I went to the bathroom to take a shower. While looking at myself in the mirror, I noticed that my skin was extremely dry. Marbled veins of dryness covered my body liked cracked earth during a drought. I frantically slathered moisturizing lotion all over me, spreading it on so thick it looked like I had crawled out from a vat of pancake batter. The pressure of this rubbing caused my skin to burst in places, sending heavy streams of blood down my face.

This was too much to handle so I called for my mother, who happened to be at my house at the time. She came into the bathroom and promptly slipped on the floor, falling, hitting her head on the edge of toilet. I carefully turned her around and propped her up. Her eyes were milky and opaque. She was blind.

Then I had some other dream, but this one stuck with me.

I was hanging out in the backstage area with Dave’s wonderful interior designer housemate, discussing relationships and the Landmark Forum (which she was attending that weekend). Beth came in and joined us. I don’t recall how the conversation took this turn, but suddenly Beth was telling me things about Cathy. I remembered what Beth had said before and I asked if she knew where Cathy had ended up.

I remember her saying that Cathy was married and had a child. I blurted something and fled the room. I had expected her to tell me where she was living. This information was totally unexpected and it fried my brain. A roulette wheel of emotions started cutting into my chest. Whatever I was feeling, I only felt it for a few seconds before it changed into something else. I realized I was no longer backstage and there were people going to a fro. I found myself a doorway suitable for soliloquies and installed myself therein.

It wasn’t as though I had never considered it. I just never had the thought made real. Given the conversation I just had with the housemate, my heart was in a vulnerable place. It’s not that I was upset about her being married and having a child; it’s that my desire for a happy relationship was put into stark relief.

Seven years had passed. Lifetimes for me. But a portion of those years I kept frozen in a phial. Now that icy teardrop melted and flowed free.

I’m going on.

As you can see, this is all Jodi’s fault.

Click on the image for the full view.

I miss everyone tonight.
I miss my friends, even if I’ve just seen them.
I miss how some friends were a few weeks ago.
I miss girls I should never have kissed.
I miss girls I should have but now it’s too late.
I miss my ex-girlfriends.
I miss my lovers.
I miss Cathy.
I miss how my friends were in college.
I miss wine and cheese with Beth.
I miss Neal.
I miss my best friends, separated by distances physical and psychological.
I miss my mom.
I miss my sister and my neices.
I miss my grandmother.
I miss Kevmo and The Airliner.
I miss road trips.
I miss being in love.
I miss church.
I miss God.
I miss the little red haired girl.
I already miss Christopher Eccleston, you fucking heartbreaker.
I miss Buffy.
I miss Serenity.
I miss poetry that isn’t about fear.
I miss Michael Hutchence.
I miss Dumbledore, JK, you cruel woman.
I miss garage sales.
I miss my Apple II+.
I miss floppy disks.
I miss not needing money.
I miss inventing games in the back of the school bus.
I miss recess.
I miss feeling safe.
I miss not knowing.
I miss the way it used to be.
I miss you.

Photos
v.2

I spent five years filling up a photo album with a house, a car, a dog, a set of tools, a nice dining room set, and you.
And you in your wedding dress
And you smiling by the SOLD sign
And you raking the leaves
And you looking at me like I was forever.
I was an amateur photographer, to be sure
Shooting from the hip
Sending up a prayer that when the camera winked
Something would develop:
Be they happy accidents
The smeared blur of a smile
You on a camel, framed by a pyramid
The montage of a child’s face, my eyes, your nose
Or the sepia toned hope of you and me wrinkling in a sunset forty years away
But now I wonder
Did someone else borrow my camera for the last five years?
In the economy of betrayal
One word is worth a thousand pictures
“I do” bought two thousand moments
“Divorce” took half of them back
It’s an expensive word
It cost a house, a car, a dog, a set of tools, a nice dining room set, and you.
And you packing up your wedding dress
And you putting up a FOR SALE sign
And you leaving the rake
And you looking at me like I never meant anything
And it cost you me.
All those photos, just gone
As though I had spent the last five years taking pictures of the sun.

I think perhaps the person I was with was my ex-wife Cathy. This segued into the next dream where I had gotten back together with Cathy and we were moving into a new house. I kept wondering where I was going to put all my things. There was already a bed there. I would no longer have my own bedroom and this bothered me. I started wondering if this was what I really wanted. So much had happened in the years since we got divorced and I wasn’t sure she really knew me any more. I stood in the upstairs living room of the new house (off-white carpet, white walls) and watched a black widow spider come and drag the carcass of a cockroach away. This was the most realistic part of the dream, the one filled with the most detail.

I went to explore the rest of the new house. There was a patio that opened off the kitchen, leading to a forest of very tall trees. Perhaps our new house was in the redwood forest of California. As soon as I set foot into the forest, a small one-man starfighter began a strafing run between the immense trees. I had to run and dodge laser blasts until I was safe in the kitchen. Apparently our new house could withstand laser blasts.

That’s all.

At work, as I was looking for some apartment footage, I came across a box with video from a friend’s wedding that occurred a couple years ago.  I popped it in and was taken aback to see myself and my ex-wife on the video.  What are the chances that the company I ended up working for would have taped this wedding and held onto the raw footage for no reason and placed it where it didn’t belong?  I guess I had about two tears left for Cathy.  It was just kind of a shock.  The tapes ended up in the “to be erased” box.

Doug lives a few blocks from the small kingdom I have been exiled from, namely our house. He has an arcade and a surveillance system. I meet a bunch of people and immediately forget their names. One couple is divorced, but they are trying to date each other again. This is meant to give me hope. Part of me is already waking up. Part of me is insane with glee that I am free again. I don’t want that kind of hope. Not anymore.

We go to this dive called “Misty’s Hideaway” and I can tell it’s somewhere I would never have decided to venture into on my own. I decide that if I have a beer and a pack of cigarettes, I’ll be fine. I’ll have something to do with my hands and something to put in my mouth when the inevitable uncomfortable silence arrives. I sit with them at a back table and begin to study the crowd. So it’s come to this, I think.

But then I see you talking to this guy who looks like he walked out of an article in Rolling Stone, circa 1986, during the hair metal era. I have no idea who you are, but I’m transfixed. I’m already jealous of this guy. I’m already hoping you’ll blow him off. Impossibly, you eventually stop listening to him tell you about a dream and you walk over to our table, into my dream.

Somehow you know the people I am with. You start talking to me. I have no idea what was said. I decide that you’re out of my league and don’t try to impress you and instead just talk to you like a normal person. I may have bummed a few cigarettes from you. I can’t believe how beautiful your eyes are, so I look at my drink or the ashtray or a mark on the table instead of staring.

I watch you dance and it is the most terrifying sight I have ever seen. I am not ready to move through a world that shimmers in a heat haze generated by your gyrations. My heart is gathering itself from a hundred blasted bits and it cannot deal with such beauty.

Doug is having an after hours party and I make sure you know you’re invited. I fear that you won’t come. I fear that you will come. Doug notices my interest and wonders aloud if he should tell you that I want to “take you home and fuck your brains out.” I decide not to tear his throat out.

You do show up at his house. You remember me from the bar. You mingle about the crowded house as though you know everyone. I listen to everything you say. You talk about white water rafting on the Colorado River. Everything you say is an adventure.
When you leave I mutter something about hoping to run into you again. You hand me your phone number. I couldn’t believe it. It was like someone handed me a map to Narnia.

I will always be mindful of the interconnectedness of things. I will always see you for the first time.

We meet for lunch for the first time at Woody’s, some café a short distance from where I work. On the phone I am so excited and nervous that all the street names rearrange themselves on my map and fictitious intersections spill out of my babbling mouth.

As we talk at lunch, I wonder if I should say anything about the divorce and potentially ruin my chances with you. I decide not to put any spin on my answers and answer your questions completely and honestly.

I will always tell you the truth.

I am at a barbeque with the other members of my church small group, talking to Pastor Alan as he grills burgers. This man once had a demon attached to him while he was still a pastor. He was asked to leave our church because he believed in demons and the supernatural and all sorts of “crazy” things. He left to start his own church and I followed him.

I tell him about you and he warns me not to become involved with you. He fears that because of my compassionate heart I will become entangled in your life and try to rescue you somehow.

I nod and completely ignore his advice.

I will try to follow my heart, even if it contradicts the wisdom of men.

You’re stretched across the couch in my apartment in the heights, intoxicatingly beautiful. We’re having a wonderful discussion/argument. You’re saying things that part of me has always known to be true, yet I am arguing against you. It has been a long time since I’ve had such a stimulating conversation. Cathy would always get mad whenever we had a “debate.” She thought I was trying to prove that I was smarter than she. I was just exploring a topic, trying to understand it from different angles. This method rarely goes over well with most people, including you. Everyone always thinks I am advocating a point of view when I am actually exploring a line of reasoning objectively.

You’re trying to convince me that the people in my stories are real, existing in another dimension of possibility. I insist this is quite impossible. I am forgetting the long conversations I used to have with imaginary mice and dragons in my bedroom growing up. The group of very ordinary children I would visit in a completely invented thoughtspace. The wispy dark creatures with glowing eyes, uncoiling from the ceiling, skittering about the furniture. I invited them into my house and they never left.

Your opinions, thoughts and beliefs are precious to me.
The fact that you speak what is true is more important than whether or not I agree.

You have invited me to come over to have brunch with you and your children. I am nervous about meeting them. What if they don’t like me? What if they think I am an intruder? What if they generation gap me and make me feel old? I enter your house for the first time and they are all looking at me. I forget their names and who is older than whom.

You show me your artwork and I am very impressed and at a loss for words. I feel like anything I say would be stupid and ignorant. I try to convey my lack of understanding and un-connectedness with your artwork, but it comes out all wrong.

I get the tour of the house and see your bedroom. It is one of the most inviting and sensual places I had ever been in. I guess that I would probably never see it again.

I love your family and your home and I know that they are not mine.

I will always be grateful to you for sharing them with me, though there is nothing I could do to deserve them.

We are at an event out in the desert where they have the 3-sided hole. Aaron is with us. I am dating Amy and our relationship is at its platonic zenith. I see you as a beautiful woman who am friends with, someone I care deeply about. I look forward to our cigarettes and glasses of wine out on your porch. This is who we are. A week ago I was talking to Jodi on the phone and talking about going to this event. She teased me about maybe you and I could snuggle together in a sleeping blanket. I explained that it wasn’t like that; we were just friends. Besides, there was Amy.

I faced the evening with a bit of guardedness. This gathering had all the trappings of some kind of pagan shenanigans and I wasn’t sure what to think about it. But by end of the evening I was covered in glitter, my feet washed, my head anointed with frankincense, I was wearing a sarong and tripping on mushrooms.

And you were dancing, dancing, spinning and bending. A flame, a dream, a shadow, a reed, the invisible flow of life energy.

I want to know and love each of your changing shapes.

A tale from folklore:

A boy began to climb a mountain.
Halfway up, he encountered a snake coiled in the shadows of a rock.
“Little boy,” hissed the snake. “Winter is coming and if I do not make it over to the other side of the mountain, I will freeze to death. Please put me in your pack and carry me with you to the other side.”
The boy immediately replied,
“But you are a snake. Snakes bite little boys.”
“No,” said the snake, “I will not bite you. If I did, you would die and then there would be no one to carry me over the mountain.”
The boy considered this and it seemed like wisdom. Warily he agreed and slipped the snake into the pack on his back. Together they journeyed up and over the mountain.
When they reached the other side, the boy took the snake out and said, “There, on this side you will be safe from the winter.”
“Thank you,” said the snake and bit the boy.
“Why did you do that?” the boy cried,
feeling the poison flowing into his body.
“It is in my nature,” said the snake.
“You knew what I was before you picked me up.”