Monday, August 24, 2009

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.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

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

Friday, August 14, 2009

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.




Thursday, August 13, 2009

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 -

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

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

Sunday, August 9, 2009

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

Saturday, August 8, 2009

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

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

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.