Somnolent Tourist Conspiracy; Dream

Owlright, get this. I had one of my first movie-length psychological thriller nightmares.

Green field with European music festival, a woman dancing on the stage in clips. She had gypsy moves, the camera panned and zoomed. I wanted to stay and watch, I considered joining her but the faceless escort led me further into the festival, white tents with the air of hustle in the distance.
I was part of a small tourist crowd being led through a low, outdoor hall, past somber persons adorned with skull-attached objects. A woman with red-lined eyes and deep, hidden pain at the gate I entered. A list of the rules. I was then in a building with rooms like hospital,

a bit reminiscent of the Northern place where children were held captive in The Golden Compass.

I feared sleeping; I didn't know what would happen with my eyes closed. I sat in an oldschool desk and a very Eastern European-looking no-neck man with a shaved head gently held the back of my head with one hand and fed me porridge-like substance, looking stern with a hint of empathy. He told me he must feed me to know I ate all of it, so I had a few seconds to chew and swallow, and so on.

A few weeks ago, I was speaking to a couple fellow potter women about coffee, of course, and I suggested honey + brown sugar instead of creamer and white sugar. Chris, a middle-aged lady with a Long Island accent, said she hates artificial sugar and told me a story about a cake made with it - she wrapped it in a napkin and threw it away because of the chemical taste, and honey's similarity to syrup put her off. I laughed to myself at the idea of someone hating maple syrup and said, "Well, surely you must have a -reason- to dislike maple syrup, because it couldn't be the taste; it's so delicious!"
She said, "Well, I was raised in an orphanage. You had to eat what they gave you or they would shove it down your throat with a wooden spoon, y'know, and they would drench the pancakes with tons of maple syrup, so whenever I even smell it now I feel sick. I just can't do it."
Amongst all the coats and bags on the studio's one couch, I was looking at her, shocked, and I said, "That's definitely a reason to dislike maple syrup."

The rules also stated that I must drink a large amount of potent alcohol to make me pass out at night. I wasn't allowed to see or hear anything during the dark hours. This frightened me. I thought I'd be attacked, or something of equal danger would be happening around me.
Time passed and I set out to escape. I was going to find a way to contact my parents and have them rescue me. I walked through the town, streets unknown, no way of telling which part of Norway I was in, so I photographed my surroundings to e-mail to my father who could decipher my location. A man walked by and casually pumped into me and within moments, slipped the memory card out of the bottom of my camera. I noticed the cover was semi-detached as he walked away and ran to tackle him. I held him down on the pavement and asked, "Why did you do that? What's going on?" I took the memory card back, he burst into tears. The city's conspiracy had everyone feeling guilty, as though they were also trapped and tortured.
I thought of solutions, who can I speak to? Where can I go to figure out my escape? What would I do if I were awake?
And I woke up.

Today

• Sledding with Lake at the mental hospital, I dove head first off a hill
• Japanese bath lit with semiretired candles
• Snowy afternoon in a warm library armchair, read all of Wicked Plants. The leaves, flowers, nectar, and pollen of Azalea and rhododendron have a very dangerous poison called grayanotoxin.
• Thrift store shopping: a black dress with indigo roses, red floral wool skirt, vest & plaid button-down for Web, wizard garden statue, wooden leaf dish
• Fall unrestrained into the snow countless times
• In the morning I let Watson out to hop through three feet of snow while I sat on the porch in my bathrobe and drank from my own pottery. The streets vanished and connected the properties: Max bounded across the snow and I knew he reached unseen Watson when I heard a little frightened chirp.
• Alexander McQueen committed suicide. He was one of my absolute favourite living artists.
  

LEap year...

His grandfather at the dinner table in the next room, the topic of nursing homes:

"Some of them are really nice places. I don't know ... they're depressing places. You walk through and there's people in the hallways with their heads down ... They're really depressing."

get to bed, I've said for an hour

At 10:15pm on Christmas Eve, I listened to Hanson's 'Snowed In', mixed the dry ingredients of sugar molasses cookies into the wet, and smoothed the confectioners sugar which encased the chocolate rum balls. My mother was in the next room, she wrapped presents, watched 'A Christmas Story' four times, and drank burgundy wine from a goblet made for her wedding. I was not allowed to go into that room, so whichever questions or comments we made to each other, we stood in the hallway to say. Watson enjoyed those exchanges for their approximation to the door. He walked the beaten path between the kitchen and living room to pursue the possibility of going for an unnecessary walk. Lake was upstairs in her bedroom, directly above the kitchen, to wrap the last of her gifts, and, more likely, spent most of it on the floor with my uncle's new lady puppy, Sandy. Meanwhile, James did not tell Sandy how adorable she is, but rather, laid in a mad slumber which he gave into around 8pm. My father did the opposite -- he worked on a court case in his office. I looked over at the time and thought to write this, then came 10:16pm.

Today, I've thought to write about plenty of things. But, thinking of the general topics - the introductory words make me so angry I won't stress myself on this eve. Ticks me off so much!

on November 20th, 2007 04:07 am:

New York is extraordinary. New York is autumn air and winter coats, men escort their mothers across avenues while other men drive taxis and talk to their wives with bluetooth telephones, restaurant doors open and bouquet the chilled area with good foods, babies bundled in all sorts of unnecessary layers wobble about like penguins on wet leaves across central park's paths, jolly red cheeked tourists with christmas tree arms decorated with shopping bags like branches holding bulbs, and each business and salesman glow spectacular. Everything smells clean and genial. I love anything good and everyone giving, and maybe it's the smell of hot chocolate on my nose or apple cider over my lip, but it seems like all things are redolent of goodness, good favour, good taste, good humour. I love New York.

I suck at madlibs

Morning lit by a blue moon; irradiated the earth's first seasonal frost. I approached the lustre gingerly. Watson eyed me. He stopped to examine dead magnolia leaves, which set him a few paces behind, as he found me an oddity in a hat that was best to be watched from afar. My walk was silent until I reached the field. Flower bulbs beneath the ground were unassailable by means of thick rime. My paddock boots made a sonorous crack on a pine cone and I looked over to see a tabby cat lay idly between two white pine trees. I threw a strobile near to scout out that it lived, and it did. It ran away with such might that Watson didn't dare make it a game. Again, he eyed me.
      I suppose it's to be expected, I thought. I also think you look funny in a hat.
I returned home, made myself cream of wheat with honey, and ate it by the fireplace.

For me, Word of the Day has always been felicitous on the days that I've chosen to read them.

ameliorate \uh-MEEL-yuh-rayt\, transitive verb:
1. To make better; to improve.

Scarce territories of my innards remain cold. I feel a chill stir like they are empty tundras left only for icicles and lichen. Under rare conditions would I walk across that terrain. Thinking to write of it makes me feel hated, and colder. I so would like to take a handful of light to it. I'd curse it and release the warmth like a plague. The ice would melt and the dwarf shrubs would grow to something greater.

There are other places that remain warm and I curse them as well. I wish them to feel discontent and furious, yet they feel humbly loving.

07, oct 07

My father greeted me by the greenhouse with a red lantern, then lead me through the rooms toward the back porch. Lights hung from the trees visible outside. Grapes and acorns on the table with a Spider-man cake and black cherry ice cream. A basket of entertaining hats. An old movie played in the adjoining room. We danced to my own music collection. Watson chased balloons. James photographed the joy, equipped with an orange filter I advised. Dan told verbose jokes. Tim held my hand. Papa looked sweet with his book on lap - he told stories and we discussed my book on saints. Mum spun around, brought up the topic of cake numerous times. Lake smiled shyly.

...
Lake made breakfast for me, but I was too sleepy to get out of bed, so Tim ate it. We spent the afternoon in bed. The previous night we ate steak like kings and avoided Mexican foods.

I just cut an engorged brown dog tick out of Watson's head with a hot blade.

My favourite seats to sit in are the ones from which I can swing my feet, because my abnormally long legs couldn't do it in the normally low seats of grade school. I'm sitting in my father's office chair, swinging my feet, and listening to Bill Withers' "Lovely Day" while he looks for a mahoogma. It's about time that I shower.

Oh my gosh

Yesterday, my grandmother said to me, "That's something to know, isn't it? Every time you have a birthday, I'm a year older."

Thank you, tooth ache

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current president of Iran, came to my school a week ago. Hitherto tonight's insomnolence, I didn't care what the man had to say, but I am glad I read the transcript, for the introduction given by Lee Bollinger, Columbia University's president, has benefited me a great pride. So, I list my favourite excerpts:

It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

To be clear on another matter - this event has nothing whatsoever to do with any “rights” of the speaker but only with our rights to listen and speak. We do it for ourselves. We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now. We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers. It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament. In the moment, the arguments for free speech will never seem to match the power of the arguments against, but what we must remember is that this is precisely because free speech asks us to exercise extraordinary self- restraint against the very natural but often counter-productive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear. In this lies the genius of the American idea of free speech.

Lastly, in universities, we have a deep and almost single-minded commitment to pursue the truth. We do not have access to the levers of power. We cannot make war or peace. We can only make minds. And to do this we must have the most full freedom of inquiry.

Over the last two weeks, your government has released Dr. Haleh Esfandiari and Parnaz Axima; and just two days ago Kian Tajbakhsh, a graduate of Columbia with a PhD in urban planning. While our community is relieved to learn of his release on bail, Dr. Tajbakhsh remains in Teheran, under house arrest, and he still does not know whether he will be charged with a crime or allowed to leave the country. Let me say this for the record, I call on the President today to ensure that Kian Tajbaksh will be free to travel out of Iran as he wishes. Let me also report today that we are extending an offer to Dr. Tajbaksh to join our faculty as a visiting professor in urban planning here at his Alma Mater, in our Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. And we hope he will be able to join us next semester.

The arrest and imprisonment of these Iranian Americans for no good reason is not only unjustified, it runs completely counter to the very values that allow today’s speaker to even appear on this campus.

But at least they are alive.

According to Amnesty International, 210 people have been executed in Iran so far this year – 21 of them on the morning of September 5th alone. This annual total includes at least two children – further proof, as Human Rights Watch puts it, that Iran leads the world in executing minors.

There is more.

Iran hanged up to 30 people this past July and August during a widely reported suppression of efforts to establish a more open, democratic society in Iran. Many of these executions were carried out in public view, a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party.

In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as a “fabricated” “legend.” One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers.

For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda. When you come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.

You should know that Columbia is a world center of Jewish studies and now, in partnership with the YIVO Institute, of Holocaust studies. Since the 1930s, we’ve provided an intellectual home for countless Holocaust refugees and survivors and their children and grandchildren. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history. Because of this, and for many other reasons, your absurd comments about the “debate” over the Holocaust both defy historical truth and make all of us who continue to fear humanity’s capacity for evil shudder at this closure of memory, which is always virtue’s first line of defense.

Let me close with this comment. Frankly, and in all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do. Fortunately, I am told by experts on your country, that this only further undermines your position in Iran with all the many good-hearted, intelligent citizens there. A year ago, I am reliably told, your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country (as in your meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations) so embarrassed sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party’s defeat in the December mayoral elections. May this do that and more.

I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.

Lyubov Bistreff stood alone outside the gates, holding a sign that read “Second Generation Holocaust Survivor.” She was 11 years old, she said, when she fled the Holocaust with her mother, two siblings, and one suitcase. “How can he deny it?” she asked. “I’m a witness. I remember everything.”


In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

The devil speed him! no man's pie is freed
From his ambitious finger.

By day:       Magenta, the sky to aviate. 7 o'clock illuminated on my mobile phone just as I had closed my eyes for the night's initial sleep. I woke, three hours later, aching from filth; my hair was greasy, my fingernails garnered ink and dirt, my skin had the balm of old coconut and sweat, and my muscles pounded from exertion. "I'll get something sweet to eat," I thought. Ergo I bartered the remaining mouthwatering hours of Sunday morning sleep for something with which I can actually satisfy my tongue. Hot shower with an open window. Asquith & Somerset soap. Squinted at the sun upon first step outdoors. My father said with a Bulgarian accent, "Our daughter has become a creature of the night..." This has been an ongoing joke since I first started falling into strange sleeping cycles at 14. Poppyseed bagel with butter and a Sobe Coolatta. I took small bites and chewed slowly, crossed legs, heavy eyes, humming in my head. I watched cars and the waddling walks of many a passerby. I know nothing about car models, but I can generally guess the 2 year vicinity of its creation based on the details. I made photograph prints; one for my father to hand colour, two for my mother, six for James. Lake and I went to lunch, ordered the same soup, different drinks. She's really the only one to find me so funny.

By night:       Two hour nap (dreamt of Metropolitan steps, friendly phantoms who cause the racket on my roof, kissing the fingertips of my precious in the French restaurant, and fighting. No less than four times I woke to glance the moving shadows outside my window. Peter Pan.)
cont'd

If I would be impassive. If I would be less. If I would make up my mind. If I would express my composition. If I would be impassive.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.

        My mother so often said to Spike, when he was not dead, "We should have named you," whichever sweet or sour name of the hour, that we have adherently extended Watson's name to a length I cannot recite.
        The afternoon was governed by whim. Consequently, we rode over the rivers, past the wood, and through the mountains to our grandparents' foreign home. It was two in the morning when we arrived - roughly seven hours past their bedtime - and we were no less awake. I gave my grandmother a mug from the Bronx Zoo, and my grandfather an old piece of jewelry on which an emblematic H had been engraved. Frazzled and markedly pleased, they left to share their bed during a time that my grandfather goes straight into a sound sleep, and my grandmother reads by flashlight for hours. As they did, Lake and I sat huddled together on a patchwork settee and shared a brownie she first tested for peanut butter. We spent two hours looking through an "I Spy" book and never found the duck. I dressed into my grandmother's nightgown and we tip-toed quietly, past the door with a covered hole induced by the punch of my then teenage uncle, into the deep, dark room redolent of the trees it is so close beside. Watson plopped by the crooked door, his nose aligned with the only exposed sliver of light. My mobile phone never seems to have more than one bar of service when visiting my grandparents, so I fruitlessly leaned toward the window, and whispered my good nights to Tim. In the hardship of being kept awake against your will, there is only one delightful exception, and that is being kept awake because your little sister will not stop laughing.

"Actually, there is no graffiti on our building..."
"There is now..."

I hate television at 4 in the morn. The only enjoyable sitcom they run at this time is X-Files, but, by jove, at this time it is too petrifying! Satanic alien serial killers and massive, dangerous government secrets -- I'd rather watch the painfully tantalizing mattress infomercials.
"What does that have to do with anything? That's like trying to sell a bicycle because McDonald's designed it!"

Loss and Gain

Virtue runs before the muse
And defies her skill,
She is rapt, and doth refuse
To wait a painter's will.

Star-adoring, occupied,
Virtue cannot bend her,
Just to please a poet's pride,
To parade her splendor.

The bard must be with good intent
No more his, but hers,
Throw away his pen and paint,
Kneel with worshippers.

Then, perchance, a sunny ray
From the heaven of fire,
His lost tools may over-pay,
And better his desire.

In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.