Image by ahisgett via Flickr

Journal Entry:

7/2

Human contact has always been a mixed experience for me. I am often left with the feeling that I should’ve done something differently or I should be different somehow. At my last job I came as close as I come to feeling comfortable in a group of people until it all vanished. Since then it has been so easy for me to slide back into my old solitary habits.

A wolf does not assess his performance in a hunt. Wolves do not judge other wolves on their skill. They live together, or not, and do what needs to be done. The proof is in survival. They may make adjustments like learning to avoid the hooves of fleeing deer. They test each others’ strength and resolve as pups and in courtship, but I don’t think wolves ever have the thought I am a great hunter or He is lousy at this.

How does one become a great artist or engineer or doctor. If Picasso didn’t become a great artist what else would he be? Even if he was untrained and stuck in a struggle to survive, he would have to create something original. Frank Lloyd Wright would have built something even if he never became an architect.

So who am I at my core? What is my thing? Have I found it yet? I am sure it is in here somewhere I just have to keep digging stuff out of the pile and throwing it out there.

Dreams :

7/7

There were false gods in the house. My friend, Mark, was there too. So we all decided to go.  A group of children and some adults walked out into the street as a parade was going by. The children followed me into the crowd and were lost almost immediately. We found them later in an isolated spot among the trees singing. They had all changed into different forms so we had to look carefully to identify them.

Is it good to live inside a dream? Where the bland is often horrifying and the outlandish accepted as normal? An intelligent alien might think we were living in a dream about hell as we cook our planet while watch empty celebrities make a mockery of their lives.

7/8

I stand on an immense solid block of dark grey rock carved out of a cavern that surrounds me a thousand feet on all sides. I look over the edge, down 300 feet of sheer rock, to the floor of the cavern. My cell phone rings. A friends voice comes through vaguely through the hiss of static.

“They are trying to replace me! Help!” she screams.

I look back down and see that she is running the cavern floor pursued by an exact copy of herself.

Dream Poem:

7/9

The Other Side of  The Year

In the frosted megalithic city of Christmas,

snow like sand pushed across the flat stone

serpentine patterns of white emerge and vanish

We huddle, barefoot, in an intersection.

 Immense windowless monuments line

the streets in all directions

into the distance.

I draw my cloak tighter to keep out

the clawing fingers of wind.

7/13

100 cars crash in a pile. Workers pick up body parts– one man carries a transparent face like a mask casually in his swinging hand. I take some pills and lay down on a lawn. Some people stop to see if I am alright. One woman walks next to a small black animal like an otter; smooth and sleek, It reminds of our dog, Charlie.

Another Dream Poem

7/14

The Story of Larry Troll

Peaches fall from the moon and

diabolical razor tarts.

The attic stairs rebound.

My heart raves speed in numbers,

twice the gears–

bounding up and down the windmill,

a sailing snail curling,

unfurling in beastly breath.

drawing letters to make pictures of words,

stone steps chiseled roughly

E O U

I walk up the ever steepening mountainside.

Soon I will need handles to grip

with dog licked fingers on frozen rungs.

7/31

In a city on a hill by a river in Mexico, I go to a large church to visit some people I know, but the service is in progress when I arrive. After a while, people start to come out. I find the people I know (mostly old women in black lace) and lead them down to the basement where there are some things I had left. We all sit down in a large room and eat pie. I am thinking I have to catch a bus as I am eating. I have to get home which is a hundred miles away, and I don’t want to walk. I go down more stairs and find the woman I was most looking for. She is thin and frail. I help her out of the church and we start walking out of the city. Eventually, she is so weak I must carry her. We enter a small town in a flat valley, but we still have far to go. There is a gang of scruffy men who do not like us. As we walk past them I hear them making plans to harass us. Me and my woman quickly run to a warehouse on the edge of town that looks empty. Inside we find a woman named Pilar and her two children sleeping. My woman’s lawyer joins us to draw up a contract so that we can share the warehouse and protect each other from the gang.