Gentle Hands I

They weren't alone, or together. He hid from her when she was looking. She made the bed with gentle hands. With gentle hands and a callused heart she cooed the baby and sang him blue. She thought of him as he drove together. She knew he wouldn't want her back, but with soft hands she cryed a lullaby.

From Just a Dream:

He Sits

He sits
Alone he sits sadly     playing his mandolin
a sad song his red eyes sing growing louder stronger more moving
his hand plucks   his eyes cry   his mouth sings a love song to his soul
he loved her   they went too fast   his soul seemed to love him back
their love made love
then she ran away   he has no soul to chase her with
the strings snap one by one leaving red welts       on his forearm
still the music he plays     the song his empty eyes sing
grows stronger louder and more moving
(I his only witness begin to cry)
his stringless mandolin wails the love song of his lost soul
his arms bleed   his eyes pour the song
stops
flames burst from within the mandolin
and burn his hands

Stephen and Bethany post like madpersons.

In the last four or five days I have written nearly 1000 words of (probably bad) poetry.

Yesterday afternoon we (Lee, Dan, Naomi, and I) went to Lansing. We saw: the capital, dueling pianos, eric's market (cold beer, liquor, ice cream, but no strawberry swisher sweet singles or squirts), the taj dinosaur train, espresso (terrible live music, but great service) royale, and Barnes and Noble, where I bought a book, and saw a cool poster.

"No, Kentucky is really pretty, at least from the highway." --Emily Stack

I think I may need to lay off the dreams for a while. Yesterday I experienced the most realistic dream of my life. I dreamt that I woke with the alarm at eight, hit the snooze twice, took a shower, got dressed said "ahoy" to Dan (I think). Smoked on the way to class, where all the people walking by me seemed very familiar yet different somehow, and sort of menacing. I went inside and while waiting in the hall remembered thinking this dream is really real. I was the first one to go into class and sat in the middle of the back row, after a little while I noticed that the class was half empty, and everyone was sitting in the front, then the wrong professor came in, and I realized I was in the wrong room and thought this is going to be embarrassing, so I got up walked out of the room and went into the right room next door, and took my usual seat next to Lee and as I began to tell him how I went to the wrong room, I realized that I wasn't dreaming.

While I was riding in an international semi truck over break, I realized for the first time that I had/have never been in love, or even close to it. Several times I have mistaken a sort of infatuation with the possible, with the vision of the end of particular loves, but I have never been close to being in love. I have only loved what I thought I saw as reciprocated interest.
I have "learned" to keep myself from talking and even thinking about certain things (in order to keep interest from becoming infatuation) because I think it will hurt (me or her). I have forced myself to keep myself from forcing myself. I have cut off my arms and legs. I have made myself incapable of loving. I have given to myself a security of an intact and unfulfilled life.

American Single

hot soft sheets with turned pillow
beginning creations mine not mine
familiar feeling table
full of faceless friends
my eyes are at the head
a filled food basket for feeding 5000
She set it centered out of my reach
silently, no movement, no speech
She removes an american single
crinkling fogged nail-scratch plastic
She sticks the cheese to an engraved silver platter
tip of 12in. carving knife hot steel slices butter
She drinks my water
spatially opposed to their dirt floor coffee
She takes my wrist pulls out of room
hot soft sheets with unturned pillow

In continuation of and collaboration with my new fascination with dreams and dreaming depicted in art, I watched Waking Life twice last night. It was INCREDIBLE. The best movie about dreams that I have ever seen. While it had the same "gets crazier and crazier" feeling as Lynch, it left you knowing exactly what they were trying to tell you. At one point during the movie I said to Silliman, with a smile, "It's movies like this that destroy me."

I/We have been watching an hour and a half of David Lynch every day this semester. So between that and reading Joyce's Ulysses, not only have I had strange dreams for the last few nights, but my thought process when awake has a couple of times bounced into crazy dream logic/language, that at the time seems completly sensible.

Well, after some thinking, and finally getting my comments back I have decided to post once a day (or so). I expect the blog to get either worse, better, or... stay the same.

I haven't posted in a while, so I'll fill everyone in. Silliman pulled through, and gave me a ride to Prizio's for New Year's Eve, where fun was had by all. Silliman ended up staying with me and working on grandpa's farm, which always puts me in that place I love to love for a month or two.
And my car is fixed, I should have it at school (Hillsdale College) by next month, and I ended up making 700 bucks by rear-ending someone.