love song

7-21-05
A student is posing for a photo with her pet lizard, Hazar. It is sick.

I’m leafing through a free flyer of real estate for sale. Many listings for student housing. One asked for $3,000 as a down payment. “If you don’t have $3,000,” the ad stated, “you should buy 3 (acres instead of 6).”

Someone is demonstrating a “mercy killing” on me. We are in bed, apparently lovers. It is a guided breathing excersice. He asks me to deeply inhale and exhale twice. On the second exhalation though, my body tingles and I experience and intense sensation of blissfully letting go. I didn’t die, though. It was just a demonstration.

He jumped up from bed and through the open window onto a metal platform—our broken fire escape. It looked out onto an abandoned lot, full of weeds and rocks, edged by a long, brown fence.

“There’s no ladder here,” he says.

“So?”

“So? There should be.” He attempts to jump from the platform onto the ground.

A bunch of us were crammed into someone’s dorm room. A few black guys on the floor. I’m on the bed with some other friends. We’re discussing the East Coast / West Coast musical styles of the early 80’s hip-hop scene. I passed along a question someone had: who came out then? One of the black guys on the floor listed a few names off the top of his head. I’d never heard of those bands.

“Lilies columbrated” “blue-eyed toenails and wine-stained sky”

7-20-05
I’m putting together my Kundiman portfolio.

I’m back in an old childhood home, living with my parents. It is 11 p.m. and I have been sneaking on my “going out” clothes. Mother says something about turning in.

“But Mom,” I say, “I wanted to go out for a little bit.”

“OK,” she says. “Will you pick up a few things for me?” She wanted some vegetables. I was surprised. I had been ready for her to freak out on me.

At Eric’s yard sale, a city couple is riffling through everything. We work really hard to answer all their questions. They end up only buying four sets of popsicle cups at twenty-five cents per set. They were the cheapest things on sale. It was really annoying.

For fun, I took one of the brown markers and drew tear drops on my cheeks, so I looked like a clown. LK + CZ liked the clown-face a lot.

The corner store where Turn It Up! Is now used to be a vintage / funky clothing shop. (I’ve dreamt of this place before.) They were using live models in their window to show off their clothing. They were a group of my girl friends. It was pretty eye-catching.

A high school graduation is taking place in a rolling field at the tree-lined base of a mountain. Black and white photos are being taken. They reflect the energy and excitement of the event. Marty Jezer is writing the text to accompany them. It is the late ‘60s and everyone is still young. There is a sense of history in the making.

We are having a shower for Goo Garbus. I gave some pretty cool looking cards. A priest writes and draws a lot. I say to students to buy it up as we won’t have time later, when Father….

Up a steep mountainside, where not too many cars go, I am visiting an old friend, CAW. It has been a long time and I am catching up with him and other friends. The house is big and luxurious.

The butler comes into the room and notifies us that CAW’s partner M is coming home. She’s been in the hospital for a long time, and is still very fragile. CAW takes off to pick her up. I have to find a way to sneak out of the house without her noticing I was there. It might upset her too much.

I dawdle with my goodbye to everyone. We watch the headlights that pass on the road below us, and find CAW’s truck coming up the dirt drive and parking. His door opens and he climbs out. Too late!

“How do I get out of here,” I ask the others.

“I think the steps are the only way out,” someone says. I have the butler retrieve my shoes and whatever else I’ve carried in with me. I’m sure he doesn’t like me or what my presence might mean.

CAW is carrying her in his arms up the stairs. I can hear the door open and shut in the next room. She is being laid down on a bed. One by one, the children disappear to go see her. I quickly sneak down the steps, trying to make quiet footsteps.

The grounds outside the house is teeming with laborers. I have to walk amongst them to get to my car. I try to blend in, obscuring my face with my hair as much as possible. My strategy worked and I am a passenger on a paper sled that’s heading in my direction. There is a tall blonde woman pulling it.

This is part of a Jane Austen story. It ends the way it starts—with different style cars one by one climbing the rough mountain pass in search of something.

I’m a passenger in a car following someone else’s mother, who narrates our route via speakerphone or walkie talkie to us following her. She tells us when she’s going through lights or turning onto side streets.

Today she’s taking her young son on a tour of the New York Times, which was her Savior, she says. It signifies everything she’s ever hoped for: education, class, etc.

We’re on the street walking with her through the city. She loves New York. You can tell. She’s short and formless, no hips to speak of, pudgy everywhere. She wears her hair like Pat Benetar did in the ‘80s. Her big lips have red lipstick. She’s smoking and wearing a tank top and denim cutoffs. We cross an overpass.

A stranger walks up to me. “Do you know where Palisades Parkway is?” I turn to ask the mother.

“You go up this way,” she gestures with her hands, but has difficulty explaining it, even with her hands. “You know,” she says, giving up, “you’re gonna hafta look on a map.” She shrugs, giggles. Her smirk says something like, you don’t expect me to know everything, do ya?

I’m sticking signs about radio free brattleboro to sandwich boards in town.

7-18-05
Woke up to dream recollections of the Kunidman Poets’ Retreat, as I have done all week. Very little dreaming of the usual kind. Instead, I wake up visiting scenes of the retreat. Unusual.

7-17-05
A banquet in a cafeteria at the Kundiman retreat. Lawson Inada is there.

7-15-05
Kundiman-like setting. We’re going off campus for Native Asian foods. We all had different Asian loyalties.

7-14-05
Eating in the Kundiman cafeteria . I strategize with DB. I go over to the airport terminal to interview a certain population.