My Dreams Are Waking and Rooted
My Dreams Are Waking and Rooted
May 27-May 31, 2024 / Nightmares & Morning Pages
5/27: Oh, gift of morning like polished silver, white sheets kicked down by our feet and my skin at home w/ yours. It is Monday and we are back, baby. Bags half unpacked until the weekend. We sleep in the space between songs. My cat is never so close as when he is impatient, curled in my lap and shedding like maybe love makes everything better. He gets as comfortable as he can w/ the cone on, his face in my hands and fur all over. The world goes gray.
I am not off work today. Summer like a long distance lover. We talk more knowing we’ll get to touch soon. My friends and my family, we make plans like throwing darts at the wall. If the universe agrees, we’ll get sun. We don't ever plan for rain until it is already dripping, the concrete a shade darker and relief in the leaves. Monday feels funny, the joke still hanging in the air. I wear brown because I'm serious these days, dirt and mulch and digging. My lover looks so good in white but it never stays white for long, brown and gray and staining. When I saw him yesterday, home became all I wanted it to be. He's overgrown like me, hair in his eyes and an easy ferocity. Bodies wish for each other wordlessly.
I've always been asymmetrical. I lean into it, w/ one dangly earring, pairing black and white, pairing hard and soft. My lover is into asymmetry (chicken, egg), loves that he doesn't have to choose. Can't he just have it all? It's something I love about him, something that helped me be me. He says, You make me free and I start to see him in my arms more clearly. When I remember to, I hold him tighter. I’ve seen him when he’s had to choose, choose between love & love, choose between fear & fear. I've seen what it does to him. He sucks it up, he is used to making sacrifices. He sleeps w/ it. Some nights he sleeps real heavy. When he says he doesn't want to talk about it, I believe him. I trust he's on the clock in there, getting back to center, that thing we do before we get to No good, no bad.
Peace is always worth offering. The bed is a little larger and the car rides are a little longer but I take it. It takes time. I take what he can't give me, the words he doesn't need, the feelings he doesn't linger on, feelings shuffled like a deck of cards under golden curls. He’s overgrown like me. His hair is never parted in the same direction. These days, my hair parts down the middle. These days, that feels right.
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5/28: The world turns away again to weep. The sun doesn't want to look. The forecast said hot, said sunny, but tears fall in the morning. My city wakes w/ nightmares, looking across the way. My world and it's manmade catastrophes. What stops death besides more death? Water boils and coffee shrugs anxiously. My home is very much standing. My skies are quiet and clear. I don't know how silence feels after the bombs. Blood turns to ash and does what ash does - fall wordlessly back to the earth.
There is a topographic map in the kitchen of our small corner of the world. The mountains my lover and I have climbed, the peaks soft under fingertips. The towns we grew up in close close. My city where it slopes and flattens by the sea. Deep veins of highways. Everything bought up along the ocean’s edge. The coastline is ours for now. I think of the ocean filling the Earth’s oldest cracks, flowing unstoppable.
Our blue planet, wet if not holy. The Atlantic feeds the Mediterranean, keeping it green if not free. The war creeps down the coast, eroding life, eliminating generations, thief of humanity, no way around it.
I know the map expands beyond this corner of it. I know the world reaches far beyond me. We kick our feet in the sea as the sun peeks through her fingers. We kick up hope and only splash each other. We kick up love before it's all dried up.
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5/29: Here's the thing, it's all gonna be different soon. If I can swoon a few minutes a day, I will be full, full into the night. There is an orange chair in the sun in Congress Square Park and I walk right to it. It’s mine for half an hour, a chair shared w/ my city. The Workshop is tonight and tonight is going to be different. Every month has its own flavor, it's own blend of spices. But there is something like summer in the air and my god, 5 PM feels like early afternoon. We get yanked all over when the sun gets stubborn like this, watching us watching her. There has been a hum of predictability lately so something has to shift. My only certainties are that Benjamine will be at Novel, poetry will be shared, and we will have energy buoyant for whatever comes next.
I have been thinking so often lately of resilience. Everything about it makes me want to cry. Resilience, a thing that pain builds, something like stone, awesome and demanding of respect. Resilience, like committing to the promise of life through it all. I remember when I made that promise, I know exactly where I was, bathroom tiles bare feet. Ask me how I keep it. Fear builds it's walls and love patiently deconstructs - this is all the time, now.
Tell me I'm wrong, tell me I'm projecting. You know me, stepping right up to the mic and thinking my words are so temporary. I do the art I do because of who I am, that's all. I think we all do, I mean of course, but when you think about it backwards like that, you realize. Our style is just who we already are. My art is the intersection of my life and my stories, like mountain river and mountain mud, where Earth disintegrates and water flows. This writing is the heart of me but the performance is the electricity. The performance is always w/ me.
If this all changes shape tomorrow, I will show up w/ nothing to lose. This community, this circuit in my city. My resilience, any I have, is a monument to you. I walk by every day going to work. I leave offerings at your feet. I watch you change color in the sun - summer day by summer day, spiraling year by spiraling year.
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5/30: I’m still wearing the Jenny Holzer shirt, the last 3 days, the last seven years. I’m thinking again about all the ways we become ourselves and are ourselves all the time. My mouth is salivating, saying more, letting the words fall. Tongue like waterfall and Kubrick stare.
I’ve had a new sound in my body all morning, the squeal of hope. I am getting the full breath of hope now. It sounds something like a child before blowing out birthday candles. Something like a song for the morning played all day. It sounds like getting home last night and waking this morning and picking my poem back up, my poem and all my little books. My friends are my bookmarks, poems and postcards and thinking of you letters. Things I’ve been holding onto this week and last.
I drove past Forest Ave last night to drop off a friend and remembered Orne and I salted on a Saturday, talking about our city. I remember him saying that there used to be a stretch of neighborhoods there, culture and families flattened by freeway, trapped underneath concrete, concrete laid over dirt. In a city meeting, there as a suggestion to trim the highway from the curb enough to fit a new neighborhood or storefronts. Our city diced up & in discussion.
~ The Workshop Podcast, Pt. V (listen here)
We were swept across the street making eyes w/ the mischievous moon. The moon who is always toying w/ the wet, working only w/ love, trying to show us something. The Rat and I got blue, singing Billie at the bar. They handed us the mics saying, can't believe they already made this for karaoke. I felt Desire under the purple lights and only some of it belonged to me. Mostly, I was catching it, full body electric. The most natural thing. I don't flinch. I don't keep my mouth shut anymore. Ears perked up like dog whistle and I just wanted some more water. The pitcher empties, the little glass man keeps disappearing. A smoke then, outside to smoke, you comin’? Outside in the streetlight all lit up like the sun. I think this is the easiest thing, being here w/ you allowed to dream.
I filled my body w/ city air, tastes like sea brine and infinity. Tell me your dreams and I'll show you how to get into them. Point out your apartment right there on the corner and tell me I'll see you around soon. Tell me you hear me and I'll share what I've been hearing from you. A soundscape, a whistle in the air calling us home, a Wednesday night ears ringing. How we howl in the West End where the sea can't hear us, blasphemous and bohemian.
This quilted red coat gets passed around, sat on and worn as costume, looks good everywhere, looks good on everyone. I was out talking philosophy w/ the boys, leaning on brick. Achilles and Plato and Moses, 70s polyester and gold rings and backwards cap. And if we're not going to get existential out here then what's the point? I've been living in the world absurdity gave me. I think you should see this, chief, the beating heart of me crowns Chaos as king. It has helped me trust again - an element of idiocy that saves my life. The not knowing, never knowing, certainty a thing in the compost. And anyway, we're saying essentially the same things.
I told Plato I don't believe in the kind of striving he keeps talking about, but we agree the experience is worth everything. He works in music now, knows words aren't enough to tap into feelings, will never do them justice. The trouble w/ language, formulaic and lacking. Play the song then, play the song, tell me where you first heard it, another seed dropped into the Earth. Tell me what you hear in it. Tell me how it shows up in your dreaming.
I was outside for an hour, wouldn’t have left w/out saying goodbye. The Jewel Box was busy now, all of us like pearls scattered in the corner, no thread between us. The Wizard and I took up space at the bar, not drinking but making little wishes. We dreamed and dreamed out loud where no one could hear us. We were rethinking our city, rethinking the centerfold. When they hit the road, I knew they got home safe.
MC, an angel chic in white, staying out so much later than she meant to. GH sticking his teeth above the rest, smiling for the photo. Red said, Pizza! and the night sloshed in its glass. A splash onto the ground, to the dirt under our feet, leaving our trail in a song in our city, bar to bar, beat to beat. It was GH and Red and I, Achilles and New Boy II, five of us at the spot down the street where we were the other night. The spot where I am still haunted by the bliss of a dead friend all those years ago. Oh, the dreams we dreamed together just one night unknown in his city before he left for another city. But now -
Now, I dream w/ you differently, Lazlo. I dream w/ new friends. I sit in a booth staring at the small table by the window where we read palms and swirled dreams in our glasses. This pizza place was new then and made it through the drought. I carry our dreams still, and while they look a little different, they feel the same as they did w/ you. I realize it is not a question of making time anymore, it's a question of structuring a life like scaffolding, making art w/ my city.
Now, morning still dark and tongues running but mouths dry and bellies full. I dropped Red off at home and avoided Forest Ave, East to West. I sat w/ myself as it all quieted and it was just me and my body still wishing, still sprouting, still sparking, I and my Freedom, I and my dreaming. In the Soul, I sat w/ a song I hadn't heard in a while, a song of love and dreams of future, of even when things fall apart and relationships change, the dreams created together - unique and honest and misunderstood - these dreams outlast. They sleep in us until they are restlessly ready, growing petals, growing legs.
I drove home laughing again, dreaming of maybe again, Desire itchy w/ allergies and doubt burning up in the heat. On Congress St, it was empty except this one guy, a sign in his hand and my dollar in his pocket. He held an empty paper cup up to God, Ace of Cups, empty and still givin’ it all up. A reverence. A readiness.
I write a poem / for 2 AM. I write / my house is a nearly / empty one tonight / could feel it / when I pulled into / the driveway. But / I am out in the yard / out w/ the flowers / warmer by moon than / by sun. I am home / all white and brown / shaking out my petals / keeping only what still / grows. I can't get / enough of this feeling. / My voice just wants / to be used. My body / just wants to be moved. / Mercury is alive in me. / I am creation eating / itself, we all are. / Running wild / Running wild / This is a poem for / finally 2 AM, the / one I swallowed / w/ squeal and teeth / brush. The tide rolls / in and the edges get / soft, white sheets / glow in a dark room / stripped to sleep / and not to dream.
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5/31: Who’s up engaging w/ Desire? I'm telling you, don't leave it all to dreaming. I'm not convinced my dreams are mine, not fully. All the running, running through worlds. Time flipping the pages of a book. I haven't been sleeping so much this Spring. My dreams are waking and rooted. I haven't been sleeping so much this Spring. Oh, my days have had all these layers, multi-colored commitments, pieces of dreams. I make no wishes in sleep, in sleep where everything is subject except me. In dreams, I am object digesting time, legs that open, legs that run. Circles w/in circles, pockets of macrocosm, love uncanny.
Awake in my city, I get to wishing. I ask friends, I ask once strangers, I ask What do you want? What do you want to do? And they tell me sometimes of dreams. They tell me where they come from and how they got there, how their dreams began or how their dreams have changed. We are the pages Time flips through. Most dreams are not unrealistic. From my talking, that's what I've learned. Tricky and sticky and nonconformist at times, at times honest and dressed in white, at times the simple dream to not be alone. When we shine a light on dreams, they start to unfurl, blooming both while we are objects, merely bodies building strength, and while we are awake and asking for it / night and day and night and day.
I believe in asking for what you want. I want to work in beginnings. I want to work w/ my friends. I will be the dirt under your feet and the belief you need. I see now how for a lot of my life, my dreams weren't fully mine. Dreams, lovechild of touch and delusion. Someone else's ideas of the world, obeying someone else's masters. Give me a future! Something to love! My dreaming in the palms of those who made me feel like a difficult thing - I surrender my naivete to a reality gone cold! I don't fit in here, I would say, you love me, tell me what to do. I think of people I love, people who love me, well meaning and wanting more from me. I think of how they pretend to hold the world while I admit only to sitting in the grass, a small thing made of light. I look in a direction and know intuitively which parts of me I would have to leave behind. Makes me want to stay the same, makes me want to dream better dreams.
And I do, I dream of it all colliding in a way only my life could deliver. If Time trusts me as much as I’ve been trying to trust it, something will fall into place. I dream impatient but I wish wordless w/ my body. I am left w/ possibilities half-read and less people in my life telling me what to do. Petals rain down from the sky now, all around my yard in the sun. An inch worm stretches in a storm of blessings.
I think of dreams over drinks and the roles I could never fit, friends who wanted more of me and lovers who wanted to control me. I think of endings when they are soft and death when it is too young. People change and people get busy and people expire and time rolls on. Every dream becomes fodder for future. I still want that art studio. I still want to run away w/ you. I still think home could look like something I'm not used to. The dreams we dream together belong to us still. My love is yours to keep.
Losing people we love does not mean we lose the dreams we love but I didn't believe that until last night when I was feeling brave again; made resilient by my singing city and the ways I choose to love, by my instinct all animal and a lover made of gold, solid gold. I talk of Desire like the most natural thing, the most demanding god, red velvet where Now starts to feel romantic. I am at home w/ silk and sweet tea, the world takes my words, my body left hanging in the gentle breeze. I am resilient knowing my dreams are possible . I mean, how the waking world and the dreaming world don't feel so different. My symbols are easy to find, made of dirt and stars, whatever comes next and the endlessness.
Sometimes I pop into dreaming and sometimes I crawl through, find a door and step into. It matters how I get there. It matters what the door looks like. It matters if there is room to grow. In this way, I am insufferable but I do not suffer. I suffer not fools and kings, graves nor gravity. I will be happy to trip into dreaming, heels clacking and bells jingling. The future collects me, one of many. I take my dreams w/ me. I don't pretend to know where I'm going but I'm walking this way while it feels good.
This entry is a part of my Nightmares & Morning Pages series, where I write every day and share the good stuff. Subscribe to keep up with me & share what you like (please).
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