Dialysis Cell

The guy awoke already in imprisonment. A scar ran the length of his forearm and extended through the edge of his middle finger. His fuck you finger. A swollen and blueish fuck you finger. The prison yard was muddy post a good rain. The guy was naked and sitting upon a cold stool. He rotated each arm. The long scar hid on the dark side of his arm, now revealing an IV tube sticking into his veins. On both arms. The IV ran to a wood pole sticking up from the mud. An armed officer was in the act of replacing the bag of liquid on the post.
"What is going?!" The guy barked.
"Hold still! Hold still!" the officer ordered back.
"Why am I out here?"
"Finally coming to eh? Congratulations. You fucked up and killed a man. Although he nabbed your liver, so congratulations, you'll die if you move an inch and lose the flow of from the baggies."
The guy looked back at the prison.
"No room left, but you are good and trapped here. Move an inch, you pull the plug on your IV and you'll die within minutes. Congratulations."
The officer finished what he was doing and the guy under the gray skies of late afternoon.

The night chill whipped the guy around and made the liquid entering his blood stream icy, near icing. His body temperature dropped drastically. The officer watched from the tower and laughed. He finished his warm tea and flicked on the auto beam and declared he was ready for bed. The auto beam would scan the prison yard in a constant rotation with a spotlight and sense any change in movement or space.
"The guy's fucked," the officer grumbled.
The guy shivered. And shivered. His skin whitened as though bleach popped and spread from his goosebumps. The guy's eyes glazed over. Thunder patted in the far distance and a slight warm breeze shifted through, for only a moment. It was a moment enough to give the guy the ounce of body heat needed for a lucid thought.
"This is bullshit," the guy gasped.
The guy proceeded to remove the IV tubes from his arm veins and trotted off down the prison yard and hopped the fence. Fifteen minutes later the auto beam landed on the spot where the IV bags still flapped but no longer ran to a body. The alarms sounded and all officers were called on alert.
The guy hid in the back of a garage down the street. The house seemed to be empty. He found a dirty blanket and laid out in the tube of a rolled up a rug. He could hear the sirens tread the surrounding hills and shouts from the woods, a search party. Four hours later the guy was still alive, without crude dialysis. He felt the rising scab on his arm. He recalled no such event when he killed a man. Having found warmth he now felt quite healthy.
"What kind of bullshit is this?" the guy mouthed silently in the rolled up rug.

The Bears Took My Sleeping Mound

I was on "getaway" in a cabin that my family newly discovered it owned. It was dilapidated a bit, a very gray wood that had dried and splintered by way of old weather. The screen to the porch was definitely torn at the upper corners. By raccoons? It seemed originally it was only two rooms (living room, one bedroom) and kitchen. Latrine was outside. Little rectangular slab with a hole for your buns and an open tank into the dug up ground. I met an old cousin whose name I forgot. He lived as a spirited loafer, often poking around the woods shirtless. Did I mention this cabin stood lonesome in the woods of Colorado? At the base of a rocky upheaval of mountains. We ate our meals outdoors, on a slanted and rotting picnic table. My cousin insisted that I take the bedroom. He slept on a heap of blankets in the living, as though one who tended to dose watching television on the couch, although there was no television, no glistening manifestation to proclaim the flow of electricity. The mattress was so goddamn damp though and he was so friendly in his offering up his bed that I felt weird giving it back to him during the middle of the night. I did spot a sort of hatch in the ceiling which I poked around at, revealing an opening onto the roof and the piny canopy. I crawled out and walked around in the chirruping night in only my boxers and savored the freshness of the air. A drastic improvement from leaning face first into the musty mattress. I gravitated against the slope and felt plucked by curiosity to scope out the mountain that reached up into jagged gnarles of land. The trees thinned and it was an open, grassy slant. A few buffalos grazed and the moon made everything look blue. I walked, barefooted into dewey grass and the loose grass stuck between my toes in little balls. I hiked up and found a nook of grassy brush resting on a tuck of cliff face, which I climed and looked down at even more buffalo in the far valley below. Here I rested. Fatigue caught up with me and dissolved the second wind of curiosity. I awoke once before sun up and though to make my way back to the cabin and climbed a little pine and hopped back onto the roof and descended back into the bedroom. With my nose mashed into the sick smell of the once white (now charcoal black) mattress I thought about returning to my little spot, my found nest in the open of a refreshing nature, but the sun began to peak through some trees and I could hear my cousin stirring.

The next night arrived and my cousin snored from the floor of the living room. I could easily have exited the front screen door through the porch with saggy holes in the floor boards, but I enjoyed the process of sneaking up onto the roof and out. I enjoyed the jump from the smoothed out panels and into the moist ground made of old leaves. I enjoyed sinking to my shins and pulling my legs forth, streaked with wet dirt. I read once that the elements in dirt can revive certain mental abilities and I admit I felt a tad more open minded. Well, a better way to put it would be "open sensing." Everything felt clear, sounds were crisper and my pupils seemed to dilate and gulped the blue/dark world before. I walked up the slope again, anxious to claim my little open aired nest to sleep below the stars. The buffalo grazed and from the distance their shapes triggered thoughts of old friends.

Upon arriving at my nest from the night prior, the buffalo which I had assumed, was actually a bear, a big black bear which roared at me and I stood very still. I cannot tell you what I did from there or what he attempted to do to me, because I awoke mid morning, unscathed, laying on the roof, looking up at the tall length of trees. Noises pounded from the canopy, and as my eyes adjusted to the light poking through (it was noon) I could see the figures of construction men with hard hats, clinging to the trees by rubber saddles and laying the foundation of an elaborate tree fort.

Thin Strip of Hair

I am realizing I am not a fan of the man with a ponytail. Perhaps this is something I've always tended towards but it consumed me like a gutteral reflex about a week ago when I was at a poetry reading, some ass in the back with a ponytail, drinking Tecates began heckling an old man who was reading poetry. The regular emcee was not there so it seemed they were not able to bring out the usual lighting, so he had difficulty reading. During the process of him stumbling over some words, a small group of office folk left the bar. You could from the get go that they were not pleased this was poetry night. The ponytail fellow - smily smuggly - shouted "you sure know how to bring in a crowd!" This was the closest I've coming to instigating a punching in another fellow's face. In the end I exerted self control/pussied out. God, what a smug little fuck. Reminded me of a Leo Johnson from Twin Peaks.

Last night I had an intense dream which actually has inspired within me a new idea for a play. I will begin working on it in the new year. I've never tried mead before, and I think I will make it my new year's resolution - to try mead. Fermented honey correct?

Last night chocolate chip pancakes made an appearance in my dreams and this evening my girlfriend suggested we make some. What a great manifestation it turned out to be!

The Shivers

One of my biggest fears is becoming the ticking of time. On a subsonic level it is becoming pervasively loud, at least within my own cochlea. My guts are churning an ever increasing pool of ideas for projects and the act of juggling and sustaining each and everyone with a mighty and passionate fervor seems to be egging on this proverbial tick-tock that sends shivers down my spine. It's attempting to shatter the child-like hunger I have to create. I get the feeling this tick-tock wants to co-opt the creative spirit into a mechanical act of production. Churn and churn the goods and get them on the market. Is the capitalist trying to wear my artistic drive like a fine suit or disguise? My how the day flies by and how I kick myself for all I accomplished was write a short story, several stage sketches, write part of a screenplay, send out some promotional e-mails, cook a fine meal, read to refresh my command of the english language. And the capitalist that likes to wear my creative skins does chide me for not summoning the revenue. My I'd like to kick modern money mechanics in the gut and run like a child into the fields and build a strange fort and relax for a bit, truly let my imagination run wild.

Tonight I'd like to induce a dream, where I drink absinthe with an unknown and forgotten novelist in Belgium, in the late 1800s. We will revel in the absinthe guzzline and exchange thoughts.

Droves and Acorns

Last night I had a strange of glimpse of the city of Chicago on the brink of absolute chaos. I hopped over a roadside barrier and had to sweet talk two female cops as the sunrise came up and people took to the streets in droves. My enjoyment of the excitement dissolved as I saw apartment buildings collapse, then my meandering turned to the west, to the smaller towns, where I stayed with an old high school friend, in a large white house near a lake, and enjoyed a more subdued sunrise the following "dream" day. The warm rain fell on my shoulders. Tickling, wet, refreshment. I had a ball throwing acorns into an abandoned pool over grown with ivy.

There were tones of my dream that reflected and resembled some themes in the book I just released: Turban Tan. I hope you get a chance to check it out. I had a good time writing it and putting it together. It's a piece that means a lot to me. www.TurbanTan.com. Below is a little trailer for it.

Turban Tan is Now Available!

I am absolutely psyched - my next book Turban Tan is now available on paperback. Best place to get a copy is at the website - http://www.TurbanTan.com. It ships pretty quickly too! I hope you enjoy the read! I am really excited with how the book came together and it's proven to be a pretty important book to me. Please let me know your thoughts on it when you get around to reading a copy. Your readership means a lot to me.

-Jeff Phillips
TheIglooOven@gmail.com

Nonsense

Last night I was at a poetry reading and a fellow was reading a poem in Spanish. Now I only remember minute snippets of high school Spanish so in a sense it was a blur of words - yet there was a precision in his delivery. Despite lack of comprehension on my part there was a sharpness of content being communicated and expressed before my very eyes and indeed I was “looking” at words much as one would a sign post or even a strange plant or tree. I’ve been tossing around the idea lately of learning a foreign language, some thing that it is far removed from English in structure, some thing more ancient or based in different alpha characters or symbols, perhaps Sanskrit, Hebrew, or Arabic. I’m often intrigued by how a language that is structured differently affects the thought process of those who speak it. So, by learning a new language and working towards fluency in that, I’m curious how stepping out of the gestalt of my English tongue, and processing ideas through a different linguistic construct, will affect my expression of ideas through writing. I’m feeling more and more serious about this idea. I have a lot on my plate now but perhaps I ought to start clearing some room to embrace this long term experiment. I believe it was Samuel Beckett who wrote all of his plays in French. It not being his native tongue, it forced him to truly think about each line, each word, each thought. In the end I find it quite miraculous, that as animals, we can even deduce ideas and emotions from words. But listening to a cat’s meow, dolphin’s chuckle, bird caw, perhaps there are subtleties of timbre that are conveying a different construction of language. My cat must be telling me something when he purrs. I have chalked the cat’s purr to being their physical equivalent a sort of laughter, a giggle. My good friend Ian Randall once stated on a drunken evening, King Cobra peeking from the paper bag, “Language is just agreed upon nonsense.”

Evacuation

Last night I dreamed that the north side of Chicago needed to be evacuated due to spraying some chemical to burn a potential virus. We were given vouchers by the city to stay in a hotel downtown, downtown had been evacuated and there was a strange musical "residents"going on. The logic was confusing as to how this would prevent disease, it would just be spreading the disease to more places I thought. But they had some scientific answer planned on developing immunity by slight exposure and evacuation for spraying a residual chemical that would serve as anti bodies when we digested or breathed it in. Anyway, my girlfriend and I headed down town and packed our bags for a week. I realized I forgot my swim suit (the hotel had a pool and jacuzzi - and quite a view) but could not get back into my apartment for it was sealed for the time being. Unfortunately none of the stores downtown had any swim suits, apparently. I ended up having an issues with the valet when I returned from my swim suit hunt and it took awhile for a space to clear up, so I waited. When this had been taken care of, I entered the hotel, and my mom and brother were suddenly there and had got us access to a private movie theater in the building and were set to play a series of movies. I feel like it was Star Wars. Although I was kind of upset because they had dinner without me while I dealt with the valet dilemna and so I wanted nothing to do with the movie until I had some dinner. In my dream I also started to re-read The Hobbit.

Dream Log 11.23.09

Terrible T i v o

My girlfriend's mom gave us her old Tivo as a gift. We were excited about it, it was nice and thoughtful of her - we would now be able to ensure we get to see our favorite ghost hunter / ghost lab shows and random history channel specials. It has since proved to a drain on our time and money. In order to get it to work:
-Tivo yearly service - $129.00
-Because it is an older model, it was designed to connect with the Tivo service line through a land line. Getting it set up with a wireless adapter ($31.00) was not successful. In order to set it up the Tivo unit needed to complete guided set up, and the last step was to connect to their database.
-Linksys, we needed to configure the wirless router to open up some ports so the Tivo could work with the wireless adapter and finish the last step. This involved calling Linksys support - apparently our warranty was up, so would cost us $29.99 for a one time service or $39.99 for a six month service plan. We went with the six month plan. He opened up the ports, we rebooted the Tivo - it did not connect successfully.

So far we were $199.00 the hole with out a working Tivo. He mentioned he could pass this on to their sister company, where a team of engineers could solve our problem for a one time fee. We opted no, asked for a refund, and we were successful at that! We cancelled our Tivo service plan. We are over this costly and time consuming process to get an electriconic box to record more television shows for us, when we still have to finish our Twin Peaks, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia marathons. And when it comes down to it, we have an old fashioned VCR.

Tivo will be up on e-bay at some point soon if you want to give it a whirl.

We did a little short movie for a Second City video sketch contest. Feel free to check it out and vote for it if you enjoy it! http://chicago.metromix.com/home/article/vote-so-you-think/1614353/content. We're number #31 - (Bee)tnick Poet by Wood Sugars Comedy.

Pegging

Two dreams of darting instigation: Back to my old days of competitive nordic skiing in high school, we were on another trip into Canada, sleeping in a rented farm house. Five or six of us were sprawled on the floor in sleeping bags. One young man started in hysterics - something had poked him, but none of us were near him. Something poked him again and he leaped away from the corner. The rest of us, in investigative spirit, tossed pennies to the corner. The naught spirit slapped the pennies away, bouncing back from seemingly empty air like a rambunctious kitten knocking things off shelves.

I was sleeping in a motel, hiding away from an enemy of sorts, I knew he was trying to snipe me. The goal was to lie low, with the blinds closed - only in this shoddy motel slabs of the blinds were missing, leaving open shafts of transparency. This did not please me, and in notifying the front desk, they apologized and offered no other room as they had a bit of a "mini blind" problem. As predicted, my enemy began to snipe at me. I clung to the floor, gripping the rug as though my claw of a hand were engaged in a desperate bear hug. The sniper entered the room, but to my lucky advantage, the television set had been jury rigged by a kindred spirit from a similar predicament to act as a flame thrower. I utilized this in a rush of resourcefulness and blazed my foe to a black crisp of skeletal residue.

Dream Log 10.21.09

Abode Becomes Ice Boat

I have always been intrigued by how components of dreams can shift shape and setting and how we roll with the series of alterations with nonchalance. I was hosting a large party at my house. Streams of guests and old colleagues arrived on the long plank of side walk through the courtyard and entered my abode. It was heavily attended by former coworkers and had the appearance of being a company party! A good friend, Adam, and I took descent into the basement below my apartment for a quick talk while the guests above got settled in and mixed their drinks. When we ascended, the stairs connecting my back door with the lower level was now on the edge of a wooden ship. Beyond us was a black sea, calm, icy, and snow fell as think sheet.

I am also amazed that I did not have a dream with this-man. I learned about this yesterday, finding it almost creepy. I'll admit it made me slightly apprehensive for sleep, as though I'd be entering a realm where I am most vulnerable to the weird presence of an ambiguous fellow. And so I thought about Nightmare on Elm Street. Find out more about "this man" at Thisman.org and see if you have dreamed him prior. I thought for sure just thinking about the possibilities of him being in dreams would bring him out it my dreams last night. However for now I have avoided him.

Dream Log 10.16.09

Sea Nots and Flapping!

Teetering indebted, stringing into the system of borrowing invisible monies, that will not only chase you - haunt you and convince you subtly to choke yourself. You try to build a bigger boat upon it, with it, but we all know salt does not skim over the seas but slips deep into it. I'm throwing away "nots" in the guise of salts, letting the sea grip it and keep it. And I'm doing this because I'm giving into my own delusions of grandeur, un stopping the flow and embracin naivety in my own veins, puffing wind into my pipe dream. Because I firmly believe that it can take sail and skim along smoothly, charging against the waves. The delusions can benefit man by inducing cloudy enough thoughts to make him cough on talking about it and finally take that risk, to actually breath it. I wish to make my business in stories. Stories to hook you into the stimulation of tale that welcomes you deeper into your own forgotten imagination. The drug dealer and I have much in common: dealing a form of escape. I will strive to fill American bedstands with copies of my books, dog eared and battered, evidence they served as bedtime stories and may dance in your mind as new mythologies. If you tell me that there are many who do not make a livelihood dealing stories, I will retort that many have and do. Look at your fellow on the train, engrossed in a book, missing his stop! And then tell me that America is not ready to be intoxicated with a new and wicked tale. If you wish to continue to fight on the side of nots, you can join those nots as they are gripped by the sea! And I will turn my attention to the little vessel, rocking gently and flapping my sails so the next given puff can let it boast its shape and cut apart the nots that still yelp as white caps on waves that still wish to work against me. But the vessel of mine is gaining momentum and will sail where it pleases, to any port I can find: where I can unload to the hungry imagination. And I will enjoy every second in the process of flapping the empty, yet open and crisp sails. In the end all I can control is the flap, and my enjoyment of the flap. I cannot control the wind. But I rest assured and capitalize on the fact that as long as the Earth maintains an atmosphere, the wind will come around. The vast ocean I am enbarking on causes me to tremble, but it does not hinder the exhilaration when even a small gust incites the glide of my ship and the collection of these small victories steady and quench the tremble.

Coming Up for Air

I stepped out for a sun shine break and the light hurt my eyes intensely. In a cave of occupation I realized this is how my brain sometimes felt. Where the occupation seeps so far into your consciousness and is somehow linked into every thought. And to escape into another realm, say creative pursuits, it is almost shocking. Clouded and pursued by a mechanical distraction, a rewiring of my brain, I realize it is time for me to take a step back and rewire my brain the way I would like it to function on a more relaxed and creatively charged plane, diving into new concepts plucked from simple experience and opening the channels into the deeper realms of my subconscious where stories linger and are ready to be told. I had a good moment today, feeling naturally a conversationalist, enjoying creative interaction, and the art of goofing around without forcing anything.

Detective Farms

I was working as a detective and was called to investigate the murder of an alien on the site of a quarantined alien bunker. I sneaked in through the metal gate with my partner and pulled out the body from an empty wharehouse. The bunker was out amidst some farm lands, it had begun to rain and our plane had somehow filled with water, so we were unable to fly out of there. We had to walk through farmland through tree groves back to civilization. We came across an antique house with modern wings built upon it, with fountains lit from within, a yellow orange flavor of flame. Here the elderly resided in leisure. We joined them for tea.

I jumped out of an airplane, felt the sudden "oh fuck what am I doing." Had a cheapy parachute made from a back pack but didn't use it, landed safely on the ground after I persevered the feeling of falling through fog, no awareness of the ground approaching but suddenly my feet were planted. I've had many of these types of dreams before, skydiving without a parachute, a sudden leap from the plane to the ground as the quickest route down. Perfect landing on my two feet.

In this dream I was living on Grand and wilton, took the subway home and got off at the grand blue line but was somehow way way west of the city. I began walking a little bit more west, unknowingly, disoriented, and came upon the expanse of a cemetary. I turned back around, by this time it was pitch dark and snowing. I came across two of my former professors but only had time for a quick hello in passing. A trashy looking woman, young woman, probably in her teens, said "hey want to get a hotel room." She was missing her front teeth and I was quick to tell her to "get the fuck away." But it turns she was the sister of a friend who immediately came upon us. We cleared up the misunderstanding as she was "just joking." We went back to their house and had hot cocao and watched the snowfall and a halloween parade pass by their front bay windows. We soon joined the parade and I found two coins made from alluminum in my front jacket pocket, large coins. Somehow these resounded with great significance, as though I had gone full circle on journey, and a twinge of deja vu reverberated in my heart to tell me I could have missed out on all of this adventure had I found these earlier but felt satisfied that I hadn't.

All of my family came in town, including aunts, uncles and cousins. We went out for beer and ice cream. I had finished one brown ale, ordered another, took one sip, then went to releave myself. When I returned my family was gathering outside the door, ready to return home, my full beer had been cleared and drained. I was highly disappointed. We played a family tournament of Mario Kart after the ice cream and beer.

At my old home in Maine, the house I grew up in from 10-19 years of age, we were shooting a Wood Sugars short film. Eliaz Rodriguez was setting up his camera angles on my back deck, which had been removed from the house and re located across the lawn in a wooded patch. Two rabid black possoms began encircling Eliaz, stranded on the porch. I hustled inside the house to attempt to retrieve a bb gun, my mom found one in the garage. We shot the beasts. I do not remember ever owning a bb gun as a kid in that house. Yet conveniently one was placed with in the memory of my childhood home to aid me in that particular predicament within this dream scenario.

Dream Log 09.05.09

Dreamy of odd Beachy

My gal and I settled into a swell country cottage and tested out the sparking flames of the stove and were pleased with the smooth transition of clicking to roasting burn from beneath. A sunny hill ran up to a nestling of trees beyond our back yard. A charming afternoon. The evening walk turned wicked as we rounded a weeping willow and discovered metallic men patrolling with creepy grins and steel guns as arms, a literal extension of the word sometimes used to describe weaponry, replacing a limb as a sole function. Storms a brewed and wind devastated trees, we got the hell out of dodge and made our way to an exansive beach in the open distance. We knew it would not shield us from the wind but could rely on the fact that we'd get out and away from the trees which looked as though they were about to snap and thrash. Upon reaching the beach, the sound of roaring waves could hardly drown out the sound and site of a million jack rabbits doing the deed at high speed to one another. Second jack rabbit dream in less than a year.

Dream Log 8.24.09

I have a live reading booked for September 23rd at 7pm for Whiskey Pike: A Bedtime Story for the Drinking Mankind. At Quimbys Bookstore (1854 W. North Avenue). Chicago, IL. Complimentary whiskey shot (for all attendees 21+) in a toast to kick off the reading. Bring your friends and get your bedtime story fix. Free event.

Blue Survey

The underwater display of an exhibit in its intricacy had a profound draw. The museum decided to erect Atlantis, the lost forgotten city, enchanting the guests from abroad by the blue sea glow and seaming expanse of this dwelling claiming to have used original archeological evidence to devise blue prints. A photo op was set up at the entry, which arced as a tunnell down to the city at the depths. Families stood in front of a green screen, and later saw themselves in front of the grand scape on a printed photo. Inside the plaza of the city, waterfalls adorned the walls surrounding kiosks of merchandise. Boards splayed the photos of the people from their entry. A great distance covered the span from the capture of images to the selling point. The easiest route of transportation within the great tank was by riding a small whale to and from. If a problem arose at the selling point and I was at the other end, I could glide from the upper surface to the airlocked pool, where I could park my blue whale, dry off quickly in an intensive blast of air, and rush to get a-fixing.

After a day of this I went to eat at a buffet in yellow and dusty field, picnic tables spanned in a straight line, and the sky took on the green of tornados looming. I was first in line to fill a plate at this rationed fair. Red barbeque chicken was the first to slap my plate.

Work Dream 8.18.09

Burning Ink

I tried an experiment while camping this past week. I wrote a page of prose, feverishly handwritten, then tossed it to the smoking flames, to see the ink sear, then crumple into the collapsing paper, bronze running to black, and withering away forever into an ash that will run with the mud of upcoming rains. This experiment came to mind as I walked past an image of Adolph Hitler not too long ago. In a long series of thought associations I stumbled onto the concept of book burning, and as I vested more of an interest and passion in writing literature over the several most recent years, the idea of book burning hollowed me with a more personal sting. My curiosity and tendency towards slight masochism itched me to explore the experience of seeing a written work singe and disappear. I could very well toss my book Whiskey Pike, which I recently self published, but that wouldn’t have the same flare (no pun intended) of indignation, as there is a pdf of the original typeset saved on several computers, jump drives, and CDs, not to mention with the publisher. We see here the glory of the digital age in backing up intellectual property so the artist can rise again like a phoenix amidst the destruction of one physical copy. I wanted to see something unique written, never again to be recreated, slip into the orange flicker of destruction. Of course this experiment is a bit watered down as I knew going into it that I was going to destroy whatever it was I was going to write, and perhaps subconsciously I did not release a depth of personal vestige in my work. However upon completion of the writing, I was filled with a touch of pride at the poetic flow of the piece I had written, and pleased with the aesthetic configuration of words communicating the idea of burning literature. I thought for a second how easily the words came to me in the instant I wrote them, but how ethereal they were without the preservation through ink to paper. Never again could I communicate with such precision the same thought, as I would be crippled by the urge to recreate the same poeticism and rhythm of the first attempt. Writing is very much a performance, a very personal performance, the writer performing at the paper, and beautifully the paper preserves it through the whip of ink or tap against type pad. The hollowness I felt post paper burn struck me with some similarity to the feeling I have had after the close of a play, pleased with the piece but realizing it would never again be seen. There is a bittersweet twist of pleasure with the creation itself and emptiness that it will slip away through the cracks of history, as with anything in life, we realize we are of mortal nature, ourselves as well as our work. Enjoyment of the work becomes necessary to continue on knowing all of nature’s destructive forces. The writer may also face the loss of work in the everyday dance with technology, a power outage before saving the document for instance. Art reaches to be shared, and obstacles to its ability to be seen or experienced can be of a devastating vibration. My experiment in a sense was meaningless as I wrote it without the intention of sharing with an audience and wrote the carefree flick of pen knowing I would never get to share it – the result however with the carefree flick was a piece I felt was actually, truly beautiful, and indeed despite an assumption of closed subconscious, a personal splatter of words that had a raw and fresh quality to it. I almost want to approach all of my writings with that same carefree attitude. It in fact may well be my most honest writing to date. I thought that I may perhaps rewrite it and see how close I could pull out the phraseology that may be lingering in my short term memory. But it would have lost that original flow, and would be a prefabricated attempt to duplicate, as if I were a photocopier – I in fact would not be engaged in the act of creating. I will let the aforementioned piece remain a mystery both for the reader and for myself. I can only image how one would feel seeing his body of work purged and what possible ways there are to cope with such a protest against ones art and ideas. I know how I coped on the level of my experience, which was in all essence self induced and petty. Immediately after staring into the destruction and page particles flittering away as smoke, I pierced two hot dogs with a whittled stick and balanced them above a hot coal. I buried the loss with sustenance by cheap beef frank and slid a momentary step back down the ladder of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

Visions from Sleeping in the Woods

My girlfriend won us a romantic room for a night at an elite downtown Chicago hotel skyscraper. We claimed our prize and went to have our stay. The place was beautiful, dim blue lights in the form of a glass shell adorned the golden walls, and intricate gold and burgendy oriental rugs rugs stretch the halls leading away from the marble entry of hall grand height and gold haze. We took our private elevator, an old fashioned manual operated cart with grated door, with the guidance of a bellhop, to our private top floor suite. The top floor suite was modern, with a balcony and jacuzzi by the window gazing out at the glory of nightly lit Chicago. All was fine upon the first gaze until one step out on the balcony caused me to feel its sway, its massive sway in the wind. Nauseating, inducing the opposite of romance, we forfeit our stay and left to enjoy our romance with humility and our feet closer to ground level.

My good friend Alicia Dorr (now serving in the Peace Corps in Zambia, Africa) got in touch with my phone, we were having an excellent conversation about her current projects. I arrived at work at the Museum of Science and Industry, and saw Eliaz Rodriguez leaving, he quickly mentioned that one of our film shoots would once again be delayed. I realized I had a few more minutes until work, and wante to continue talking to Alicia so I stepped outside as not to lose signal, and into a massive windstorm, she could not hear a word I said. Matt Sullivan, a fellow colleague of mine at the day job, only he now works in a different city, was out huddle against a wall and alluded to the wind as though it were like the dropping of an elevator, and how everytime he took the elevator down at the John Hancock Observatory, a tourist would say "looks like your the fall guy" and Matt exclaimed to me how he had always wanted to point out to them that he as a college degree!

My mom and dad bought a very futuristic looking car, with a dome like glass acting as roof and window, although of a very oval shape as to allow for an aerodynamic windflow. They parked this on the roof of a city building four stories tall and took a ramp down into and alley when taking it out for a spin.

Dream Log 8.13.09

I embarked on a ferry of sorts, from a very foggy coast. It took me to a fishing boat, earthquakes were taking place below the surface, making for some thrashing waves, which did avide well when I tried to descend from the crows nest with a wine glass in hand.

My friend Alicia was in town, I met up with her at her friend's place, a four bedroom apartment, long in length from one end of the brown stone to the other, longer than usual, with an especially long kitchen counter. Three of the roommates were chefs and they made me the most delicious macaroni and cheese.

I was at Swanny's, meeting up with Swanny and Fauser post a meeting they had with a seasoned theatre director who solicited by Swanny to give them advice on making theatre. Fauser and I were heading back to my home. I was walking my bike, Fauser was calling his girlfriend. In telling her about the meeting, he used the phrase "felt like he really brought us up to speed" which his girlfriend heard as "they took speed" which made very an ugly misinterpretation and explanation and an overall shitstorm of judgement. We returned to my home, in the dream I was living with my mom and brother. Fauser was suddenly gone, and I had to enter through the living room of a different family to get to my home. There was a mother, father, and three fat, snotty, spoiled children. One of them hissed at me for getting in the way of the television. I reverted to some petty behavior myself and spun the television set away from him and called him a string of names and insults based around the fact that he was a fat chunk. I hustled off into my home, the front entry room was a styling salon run by my mom. I decided to hide in my brother's room as I could hear my neighbor, the mom of the fat kid I ridiculed, come into the salon to tell my mom on me. I didn't want to face the fire nor deal with the nonsense so I figured my brother's room would be good for the time being. I pet our eight legged cat and retreated into the dark, unlit private bathroom of my brother. There I realized I had the urge to piss, but also understood that I would have to hold it as to not compromise my hiding by the sounds of a pee stream cutting through the water level of the toilet bowl. This is when I awoke and had to pee like a -

Sinkers

The love of my life got a job offer teaching in the upper peninsula of Michigan for the sum of $300K a year. Waiting in the car as she went into the rural bank to get a loan for a condo, a mudslide unleashed its rush upon a usually gentle creek. My heart sank as I brought my mom's cat to the vet, to realize they were closed for the next two days, and I almost left the poor cat in the cage, in the hot car. I soon caught my glitch and humanity and rectified by getting her to a cool shelter, but horrified that I could neglect to begin with. I got a job as a police officer. I was on the steak out on an old dilapidated house believed to be a house of crack. In a beater of a car, another cop almost gave me a parking ticket until I flashed my badge.

Dream Log 8.11.09

Mobile Home

Atop the rail track I resided, 20 feet above the street. A railtrack ran in circles, with the house unit resting atop the rails. If I desired, I could clamp the house in place, on one spot along the rails, or I could lighten the resistenance and allow the wind to twirl me gently along the circular path. Above the street, gliding and gazing, and feeling the comfortable ride of the mobile home for the future. Many such houses popped up on a grid line of circles, squares, and straight lines running along the horizontal length between city sky scrapers. More grids were erected in place twenty feet above mine, and some twenty feet above theirs, and so on, and so on, until the rail grid collective itself competed with the height of the skyscrapers. As I said, this is the mobile home of the future, rest assured in your soft steel trot in motion upon a fixed path of comfort and easy mode of relocation if you so desired to rent another track.

Dream Log 8.9.09

Douche Bags in Post Apocalyptic Apparel

The rusty tricycle hardly held my weight as I squeeked through the hot desert road. I persevered upon the cracked surface and felt the tear upon the cycle frame yet charged forward towards the horizon so that I may reach my shaded destiny. I stopped briefly to gaze upon an old billboard. Long since the design and paint chipped away I still felt the vibe that it once sang a lure for something of tourism. I gazed at this and then moved along, towards the mountains and the evening of my American excursion of survival. Nightfall was soon in its black sheathing against the sun's shy rays and I was in the thin, hilly woods. My brother sat upon a rock by the campfire several yards from the cabin. I was about to retire for the evening. In the cabin, I decided to do a quick tackling of dishes. The pot of chili still had some remnants of bean crust. I walked the pot outside the cabin, to the side opposite of the fire pit. I scraped away the bean residue into the compost heap then returned inside to finish the dishes, however as I peered out through the window during this task, a big brown bear passed by. My brother was still outside plucking at his guitar and my inards danced anxiously a fearful tremble. The bear was between him and the cabin yet he still plucked his song. When the bear later meandered off and my brother returned inside the cabin. As we were to crawl into our cots, the door burst open with four men in tattered clothes with the likes of a slutty woman, their body language juiced with a message to the world that they were to fuck her and she was along for the ride. The men looked quite boyish, hair a bit spiky and their manners of speech of simplistic selfishness and insecurity disguised with an annoying machismo that did not match their bodies features. An iconoclastic existence they pranced as "douche bags" in post apocalyptic apparrel as though New Kids on the Block survived a nuclear world meltdown and would not tone down their pathetic need to portray an attitude.

Dream log - 8.8.09

Ghost Run

The carviverously cavernlike house was massive and stood decrepit with the stain of several generations that behaved in such stainful ways that souls continued to linger and spread their spite with naughty sounds and attention getting tricks. The souls wanted to hinder anyone who lived there from cognition until the living helped the soul achieve some sort of understanding or catharsis. The house gained quite the reputation. A not-for-profit raising money to help newly blind folk adapt and learn self sufficient ways to get around, rented the house from a failing broker and set work to host an extravagent event for Halloween. An obstacle race was to be held inside the house, costumed runners to make their way through maze of creepy halls and staircases and gardens, made even more creepy by brave and imaginitive volunteers who had a knack for something decorative. Courageous runners, signed up by the thousands, as teams and families, and gave chase through the house of subtle horrors. Legs as pistons up steep steps at times felt the cold grip of a tormented apparition try to hold them back and yank them down atop old splintery wood. Yet the comraderie of a thousand living helped each other cope with the chills and all who witnessed the event pondered whether this would be as much fun if they were alone in the darkness and draft. At the end of the night, a minister said a prayer for the house, the not-for-profit president collected the jar of donated entry fees and all left before midnight. Before lightning struck the tree beside the house and stirred all the ghouls that crept to scream and the whole town heard and rose awoke and could not sleep and all wondered how the hell they had the balls to run through such a piece of hell on Earth.

Green Art Dreamy

The thicket of vegetating yet living carpet that streaked my white loafers with green stains also pumped subtle freshness into the ornate room. A gold rim encircled the dome roof, separating the canvas of a pink hued sunset fresco and the expansive lush green landscape of a renaissance Italian village overtaken by overgrowth and tranquility. I did not mind the contradiction of dusk and noon in the juxtaposition of this natural wealth in oil streaks and splattered design. In fact the slightly darkened ceiling directed my gaze further into the exhibitions which glimmer a pleasance I had long forgotten. I was reminded of summer days as a child and so I lingered in this gallery longer than I intended. I expected a lame and bland installation of generic mimics of old naturalist masters, yet the set up of impressionistic paintings popped with original clarity when spread not as a one dimensional square on a white, pristine wall, but upon full length of wall amidst an ambitious green house.

I wondered how they induced the necessary photosynthesis in such a building of marble antiquity. Yet as I lingered in the rotunda which was carved with streams and a massive waterfall in the center, seduced into a humble meditation of ease, until closing time and the soft lighting of yellow bulbs dimmed, I learned of hidden lights. With a hiss, on fizz the purple glow of black light from deep in the tiny crevices upon the ceiling. These rays danced upon the leaves and elephant ears and flowers yet hardly embraced the paintings as noticeable. We all saunter out from the cohabitation of god’s art and man’s representation in the purple glow making faces black and white loafers vibrant. We are but zombies now, disappointed at the disappearance of our metropolitan heaven and must now ready ourselves to reenter daylight refracted from tower windows and puddles upon concrete.

Russian Exit

In my REM shutter projection of mind movie, I was leaving my family in Russia to return to the USA, so that I might find them a safe exit. Politically turmoil was surrounding us, outside the mote of our estate. The mote was an expansive lake, calm still waters, and an ever extendable bridge, collapsable. The width of this pool allowed more options for a secretive departure, so I was not neccessarily worried but was exhilerated. In my dream I spent much time packing. That seemed to be the most difficult aspect of this expedition. Which would be the best bag? I had many miles to travel by foot so I needed as little baggage as possible but would have to survive out of this bag for quite some time as I did not neccessarily expect the Russian wilderness to be prosperous. This is where I left off in my dream. My bags were not packed yet and the last thing I remember is spying on the enemy across the water way through heavy duty binoculars. They were smoking cigarettes and adjusting their ushankas. Waiting for us to show our faces so they might display their dissidence.

Upon waking, I looked up what is going on in the world of Russia so that I may see if their is any corresponding universal agitation that may have bled into the scenario above in my dreams. Of course I found nothing clear and direct, although one seemed to resonate. There was an article on BBCnews.com (http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_8070000/newsid_8079100/8079113.stm) and part of the article touched upon the immense anger felt toward the "oligarchs" by the "people" who feel that their wealth was stolen and privatized from them during the turmoil of the 1990s. Looking back at my dream, I was clearly living in wealth and surrounding me was anger indeed. I am rushed with curiosity as to why I had this dream, this cerebral reflection on class struggle. I come from a middle class family, and currently I do not live close to extravagance by any means. Any dining spluring of mine is thrown on the credit card to be paid off slowly, meaning only more debt, the furthest thing from garnering wealth. So why in this dream was I singled out as perpatrator of class conflict, as an enemy of the people? Perhaps I have festering feelings of guilt, from my job, where I was pretty high up for some time until I put in an advanced notice of resignation. Before this decision of mine, many among the staff looked to as though I were the right hand man of the company, and could sway the big boss's decision with great influence. The sad aspect was that no matter how hard I tried to get a good worker a raise, a monetary bump for them never popped, and this especially felt roadblocked as the economy worsened in the fall. I'm sure I was seen by many who did not see their income increase as the kink in the chain that did not follow through for them, that in a two-faced diplomacy made promises then forgot about them. Yes, there were some that talked to me, in which I said I would see what I could do, then as the peak season consumes my scattered energies, I did forget about them, I admit. However there were key people that I pushed for that were met with rejection at the financial request. I guess perhaps I have not atoned the fact that I really did not have the influence that people thought I did, and in turn I believed I had, but still I remain as the figurehead in the field that let them down. I apologize for what I seemed to be and for trying to play that role with precision, for the hope I led on, and for the hope I ultimately did not fight for.

The Igloo Oven Returns!

Hello!

I have gone astray from this lovely platform and apologize for being absent with material. I have been busy "exit strategizing" from the corporate cog which I became heavily cranked into. The good news is: I have put in a notice of resignation from that company and by October 1st, I will be creating 100 % of my day's time. However, the creative wheel can't wait until then, so I would like to make a committment to have something new posted by every Thursday night, every week, by midnight. Feel free to punch me in the face if I fail that obligation, but I think you will lose out on that oppty, I'm feeling inspired.

Also, I have not been completely void of creating, despite the ever escalating occupational pressures I had to persevere. I acted a in a play, The Loitering Hole, written by Matthew J. Swanson of http://thegancer.blogspot.com. I also self published a book, "a bedtime story for the drinking mankind." It is a twisted folkatale of sorts, illustrated like a bedtime story, but of course a little too dark for the children's book market so I thought I'd turn to my fellow imbiber and offer them a tale to stew in their subconsious as the whiskey seaps into the bones and fuels racy dreams that perplex them through the last of their hazy morning ritual, haunting the cab ride into work due to oversleeping. The book is available through http://www.whiskeypike.com. There is a preview gallery with images, sample text, and audio if you have more questions or your interest in a new summer read is perked in the slightest.

But I will leave you with a little observation. The other day I rode the bus and observed a family of four, a father, two sons, and a daughter. The daughter was speaking to the father through sign language. The father responded in kind to the daugher. The daughter also interacted with her two brothers in like means, so I assumed the daughter was deaf/mute, and the other family members had learned to speak like so to her. But then the two brothers began speaking to one another by way of sign language, and the father to the brothers. Was the entire family afflicted with inability to speak by tongue and hear through ear? Or had they by way of learning this particular language for the sake of a loved one, taken up that language in preference to the traditional and ordinaray means to transfer everday information? Or did they learn to enjoy the privacy with communcating through a language reserved for handicap, but conveys speak with every bit as much precision, and much more emphatic?