20:43
"...impossibly at home. It's hard to write about. Even harder to speak about. After the hugs is the inevitable 'how was England?!' and me, again and more frequently now it seems, without an answer. 'Good' is not the answer you're looking for. You want the balls of it. The adventure and drama. I know, I know, it's just hard to... It's hard to write about and, yeah, even harder to think about myself, you know? Andy called it something like a 'did it happen or did it not happen kinda thing.' I like that. Did I forget to pinch myself for six weeks, did I not once check my reflection? He's pretty sure it happened but he says 'so you're on your own from there,' which is poignant, all things considered.
But I guess I'm pretty sure it happened, the evidence is there. I'm a ghost in the photographs otherwise! But seriously, seriously... there's more than that to say I feel-- than where we went and what we did there and how I learned so much so differently. It's something illiterate. Like... I could deconstruct. I can take the 'we' I just put out and rearrange based on the character of the whole thing, the molecules and how we bounced off each other and why and what it created, if only momentarily, in I guess the Universe, whatever. Or you could consider a fractal and we could talk about it that way, the shape of the figures in the big figure and so on and so on and so on but that doesn't really tell you anything. There are stories, sure, and they can be fun to tell. I get into them sometimes and others I don't do them right and its this same problem: the manifestation of the memory as language or or or the... creation? of experience as art... and how ridiculous it is to attempt it. I don't want to be ingenuine, you know, so I can only move in the space that I 'know'... the Knowing Space, 'kay? So all right let's start there.
America has some beautiful sky. I didn't always think so. But I came back with this lens, like a bubble I'm in, and its a delicate, careful bubble. I try very hard not to say 'I think' when I mean 'I've read' and I try very hard to say 'I feel' when I'm doing just that. I try not to project myself too deeply into your head because I don't fit there and I get stuck. When I'm gonna get hung up I try to fall onto a hook I can jam with. There's a girl here I'm crazy about and I like getting hung up there just fine, doing loops in the happy cosmos rather than trudging something unpleasant, linear going nowhere. It's tough not thinking of things as beginning and ending but phasing in and out, or rather perhaps beginning and ending again. I'm really happy this summer and I can't help but feel I've been here before, in childhood or maybe in a dream. And as inescapable as wondering how things come together is, I'm getting better at letting them. I feel not like a new person but a tree that grew out of the shade. Ah! Sun!
But you want to know about Cambridge. It was good. I learned a lot about literature and about people and I got to look around inside myself a bit, in the quiet moments, in the blear of subwoofers and Guiness. And I met some beautiful souls. I tossed discs to hands I'd want hugging me on my wedding, hands I'd hold if they needed me to. Seeing things differently... Changes... Sharif's was perhaps the greatest birthday gift, though he wrapped it in teeth and it hurt to be given. I thank him, now, and though I'd like to one day see him to say it, I don't feel it necessary. I like to believe he knows. And Ulysses... I look forward to growing with it, higher towards that sun.
I don't know if this is what you wanted. I don't know if this would or will be recieved as a sufficient or appropriate capstone. I didn't really tie anything together so much as drop the pieces in your hands. But I do it smiling. I really do."
21:34
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
rhinoceros
sometimes the poems spill
others i reach for
cutting an arm on teeth
claw-machine fingers snatching
at baubles in bellyacid
feeling for half-digested ships
found you there
pink paper rhinoceros
pulled you out of my mouth
quiet in my hand-- happy
with a secret you trembled with fear
others i reach for
cutting an arm on teeth
claw-machine fingers snatching
at baubles in bellyacid
feeling for half-digested ships
found you there
pink paper rhinoceros
pulled you out of my mouth
quiet in my hand-- happy
with a secret you trembled with fear
Sunday, August 2, 2009
from a margin
[Edinburgh notes]
Home,
It's been a while, hasn't it? I wonder how you are often, me in Scotland an American far and in some ways more alone, and sometimes now consider this sickness longing. How have you slept? Side by side in time at least, on days I'm early enough for breakfast coffee I could reach and kiss you goodnight; and would. It's a new planet here. Windy wetstone city, night with snatchclaws, body-eaters. Tight against phantasmorphic water, soft from above-- I watched the sun spill from a cliffspeak, dancing janglylight, flush blush skysmiles. Wrapped in a hotel-stolen blanket pressed against a plated rock "distance above sea level x" I turn to touch you, this life electric, feel the sun keys: ectoplasm, harmony. Did you feel it?
Home,
It's been a while, hasn't it? I wonder how you are often, me in Scotland an American far and in some ways more alone, and sometimes now consider this sickness longing. How have you slept? Side by side in time at least, on days I'm early enough for breakfast coffee I could reach and kiss you goodnight; and would. It's a new planet here. Windy wetstone city, night with snatchclaws, body-eaters. Tight against phantasmorphic water, soft from above-- I watched the sun spill from a cliffspeak, dancing janglylight, flush blush skysmiles. Wrapped in a hotel-stolen blanket pressed against a plated rock "distance above sea level x" I turn to touch you, this life electric, feel the sun keys: ectoplasm, harmony. Did you feel it?
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Space: what you damn well have to see
[After Scylla and Charybdis]
After Fez, the loudhouse music cave, where we sprawled over pillows in fits of tequila, picked burning inscense sticks from a decrorative trellis to poke through bended promo cards so the smoke would curl before us, serpentcharmed. After our bodies let themselves be sound. For a time at once biorhythm and bassdrum bump bump bump bump oh ho hum alone in the space above moving feet, painfully aware of the floor and my uncomfortable mechanics. A little sauce for oil here, get the knees uncreaked, the mind unwinded so it stops wondering what the fuck to do with its hands. Dancing sweating skeletons. Penguin paired now all hips and hands on hips and thirsty demon eyes, wandering crotches. Looks that cry helpless, helpless. It's time to get a beer.
-As we, or mother Dana weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image.
O Penelope. So like you we ravel and unravel and sputter from moment to moment like molecules, clutch and release, flicker and flit-- making our selves.
Back on the pillows the conversation turns from back home to sex. Stories for laughs, oral porno-- forgive the pun. Hip thrust, eyeroll embellishments. Punchlines. Ohhh!s I try my best to jeer along relieved at least my quackcough laugh is lost in synthesizer. Not quite myself? I don't know. Have I my quiet times? Ahhmm. Questions come my way, knew they would. Community! Find words enough, delicate ones perhaps, spacious and light but with a hopeful vagueness like what I'm saying is implied. You know? Yes lovely really. Just the right thing it is, mmm. Hard to put, this is this this
He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible... Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts giants, old men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law, but always meeting ourselves.
Intermission now to deconstruct. How strange to be a person. To father the self, at once creator, designed and ghost. In the forever-state of reevalutation and repiecing in different patterns from different palettes. "Fuck the institution. Fuck allusion." Performers in a gallery. Pictures at an exhibition. Despite our best intentions theatrical, audience applause. Begging. But now: are we ever really honest? Do we ever really believe?
"Cloudy, misplaced Mike Stringer came to Jesus Green slightly pissed and wondering mercilessly, adapting and undoing in a fevercircle..." no.
So after Fez. Right. After Fez.
-I'm not really ready for bed, Mike. You?
I realize that I'm not. Buzzing but unwilling to lie and let my head brim too heavy to empty. It happens when sleep won't come but the will isn't there to fight the brainbats when they gather and cull, snarling thoughts.
-No, not at all.
So we walk. Cambridge is all alleyway by night, shadows pissdrunk middleclassers. It's Saturday, lads, fuck all 'til it begins again. We talk to strangers. We step over bodies propped against a glowing McDonalds, a Mecca for the living, vomitstain of the pissed and hungry, frenchfrymackers, friends.
We find our course plotted for Jesus Green, the familiar haunt, a different monster by night when the weirdos walk. And walking, pause at the entrance gate. In the relative distance, galaxy inverted! lights dancing like planets haphazard round a black sun. Great electrons of fire, spinning noiselessly in the night.
-Dude.
-Yeah. We should go over there.
We stop and watch until we're noticed. The dreadlocked gypsygirl extends a hand and introduces herself as Emily, a gesture to allow us their company. We meet the rest. They are from the Cambridge Community Circus, and practice their firetwirling here by night. We are from Massachussetts and New Jersey, and are far less interesting.
-Sorry we've just finished the wine then! one barks, all grins. And we laugh, because it's right here. Take a sit down, then.
The gypsygirl takes up her chains, wraps them around her wrists and lights the lamps that end them before starting the slow and musical ravespin rings. This is moment. This!
-A spliff, then, gents?
One takes a baccypouch from his bag, produces two papers to L, and picks a ziploc pinch. Another gets a set of glowing jugglyballs from somewhere and launches them between his fingers so they bounce until they fall.
-Juggling goes out the window when ya pissed, yeah?
Out come a guitar and drum. Andy plays. Don't let me doown. Don't let me down! I'm in love and I think we might all be. The gypsygirl howls and warbles. I take up the strings and one of the jugglyfellows raps. Andy taps precussion and we're all so alive and smiling and turned on and hi hi high hello.
So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now by reflection from that which then I shall be.
It's the funniest part. In the present we are, as my Ulysses professor would say, most acutely aware of the slippage of time. And in that present perhaps only are we even capable of that organic honesty. So now to write, to make permenant, give form-- do I betray these moments? Do I cage them, inflexible?
This is it: the inescapability of rendering a moment past through the lens of the present.
So sorry, ameteurish. But believe me.
Jest on. Know thyself.
After Fez, the loudhouse music cave, where we sprawled over pillows in fits of tequila, picked burning inscense sticks from a decrorative trellis to poke through bended promo cards so the smoke would curl before us, serpentcharmed. After our bodies let themselves be sound. For a time at once biorhythm and bassdrum bump bump bump bump oh ho hum alone in the space above moving feet, painfully aware of the floor and my uncomfortable mechanics. A little sauce for oil here, get the knees uncreaked, the mind unwinded so it stops wondering what the fuck to do with its hands. Dancing sweating skeletons. Penguin paired now all hips and hands on hips and thirsty demon eyes, wandering crotches. Looks that cry helpless, helpless. It's time to get a beer.
-As we, or mother Dana weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image.
O Penelope. So like you we ravel and unravel and sputter from moment to moment like molecules, clutch and release, flicker and flit-- making our selves.
Back on the pillows the conversation turns from back home to sex. Stories for laughs, oral porno-- forgive the pun. Hip thrust, eyeroll embellishments. Punchlines. Ohhh!s I try my best to jeer along relieved at least my quackcough laugh is lost in synthesizer. Not quite myself? I don't know. Have I my quiet times? Ahhmm. Questions come my way, knew they would. Community! Find words enough, delicate ones perhaps, spacious and light but with a hopeful vagueness like what I'm saying is implied. You know? Yes lovely really. Just the right thing it is, mmm. Hard to put, this is this this
He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible... Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts giants, old men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law, but always meeting ourselves.
Intermission now to deconstruct. How strange to be a person. To father the self, at once creator, designed and ghost. In the forever-state of reevalutation and repiecing in different patterns from different palettes. "Fuck the institution. Fuck allusion." Performers in a gallery. Pictures at an exhibition. Despite our best intentions theatrical, audience applause. Begging. But now: are we ever really honest? Do we ever really believe?
"Cloudy, misplaced Mike Stringer came to Jesus Green slightly pissed and wondering mercilessly, adapting and undoing in a fevercircle..." no.
So after Fez. Right. After Fez.
-I'm not really ready for bed, Mike. You?
I realize that I'm not. Buzzing but unwilling to lie and let my head brim too heavy to empty. It happens when sleep won't come but the will isn't there to fight the brainbats when they gather and cull, snarling thoughts.
-No, not at all.
So we walk. Cambridge is all alleyway by night, shadows pissdrunk middleclassers. It's Saturday, lads, fuck all 'til it begins again. We talk to strangers. We step over bodies propped against a glowing McDonalds, a Mecca for the living, vomitstain of the pissed and hungry, frenchfrymackers, friends.
We find our course plotted for Jesus Green, the familiar haunt, a different monster by night when the weirdos walk. And walking, pause at the entrance gate. In the relative distance, galaxy inverted! lights dancing like planets haphazard round a black sun. Great electrons of fire, spinning noiselessly in the night.
-Dude.
-Yeah. We should go over there.
We stop and watch until we're noticed. The dreadlocked gypsygirl extends a hand and introduces herself as Emily, a gesture to allow us their company. We meet the rest. They are from the Cambridge Community Circus, and practice their firetwirling here by night. We are from Massachussetts and New Jersey, and are far less interesting.
-Sorry we've just finished the wine then! one barks, all grins. And we laugh, because it's right here. Take a sit down, then.
The gypsygirl takes up her chains, wraps them around her wrists and lights the lamps that end them before starting the slow and musical ravespin rings. This is moment. This!
-A spliff, then, gents?
One takes a baccypouch from his bag, produces two papers to L, and picks a ziploc pinch. Another gets a set of glowing jugglyballs from somewhere and launches them between his fingers so they bounce until they fall.
-Juggling goes out the window when ya pissed, yeah?
Out come a guitar and drum. Andy plays. Don't let me doown. Don't let me down! I'm in love and I think we might all be. The gypsygirl howls and warbles. I take up the strings and one of the jugglyfellows raps. Andy taps precussion and we're all so alive and smiling and turned on and hi hi high hello.
So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now by reflection from that which then I shall be.
It's the funniest part. In the present we are, as my Ulysses professor would say, most acutely aware of the slippage of time. And in that present perhaps only are we even capable of that organic honesty. So now to write, to make permenant, give form-- do I betray these moments? Do I cage them, inflexible?
This is it: the inescapability of rendering a moment past through the lens of the present.
So sorry, ameteurish. But believe me.
Jest on. Know thyself.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Congratulations Cambridge University Class of 2009
Graduation day. No cobblestones only hundreds of greaseblack shoes. Fussing and hands through greaseslick hair, waves too deliberate but eligible enough yes for fussing. Handshakes with unstrangers, smiles exchanged for smiles, sweat under curtains of decoration and gown. Christmas ornaments, before the hook and display (or after?) Friends like this is something you've done, the lot of you. Yes yes congratulations around. Behind a camera, dressed not-quite but yesfine, your father and his wild dogholler "smile!" Shutters flashing too-often, half-hugs and quacks: your day, your future! Like you can take this, you can, immortalize it. Keep it for a place to go and rest. The green and brilliant past. Ah what we remember from photographs.
No time for what now, no time for so long.
No time for what now, no time for so long.
Monday, July 13, 2009
In London
I have Ulysses class in a little over an hour but I'm finding it far more important to get my fingers on some keys before this weekend escapes my (as much as it can be!) reliable memory.
We awoke even earlier than usual on Saturday, breakfasted some eggs and bacon (ham, not bacon), and were piled on a coach headed for London by 8am. Earbuds blaring, I passed in and out of dozing as the lazy English countryside rolled, a swell of green and gold under a low-hanging morning grey. When the bus eventually halted and swung its front door open I jumped at the opportunity to stretch my legs. The Notorious BIG was loud in my ears as I stepped from the bus, missing entirely the verbal message "unless you're getting off to see the Tower of London, stay on the bus!" I looked around myself to see only five or six other students and by the time my mind was beginning to grip at what was going on, the bus hissed and lumbered away, faces passing like ghosts in its windows.
Disappointed, as I had minimal interest in seeing some Tower, I had just gotten used to the idea when I saw Rob, who listens to Big L and hails from Annapolis Maryland, scooting down an stairwell to the underground. Interest perked, I followed. Turns out he'd made the same mistake as I, and intended to catch a "tube" to somewhere more exciting. I decided to tag along and from there we set off on a ridiculous London adventure.
Very few pubs are willing to serve two Americans sausage sandwiches and Guiness at 11am, but sure enough we found one near the lively center of town after stopping off at Picadilly Circus to see Turnbull & Asser, the shop that custom-makes all the Bond suits and garments. Post-Guiness, we wandered into a casino. Rob already had membership (his father grew up in London and he'd been a number of times, making him an ideal companion and guide on this journey) but they had to take down my information, take my picture, and present me with a card entitling me to "player rewards." We (Rob, not so much me) lost ten pounds at the blackjack table before we really knew what was happening and decided it was probably time to go elsewhere.
We saw some of the important touristy things for a small while and visited the National Gallery, skipping right to the Van Goghs and then peacing out, but the day earned the title "trip" upon our arrival at Camden Town.
The best way for me to describe Camden Town is that it is an inner-city district carnival of alternative subculture, a punk rock shakedown street that plays nice with the ravers and goths. The streets boiled with freaks, at home between and bouncing off each other sparking cigarettes packed with hash at storefronts or bustling through cramped market squares. Everyone and so no one was strange. Supplementing our exploration with beer (from a cuban pub and then from the famous World's End) we delved into multi-tiered ghettos of tapestry-tent shops and glorious novelty stores. You only needed to take a few steps between buying salvia or a waterpipe and a custom-fitted leather corset, knee-high black platform boots and jet lipstick. We passed vendors selling Clash vinyl from milk crates, artists laying their handmade jewelery around each other's necks, homelss psuedo-rastas who pressed incence into our hands and asked us for change. Riding the blacklight escaltor down into the spaceship-greenglow Cyberdog introduced us to the most cutting-edge rave-wear and eyecandy. The bass pumped, dreadlocked blondes bumped. As we prepared to leave I bought a tapestry from The Farcyde which now hangs in my Cambridge abode, a flashback-inducer and a reason to return to Camden.
Now exhausted, we set off to find Shakespeare's Globe, where we would be seeing A Midsummer Night's Dream that evening. With a couple mistakes, at least one of which involved us falling asleep in the underground, we made it. With still a couple hours before the show we perused the Tate modern art museum, its display (appropriately enough) on poetry and dream, and searched for affordable food. We pizza'd and reunited with the rest of our class in time to indulge in a 'cigarette' before the show. Though I had a difficult time staying awake through the first couple acts (no fault of the performers', naturally) the performance was seriously enjoyable. I slept the whole busride home and barely made it the walk back from the bus stop and up the stairs to my bed.
Yesterday was a day of equal pleasure. Rob, Jeff and myself spent the day at Jesus Green, a nearby park, getting down and watching a pick-up soccer (football?) game. Preparatory work for this required us to enjoy the company of a couple local dudes who ended up being really chill; they hung out for a little while before departing to do whatever it is they did. Soon after, we walked around town, picked up some bread, cheese and big bottles of Peroni and returned to JG with Andy and some other fellows. It was perhaps the perfect companion day to Saturday. Quiet to its volume. Calm to its hustle. Chilled-out to its action.
While I feel there must be more to say, I need to give James Joyce a little more of my immediate attention. Writing this helped me go back to the magic that was this past weekend. I hope you feel it too.
We awoke even earlier than usual on Saturday, breakfasted some eggs and bacon (ham, not bacon), and were piled on a coach headed for London by 8am. Earbuds blaring, I passed in and out of dozing as the lazy English countryside rolled, a swell of green and gold under a low-hanging morning grey. When the bus eventually halted and swung its front door open I jumped at the opportunity to stretch my legs. The Notorious BIG was loud in my ears as I stepped from the bus, missing entirely the verbal message "unless you're getting off to see the Tower of London, stay on the bus!" I looked around myself to see only five or six other students and by the time my mind was beginning to grip at what was going on, the bus hissed and lumbered away, faces passing like ghosts in its windows.
Disappointed, as I had minimal interest in seeing some Tower, I had just gotten used to the idea when I saw Rob, who listens to Big L and hails from Annapolis Maryland, scooting down an stairwell to the underground. Interest perked, I followed. Turns out he'd made the same mistake as I, and intended to catch a "tube" to somewhere more exciting. I decided to tag along and from there we set off on a ridiculous London adventure.
Very few pubs are willing to serve two Americans sausage sandwiches and Guiness at 11am, but sure enough we found one near the lively center of town after stopping off at Picadilly Circus to see Turnbull & Asser, the shop that custom-makes all the Bond suits and garments. Post-Guiness, we wandered into a casino. Rob already had membership (his father grew up in London and he'd been a number of times, making him an ideal companion and guide on this journey) but they had to take down my information, take my picture, and present me with a card entitling me to "player rewards." We (Rob, not so much me) lost ten pounds at the blackjack table before we really knew what was happening and decided it was probably time to go elsewhere.
We saw some of the important touristy things for a small while and visited the National Gallery, skipping right to the Van Goghs and then peacing out, but the day earned the title "trip" upon our arrival at Camden Town.
The best way for me to describe Camden Town is that it is an inner-city district carnival of alternative subculture, a punk rock shakedown street that plays nice with the ravers and goths. The streets boiled with freaks, at home between and bouncing off each other sparking cigarettes packed with hash at storefronts or bustling through cramped market squares. Everyone and so no one was strange. Supplementing our exploration with beer (from a cuban pub and then from the famous World's End) we delved into multi-tiered ghettos of tapestry-tent shops and glorious novelty stores. You only needed to take a few steps between buying salvia or a waterpipe and a custom-fitted leather corset, knee-high black platform boots and jet lipstick. We passed vendors selling Clash vinyl from milk crates, artists laying their handmade jewelery around each other's necks, homelss psuedo-rastas who pressed incence into our hands and asked us for change. Riding the blacklight escaltor down into the spaceship-greenglow Cyberdog introduced us to the most cutting-edge rave-wear and eyecandy. The bass pumped, dreadlocked blondes bumped. As we prepared to leave I bought a tapestry from The Farcyde which now hangs in my Cambridge abode, a flashback-inducer and a reason to return to Camden.
Now exhausted, we set off to find Shakespeare's Globe, where we would be seeing A Midsummer Night's Dream that evening. With a couple mistakes, at least one of which involved us falling asleep in the underground, we made it. With still a couple hours before the show we perused the Tate modern art museum, its display (appropriately enough) on poetry and dream, and searched for affordable food. We pizza'd and reunited with the rest of our class in time to indulge in a 'cigarette' before the show. Though I had a difficult time staying awake through the first couple acts (no fault of the performers', naturally) the performance was seriously enjoyable. I slept the whole busride home and barely made it the walk back from the bus stop and up the stairs to my bed.
Yesterday was a day of equal pleasure. Rob, Jeff and myself spent the day at Jesus Green, a nearby park, getting down and watching a pick-up soccer (football?) game. Preparatory work for this required us to enjoy the company of a couple local dudes who ended up being really chill; they hung out for a little while before departing to do whatever it is they did. Soon after, we walked around town, picked up some bread, cheese and big bottles of Peroni and returned to JG with Andy and some other fellows. It was perhaps the perfect companion day to Saturday. Quiet to its volume. Calm to its hustle. Chilled-out to its action.
While I feel there must be more to say, I need to give James Joyce a little more of my immediate attention. Writing this helped me go back to the magic that was this past weekend. I hope you feel it too.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
But in that sleep, what comes?
It would be cheap to say all the anxiety was for nothing. As I was jilted from semi-sleep by touchdown aeroplane tires, the rush of air against perking wingflaps and a voice over the taxiing intercom, "Welcome to London Heathrow, the temperature is..." I hadn't time to not believe it. After the bleary-eyed aislemarch and birth into sterile terminal morning, I followed signs to where I needed to be and waited to be confirmed into the United Kingsom-- all scuttle and wait, hurry and queue. And behind a family of jabbering Middle-easterners with screaming children and no words for them I staggered through the airport wondering if my ears had yet to pop or if I'd become buried-- is it not possible to be crushed without drowning? Baggage claim. The long and joyless busride, comfort from The Beatles who seemed only appropriate. Arrival and rain and displacement and wondering how red the letter 'A' was glowing. American. American. I found a direction and plunged, squeezing past cherry Brits and scowling teenagers who whispered in un-English.
"'scuse me a minute, sir, if I may?"
I stopped and gave the Brit what attention my tired eyes would allow.
"'eah, I'm just come 'atta cou't, see, and they found me innocent-- because I am innocent, right, here look."
His prisoner ID badge.
"An' well I'm just lookin' to get a ride, need eight pounds fare, see, I was wond'rin' if you might help me out."
"I have nothing I can give you," I reply, lying, making halfhearted gestures at my pockets as if to indicate their emptiness.
"Right, then, thanks." And he's off in the other direction, leaving me as fortune might joke, at the very entrance of Gonville and Caius College. Here.
Line break.
Hey. Thanks for dropping in. It's somewhere around ten thirty here at jolly Cambridge and I am a hurricane survivor. So to speak, of course. It pretty much owns here. I've moved into a spacious and comfortable single room in the R tower of a magnificent gothic castle-building, vine trellis creeping up the front under watchkeeping gargoyles. These living quarters of mine are haunted, but my encounters thus far have been friendly. As a city Cambridge rages by night, ale-soaked "fuck off!"s bouncing between shopfronts, which tower over narrow stone streets, into open windows or dispersing with the owlhoots. There are more pubs here than I could have possibly imagined anywhere. It is a wonderland of pubs, I'm serious.
My fellows are perhaps the biggest sigh of relief. While we as a contingent are not without our extremes, the too-loud "pussy hunter" or the brooding nihilist, we have somehow come together in a strangely deliberate but welcome brother/sisterhood. With only a couple days to have gotten to know each other, I feel I can already identify some friends among this number-- even being not the most social myself (for a couple of reasons). Certainly, as the novelty of acquaintence wears and shit starts to get real, things will ebb and change as they do. You'll hear all about it, I promise. Right now I'm just relieved to be in accessible company. People seem okay with me, and I can definitely jam with that.
My day begins at about 6:30am. I get up, meditate, do some excercises, shower and read. Breakfast is at 8 in the fucking Great Hall: four long tables, family-style food that appears "magically" via tux-vested waitstaff, a head table and all the ornamentation you would expect of Hogridge University. Tuesday and Wednesday means 19th Century Lit of the City class at 9 where I have to pretend to have read Dickens' Bleak House and immediately following, at 11, we all meet up for coffee (served to us, again, by staff who act more as butlers than anything). Then I chill out for a little while, explore the city, or get some reading done. Or take a nap, like I did today, but more on that later. If it's Monday or Wednesday I have Ulysses class at 11:15, where I sit and scribble notes feverishly as my mind is flayed by the brilliant Professor R.M. (I don't want him googling this up!) I do my best to pipe up at least one comment he might consider "insightful" or "interesting" ("I feel by juxtaposing Odysseus and Bloom, Joyce is coming from a place of irony-- the 20 year vs. 1 day journey, the extraordinary man vs. ordinary everyman, you know..." Success!). Tea is at 4 and then Dinner at 6:30. BUT. The Buttery opens at 6. The Buttery is the on-campus pub, complete with the raddest bartender ever, who today told us how Cricket works. The Buttery stays open til 9 or 11 depending on the day, but by night the whole of Cambridge is our burrito. Before bed I'll read a little and meditate again, something I may even be making progress at. Then relaxation of muscles and sleep.
We haven't raged too hard yet, but last night went to a pub called "The Baron of Beef" and whiled away some time telling stories and talking about the poetry. I had just bought myself a Stella when someone tapped on my shoulder.
"Hey. Mike? Didn't you say something about meeting a convict on your way here?"
"Uh. Yeah?"
"Check this out, man."
A newspaper headline: "950 conviced murderers and rapists loosed in prisonbreak." Well, well!
Then last night I had a strange dream. I arrive back to wherever it was I was living at the time to a brown parchment envelope with the word "Poem" written across it. Underneath: "To: Michael Stringer" and my address. Inside the folded letter, or perhaps from somewhere within me, a voice reads "This will help with the body and with dreams." Five or six flaps each have under them a colored pill. I take the first in my hand and look at it, chalky and red. I put it in my mouth and a voice says, "water" so I wash it down. I pause now and consider the voice, a guide or guru invisible but there, and say to him as the thought occurs to me: "But maybe-- what if this is all just a dream?" A pause. I can feel the pill hit my belly. "Impossible," it whispers, "you have a lot to learn." Struck by this or something I spill the remaining pills and feel myself drifting from the dream as I scramble to pick them up and stuff them back into the envelope. "I can tell you still need to read some..." and the voice trails off as I'm jerked from sleep. I laid there for a moment just taking in the calm of 'reality' before springing up and writing the whole thing down, sure it was of some importance.
Then today, as I napped, I had another dream. I won't go into the whole thing here, as it was long and strange and somewhat... personal? I will say that it was the most vivid dream I have ever had. I got lucid almost immediately, thinking if I can fly and stay dreaming... oh man. And sure enough I did, and embarked on an adventure that involved not only my conscious control of myself, but of some environment as well. I could change the color of things, et cetera. I do worry a little, right now, that I've gone to some plane, some alternate life, and seriously fucked some stuff up. The near-end of the dream involved "me" sitting in the front passenger seat of a car, warning a "me" sitting in the back seat about something. Is there something up with my spacetime? The characters in the whole thing were tangible and dimensional and real. I'm still piecing things together, but I woke with no doubt that I'll return to that dreamspace. Maybe tonight. Maybe years from now.
Cambridge. This place is a trip.
Cheers.
"'scuse me a minute, sir, if I may?"
I stopped and gave the Brit what attention my tired eyes would allow.
"'eah, I'm just come 'atta cou't, see, and they found me innocent-- because I am innocent, right, here look."
His prisoner ID badge.
"An' well I'm just lookin' to get a ride, need eight pounds fare, see, I was wond'rin' if you might help me out."
"I have nothing I can give you," I reply, lying, making halfhearted gestures at my pockets as if to indicate their emptiness.
"Right, then, thanks." And he's off in the other direction, leaving me as fortune might joke, at the very entrance of Gonville and Caius College. Here.
Line break.
Hey. Thanks for dropping in. It's somewhere around ten thirty here at jolly Cambridge and I am a hurricane survivor. So to speak, of course. It pretty much owns here. I've moved into a spacious and comfortable single room in the R tower of a magnificent gothic castle-building, vine trellis creeping up the front under watchkeeping gargoyles. These living quarters of mine are haunted, but my encounters thus far have been friendly. As a city Cambridge rages by night, ale-soaked "fuck off!"s bouncing between shopfronts, which tower over narrow stone streets, into open windows or dispersing with the owlhoots. There are more pubs here than I could have possibly imagined anywhere. It is a wonderland of pubs, I'm serious.
My fellows are perhaps the biggest sigh of relief. While we as a contingent are not without our extremes, the too-loud "pussy hunter" or the brooding nihilist, we have somehow come together in a strangely deliberate but welcome brother/sisterhood. With only a couple days to have gotten to know each other, I feel I can already identify some friends among this number-- even being not the most social myself (for a couple of reasons). Certainly, as the novelty of acquaintence wears and shit starts to get real, things will ebb and change as they do. You'll hear all about it, I promise. Right now I'm just relieved to be in accessible company. People seem okay with me, and I can definitely jam with that.
My day begins at about 6:30am. I get up, meditate, do some excercises, shower and read. Breakfast is at 8 in the fucking Great Hall: four long tables, family-style food that appears "magically" via tux-vested waitstaff, a head table and all the ornamentation you would expect of Hogridge University. Tuesday and Wednesday means 19th Century Lit of the City class at 9 where I have to pretend to have read Dickens' Bleak House and immediately following, at 11, we all meet up for coffee (served to us, again, by staff who act more as butlers than anything). Then I chill out for a little while, explore the city, or get some reading done. Or take a nap, like I did today, but more on that later. If it's Monday or Wednesday I have Ulysses class at 11:15, where I sit and scribble notes feverishly as my mind is flayed by the brilliant Professor R.M. (I don't want him googling this up!) I do my best to pipe up at least one comment he might consider "insightful" or "interesting" ("I feel by juxtaposing Odysseus and Bloom, Joyce is coming from a place of irony-- the 20 year vs. 1 day journey, the extraordinary man vs. ordinary everyman, you know..." Success!). Tea is at 4 and then Dinner at 6:30. BUT. The Buttery opens at 6. The Buttery is the on-campus pub, complete with the raddest bartender ever, who today told us how Cricket works. The Buttery stays open til 9 or 11 depending on the day, but by night the whole of Cambridge is our burrito. Before bed I'll read a little and meditate again, something I may even be making progress at. Then relaxation of muscles and sleep.
We haven't raged too hard yet, but last night went to a pub called "The Baron of Beef" and whiled away some time telling stories and talking about the poetry. I had just bought myself a Stella when someone tapped on my shoulder.
"Hey. Mike? Didn't you say something about meeting a convict on your way here?"
"Uh. Yeah?"
"Check this out, man."
A newspaper headline: "950 conviced murderers and rapists loosed in prisonbreak." Well, well!
Then last night I had a strange dream. I arrive back to wherever it was I was living at the time to a brown parchment envelope with the word "Poem" written across it. Underneath: "To: Michael Stringer" and my address. Inside the folded letter, or perhaps from somewhere within me, a voice reads "This will help with the body and with dreams." Five or six flaps each have under them a colored pill. I take the first in my hand and look at it, chalky and red. I put it in my mouth and a voice says, "water" so I wash it down. I pause now and consider the voice, a guide or guru invisible but there, and say to him as the thought occurs to me: "But maybe-- what if this is all just a dream?" A pause. I can feel the pill hit my belly. "Impossible," it whispers, "you have a lot to learn." Struck by this or something I spill the remaining pills and feel myself drifting from the dream as I scramble to pick them up and stuff them back into the envelope. "I can tell you still need to read some..." and the voice trails off as I'm jerked from sleep. I laid there for a moment just taking in the calm of 'reality' before springing up and writing the whole thing down, sure it was of some importance.
Then today, as I napped, I had another dream. I won't go into the whole thing here, as it was long and strange and somewhat... personal? I will say that it was the most vivid dream I have ever had. I got lucid almost immediately, thinking if I can fly and stay dreaming... oh man. And sure enough I did, and embarked on an adventure that involved not only my conscious control of myself, but of some environment as well. I could change the color of things, et cetera. I do worry a little, right now, that I've gone to some plane, some alternate life, and seriously fucked some stuff up. The near-end of the dream involved "me" sitting in the front passenger seat of a car, warning a "me" sitting in the back seat about something. Is there something up with my spacetime? The characters in the whole thing were tangible and dimensional and real. I'm still piecing things together, but I woke with no doubt that I'll return to that dreamspace. Maybe tonight. Maybe years from now.
Cambridge. This place is a trip.
Cheers.
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