Dreams

Despite the geologists’ knowledge and craft,
mocking magnets, graphs, and maps—
in a split second the dream
piles before us mountains as stony
as real life.

And since mountains, then valleys, plains
with perfect infrastructures.
Without engineers, contractors, workers,
bulldozers, diggers, or supplies—
raging highways, instant bridges,
thickly populated pop-up cities.

Without directors, megaphones, and cameramen—
crowds knowing exactly when to frighten us
and when to vanish.

Without architects deft in their craft,
without carpenters, bricklayers, concrete pourers—
on the path a sudden house just like a toy,
and in it vast halls that echo with our steps
and walls constructed out of solid air.

Not just the scale, it’s also the precision—
a specific watch, an entire fly,
on the table a cloth with cross-stitched flowers,
a bitten apple with teeth marks.

And we—unlike circus acrobats,
conjurers, wizards, and hypnotists—
can fly unfledged,
we light dark tunnels with our eyes,
we wax eloquent in unknown tongues,
talking not with just anyone, but with the dead.

And as a bonus, despite our own freedom,
the choices of our heart, our tastes,
we’re swept away
by amorous yearnings for—
and the alarm clock rings.

So what can they tell us, the writers of dream books,
the scholars of oneiric signs and omens,
the doctors with couches for analyses—
if anything fits,
it’s accidental,
and for one reason only,
that in our dreamings,
in their shadowings and gleamings,
in their multiplings, inconceivablings,
in their haphazardings and widescatterings
at times even a clear-cut meaning
may slip through.


"Dreams" Wisława Szymborska

Winter & romantic woes both give me horrid migraines, so while I know that last week was meteorlogical I really have no clue whether the nausea is due to the low barometer or my low heart.

Saturday, Briefly

Anti-social: New LRB with Anne Carson sonnet & Hilary Mantel essay, with hot chocolate almond milk & Lu cookies

Social: Godard inspired modern dance collaboration with Bruce LaBruce, with wonderful folks & best liked man

How Should a Person Be?

Fighting it off after days of sweats & chills, throat hell, weakness, tea & soup, British period pieces & grisly mysteries, the battle nearly won, except for a trickle of constant sniffs, cat attacking the tissue box. A clean house, freshy laundered bedding, a full fridge after an outing for preposterous uppity groceries (kale, mushrooms, olives, avocado, chevre, San Pelegrino, espresso, etc). Not out at the zombie party, not my style, instead in bed with legs up the wall, reading new Sheila Heti:

My brain had not worried me when I was younger, but over the past year I had become convinced that I did not think as well as other people. No, that was putting it too gently-- that I did not know how to think at all.

LA Noire

Sleuth story with computerized Ken Cosgrove... Maybe I will take up playing video games?

Infinite Sickness

My throat! My throat! My head! My heart... Another bout of hell throat, the technical term, made myself even sicker by going into work suppressing my primary ills by making stomach swim in non-stop lozenges, left at noon having got the essentials out of the way. Ran into the Lord on the way home, having a brief "Look at that beard! You have a ladyfriend and I have a best in sneakers but maybe we should revisit the sexy times?" mental lapse while wearing earmuffs and coughing up a lung in the cold. Slept the afternoon through, now soup & tea in sweaty sheets while watching Kids in the Hall and talking about period peices with a gal pal. Jane Eyre? Oh hell yes. This is a guarantee that my fever dreams will be about Dave Foley in corsets with the Lord locking ladies up in the attic.

Inventory

Things that are new to my life (in the last year) that I really enjoy

• Aquiring blazers and cookbooks
• Cats (esp when standing on "hinders")
• Gallery gals & library ladies (both on & off duty)
• The one I like best (esp when standing in "pleased posture")
• Montreal (the city I like best? More than Bayonne?)

Things in my life that have made welcome reappearances

• Bangs
• Wide leg jeans, sneakers
• Owen Pallett & Sufjan Stevens
• Olives, tartines with chevre & cucumber
• Yoga

Seasonal reappearances that make the snow bearable

• Mashed potatoes (now with Tikka Masala sauce)
• Hot chocolate almond milk
• Fiction binges & obsessions with Marian apparations

Constants I am always grateful for

• Family & the best two gals
• Music made with moogs
• Poetry magazine

The latest issue of which bears a Giacomo Leopardi quotation "Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry." To which I reply with the words of Louis CK (I think?) "Everything is amazing and everyone is miserable."

Things I am saying goodbye to, for the season

• Oxfords, cropped pants, flats
• Oscillating fans
• Walking

Finally, pessimism

• Public transportation in this city
• Events that spiral out of control
• I am terrible at Christmas gifts
• I cannot find any good looking boots with sensible heels. I am resigned to freezing my feet while treading safely in sneakers or warm feet in a pair of lovely flat boots that have astoundingly no grip whatsoever on the ice. Everyone is miserable, there have been no good boots since Homer!