Form Prayers to Broken Stone
Someone at work asked me today, "Were you up late writing or something?" Either my messy hair or my bloodshot eyes gave me away, but I couldn't help thinking, Oh, if only I were up late writing last night. At least people assume that of me. No, I went to sleep early last night and woke up early. I've been up since 5:43 I told them, though that was a lie; it was only the time that I woke up first and looked at the clock. I spouted off the time off the top of my head as though at random, as though I couldn't have invented that time so quickly and thus must be telling the truth. Which perhaps is evidence that, at least in the mind, nothing happens by coincidence, nothing can be invented of thin air; 5:43 is too random a time to invent just like that.
This evening though the air is very thin and, reaching the tops of the hills, in a trance, my heart beats through my body like the clicking of a rollercoaster, and I turn to see the sunwashed sky behind a mixture of the tops of eucalyptus and apartment buildings. Smell the air, both for practical reasons and for reasons of nostalgia that compel me. I descend the hill and, there, it is dark, night has fallen and it's cold and sharp, passing mud- and blood-stained faces and 'spare some change's here and there, a bus emptying its people, hopping curbward and setting out homeward, and finally, a string of traffic, two white dots each extending down and up the hills of the city, together coupled with a sense of relief that I am not a part of it and a remembrance of being a part of it.
It happens so often, and yet each time I am astounded how I can be in the midst of some routine activity, washing the counters of the cafe or steaming milk at the espresso machine and something like the general feeling of being a freshman and riding my bike across the then-unfamiliar Davis campus can pass over me like the violent fogs of San Francisco, or the same feeling of crossing the bridges of a then-familiar Bordeaux; and how I will continue about my routine activity without even tripping or forgetting something; and especially how no one will ever know, can know.
"Were you up late writing or something?"
"No, I woke up early."
"What time?"
"5:43!"
"What for? Do you live far away?"
"No, I live down the street."
I had a series of amazing dreams, I told them, and I had to write them down, though this too was a lie. I did have amazing dreams, amazing landscapes that will never exist. But I failed to write them down. I dreamt that I was on a small scooter going uphill with bigger cars that were passing me on my left and right. Suddenly I saw the burning shacks of the poor. I got in the left lane to pass the houses slowly and survey the damage. As I passed each shack their stories passed through me: this family lost books and photographs, this family lost money, this family lost a grandmother in the wreckage. There was smouldering and the damage was not great, but each family was crying on their porch. I told them telepathically as I continued down the highway that when I was a child I had lost everything too. That all things passed. Soon this would be a distant memory. At the last house I met myself as a child and, as I had communicated to each family, my own house was burnt down and I was there crying over the loss of my toys and clothes. I took my five-year old self by the hand and comforted him as a father would his child, Don't worry I said, we will get more clothes for you, we will get more ninja turtles toys, more hotwheels cars, I told myself, would you like that? Yes, I said to my older self, beginning to wipe the ceasing tears from my face, can we go now? Sure, I told my self, let's go now. I feared momentarily that if I took my younger self by the hand that I would disintegrate in whirl of contradiction, but as I led myself to the mall nothing happened except for this brewing feeling inside me that it was not my younger self I was comforting, but my own son.
"What for? Do you live far away?"
"No, I live down the street..."
"What do you do when you don't work?"
"Oh, pay bills, read, write, nap, ride my bike, drink."
"Yeah, drinking is fun."
We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings; stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world. Think not, o king, upon that lie: That Thou Must Die: verily thou shalt not die, but live.
10/03/07- (10:01pm) I just realized that I feel like I'm in a weird part of life where I don't have much to look forward to or anything to really be apprehensive about. In school there were always vacations, Christmas breaks to anticipate and, on the other side, papers, tests and finals to dread. There is none of that now, only the constant flow of work and days off. Work and days off. And so I'm in this part of life where my I revolve around something that I don't fear nor look forward to. Labor is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. And this part of my life is a steady flow of living.
I dreamt that I went with her via some sort of strange hybrid tandem bike-fire engine up this steep hill. She pedaled the entire way and I steered in the back cabin. We went up the hill and found ourselves on this lush park area with a lagoon and a gray duck that was coughing as though something were caught in its throat. On one side there was the bay and the city: whites and blues and the fresh lights lit against the crepuscular sky. On the other side of the hill there was a Caribbean-like scene with a tall mountain in the middle of the light-blue water, like the sharp mountains in Chinese paintings. Impressed, she shouted to the nearby houses, "Oh! The City!" and someone yelled back in the distance, "Fuck you! I'm studying for finals!" So we sank into the warm lagoon and looked up at the now-night sky. Shooting stars streaked across it much longer than they should have.
I knew this was not a landscape I could have created myself. Perhaps it was a real landscape of another world. Or perhaps it was just a combination of views I had seen collected from my experiences and seamlessly combined. Though I liked better the idea that it was another, alternate universe, awaiting me somewhere. Because I go to sleep hoping, expecting that my dreams will be my transfer ticket to those universes, and so often they are in fact just bizarre combinations of the everyday activities I experience all the time: being late to work or trying to remember to put my pants on and failing. These were the dreams I was waiting for, so I had to wake up at 5:43 to write them all down. But I didn't.
This evening though the air is very thin and, reaching the tops of the hills, in a trance, my heart beats through my body like the clicking of a rollercoaster, and I turn to see the sunwashed sky behind a mixture of the tops of eucalyptus and apartment buildings. Smell the air, both for practical reasons and for reasons of nostalgia that compel me. I descend the hill and, there, it is dark, night has fallen and it's cold and sharp, passing mud- and blood-stained faces and 'spare some change's here and there, a bus emptying its people, hopping curbward and setting out homeward, and finally, a string of traffic, two white dots each extending down and up the hills of the city, together coupled with a sense of relief that I am not a part of it and a remembrance of being a part of it.
It happens so often, and yet each time I am astounded how I can be in the midst of some routine activity, washing the counters of the cafe or steaming milk at the espresso machine and something like the general feeling of being a freshman and riding my bike across the then-unfamiliar Davis campus can pass over me like the violent fogs of San Francisco, or the same feeling of crossing the bridges of a then-familiar Bordeaux; and how I will continue about my routine activity without even tripping or forgetting something; and especially how no one will ever know, can know.
"Were you up late writing or something?"
"No, I woke up early."
"What time?"
"5:43!"
"What for? Do you live far away?"
"No, I live down the street."
I had a series of amazing dreams, I told them, and I had to write them down, though this too was a lie. I did have amazing dreams, amazing landscapes that will never exist. But I failed to write them down. I dreamt that I was on a small scooter going uphill with bigger cars that were passing me on my left and right. Suddenly I saw the burning shacks of the poor. I got in the left lane to pass the houses slowly and survey the damage. As I passed each shack their stories passed through me: this family lost books and photographs, this family lost money, this family lost a grandmother in the wreckage. There was smouldering and the damage was not great, but each family was crying on their porch. I told them telepathically as I continued down the highway that when I was a child I had lost everything too. That all things passed. Soon this would be a distant memory. At the last house I met myself as a child and, as I had communicated to each family, my own house was burnt down and I was there crying over the loss of my toys and clothes. I took my five-year old self by the hand and comforted him as a father would his child, Don't worry I said, we will get more clothes for you, we will get more ninja turtles toys, more hotwheels cars, I told myself, would you like that? Yes, I said to my older self, beginning to wipe the ceasing tears from my face, can we go now? Sure, I told my self, let's go now. I feared momentarily that if I took my younger self by the hand that I would disintegrate in whirl of contradiction, but as I led myself to the mall nothing happened except for this brewing feeling inside me that it was not my younger self I was comforting, but my own son.
"What for? Do you live far away?"
"No, I live down the street..."
"What do you do when you don't work?"
"Oh, pay bills, read, write, nap, ride my bike, drink."
"Yeah, drinking is fun."
We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings; stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world. Think not, o king, upon that lie: That Thou Must Die: verily thou shalt not die, but live.
10/03/07- (10:01pm) I just realized that I feel like I'm in a weird part of life where I don't have much to look forward to or anything to really be apprehensive about. In school there were always vacations, Christmas breaks to anticipate and, on the other side, papers, tests and finals to dread. There is none of that now, only the constant flow of work and days off. Work and days off. And so I'm in this part of life where my I revolve around something that I don't fear nor look forward to. Labor is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. And this part of my life is a steady flow of living.
I dreamt that I went with her via some sort of strange hybrid tandem bike-fire engine up this steep hill. She pedaled the entire way and I steered in the back cabin. We went up the hill and found ourselves on this lush park area with a lagoon and a gray duck that was coughing as though something were caught in its throat. On one side there was the bay and the city: whites and blues and the fresh lights lit against the crepuscular sky. On the other side of the hill there was a Caribbean-like scene with a tall mountain in the middle of the light-blue water, like the sharp mountains in Chinese paintings. Impressed, she shouted to the nearby houses, "Oh! The City!" and someone yelled back in the distance, "Fuck you! I'm studying for finals!" So we sank into the warm lagoon and looked up at the now-night sky. Shooting stars streaked across it much longer than they should have.
I knew this was not a landscape I could have created myself. Perhaps it was a real landscape of another world. Or perhaps it was just a combination of views I had seen collected from my experiences and seamlessly combined. Though I liked better the idea that it was another, alternate universe, awaiting me somewhere. Because I go to sleep hoping, expecting that my dreams will be my transfer ticket to those universes, and so often they are in fact just bizarre combinations of the everyday activities I experience all the time: being late to work or trying to remember to put my pants on and failing. These were the dreams I was waiting for, so I had to wake up at 5:43 to write them all down. But I didn't.