randall

Good lord. Looking for excuses to undermine a friendship is silly. Don't do it. If I wasn't your friend I wouldn't waste my time. Think about that, and realize that this is genuine: I like you, I'm your friend, I want the best for you. Truly.

Now knock it off for chrissakes, and admit you were being ridiculous. ;-)

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Stevie Smith

Amie introduced me to this poem, and I'm posting this in remembrance of her. I miss her. But more than that, I'm indebted to her. After all this time, I finally feel my strength to write coming back to me, and in some way, it's due partly to the ghost of Amie hanging about my shoulders, urging me to get on with it. And it's due also to Paula, who's there going through this with me, on her own halting trip back to her work, and the work we hope to collaborate on.

So I've retitled my journal. And I've been writing. And more about that later.

In the first, I was driving along Route 5, just leaving Auburn... where it's called Grant Ave. Just as I was passing the shopping center on my left (and of course, being a dream, everything was stretched out and larger than life) I glanced to my right, and with a feeling of horror, saw a huge jetliner barreling down at me from the sky. I managed to drive past just as it touched down and headed into the shopping center.

Then I saw another approaching from my rearview mirror, and another from the right again. The latter missed me easily, but the one behind was coming up on me fast. I could only think that some kind of terrible emergency had happened, and all these airliners had been forced to land wherever they could... and this being a fairly large, wide highway, with a large shopping center behind it (with attendant parking lot) they'd chosen here to do it.

I managed to avoid being crushed by the liner behind me... and it turned, with the others, into the shopping center. At the same time, others were descending.

Naturally I felt small, terrified, and fearful of being crushed.

The next thing I knew, I was coming into work, but not at all the building I work in--more like a vast tire shop, like a gargantuan Goodyear or something... only there were no tires or cars, just rooms and offices, as if someone had built them into an enormous, empty garage. I was trying to tell people why I was late, how shaken up I was... but I felt silly...

It didn't take much to analyze this one---I didn't need Amie's sharp skills with dream analysis to figure it out. The association of objects falling on me from the sky--almost crushing me, running me over--associated in turn with my job--is an illustration of the stress I feel here. Waiting constantly for the other shoe to drop, the bad to descend on me and flatten me. Why airliners? Why not? I love airplanes. And planes are piloted, controlled by others... not mere meteors falling down blindly and purposelessly.

The next series of dreams were stranger. (These occured on consecutive nights, of course). Once or twice there was a recurrence of a dream I think I wrote about here earlier, with Darlene and her car. In that dream she was driving some 60s antique European sportscar, I think. Oddly enough, in another dream, it was once again Darlene and her car--only this time a new Volkswagen, some kind of station wagon or other.

The dream began with me getting ready for my own birthday party---I was back working at my old job, with friends... and took notice of the fact that everyone was telling me that they were coming---this a not at all subtle illustration of my desire to be with old friends and back at the old job which I loved so much. But then suddenly I was no longer at the job, but outdoors, in a huge parking lot on steep, large hill... and it was night, the parking lot lit up with lights, the sky smooth black. And there was, of all people, Darlene. It was today, now, not years ago. Of course she hadn't aged much, since this was a dream. I was glad to see her, and glad to hear she was coming to my party. I had to get some things at the store, so she drove...

When we arrived, she said something about needing shoes... and I said she could get them here--but it was a grocery store. Then, as I got out of her car, I noticed that she had a large package tied to the luggage rack on top... and I saw it was a mattress and box spring, covered in plastic. I asked her about it... was she moving? But she didn't answer.

There was conversation with her in the dream, but I don't remember any of it.

The meaning to this one is only partially clear to me. Obviously there's the desire to be with old friends, to feel wanted and liked, and so on. But then there's Darlene again. Okay... Darlene represents... what? My first love. Youth. Years gone by. The yearning to relive past mistakes and correct them. And of course there's the desire to be with her again, though of course almost 25 years have gone by... so it's only the memory of her that I really yearn for. Okay, so far so good. And the mattress? Hmm. The idea of moving away. Of moving away with her. And sex, of course. Bedding down. Sleeping with Darlene. Okay. Maybe that works. But why have there been so many dreams lately of Darlene and cars? In fact... if I think back... years ago I had ANOTHER dream about Darlene that had stuck with me ever since---she and I, riding together, laughing, in a truly antique car---some kind of 20s roadster, with the wire wheels and so on---and she had on a scarf, and it was trailing back from her neck as the wind blew through the open cabin of the car.

Why always Darlene and cars? Not EVERY dream I have about her is associated with a car---but it does recur, again and again. Last time it was the old sportscar, getting stuck in the driveway or whatever. This time her new Volkswagen, with the mattress on top. A long time ago, the roadster with "Little Deuce Coupe" playing as we chugged along on a bouncing ride somewhere. What the hell?

And why the shoes? Why did Darlene need to buy shoes? And why did I think she could get them at a grocery store?

Perhaps I consistently associate cars with Darlene because we spent so much of our time in them. When we were going out, she wasn't allowed to have men in her apartment--her landlady (I still remember the woman's name: Gladys) objected to this. So we spent a lot of time in my car. But then why aren't the dreams mere remembrances of that? Why is it always some OTHER car, in some OTHER place?

Perhaps it's the motif of movement, again... of getting away, escaping. Escaping back to my youth... to a youthful love relationship... to get away from all the stresses and miseries of my later life, to get back to that simpler time when all I wanted was Darlene, and the worst stress I had was making it to class and deciding what to wear.

Doors swing open. Many tired-looking, dull-eyed rural folk begin filing out. We (the three of us--myself and two daughters, one verging on fifteen, the other coasting along towards twelve) are back in something of an alcove that frames the doors to the dome itself.

ME: (whispering--to oldest daughter) Great time for people watching.

SHE: Yes indeed. (People still filing by--mostly overweight, NASCAR t-shirted... you get the picture).

ME: I like to imagine what they're thinking.

SHE: (on the beat of each person walking out) Bacon. Bacon. Bacon. Bacon bacon. Ham. Bacon. Shiny. (pause. More people). Bacon. Bacon. Uhhhh...bacon.

Well, *I* found it hysterical.

At a diner a couple months ago:

The three of us sit waiting after we've ordered. In walks three local lads in their heavy parkas and jackets. At first we take no notice... though how we missed this I can't say.... but one of them is sporting an enormous cloud of red hair like a mane, complete with beard and 'stache... a huge, tangled mess of red hair--clean but out of control and really UP THERE if you know what I mean...

ME: (gaping) Whoa...

SHE: (before I can get another word out) Awwwww... he needs some courage!

At an Italian restaurant last week:

We have a particularly obsequious waiter, clearly out for a large tip. He's all over us. Very oily (I don't mean physically). He even strikes up a conversation about whether it's likely to snow again and how I'd feel about that. But I stress, in the weirdest "interview style" way. It is not a normal conversation. Finally, while he's away, I tell the girls about the British Fops that David Koechner and Mark McKinney used to play on Saturday Night Live and I do an imitation of their fawning "EEEEEWWWWWWW" gesture that they'd always descend into after several moments of.... well... fawning. Immediately the girls pick this up and are doing it themselves.

SHE: (bowing head, extending out arm and hand in gesture of submissive "hand curtsey") Eeewwwwwwwwww... Forgive me sir, but I'm sucking my way through med school! Eeeeewwwwwwww....

At a coffee shop a few weekends back... me, cappucino. Oldest daughter, same. (or was it a steamer?) Youngest daughter: steamer with raspberry. Brief snippet of conversation:

We are talking about college and the necessity for the girls to get into more extra-curricular activities so they can present themselves as “well rounded” students to the Ivy League. Then the conversation drifted to future occupational plans:

SHE:Well, we know A___(younger daughter) will build a race of mutant robots…

SHE 2: (interrupting) Well DUH! That’s my plan!

SHE: So A___ will take over the world… And then as her sister, I’ll trick her into giving me her secrets and I’ll depose her and take over for myself.

SHE 2: That’s not in my plan!

Well, last night the following happened:
I got home and proceeded to let the water out of my sailboat by uncorking the drain plug, then puttered around in the yard and down along the beach until the sun settled below the horizon in a gorgeous, creamy mist of orange.
Then I went upstairs and had dinner—homemade tabbouleh, homemade hummus, homemade falafel, some wine. Already had it in mind to get on with writing. So I began going through the projects at hand and which one(s) I wanted to get to. Of course, the desktop computer is still dead, but I have an older computer my sister gave me, plus the laptop. So not terribly concerned. Went through my notes, settled on completing the chapter where Evan and Maureen (the character based on Darlene, whose name I’m not sure about yet) construct the enormous “Empire of Lights” “ambush art” (so Maureen names it) and hang it, in secret, from a campus building late at night. An intricate, long, character-driven chapter that is about 80% complete. This is the chapter where Evan has this sort of epiphany about himself, and has the first glow of growing up—in that he takes on a daunting project that he thought he never could do, and does it, (albeit with Maureen’s help to some extent) despite big risks. In other words, this is analogous, in a way, to Telemachus becoming a man, in the Odyssey, and mirrors the idea of the hero who has to face great odds and risk and a nearly impossible task, and manages it. With the help of a love at his side. Great stuff. This is also where Maureen finally, actually, gives herself to Evan---and, we’ll learn much later in the book, where their daughter is conceived. (I think. I haven’t settled for certain on that yet).
So I thought, okay… I can’t work on Chapter Ten right now because that’s trapped in the desktop computer. But I want to get this other chapter done (I’m not yet sure where it’ll sit, in the book, so I don’t know the number of it) as it can be its own self-contained short story, also, and I could therefore try to get it published. Then, I want to finish “McWaiting,” which shouldn’t be too hard.
So dinner’s now done and I’m gathering my notes together. I fire up the laptop. Hmm. Slow tonight. Been doing that. Finally it starts up, and I do some work. But it’s slow going, I’m not feeling hugely inspired. So I need inspiration. And to get this, I do three things: one, I drag my paints out and do a sketch of a copy of a Rembrandt in a book I have---the painting “The Jewish Bride.” This is good, gives me confidence. Damn I’m good. I have a freakin’ eye. I reproduce the face perfectly. I put aside the idea of painting for now, though… it’s getting late and I’m feeling tired, and need to get back to it. What do I need? Well, I need to put myself back into college. Okay, so music. On with the 80s punk and new wave. And I pick up a trick I learned from Henry Miller… I’m writing about Darlene, really, so up with Darlene’s picture by the computer, and because I have only two of Darlene anymore, pics of Lily Allen, the British pop singer, who is about as striking an exact double for the real Darlene as I’ve ever seen. And the reason being is that I found some pics of Allen online where she’s dressed almost exactly as Darlene used to dress in college… and so it’s like looking at this character of mine, in a third or fourth-level prism, back almost to the real person…. Only fictionalized twice over, or whatever. But this allows me to visualize this person I’m writing about---not the real person, of course, but A) the person as I remember her and B) the person as I’m choosing to fictionalize and “create” her. Great.
But here’s where I make my mistake. I decide I’m tired. So I just have to sit for a bit…
And of course what happens? I fall asleep. Well no big deal. I wake up at about 1.30am and cursing myself slightly, I get back to work. I’m actually feeling very awake and very ready to write. I want to do this. Fired up.
Laptop has shut off. Damn. So start it up again.
And it won’t start. It just sits there. I reboot. And again. And finally an error screen. Something’s wrong with Windows. A corrupt file. Windows must be re-loaded.
My heart sinks. This is it. I now have nothing. No computer. Last resort---the old PC my sister gave me. I actually go to the trouble of setting it up, fire it up---it works! And then I remember one of the reasons why I stopped using it. It works---but has no means of transferring data, except for floppy disk. It’s that old. Oh, it has a CD-Rom, but no CD BURNER. And it has a USB port… but is so old that it refuses to recognize the two memory sticks I try to insert. I even try to get it to install a driver for flash memory, but it still doesn’t work.
So I have nothing to do. I could write, sure. But it’ll be stuck on this computer. I have no old fashioned floppy disks. And god knows, the way things have been going, THIS old piece of crap will die next and steal my data.
So… defeated, angry, disappointed and fed up…. Off with everything, and I go back to bed. Only I can’t sleep.
So I paint.
Yes, Paula…. I HAVE to buy a new computer… soon. And I mean NEW. Not used. Something reliable.

Work proceeds on the total renovation of my place---the massive shelving units are up (enough shelf space to accommodate, you'd think, hundreds of books, DVDs, VHS's, and CDs... and yet the damn things are already over-full, to the point where I've had to double and triple stack the items in order to manage it all) and I've moved tables, discarded old furniture, and begun the process of careful measuring the for the next phases of the operation: building a new bed (to be done next week) and the purchasing of all new living room furniture. Expensive. But nearing age 44 (omigod) I'm sick to death of my living quarters bearing the ad hoc decorative style of a destitute college student who has bought all his stuff second hand. So out with it all. And in with all new, all modern, all color coordinated decor and furniture. So very materialistic of me, but it can't be helped. I'm in dire need of the self-respect this will cultivate for me.

So, as mentioned, the next project is the construction of a platform bed. "Build it and she will come" is part of my thinking, surely, but I also just want that feeling of accomplishment in constructing of my very own that's utterly indestructible. Which, of course, a store-bought bed would not be. Unless I were to spend ten times the amount on it that it would cost for me to build.

Paula may be coming for a visit at some point soon--propriety demands that I take an ambivalent air about this, but of course the natural truth is that I hope she can make it, since our conversations are always enjoyable and productive, and who else do I have to watch cheesy old horror films with? And anyway it's just always pleasant to see her.

The rain continues steady. Very soon I'll have to make my way out in it. Seems a good night to return to my growing collection of classic film noirs (I've been buying them up frantically on eBay--my latest celluloid obsession, the darkness of killers, guns for hire, detectives, corrupt policeman and femme fatales. Something in my darkened, aging mood perhaps) and to return to the novel, which has been waiting for me impatiently to get back to its last remaining bits of "fleshing out." I sometimes feel like it's a fat child I'm forced to overfeed again and again until it reaches its maximum fleshiness. This is not a good analogy when once thinks that books ought to be lean and wiry. But it isn't really getting fat; I think of it more as bulking up and bodybuilding, I suppose.

This is by no means any kind of a boast. I didn't much like the guy. Nothing against him, just seemed like Hollywood had gone to his head. Maybe he deserved the tirade, maybe he didn't. I don't much care. I suspect that both he AND Bale are pricks.

Do you know how you suddenly "find" yourself in a dream? As though you were suddenly aware--not of being in a dream--that isn't the same thing--but rather, of being suddenly aware that you are inhabiting a different place from where you previously were... and yet this happens in a dream, and you don't know you are dreaming, but you know that there has been a shift of some kind, from one "reality" to another...

That is what I mean. I was in a dream, but not aware I was in a dream. But I was suddenly next to Darlene, in a small sportscar, like a very old, very tiny Triumph (rather like the one my friend Joe had in college, and surely derived from that real memory) and Darlene was driving.

She was beautiful, as she always was (I can't say if she still looks that way, but she surely must look older by now... however, I had aged her, in my dream's mind, though no doubt still not "realistically") all big, dark brown eyes and toothy smile with her jaw jutting, and that curled, full bottom lip, pillowing underneath... her nearly-black hair fringing her jawbones, her forehead... a scarf around her neck. It was Darlene from age 20, unrealistically-dream-statedly aged to... oh, say... 30 or so. What I would want and hope her to look like.

She pulled the car into a driveway, and made me aware that she had to see her family in the house we'd arrived at---but she didn't want me to follow her inside just yet---she didn't want them to know I was with her for some reason. She went inside... and I got out, and strolled to the front of the car, and leaned on the hood...

and the car rolled down the inclined driveway, out from under me, into the street. The brake had failed.

Why I should klutzily endanger Darlene's beautiful little sportscar, and other drivers, in my own dream, I don't know. I was stuck in the imagined world of the awkward teenager I once was, I suppose. It was that awkward teenager who first met Darlene when he was 18 and she 17 (she'd graduated early from high school) at college, and that awkward teen who fell madly in love with her while she gently and forgivingly put up with it, returning my affection, but not at the ridiculous level I had taken it to (who could? who would?).

Out came her family. And then her brother, it happened, had a garage right next door, and we pushed the car in there and I helped him fix it.

There was more, but it became foggy after that. Darlene and I were walking somewhere---that's all I can remember. She was saying something, a long talk... but I've lost it.

An odd dream, like a sliver of memory that never actually happened.

Nikos Kazantzakis

(But first an aside: why is it that I consistently couch the smaller experiences of my life in dichotomous terms? Ever since I was a child I had a fascination, for instance, with the bittersweet. I'm attracted, it seems, to the cross-current or crossroads kind of encounter, or experience of being alive. Does it make me more mature, pithy, ironic, or deep? Or is it just some odd sort of miasma or dysfunction?)

Yesterday evening, while waiting at the bus stop, in solitude (it was dark, the air frosty, the black of the sky tainted with that sickly grey glow that slightly overcast winter evenings always have... not exactly a depressing backdrop for waiting all alone for a bus, but sort of at the edge of being low and unpleasant) it happened to suddenly strike me that I was very, terribly missing the company of a woman just then. I mean the physical company. The physical presence. Now in fact I of course miss this all the time--since Betsy I've been bereft of it and I'm hardly the sort who takes celibacy with a shrug and a "let's think of something else" attitude. But for some reason in that particular moment it was especially keen. I was suddenly, for instance, coming up with funny little things of a suggestive and even outwardly dirty nature to say to Paula the next time I spoke to her... not out of any hope that she and I would get on a roll, but simply for the enjoyment of tantalizing a woman and feeling her satisfaction at knowing she was still attractive, and perhaps (he says egotistically) is still attractive to me. I miss, frankly, phone sex with Betsy and Amie--phone sex with Amie was practically a requirement of the relationship, after all--and with Betsy, it was just another aspect of the vastly sexual relationship that she and I had, which basically was pure Sex on a Stick no matter how you turned it--backwards, forwards, sideways, upside-down...

Anyway, to come to the point, at that particular moment I was filled with passionate waves of horniness, and that's that.

Just then, a bus pulled up (not mine of course) and a woman got off--youngish, perhaps a grad student. My very type--dark, dark hair, an intellectual face (whatever that is---at any rate she had glasses on, which has nothing to do, of course, with the intellect, but I only mention tangentially, as I find glasses on women sexy--it nearly forms a fetish for me, though it's not quite that kind of a fascination) not particularly pretty, really, which was unfortunate, but certainly not unattractive, either. She had on a cute hat, and a tight jacket and jeans that nicely grabbed at her form.

And for that moment I suddenly felt such the aesthete---I wanted to shout out how I do love the female form, that there's nothing like it in god's universe. What a perfect little ass this woman had, and how small she was--I find all kinds of women enjoyable, but I must admit to a strong attraction to women who are slight in stature--odd, I remember reading once, somewhere, a long time ago, how it is that larger, taller men seem to habitually and naturally like small, slight women---at least a certain percentage of them do---even though you'd think such men could desire a wider range of women (if we assume the natural prediliction of men in general to want to feel more physically powerful than women) they--and I am one of them--often seem to prefer, nevertheless, smaller statured women over tall or larger women, even when they are still, by a degree, larger and taller than the woman in question. I don't know why this is. But for me it's so. Odd that my friend Ed, who is by every definition a Little Guy (Ed is shorter than me by several inches, and is extremely thin and slight) has a deep fascination and longing for TALL women--not large women so much, but TALL ones. And his wife, in fact, is a lovely thing who is quite tall, certainly taller than Ed. Funny.

Anyway, I found myself taken, for a few moments, with this woman's oh-so-small and oh-so-weak construction---I could have held her delicate but delicious torso between my hands and they would have scarcely been more than a foot apart, it seems... and the delight at how the slim female frame is so perfectly sculpted, from the slight spring of the narrow shoulders down to the indent of the waist, to the outward rise of the hips--and all of it slight, small, narrow, soft, delicate... a delight, and a wonder.

The frustration, of course, comes in then going home in continued and enforced solitude, left to only ponder on such things. Oh well.

On a lighter, less seedy note, I have plans to construct a massive shelving unit(s) in my apartment... I've consulted friends on the engineering demands of this, since the primary function of said shelves will be to support a shitload of books. We have a consensus now, but in involving the opinions of others I suddenly find that the project has grown beyond the proportions I'd originally planned on, and now it seems I'll have my TV, stereo, DVD, VCR, Cable box and god knows what else moved to this grand shelving skyscraper. It means losing one of the pieces of furniture I've always been a bit fond of--an old china cabinet which I used as a bookcase. But sadly no room for it in this grand plan which is no longer solely my own. Why build it to make space, the argument runs, if I don't get rid of EVERY superfluous piece of furniture, if my intent is to make the most efficient use of the limited room in my apartment? True, true... I can't argue. And yet... I hadn't envisioned all this. I'd just wanted something... simple. Something to take care of all my books... and DVDs... and VCR tapes... and CDs... and the kids' various toys and junk... and some display items.... and... well, and then I realize I wasn't being at all realistic, and everyone else is right.

:>Yup! How about you?

Honestly? Eh. I was supposed to have the kids this weekend.... then kinda last minute Judi wants to keep them because the girls are tired from their first week of school, and she has school shopping to do with them, and and the girls have said they want to stay home, sort of... etc. etc. I mean, I understood... but I miss them, and nothing to do this weekend now. Neighbors are all away, friends are busy, money's short.... sigh.

on such a weekend, in the past, I'd hope to see Betsy, and all would be better. ;-) oh well.

Just kind of getting tired of solitude. I've noticed that lately. I used to dig being alone, having time to myself. It's still nice to have freedom and to have one's own time.. but I've also had a lot of that the last few years, and it's a bit old. I can't tell you how many nights I've come home from work, tinkered with the boat, or sailed it,
swam a bit... then sat by the lake watching the sunset and thinking to
myself... "well in one way this is the life... but in another way, it's kind of old." I seem to be bored a lot lately, and none of the old stuff I used
to do has really been engaging my attention.

I even found I was missing Syracuse last night! ;-) I went into Auburn after sundown (BEAUTIFUL sunset last night--best I've ever seen.. a sunburst all over the sky) to get some groceries (another bummer---I went and bought a lot of groceries anticipating A) two weeks until I get paid again and B) that I'd have the kids the next two weekends... then I find out no kids this weekend... could have saved some money if I'd known that in advance) and then I had dinner at this nice Mexican place, and they had a Syracuse New Times there... and I was reminded of places I used to hang out in, in Syracuse... like that coffee shop that used to be in Armory Square... oh, and Armory Square itself, I guess... etc. I didn't think I'd grow nostalgic over Syracuse... but I was also up there last weekend---I only had the girls from Sunday to Monday for Labor Day, and on Saturday, Mike and Laura wanted me to show them around Syracuse, because I'd said it had a lot of great ethnic delis and such... so we had a great time (they were crazy for Lombardi's---Mike said it was better than any Italian deli he knew in Brooklyn) and they really liked Syracuse,
especially the run-down parts, oddly enough.... (but they live in Buffalo,
and Mike's from Brooklyn and Laura from Utica originally, so I guess they
have an affinity for "run down") so I was kind of seeing it through their
eyes, in a way... and thinking, yeah, it wasn't so bad here. I hate winter
in Syracuse, I can't take that... but it's got some cool stuff all the same, about it... and then I was like, missing my years there... sigh.

Mike and Laura took me out to dinner too, to pay me back for showing them around... we went to Aunt Josie's... then I told Judi that, later, and she was complaining that Aunt Josie's had gone way downhill, etc. Seemed fine to us. But she and her family have always been Italian food snobs... nothing was ever as good as their home cooking, to them.

anyway, that's me right about now. :-)

Oh... and I should report... Amie is talking to me again... albeit... not.... at all....often....and very laconically. Three sentence emails... that kind of thing. I really don't understand Amie sometimes. I really don't. BUT... she's back, and that's great.