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2001-10-28 - 3:17 a.m. - all of yesterdays cigarettes

in a dream i am a photographer preserving every inch of your body, the beautiful and the abject: your right eye, inside your nostril, your clavicle, beneath your arm, the side of your left breast, between your toes, your stomach, inside your ear, between your legs. And in this dream you are a cartographer tracing maps on napkins, one at a time out of a pile we stole from an all night diner, using diagrams and measurements we gathered and constructed earlier that afternoon driving down gravel roads and dirt paths. i am getting in your way. that always seems to happen when i become a camera. lens and shutter always getting in the way. click. click. click. you shudder at the coldness of my skin against your legs as i try to find the perfect angle to photograph your ankle. i always ask you why you are drawing maps on napkins and you aways answer that it is because there are roads that have never been shown on maps before and you feel as if it is your duty to preserve those roads and show everybody that they exist. in a way these maps are your legacy. you are Americo Vespucci sitting shotgun in my car with graph paper and a mechanical pencil. You are Lews and Clark or Mason and Dixon following all the paths that have undoubtedly been tried by others but not recorded properly. You are Cristopher Columbus selling the men hwo built and named these roads into slavery and claiming them as your own.

In this dream i never wonder why you are drawing maps while completely naked. And i never wonder how exactly my camera and your maps compliment each other so as to appear in unison with one another in my dream. I never get a chance to wonder these things. By the time i get my barings the dream is over and I am awake smoking a cigarette alone in my bed. With each inhalation from the cigarette i begin to remember the facts that comprise my life: I am 22 years old, There is no "you," I have never seen the woman in my dream before in my entire life, i am not a photographer, i have never even met a cartographer, i am alone, by bed is occupied only me, it is cold in my apartment, it is even colder outside, that angry hissing sound from outside my window is the wind.

As the dream recedes into the depths of memory, not unlike my father's hairline or the sun at dusk, i recognize the ache caused by my lungs trying to heal themselves from all of yesterdays cigarettes. cough. cough. cough. its the rattling kind of cough that always manages to key people in on the fact that I am a smoker. And soon, as i reopen all of the old wounds inside myself, the ache bleeds out of the scabs and i am ready to face a new day.

I suppose to some this seems like a rather odd morning ritual, a far cry from the shower/shave/eggs/toast/coffeee/newspaper routine of most red blooded, hard working americans. I suppose they're right.

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just a little creative writing excericie that grew out of some song lyrics i wrote not long ago. maybe ill expand it who knows. anyway. to those i owe emails to. sorry. im a slacker. to those i owe mixtapes to. im a little hesitant to send anything through the mail right now. so i might hold off on those until "AMERICA UNDER SIEGE: THE MOVE" is done or winding down to the point where nobody really cares that there is a band called Anthrax who has been making heavy metal music for for many many many many years.

goodnight.

xoxo

listen to: otis redding, fugazi (finally got the new record...damn its amazing).

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