one last dream

My sister lives in a prosperous, upper-middle class suburb of Des Moines. A neighbor two blocks down locked himself in his house armed with alcohol and a gun yesterday. The street was blocked off for most of the day while the police tried to negotiate with him. The man shot himself dead in his garage, leaving behind a wife and two children.

What an abysmal ending.

---

At midnight I'm going to listen to Aretha Franklin sing "Never Let Me Go".

And I'm going to imagine, through the cold, that I'm slow dancing with a warm and sensuous body, drinking in her smiling eyes, gently venturing across her sacred lips, feeling the faint electric beating of our content mutual heart.

Happy new year.

the men's room

When the movie was over I went into the men's room. One man's assessment of the film was this: "I had to piss so bad I couldn't even concentrate."

Later that evening I channeled that rare, elusive thing called honesty and I told my date that she was a lovely person but that I couldn't see us going anywhere.

She agreed.

---

I still got it bad.

I'm so in love I can't even concentrate.

Hence, I am no good to anyone.

voiceofwitness.org

Using my pathetically limited reach to promote a worthy cause:

https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/eeFUa?variant=1B,2A&utm_expid=35112346-2.Ha7NegCKQLO97s8rW-jMoQ.5&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Ffundrazr.com%2Ffind%3Fsearch%3Dvoice%2Bof%2Bwitness

If you're not familiar with Voice Of Witness, it's an NPO founded in part by the wonderful writer Dave Eggers. The oral histories this series has already produced are phenonemally educational. They are trying to raise money to complete their book on life in post-earthquake Haiti.

It really is a wonderful series, so I just thought I'd put this out there. Pass it along if you can.

I emailed her.

Again.

Damn.

Loser.

Soap poisoning

I was watching A Christmas Story with my niece when I realized that Van Morrison's mid-90s look was stolen directly from Ralphie. Rather than spend my time doing anything valuable or constructive, I put together a convincing argument:

"You can take all the tea in China,
put it in a big brown bag for me.
Sail it right 'round all the seven oceans,
drop it straight into the deep blue sea.

She's as sweet as tupelo honey."

-VM

I hope someday she finds the words so that we can truly talk again.

"We've all got to believe in something, and I believe I'm about to drink some peppermint schnapps."

That's what the old gentleman said to me and the two tellers in the grocery store as he approached the counter with his bottle.

Just read a horribly depressing article about a U.S. drone strike that mistakenly killed 14 attendees (and injured many more) at a Yemeni wedding.

Arg...

Just, arg.

And sigh.

I heard the song "Billy Jack" by Curtis Mayfield the last time I was at First Avenue in Minneapolis. So I bought the album There's No Place Like America Today and discovered a really beautiful song called "So In Love".

I also listened to Miles Davis's Sketches From Spain today. It was a good day.

For music, anyway.

---

In other news, I tried to be funny enough to warrant a response. No success. Hope the jokes made her laugh though... her smile is the important thing.

Sigh.

Need a friend to share my musical discoveries with. Someone who appreciates a good, dumb joke.

Great Moments In 20th Century Music

"Who Needs You So Bad" by Gary Walker & The Boogie Kings

Thanks, Treme.

Some guy in Kenya killed himself because Manchester United lost...

What a world.

I dreamed of love's alluring ache,
familiar once but now so faint.

My eyes fell open to the gloomy light
of a lonely pillow in the dark of night.

I thought to myself: how cruel a fate
to dream of love and then awake.

"She'll let you in her car
to go drivin' round.
She'll let you into the parts of herself
that'll bring you down.
She'll let you in her heart
if you've got a hammer and a vise.
But into her secret garden
don't think twice."

-bruce

Once again, my life is upside down.

Capsized, if you will.

"She was beautiful as Southern skies the night he met her,
she was married to someone.
He was doggedly determined that he would get her,
he was old and he was young.

From time to time he'd tip his heart
but each time she withdrew.
Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance,
everybody thinks it's true."

-paul simon

i wish i was dead.

c'est la vie.

The new R. Kelly song "Genius" is...

brilliant.

About the nicest thing in the world
is having a friend to come home to.

I dream of performing

in the coliseum of her legs.

Troy, a 46-year-old black man, said to me, "See man, I like talkin' music with you. It's hard to find anybody that knows anything about black music, and they're always my age you know. But you're young and you know Sam Cooke and all that."

It gave me that rare feeling... what is it again?

Oh yeah, good.

"There Must Be A Way" by Dinah Washington

Damn, Dinah. Sing it.

Some days the thought of her nearness causes a passionate burning in my mind, body and soul... an aching in my thighs like a frustrated stirring of leaves, caught in a whirlous wind, crescendoing in collapsing circles in an empty alley.

New Okkervil River album out today.

Great Moments In 21st Century History

Just watched 2001: A Space Odyssey with my niece.

Rather incredible discussions on A.I., evolution and the purpose of existence ensued.

---

I remembered climbing into R.'s fort and reading If You Give A Mouse A Cookie with her.

It was a pleasant reminiscence.

"Now out on the street tonight the lights are growing dim,
the walls of my room are closing in.
But it's good to see your smiling face,
and to hear your voice again.
Now we could sleep in the twilight, by the riverbed,
with the wide open country in our hearts
and these romantic dreams in our heads."

-Bruce Springsteen

I miss the texture of her.

Signs that Barcelona are desperate:

1. Alves takes a shot.
2. Iniesta shoots from distance.
3. Sanchez is playing.

I watch her grow
through photographs.

My love encased
in cooling wax.

Great Moments In 19th Century Literature

"When two mouths, made sacred by love, draw near each other to create, it is impossible that above that ineffable kiss there should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars... Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps."

-Victor Hugo

J.J. Cale's song "Magnolia" is really getting to me.

Sigh.

"Oh sister, when I come to knock on your door,
don't turn away, you'll create sorrow.
Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore.
You may not see me tomorrow."

-BD

Several nightmares this morning.

Nightmares in which she did everything to me; abandoned me, laughed at me, ignored me, humiliated me, teased me, manipulated me, ignored me.

In the dreams I felt that old gut-wrenching feeling of seeing her walk away. I was crying in front of people who knew me and I was embarrassed. I crawled away mortally wounded, clutching my aching gut as my soul dripped out like blood.

And still, all I could do was desire one look in her eyes. In the dream, I saw in her eyes that beautiful ocean I once got lost in.

I feel as though she let me in and abandoned me there. I've been drowning.

I can't breathe anymore.

I'm  not normal. This can't be normal. I wish I was normal. Did she stop loving me because I'm not normal? I think I was born wrong and I see why she can't love me.

We were both in the ocean, offering life rafts to one another. It seems she pushed mine away. I loved her so much that as she swam away I punched a hole in mine. Without her, I just can't seem not to want to drown.

She made me feel secure. She made me feel valuable. She made me feel real and normal. I miss holding her. Listening to her. I miss knowing her, being her best friend. I want her to be happy so badly. Maybe she is. I'll never get to know because her eyes no longer look at me.

I miss feeling whole.

Being in Iowa City and not seeing her is the worst torture.

---

"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens." - david byrne

---

Great Moments In 21st Century Film

"There is no such thing as a liberal. A liberal is a Commie with a college education thinking Negro thoughts."

God bless Hunter S. Thompson.

I dreamed of you last night,
your halo of pearl white.
Beneath your flowery shirt,
your body like watered dirt.
Your bones hid deep within,
whispering beauty with your skin.
I swim to shore in the soft beaches of your eyes,
I kiss the promised land between your thighs.

Your firm flesh is my earth.
I must dig to find my worth.

I am lonely.

Very, very lonely.

And I don't just mean right now.

makes me infinitely sad that she would be "at a loss" for words in regards to me...

when I guarantee I'm the person most in the world who desires any words at all from her. Any words at all re-ignite my heart.

Her cheeks are made for kissing.

God bless that smile.

She said she missed me...

Guess that'll have to do.

It's the hope that kills me.

The naive, unfounded hope that maybe she still loves me.

Great Moments In Van Morrison

"Well this world's so cruel
with its twists and its turns.
The fire's still in me
and the passion it burns.

Love her madly till the day I die,
till hell freezes over and the rivers run dry."

She spoke...

Sigh.

I have such a crush on her.

god i miss her... /us.

I = dumb.

No hope...

I started reading the latest two entries from NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction" contest.

I skipped the first one when I realized its plot was stolen from an episode of The Simpsons.
I skipped the second one when the writer used the word "fugly".

What a world.

Dreams only break your heart.

The respite of sleep brought me dreams that will never be.
I was able to hold her, to hear her, and to look into her beautiful coffee eyes. She smiled at me, the way she could with her whole face, the way that made me believe I was in her heart.

Then I woke up and it was all gone again. Just like real life.

I haven't had a peaceful rest since that day she didn't say it back... I felt like I'd been left on a deflating raft in the middle of the ocean as she waved goodbye from the fading stern of a ship.

Dreams only break your heart.

So it goes.

When I hear Mark McGrath I think of her coming back to her seat, sitting next to me.

She was so beautiful under that high sky, the starry November night in Hollywood.

I was in heaven, holding her hand and strolling.

Great Moments In 21st Century Television

"Okay, here's a little bedroom tip. Put a bag of popcorn in the microwave beforehand. That way when you're done, you have a treat."

Oh Liz Lemon.

Why hasn't anyone blown up the Westboro Baptist Church?

Oh that's right... We're the sane, tolerant ones.

ARG! (frustrated fist gesture)

It's been seven years and Jesus Camp is still one of the most depressing documentaries I've ever seen.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: smart person.

Great Moments In 21st Century Punctuation

A sign at a gas station reads, "Supreme Nacho's!"

Also, there is another gas station here that's called "FREEDOM".

Needless to say, I will be leaving next month.

Great Moments In 20th Century Literature

"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." - Carl Sagan

Great Moments In 21st Century Television

"And so, like many people who no longer felt anything for each other, they decided to get married."

Surviving a lonely rainstorm.

Arg... Guess I'm even dumber sober.

I know the meaning of "hopeless romantic".

lonely and... anxious.

I remember
the fortress of her body.
Warm bronze in the dark, the coolest heat to touch,
with the ocean sheet upon us calling me to cross the borders
and penetrate all of her with all of me.

I never felt freer then when I was moving with and into her.

I wish I could send her one of the kind of texts we used to. I miss letting her know what I'd do to her when she loved (or seemed to) the things I did to her. I miss making her legs shake, I miss making her anticipate, I miss fulfilling. I miss knowing that what she said to me after that first day we made love was true.

I need some connection.

---

I need a blow job.

tapping at dead leaves, but still singing songs

I was laying in the newborn grass, the short green grass still scattered with its brown and yellow departed ancestors. The warm sun, the long stranger, whispered with the warmth that he was glad to be back. Georgia was coloring with sidewalk chalk no more than three feet away. My eyes were closed.
I opened them when I sat up. I started tapping at dead leaves with a long skinny stick while singing, "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" by Whitney Houston.
Georgia asked, "Is that a girl supposta be singing that song?"
I said, "Yeah."
Georgia laughed.

Great Moments In 21st Century History

Great. Now we have 3-D printers capable of making guns.

Here's a clip of a conversation that I'm sure will be happening somewhere in the next twenty years:

Son (shouting from the kitchen): "Hey dad, where's your gun? I gotta go kill this kid that looked at me funny."

Dad (shouting from the living room): "It's a- it should be in the second drawer there."

Son: "No I checked. That's just your porn."

Dad: "Ah hell, I don't know son. Just print off a new one for God's sakes!"

End Scene

The Great Divide by Leonard Cohen

"I never liked the way you loved
So devious, so dated
But still I fasted like a monk
And prayed to see you naked

I'd see you hurting everyone
A government of suffering
I'd tell myself 'Thy Will Be Done
My will it counts for nothing'

I drank a lot I lost my job
I lived like nothing mattered
And you, you never came across
You never even answered

It was a blind and broken time
And kindness was forbidden
I guess I tried to hitch a ride
From acid to religion

But every guiding light was gone
And every good direction
The book of love I read was wrong
It had a happy ending

But when the system had been shocked
Beyond all recognition
The simple things that I'd forgot
Resumed their sweet position

I thought I saw you with a child
I thought I heard you weeping
And all the garden round you wild
And safely in your keeping

I don't recall what happened next
I kept you at a distance
But tangled in the knot of sex
My punishment was lifted

Your remedies beneath my hand
Your fingers in my hair
The kisses on our lips began
That ended everywhere

And when I gathered up to leave
You drew me to your side
To be as Adam was to Eve
Before the Great Divide"

---

And that's only half the poem.

Last-ditch effort.

I think my brain just realized that my body is done.

It's strange that when my body is facing death my only hope is that I can speak to her again.

One time we were lying in bed and listening to Paul Simon's "Run That Body Down". She said, "This is a pretty song."

I wonder if she even likes me anymore. Probably not.

I had a genuine out-of-body experience... I saw myself helping my daughter (or my step-daughter) with her homework, while I was lying on the floor helping a boy with his.

I think I felt for a minute what it would be like to have a kid and to help them with their homework... Amazing.

Anyway, I wish S and I were still friends because she was awesome to talk to... haven't had that in a while.

Her smile might be the best thing I've ever seen.

Aw man.

The pajama pants I bought in France just ripped.

I remember the feeling of her feet upon my feet.

What I wouldn't pay to feel that once more...

Sigh.

There are few things finer than having someone nice to talk to at this hour.
Or simply to be by.

Marta Gomez's recording of "Cielito Lindo" is just about one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard.

It sounds like a sorrowful sigh sent out across an amber sea, as the sun is setting.

---

"Una flecha en el aire,
Cielito lindo, anzó Cupido,
y como fue jugando,
Cielito lindo, yo fui el herido.

Ay, ay, ay, ay.
Canta y no llores,
porque cantando se alegran,
Cielito lindo, los corazones."

There are times when I'm listening to "Brand New Day" by Van Morrison and the breadth of that song is so vast, like the shadow of a voluptuous cloud caressing the land below itself, that I can't even remember how brilliant Astral Weeks is.

Incredible. To me, anyway.

Great Moments In 21st Century Journalism

"El Mundo Deportivo: 'Ten percent of Messi is worth a hundred of most players.' Sport: 'To the semis!' They say, 'Messi fit is the best player in the world. And the second best player in the world is Messi half fit.' And so on and so forth, El Pais even suggesting this week that one day Barca will win a game simply by fielding a cardboard cutout of him... Don't know. Hasn't worked for Torres." - Jamie Richardson

It disgusts me to no end to see Louis C.K.'s face everywhere in this country and on every channel when Stewart Lee exists.

Louis C.K. is so blatantly awful and Stewart Lee is, in no hyperbolic sense of the word, a genius.

I wonder what idiotic, uncreative painters were popular during the time period that Van Gogh was working.

What America means to me...

Charlton Heston is famous for lifting a rifle and exclaiming, "From my cold dead hands!"

Charlton Heston is also famous for playing Moses in The Ten Commandments film.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the commandments that made it down the hill with Moses was, "Thou shalt not kill".

Heston is an asshole and I need to talk to someone that recognizes what I'm saying because right now I'm surrounded by small-minded Minnesotans and lacking in clear-thinking friends...

When the only thing you're good at is words, it's infinitely frustrating that words cannot encapsulate how much you love someone or her daughter.

I met my soul mate once and I knew it.

It's impossible that the poets were writing of a different feeling.

Or am I just dumb?

Interesting Moments In My Life

I asked my Filipino friend about the Maguindanao massacre and she said she didn't know much about it... I realized it wasn't just an American thing to try to forget about the horrors that occur in one's country.

---

I proposed again.

I wish her heart knew I was serious (and took me seriously).

Great Moments In 21st Century Journalism

"I'm a vegetarian but I eat bacon!"

Kind, cute guy that works at the liquor store...

Sometimes I wish I was gay because I would've gotten laid about a million times more than I have been.

I miss getting laid.

Rocco wants me to move back to Iowa City... I don't have the heart to tell him that I couldn't do it.

When I was visiting him at Thanksgiving I saw her driving.
It was painful.

As Paul Simon sang, "A bad day's when I lie in bed and think of things that might've been."

And they're all bad days more or less.

For no more than five seconds I recalled by way of a dream what it was like to hold her hand. The cool silky feel or her skin entwined in mine. In my dream, I was driving with her next to me and we were talking and smiling at one another. Then I took her hand in mine. She let our hands embrace, and seemed to betray with a quiet smile a deep happiness looking down at our together hands. Then softly she raised her lovely porcelain fingers and pulled our hands apart.

I awoke with a tangible tingling loneliness overcoming my right hand.

Great Moments In 21st Century Music

"I don't wanna be the one to alienate. Alienate!

You see, I'm tryin' to find the alien in you. You!"

 - from "Spaceship Coupe" by Justin Timberlake

---

Really? Seven years since your last album and this is what you've come up with?
And yes, it's really called "Spaceship Coupe".

Thanks, but I'll stick with the classic tracks in the "space as a metaphor for sex" genre. "International Lover" by Prince, "A Funky Space Reincarnation" by Marvin Gaye and "Sex Planet" by R. Kelly.

Also, the new album rips off R. Kelly's album Love Letter, in particular the song "Number One Hit".

---

... Wish I had someone to laugh about this with me.

I feel as if I've run out of words.



Sigh.

I wrote her a poem
right after I dreamed
of walking down streets
no man's ever seen.

I felt a mirage
arise from the steam.
In a blanket of vapor
her body was seen.

Her sugar brown skin
was white as a ream
of paper, entangled,
in her shower's regime.

As she princessly steps
out of the stall,
I hand her a towel.
I answer her call.

"Someday, everything is gonna be different.
When I paint my masterpiece."
- bob dylan

"Everything is not enough.
Nothing is too much to bear."

"Tell my baby I said 'So long.'
Tell my mother I did no wrong.
Tell my brother to watch his own.
And tell my friends to mourn me none."
- TVZ

I dreamed about her, about us.
I held her tightly in a lingering instant,
in my arms the tingle of livelihood was sparked
by the transfer of data across the synapses of my brain.

What a nightmare, to wake from a dream.
My only dream.

"As someone long prepared for the occasion;
in full command of every plan you wrecked...
do not choose a coward's explanation
that hides behind the cause and the effect."
- L. Cohen

the knowledge

My family is trying to set me up with a woman who lives in a different state.

Today, for a sailing moment, I saw the bored sun setting over the vast Lake Superior. It hanged to the tune of two children laughing. It sailed along in the wind like a true boat, undemanding, all of it and it was the first undemanding thing I'd seen in a while.

the definition of irony...

A "Christian" nation with no concept of sacrifice.

Sneijder working for Galatasaray is like me working for Geico.

Say it ain't so.

Echo de menos Madrid. Entre otras cosas.

Great Moments In 20th Century Music

"The words that he spoke
seemed the wisest of philosophies.
There's nothing ever gained
by a wet thing called a tear.
When the world is too dark
and I need the light inside of me,
I'll walk into a bar
and drink fifteen pints of beer.

I am going, I am going
any which way the wind may be blowing.
I am going, I am going
where streams of whiskey are flowing."

- the pogues

why is she speaking to me?

I remember a story where a child tells all his secrets to a hole in a tree. And there the secrets dwell with no response.

I've adjusted to being that child.

And now the tree has spoken back.

But for how long? I desire more words.

Or is it?

It's funny when you spend your life wishing you were dead.

Or is it?

It's funny when Messi is your hero.

Read it out loud and hear the beauty.

Does anything ever end gracefully?