dog day journal, part one;
��������� �����[this entry is dedicated to excerpts from my longhand green journal. i.e., the stuff i really like.]FRIDAY, AUGUST 15th
[SKS, the porch]
nighttime, a collection of systolic pulses all arrhythmic, like gears just about to slip out of sync. it's the delicate light on the powerlines that does it, rendering the thick electric sinews into half-shadowed spiderweb filaments, coruscating with prognostications of dew. a guilty-faced moon trembles gibbous in the darkness.
a stray penny, halfbent, is making cautious acquaintance with a cigarette butt. a gust of wind will send the butt tottering over a precipice of the sewergrate.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16th
[SKS, the kitchen, midday]
gavotte!
the deliberate passingby of cars seems overly frenetic. suburban children on bicycles. a woman clad in wal-mart walking a beagle. old rhododendrons pressed against the windows of the porch like homeless vagrants begging to be let in.
this house reminds me of something. it seems a collection of things you always want, but then forget you have. a folding chair. glade fragrance spray. a book about the history of colour. music, artwork, cookbooks, alcohol, remembrances - but all somehow just out of reach. i would like to live in a house & be able to wander the hallways in a sporadic mood, investigating - but what would be left to investigate if i lived there? this house has old rosepetals in a rodent-like fashion in the main hallway; odd tourists to the canvas of artworks hanging on the wall. i have pause mid-corridor and glanced into each room: dan's, equally & agreeably allocated. tara's, decourous but somehow in-transit. less concerned with structure. dan's, more relaxed, a base for which he can return to and mellow. tara's, a place to sleep, unafraid of visitors. amanda's, a curious anteroom-vestibule at which the hallway terminates, is made for the living-room, and serves as a conduit to the porch. she uses it for storage - it is dim and books pile in the corners like small monuments to gods. the entire place is possessed of a strange security, like a threadbare blanket from infancy; kept, but no warmth offered ... holding together, but only for as long as the will of the keeper focuses on it -
knobless doors!
oh these long, indolent hours best served by writing love-letters! i sigh frequently.
i need something life-altering. but i'm looking so hard for it i may have already missed it ...
[later, the porch]
the skies have grown dark and the heat is gone as easily as a sheet from a mattress. across the street, head tilted up, is a small towheaded boy in a blue t-shirt. he walks back and forth on the sidewalk solemnly with one hand fisted at his mouth - like a sentinel at Dunsinane. he is now joined by his sister. a bolt shrieks down the sky & she screams, laughing:
"did you see that!" pointing over the house.
"amanda, you have metal on your zipper!" the boy yells.
"it's RAINING!" she runs around the front yard. the boy takes up his sentinel-walk again as the thunder rolls - crescendos!
too loud - too near. he retreats to the doorframe, pressing his face to the screen in eagerness. one last traincall of freight rumbles across the expanse - there is no rain or even wind. a dearth of noise. jon came in, and left, another transient habitue of the house. amanda's keys in hand, he closes the door & the rain begins, painting over the gesso of the pale asphalt, rendering it lampblack. and passes.
[later, backseat of amanda's car]
i enjoy living between the ticks of the clock. it's the season that impedes, a slow, langourous decline into autumn that always seems rather desperate, like a heroin addict's final days.
i feel somewhat bound by the inveteracy of who i am - no longer an identity crisis in that i don't know, but an unabashed uncomfortability in my own skin!
the sun is a drain, it siphons the colour from the sky and makes the early evening seem like an empty bath-tub. i am sheltering the notebook with my hands like an anorexic hides herself by her crossed arms.
my reflection is like a friend i have fallen out of favour with - intense annoyance bordering on loathing.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 17th
[SKS, the kitchen, after the party]
half-headache ... still mildly stoned in the aftermath ... most have retired back to bed .. the morning dawdles onward now, lazily crouched in the haze of ten o'clock. the occasional shift or cough trickles out of the other rooms. i feel the heat pressing on my shoulders like an overeager lover. sundays are ancient days of indolence & laze. it's as though the South creeps tendrils of old-time bougainvillea & honeysuckle around our Yankee throats, making it more difficult to breathe. slower pulses & lackadaisical glances. bourbon, mint julep. i am in shirtsleeves, unshaven & grimacing. should be nursing a beer.
the house shifts & i with it. slight systolic motions - some significance of life. some vague discrepancy lodged nugget-like in the throat of laze. somewhere in the house resides a primadonna cricket, determined to be a symphony on his own ...
momentary intrigues! jon sits by the table [last night] that supports the stereo, which is an anachronism of turntable/cassette/CD. he rests an elbow and blinks lazily a few times, always somehow aware of the arterial conversation while maintaining an inner monologue of sorts ...
MONDAY, AUGUST 18th
[pittsfield]
the top of my head looks like a corkscrew salad ...
[later, jason's house]
there is so much to record ... such big clouds ... such emotional longing deep in the somewhat ancestral pinetrees ... a town-in-progress, i remarked. something on the edge of a tectonic plate, always subjected to earthquakes.
remarked to kaylen today how much i felt like Darley from the Alexandria Quartet - right down to his characteristic hesitation & need to overanalyse everything.
(love love love love love love love love love love love love love) ...
HE: it's so big up here. more room to make mischief, i guess.
SHE: Ahh, mischief. I miss that.
HE: i never had that. was never the puckish type.
SHE: You missed out.
HE: i know. i'm trying to make up for it now.
SHE: Ahh, good.
HE: i'm hoping it'll translate to a "child-at-heart" type thing, but that sort of clashes with my "old soul." they have familial wars.
SHE: Good metaphor.
HE: thanks!
TUESDAY, AUGUST 19th
... jason remarks, earlier, "you like every kind of music. there is no one you couldn't get along with." ...
[LARGE SKETCH OF JASON]
[later, backseat of jason's mom's car]
//here i am, rock you like a hurricane//
a general malaise is draped over the 3 of us ... adam's [jason's brother] sharp eyes glint in the sideview mirror ... ash from his cigarette tumbles with the breeze ... i feel as though we're barganing with the russian mafia for jason's life or something. [he's inside trying to buy a used car.]
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22nd
[many sketches]
.. the road whips by like an angry snake ...
buying time / the remedy / then i'll be smiling ...
[more sketches]
FRIDAY, AUGUST 22nd
[greene, ME]
14 timothy lane, (private drive). the pratt residence. a musical revue called Smokey Joe's Cafe. 50s songs.
//tell me am i right to think that there could be nothing better//
i'm thinking - realistically - about my acid-soaked future. reflux & bile. ulcers & liver cancer. splenetic disposition. whores and whiskey. gin & tonic. mildly depressed. can't draw women worth shit. will practice ...
//where everything will change, we'll give ourselves new names, identities erased - the sun will heat the ground under our bare feet, in this brand new colony - this brand new colony//
oh postal service, how right you are. is it so bad to want change?
bed-time.
[afternoon, gorham, ME]
amato's.
the brilliant idea to give a different name at the counter. "can i have your name?"
sebastian. no, wait -
"jonas."
she spells it something like Jhonasse and throws a smile at me. "i'll figure it out," she says & i laugh, immeasurably relieved. it's not that i hate my name. i just don't like how it sounds, all clicks & hisses. it's a stealthy, grimy name. jonas is wide & open. an honest, round sound. maybe i will change my name someday -
an hour.half to kill before i have to pick jason up from work & drive out to standish, where we will lay around in a hot, dry field with no wind.
...i wish more people were in here to hear my "name" called. i should've said i was craig, or ethan. or ian. - isaac, adam, nathan, david, jonas jed jeremy ken taylor frank sam! something that isn't hard to spell, requires no confused looks. bleachedblond tanned muscle honesteyed bighanded normal -
suddenly with the advent of new voices in the "dining area" i feel mildly ashamed of what i've done & momentarily even more alone than before.
who name their kid JONAS - he looks too bad to be a JONAS - looks more like a QUENTIN -
& i'm called. the irony of it is that they called me with "cheese pazzo, now ready." denied.
and the guy at the counter (blond, dark-eyed) seems to be reproaching me for even trying, silently - his smile is brimming with enamel-white pity.
[TO BE CONTINUED]