2001-07-19 - 2:34 a.m. - where there once were rings of brass
i find sleeping in a cold climate much more enjoyable than a warm one. i've always liked the way my skin feels against cool sheets reminding me of times when i was younger than i am now and burning with fever; cool sheets were my relief, those and the cool compress my mother would press to my forehead. anything to cool the boiling blood of a child. I remember also, when i was younger, and perhaps i still do this without even realizing it, flipping my pillow over each time it absorbed too much heat from my head and became warm, at intervals of about twenty minutes, so that the cool side of the pillow was always pressed to my head, until i fell asleep.sleep is a truly beautiful thing. sometimes i wake up and recall blurred images and distant voice reminiscent of how your best friends might sound if they were trapped down a well and carrying conversations that you feel you should be a part of but don't want to climb down into the well with them. those are the mornings when i know that i dream. we learned in psychology class that everyone dreams it is just that most people are unable to remember there dreams. most of the time i think this is for the better. the shadows and uncertainties in real life are often times more than disconcerting enough for me. take for example tonight: i was outside of my apartment smoking a cigarette and i heard the heavy flapping of wings against the wall behind me. earlier i had seen a bat flying around and so i figured that i was, most likely, being stalked by a clumsy bat. I saw a large shadow of desperate wings cast from the light fixture outside of my apartment door onto the sidewalk in front of me. yes it was the bat. the bat was here and it was going to bite me and give me rabis. of course i couldn't let that happen so i sat uneasily finishing my cigarette and planning my escape. finally with courage gathered i turned and instead of the expected bat i saw only a large moth persistently(and quite foolishly i might add) banging itself into my light fixture and casting a bats shadow. i watched the moth bang itself into the light for a few moments, afraid to open my door as i might admit this impulsive creature into my home. i did not want to deal with destroying or removing an unwanted guest from my home tonight so i waited. finally the moth realized that the light was nothing more than a piece of plastic and settled against the wall to rest and let its head, battered from numerous redundant collisions with a light fixture, slowly heal until later in the evening when perhaps the light's defenses may be down. i glanced at the moth before opening my door and was astounded at the beauty of its pattern. the moths wings were tan and graced with smoth brown and grey markings that resembled, slightly, egyptian hieroglyphcis or at the least the kind of furniture that one might expect to find in the house of a liberal middle aged couple who lvoe the environment and have decorated their living room in an aborginal motiff --which mainly consists of several different shaded of brown and perhaps some earthy clay reds just for balance--but either way the moth served as a reminder of a specific concept in history, it just so happened that one of the ideas was one of the foundations of history and the other was a footnote to a slowly dying era.
Now there a cool sheets, historical moths and...ah but there is nothing else. i thought perhaps i could reach into my skull by way of this keyboard and extract some sort of story that i could share with you, my audience, from which we coud all learn something prfound about the human spirit. instead i am stuck with two lonely fragments of anecdotes trying desperately to find some story to tie it all together like a perfect rug that sits in the middle of a room, transforming the room from a random assemblage of furniture and modern, utilitarian art into a unified whole that rivals all other unified wholes even "Pet Sounds," "Exile on Main Street," and "Revolver."
F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that when a person writes they should write for the young of their own generation, the critics of the next generation and the educators of every generation after. That is the making of a masterpiece which we all try so dearly to strive for, thrusting strained hands wildy into the night air as the carousel goes round and round and round. and much to our chagrin most carousels don't even have brass rings anymore because they are dangerous, or perhaps just petty, and we learn we have been grabbing at nothing. but what happens when youa re grabbing at nothing and you find yourself with a ring crafted of brass firmly in your grasp. then my friend you are a miracle. you are not the product of a miracle or the recipient of a miracle, you are THE miracle.
maybe we should all stop trying so hard.
let's go get drunk on grappa and let every day dissolve into night and every night into day sleeping only when our eyes are heavy and not when we think is a proper time to go to sleep. let us sleep on subway cars andthe backseats of automobiles, the beds of dying pick up trucks and at the foot of the tree outside of the old courthouse. we will burn our beds and exchange our blood for alcohol without a second glance and dissappear into the night to create our own masterpieces about the human condition.
we are the night.
we are all slowly dying.
i'm never going back.
i don't think i like this anymore.
i began this entry at 234 AM, it is now 307 AM.
xoxo
listen to: the white stripes, ten dollar typewriter, lovesick, aloha.
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