ch-ch-ch-changes

Dreams last night: One neutral, one bad. The neutral one came second. I was living at the Pittsburgh house but instead of being fancy it was REALLY REALLY fancy. There was the same uncomfortable tension between roommate X and I, but this time it was against a whole lot of people and not just me, because a lot of friends from Boston -- both highschool friends and punk friends -- also lived there, and Soupie lived there, and the dog. It was like some sort of weird huge fancy community clubhouse or something. I remember a lot of gold fixtures in the bathroom, a lot of people in the glorious bathroom putting on eye make-up, and i was yelled at again for some bullshit and somebody, maybe kris or kyle the girl, sticking up for me, and the dog being awesome.



In the bad dream, I was living in New York again. But I was living by myself, in this weird apartment in a row house. The dream was very disjointed, or maybe my memory is disjointed, but the main drag of it was that it was cold So cold. So could people were dying, and the homeless were breaking into people's houses just to get warm. The cold wasn't like a weather factor, it was an epidemic. Everyone looked ghostly, hollow. I had to leave my apartment for something, and I got accosted, and when I finally got back to my apartment it was in shambles, the cold had gotten to it and collapsed the wood, and the little bit of shelter left was overrun by crazies and the dead. So I was homeless and miserable, and looking hollow and ghostly myself, and then the dog jumped on me and I woke up.



Speaking of which, we have started getting the dog to sleep on a pillow next to the bed, on the floor, rather than in the crate. He sees it as a fairly comforting compromise, and doesn't fight it nearly as much as he fights the crate. He's also completely housebroken. I want to start letting him loose in the house while we are gone, trying it for a bit at a time. When we did it before he was great, I think he messed up once and we never did it again. But lately on walks he's been good. Even in my house, with Zoe who he loves but also who he torments, and who he's tormented by, he's stopped going after her toys so much, and when I tell him to drop it, he does. He hangs out in my room with me all day and it's no big deal as long as we play a little bit and I take him for a walk at some point. He's also learned Stay, finally, and is starting to pick up on Down. On walks, he doesn't really bark or pull when he passes dogs anymore, which was a huge thing with him for a while, one of the really frustrating aspects of taking him for walks, in parks or whatever. I think he's ready. We talked about it last night. How maybe he's just too late for the crate, since we adopted him at a pretty old age to be teaching him puppy skills like "your crate is your home."



Evan's birthday is on Thursday, and yesterday (Sunday) we had a family party for him at his mom's house. It was a real nice time, I like his family a lot and they've really opened their arms to me as a member of the family, which is comforting when my own family is so far away and spread out at the moment. I wrote him a card that he seemed to like a lot, and a book on eating right to cure ailments. Something he'd mentioned a few times being interested in learning about, but would never actually buy for himself. Which is what gifts are all about. That's what my mother always told me, and what I never wanted to believe, but it's true. We stopped by Soupie's new shop on the way. It looks great. Reminds me a bit of TRM and Bicycle Habitat. Well lit, clean, but still with a bike shop feel, rather than a department store feel. They also carry some real nice bikes, and a good number of not so great bikes that are still pretty cool and marketable. And they carry Patagonia clothes, not Nike. Really, it's just a change, and I'm glad it's a good one. I think it will be a good experience.



I guess that's it. The semester's winding down, and I'll be glad when things are over and done with. We slept in on Sunday for the first time in I can't remember how long. Months. Vacation will be greatly welcomed.

prison dream

Another dream I had a bit ago was that I was a woman, not myself, and had commited a crime. I think it was a murder or something that just sort of fell into "my" life. So this woman (me) is in complete denial about her predicament, being in prison, having found this fate. She goes through the processes in a dreamlike state, but she is on death row and every week they put her through this low dosage electrocution and torture test, that is painful and increases her idea that it is all a dream, unreal. So she makes jokes and maintains conversation with her guards, and then they let her know that the next day she is going to be actually executed. So suddenly she's at home telling her parents because she'd just disappeared and they wanted to know where she was. Her family is very Christian so they just stary praying. Then shes taken away and she is executed. But remember she is me. I woke up a bit shaken, to say the least.

dreams, awkward moments and thoughts

So I am officially "that girl" of the Pittsburgh student literary scene. I am "that girl" who cries in poetry class when, after listening to everyone go through her fairly emotional poem line-by-line, is asked to explain exactly what is going on. How embarrassing. How trite. The bright side is that my professor loved the poem and said that my tears were a sign that I am really on to something in the piece, and she said it is a very brave poem and with a bit of tweaking it will be even more powerful than it already is.


I'd forgotten what it feels like to cry, or perhaps to cry in public, when you are trying to not cry. Either way. It feels like it's raining inside you. Maybe rain feels like crying. They're both sad, they both evoke. Afterwards I went to Mad Mex with Adam, Joe, and Ed. The food wasn't very good, but it was nice to be out socializing, to laugh a lot and make jokes. I feel like I haven't been funny in a while. I'm a little nervous that my friends will be disappointed when they come see me. It's a silly fair, but a legitimate one, I think. But as Kyle warned, we will wear tights and eyeliner and drink coffee and photocopy our boobs and it will be awesome.

When I was younger I never really considered people understanding me or not, that I can remember. And now that I am past all that truly, I have a deep feeling that there are very few people in the world of people I know who actually "get" me. I feel like a big weirdo with whoever I'm hanging out with. It's alright, it's just how it is I suppose. To normal or to weird or too smelly or two clean looking or too deep or too goofy. Maybe people should stop thinking about me so much, maybe I should stop thinking about people thinking about me. Maybe I'm doing all this thinking about people thinking about me, but no one is really thinking about it at all.


Soupie's gone and it's depressing. I'm really glad he's out on the road, and that he's in California and the west coast in general, seeing so much, but that selfishness of also missing him and wanting him to come home is hard to suppress. Not that I want him to leave tour early, I just want the next week go to by quickly. He's been gone for a week and a half, and will be home in another week. The bright side is that the first complete draft of my portfolio is due the day he returns, so in the meantime I am preoccupied with school and also not distracted by him. Also, My parents came to visit last weekend for a day, and tonight Kyle and Metro arrive and will be here until Sunday. Also, Nay is coming to visit on Saturday. Full house, lots of friends, hopefully they will keep themselves busy enough that I can get some thesis work done.



I have been having reoccurring nightmares for the past few weeks, maybe longer. Not every single night, but maybe every other night. The overall story is that I was at a fort, it was my home, and troops of some sort came in to evacuate, but I wouldn't leave, and kept hidden in the dark hallways, with some other people. Eventually the troops annouced that we could stay, but then started massacring and torturing people. People get skinned in every dream, that's the most common torture/murder, and you can hear them in agony, and you can hear people searching for you, and some soldiers see you and tell you where not to go, who to look out for, etc. You see people you knew were skinned walking around, and they have weird plain loose clothing on, and act totally normal, like they are in shock, and I can't tell if they are alive and in shock, or dead and don't realize it.



The whole emotion of the dream is suffocation, and it's horrifying. Maybe I should write a poem about this, too. It'd fit with the other ones I'd been writing. Good grief.



I finally wrote a poem about that time a gang fight broke out in front of me in the subway car I was in, during the beginning of a blizzard, in NYC. Also horrifying.


I am performing on the North Side at some music festival thing on January 3rd. If you are in the Pittsburgh area, please come. And if you'd like to come, please buy tickets off me, they are two dollars cheaper ($5 opposed to $7) and it pays me more, the more tickets I sell.



I don't know what else to write. I get my Latin America paper back tonight, I'm nervous.

I'm supposed to be working on a paper right now. My idea is the concept of time in 100 Years of Solitude, and that there are three tracks. There is the one track that is the linear way in which the story happens; the second in the cyclical way in which the family developes and history repeats itself; the third is the way in which the story is told, constantly with leaps forward "years later..." type statements. I want to explore how this represents Latin American Literature, and how our concept of these being different sets of time and not just one that works with much fluidity is in itself an imposition of our contemporary minds. BUT my book and notes are at Evan's house, and the article on the internet is LOCKED, so I can't really do much research. It's frustrating. My car is also broken down and that is frustrating, too. It's in Oakland. I gotta get it towed today before they close, but later in the day so I can get a ride home with Evan cause he works nearbye. I asked him to take Major Tom with him, the puppy, because I would be riding my bike to Oakland and then riding in the tow truck, then riding my bike to his shop, and it'd be easier than sticking him in my bag or leaving him in his crate. He's really good in cars, and good at the shop as well, at least it seems so. We have been staying primarily at Evan's house in Oakland because the puppy is a bit much for Courtney, but we brought him over last night and Major Tom and Zoe (Courtney's dog) got along real well. He's not perfect, but neigher are we, and I like that he's a little nutzy. He's stopped freaking out at dogs so much, which is incredible, though he still has his moments. I've never regretted adopting him, even though we have altered our lifestyles to accommodate him. That's what owning a dog is about, though. We think in about 6 months he'll be the coolest dog in the world, and we're willing to keep hugging and loving and feeding and running and scolding him until then.

In other news, I wrote this poem. I can't find the most recent draft, which is of course not the final draft. But this is what I have. It is weird and I'm sure that everyone who reads it will internalize it differently and incorrectly. It's a poem. Don't think about it.





Because he asked



it wasn't so bad, it was an annex.

I'll say it again: my heart

was annexed in your love. I'd forgotten

about the month spend watching zombie movies

in that room with no windows,

your cat by my head, big and happy as a dog,

I passed out from stress, you fell

drunk and eyes rolling back onto me, cock

annexed in that warm cuccoon, between

my need to hide, my need to keep you hidden.

Unused condoms forlorn behind the mattress,

they probably wanted trusted, I just wanted rest

or a place to find it. Nobody gets what they want.


There was no air. Not in that attic, not what we breathed.

It was all carbon, all salt. The ocean so close we could feel

the webbing tide, not hear, not see, just the pull.

It was okay, there was a safety to the knowing

and the not knowing, to the bed like beer foam.

I remember lots of drowning. The air up there

warmer than November New England but not much,

we steamed against it like dead animals. The fresh dead.




It's based roughly on a conversation I had with Soupie on the way back from our camping trip in southeastern PA, where he had some bike races. We talked a lot about pasts, which we often talk about during long drives, and he mentioned this Bukowski poem he likes a lot. The conglomeration between the poem and the shared stories created the poem. Looking only at that first draft, I know there's something missing, but I can't remember what it is. It feels very flat and unbalanced right now, though. So it goes, poor readers once again get a peak into my creative process.



So, camping. I am going to cheat by reposting my Myspace blog about it. But I will reimberse you by infiltrating it with pictures, if I can figure out how to do so.:



Speaking of higher ground, I went camping this weekend, perhaps my first time ever really CAMPING. Me, Soupie, and Major Tom G. Warrior (the puppy) went down to French Creek National Park, in Delaware on Friday for a race Soupie had on Saturday morning, an hour away. We got there after dark, having driven in a light mist with not too much disruption in the drive. Evan will attest that I jinxed us by saying, "The trip down here went off without a hitch," though I rebutt that statement with the fact that I meant exclusively our drive to the park, not the entire trip, and the he is actually the jinxer, turning the meaning of my statement into that of the whole broad weekend. Regardless, it rained all night. We couldn't get the fire started with the stupid flint thing, but even if we could have, it would have gone out soon anyway, because the rains were so heavy. We were also too tired to remember we had camping forks, etc., and also had not packed a can opener so we had to use that stupid one that thank goodness comes as part of most multitools. So we ate half a can of cold beans with our fingers. Then one of us went to step out of the tent for a moment and saw that our shoes, which we'd kept under the rain guard, but outside the tent 'cause they were muddy, were floating. The tent was also floating, in about 2.5, 3 inches of rain. Being two relatively pragmatic people, we just picked up the tent and moved it to higher ground. Being two wet and tired and therefore very relatively cranky people, he snipped at me for not being able to follow his simple directions on where to place the half of the tent I was carrying, and I snipped at him for leaving my nice hiking sneakers on the picnic bench. The tent was put in the right place, the shoes eventually dried out, we both apologized and cuddled with the puppy, occasionally waking up to the dramatic pummeling by the rain.



We woke up before sunrise and woke up the world with our drowsy shuffling and hazy driving. We got to the race late so there was no chance for Soupie to pre-ride the course or warm up his muscles, and he came in top 30, out of just over 60. Had a bad start, was in the back of the pack, but still held up alright. The course was incredible and obviously difficult but looked like a blast to ride. The worst thing was watching the A's ride it, because they are so good they make it look like it's not hard but as a sub-par mountain biker I am watching, thinking, "oh come on! I know that's hard, don't play it like it's easy!" Major Tom had a pretty hard time of it, too. There were a lot more dogs than we'd anticipated, and he does not really get along with most dogs. He has what we think is "fear aggression." But I gave him a nap and ran him a bunch and he was pretty good to go. If we hold him he's not so bad, but I know that's not the best way to deal with him if we want him to grow and become socialized and have K-9 friends who are not just submissive dogs who don't mind being nipped at in the face.

Anyway, after the races, we bought some more beans, and some veggie dogs to celebrate making it through the previous night (and also some matches and that $1.50 kindling you buy at the grocery store that burns real easily and clean because the flint thing was stupid and in fact Evan returned it to the store today and demonstrated on the counter how stupid it is and they agreed), but when we finally got back to French Creek, it was full for the day because the next day's race was right down the street and the weather was much nicer. So we went to this place called Sun Valley, in Amish Country. There was a Haunted Hayride going on so every half hour or so we heard "bang bang aaahhhh!" We clipped Major Tom to the lead and I set up the tent and our sleeping bags while Evan got the fire and food started. He made "campfire corn chili" and we made chili dogs out of that and the hotdogs and buns. We took Major Tom for a short walk in the woods, but the train behind our tent ended abruptly and with the haunted hayride going on if we were to be mauled by Amish meth heads on Rumspringa (jokes!). On the way back to the campsite, I happened to flash my headlamp upon a HUGE spider that was hanging mid-air in the darkness, completely unseeable without the light. So I just turned the light off and thought it best to just not think about such things, as we were already bitten by a number of spiders, and would continue to be bitten, and there was really no use bringing fear or wariness into the matter.

We slept well, and before dawn once again we packed up our camp and got in the car to greet the day as it woke, only this time it was a bit harder since there was a big campground breakfast happening at 8am at Sun Valley, and I had a headache probably due to lack of caffeine. But we had a chance to stop for coffee at a gas station, and I took some advil we bought the night before when Soupie had a bad headache for probably the same reason, so by the time we got to the race, back near French Creek, the sun was up, the air was still crisp, and my headache was subsiding. We were all (including Major Tom) in much better spirits than on Saturday. Evan got to preride the course, I got to run Major Tom and feed him, We ate some bananas we'd picked up, and Soupie came in 5th in the race, again out of about 60. I saw him cross the finish line and I say he got 3rd, and he said he actually got 4th since the kid who won was in the U-19 class (which I think means he is a junior, but I dunno. he was damn fast though). Regardless, he did better than 5th but 5th is still podium, if the C race had a podium, and it's something to be proud of. The rest of the day was nice, Major Tom was real good for most of it, but again got cranky at around 1:30 or so and he needed a nap. Only on Sunday it was hot so we had to run the AC while he was in the kennel. So I sat in there with him for a while and tried to get some homework done. I was a bit bored by the end of the day, and had taken the dog for many walks to keep him from getting distracted by the other dogs, and keep him busy enough to not care when he saw them. He was much better though, in general, about keeping his cool and allowing me to refocus his attention on me, sitting when i said so and not fighting when I held his face in front of mine so he couldn't see the dogs. I think he is finally learning how to behave, slowly but surely. He's very very smart, he can open doors and comes when he's called and when he focuses he picks up on commands almost immediately. Anyway....regardless of how tired I was of training the puppy and generally just being at the races, it was again fun to watch the A race. Steevo was there, and I finally met Adam Meyerson who lives in Boston (Dorchester to be exact, from Brockton) and for whom Soupie Pits. Also, the person I kept seeing around all weekend who looked like Craig Roth was indeed Craig Roth, which was awesome because that kid is really nice. He said he had a Cambridge Bicycle t-shirt for me but at the end of the day I didn't see him. Ah well, a familiar face is always a comfort, and even the idea that he had a gift for me made my day that much nicer.