Lowebow's band. Simultaneous and on video. Competing for a songwriting competition. The trees like ancient torches. Brilliant. Barren.

Wait. Shhh - do you hear that?
What is it?
I don't know.
Okay.
Okay.

I see something said the man. Lowebow has a band. Only sings now. You're not talking to me are you?
Yes I am.
Okay.
Okay.

The man finally gets a response from The Soundpony. Gotten him a gig at a big event. Cycling competition. Something like that. He shivers and coughs and then into sleep.

italic dreams - i've forgotten my etruscan

Yani told me I should get toilet paper from Sumner because he had a whole lot of it. Andrew told me not to sing like that.

(I would start putting dreams in italics, but it seems I've forgotten my Etruscan!).

Sincerely,

MONG DYNASTY

If I had only seen this side of your face, and you were with a group of your friends...

I am in the supermarket. I don't really know what I'm doing here. I decide to check out the books, and soon I stand before the magazines, stuffing my own mouth full of toothpicks (the blood tastes like the cherry tooth-gelatin they had at the dentist's office when I was a kid). While my mouth gushes cherry, I focus on the magazines, which get only my brief attention; to my left, a lecture is going on in an infernal, terra-cotta amphitheater, in which my Spanish literature professor (a demon) discusses the ghost of José Arcadio Buendia. Like my maternal grandfather he haunts in a welcome way his family's gatherings.

I finally find what I'm looking for: Cormac McCarthy's The Road, perhaps my favorite book. Having accomplished a great deal, I walk to the pharmacy, which is also the bathrooms. As I am keeled over a tiny wastebasket full of paper cups, pulling the toothpicks out of my mouth, I realize that there are far more inserted than I remember inserting. And the cherry flavor is gone. Long gone. It is here that I realize why I am going to the pharmacy. I have diabetes. As it happens, the ominous "they" has found a link between bipolar disorder and diabetes. And I have both. I have been gone all weekend to Little Rock, remembered my bipolar drugs, forgotten my insulin syringes. I turn to my left and catch a glimpse of cousin Philip: "I hardly recognized you," I say.

"Yeah, that happens a lot," he says.

"I feel the same way," said cousin Thomas who has been standing nearby, listening in on our conversation. "I mean, we hardly see each other."

"I know," I say.

"If I had only seen this side of your face" - I take his head in my hand and cock it to demonstrate to Thomas - "and you were with a group of your friends..."

I look at them both for a moment:

"I don't think I'd recognize you at all."