INSPIRATION: DREAMS
I dreamed I was in a class of hundreds.
I dreamed a memory-erasing drugging.
I dreamed I was looked in the eyes and told to remember a phone number.
I dreamed that phone number was 690-7140.
I dreamed that number without an area code.
I dreamed 60 pizzas passed out with a single phone call.
I dreamed it was delivery.
I later discovered 690-7140 was the phone number to the Marion Audubon Society, the Bowhead in Lorton, the Central Harlem Mutua (which is actually the Central Harlem Mutual Housing Association) and someone’s phone number in Eudora, KS.
A ton of bricks
I feel she said like a walrus has swallowed me whole and I have swallowed him whole right back.
He listened.
I feel like someone is peeling apart my fingernails and storing them secretly away. I feel like back of my throat is made of dried dandelion seed and the lungs are being choked by roots. I bet she said if you pried my jaw apart you’d find a whole goddamn miniature forest in there. I feel cut by glass on the backs of my hands and when I apply pressure to stop the bleeding, I tear tiny red strings from the wounds instead. I feel the weight of my being on everyone else’s shoulders. I feel the lonely inspiration of a small town.
I bet if I felt old enough I’d turn around once and get carried away, and spend she said the remaining years of my life locked in an unintentional spin. I have the feeling of one eye carefully taped shut and the loss of the third dimension. If I pull on my ears I’d be willing to bet anything she said that all the cocoons living in there would just stay where they are. I feel effortless displacement and a portable stove growing somewhere where we’re not allowed to watch it. And I feel cheated because of it, she said.
Yes he said but what do you want?
World domination she said.
He said you look like a ton of bricks. Come here.
FOUND WORDS: WHITE ENVELOPE + PINK S
WHITE ENVELOPE
dated July 29, 2007
“the leaves aren’t changing yet, but I know it will soon be a year. do you know this? I can’t believe it’s almost a year. I can feel it right here, frontal in my ribs just like you told me (to). this handwriting will be a memoir when I’m dead. someone dead is just a memory, or like a dream. once a living person is just a brain creation. we’re all made up of each other, because once we die we’ll live in each other’s heads. entrapment. photographs are just temporary. people are too. but there’s nothing like a memory.”
PINK S
probably from Autumn 2007
“my bed is a sterile mouth
it swallows me thickly / my legs are exposed but when you were here, you pressed up against me like cold marble against warm feet.”
TEXT MESSAGE: SENT
I recently acquired Ian Parker’s used iPhone. To alert my current contacts about the change in my cellular situation, I sent the following message to all (most) of my address book:
“I sold my soul to AT&T for an iPhone and I’m never looking back. new # xxx-xxx-xxxx.”
Here, alphabetically, are the responses I received. Typos intact.
Cell phone numbers.
I’m officially no longer feeling any weird sentiment for my old cell phone. I turned emotions into calculations. I want to document. I want to know a few things about my contacts, about myself, about technology. About how I interact with it. And I want to know it in ways a pie chart knows things. I have a few things up my sleeve.
In the meantime, here is a list of every phone number in my contacts, totalling 184, ordered numerically.
WORDS THAT GO TOGETHER, SOMETIMES IN ALL CAPS #004 (VISUAL VERSION)
I have a whole series of these words. A series of words that mash themselves around my eyes at night and sometimes I wake up to the sound of myself speaking them, when in all reality I was just lying there asleep and not saying anything. And then I’m wide awake with a head full of illogical sentences and misplaced paraphrases. A dictionary dream.
This one happened during the day, though, when I entered my bedroom and found myself face to face with my overworked air conditioner; drool running down its back. I wrote the words down and when Ian walked in he looked at the paper and said, “is that what the air conditioner sounds like to you?” and I replied, “yes.”
YES.
Notes from one firey afternoon:
Projection of landscape that is affected negatively when and where you touch it to show the disruptive impact humans have on the earth. Trash in the ocean, holes in the ozone, paving flower fields, cutting down trees, and the like.
OR
Room you walk into that is destroyed by your intrusion. Yes.
DIGITAL CORRESPONDENCE, SENT & RECEIVED.
digital correspondence, received:
although i nurture and feed and keep the ducks swimming, i can’t always keep the feathers in line. you asked me if i was head over heels and i shrugged but i lied because i only know how to hold other people not really myself and it is a scary thing when someone wraps his arms around you and you don’t stop breathing entirely. i have piles of pink that need labeling and sending. i have a million rolls of film unshot. i have seventeen dollars in my bank account and a whole lotta vodka on layaway. i meant to write you a letter by hand this weekend but i didn’t. i meant to write one to my grandmother too but i didn’t. there are some people i cannot help but be mad at but you are not nor shall you ever be one of those people. i have felt pregnant for years and it’s about time i birthed these quadruplets. i can’t say everything will be alright but i’m saying everything will be alright. you hold my hand, lift up that cervix, shed that goddamn skin, and get back here to this rocking chair. there’s a certain direction like a slant of light that i have difficulty shaping alone.
digital correspondence, sent:
this is where you and i collide in whirlpools of sameness and seafoam sadness. always the lifeguard, never the boat. dive in head first to everything, always on the watch to save them poor souls. threw the damn anchor away ages ago, that rusty thing. forget to open my eyes, chlorine-free burns, and i’ve been underwater for years and years and years. no doubt, i know how to swim like a proper fish. gills and tail and all. salt crusts my fingertips, pickled. i open my mouth and seashells fall out. those who share my bed wake up in sheets filled with sand. the moon may balance my tide but it cannot control me. coastal wind blows my legs, arms floating in the waves. see me in the distance? i’m swimming away (to you).
Life is too short I said and you should know better.
Why I said are you giving me all of your leftover food. You are always giving me all of your leftover food I said. I am not a trash can.
And this subway train smells like dog shit.
And nothing makes any sense anymore, but you shouldn’t treat people like that. Life is too short I said and you should know better.
NEWSPAPER.
We walked past the newspaper men. There are three different newspaper men handing out three different newspapers. I wonder she said if any of these newspapers say anything different than the others. She said I wonder what its like to spend every morning yelling. Yelling at people to take a newspaper.
I was standing in a room and the room was moving.
I was standing in a room and the room was moving. It was taking us all somewhere. I’d be willing to bet if someone asked where are we going no one would have an answer. Maybe some people would. I didn’t.
There was a woman and a man nearby. The woman was sitting and the man stood close. The woman looked up at the man as if he were the sun. She peered at him through a window. She peered up through this mask she was wearing. She didn’t squint her eyes. Probably because this man wasn’t the sun.
There was a fan blowing in my ears on purpose so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The man would speak and the woman’s mouth would move around and around. She opened her mouth and made shapes with it. Then the shapes stopped. Finally, the shapes stopped I thought.
And when I looked up at the man, the hair behind his ears was still wet.
WORDS THAT GO TOGETHER #008
navy blue paperclip
WORDS THAT GO TOGETHER #007
Interlocking Armchair Device
SOMETIMES YOU’RE WALKING TO WORK IN THE WINTER AND THE WHOLE TIME YOU CAN’T HELP WISHING SO HARD THAT IT WAS SPRING.
I wanted to step on a small bit of earth as I passed by, the weight of my body causing my shoes to clap loudly against all that cement. I wanted to step and feel the new grass buckling gently beneath me. It wasn’t fair to leave the young grass with an imprint of my path. Just as I long for the site of living things in a city filled with gray, so growing things do not deserve the pressure of those already alive.
