If I say it's safe to surf this beach, Captain, then it's safe to surf this beach!

In the form of gardenias . . .

Remember Apocalypse Now? Kilgore says, "you either surf or you fight." Fucking Kilgore. What a ham . . . Kurtz would have been interested in him, but wouldn't've taken him on board. He was too ostentatious, too showy. Fuck off, Kilgore. Leave me alone. Go away. Go surf.

~~~~~~~

With no forwarding address to trace them.

Talked the other day with dear sister Karyn. About The Road, mostly - she just read it. We also talked about the house we spent our childhood in. A beautiful, architecturally nourishing space; a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle, put together just so. Her bedroom, we reminisced, fearlessly explored a powerful Raggedy Ann motif. Mine had fuzzy-animal wallpaper.

~~~~~~~

A note on fame.

I listen and read, and I have to ask - who cannot relate to Britney Spears's situation? Compassless and wild, she's trying to break out of her machine. She's at last becoming interesting, no longer just amusing or entertaining. A cartoonish, real-time morality play is being acted out through her. It'll probably use her up before it's done - it maybe already has - and it seems reckless to unheed it's warning and graceless to mock her example.

How little we need to be happy.

By the fountain yesterday at Centennial Olympic Park . . .

She's not a girl who misses much.

"Sex is the mathematical urge repressed." ~ Freud

In an effort to, um, take my mind off things, I've been reacquainting myself with proofs of the law of quadratic reciprocity, the crown jewel of number theory, and Gauss's favorite theorem. Euler conjectured it but Gauss was first to give it proof. If you like, you can hang out with a crisp overview of quadratic reciprocity here. Oh, but it gives me the warm fuzzies...

~~~~~~~

Anyway, there's been dreams. The sleepy Cardinals are hard at hand...


... hallucinating lucidity. What gives?

~~~~~~~

I'm returned tonight from the first half of a NATS Alexander Technique workshop. NATS is the National Association of Teachers of Singing; the Alexander Technique is a way of doing things. I have no association with NATS.

Today it was necessary to leave music school and go to Borders. Being there, I bought a DVD set of fifty - yes, fifty - movies, called SciFi Classics. For twenty dollars. Have you heard about this? Fifty movies. With titles like

* The Incredible Petrified World
* The Atomic Brain
* Attack of the Monsters
* Mesa of Lost Women
* The Astral Factor
* Assignment: Outer Space
* Destroy All Planets

... except there's fifty of them. For twenty dollars. Fuck. ing. sweet. Attack of the Monsters... heh.

By the sound of your voice . . .

I was at Turner Field last night, watching the Braves explain some things to the Marlins. Wanda (of markandwanda)'s back has been troubling her (and is apparently, thankfully, beginning to mend), so Mark invited me to go. He had passes to the "755 Club", so we spent most of the game in the very lap of luxury: tureens of cocaine, cigars, fallen women . . .

Hear the memories come in waves.

A beautiful day. Full, really, with things good and bad, pleasant and un-. Walked in the park and talked, instead of eating lunch, with an old friend of mine about Dag Hammarskjöld, martyr for the good guys. This would fall under "pleasant". Vlindinhauer Haverhast, the old friend in mention, himself also a sort of martyr for the good guys, was enviably on the Cape as we spoke. Fuck, how I want to be on the Cape. I've been homeless for too long. Cape Cod, if you're lost. Keep up. But don't ask me anything else about it. I don't want to talk about it. Fuck.

Placing that aside, I watched The Pope of Greenwich Village last night for the 1st time since 1984 or 5. I'm all about Mickey Rourke right now. Motherfucker quits acting to resume his relationship with boxing in '91 - at 35 - this time as a professional and doesn't lose a single fight (though he drew against both Fransisco Harris and Thomas McCoy). His acting is spot on. Between him and Eric Roberts, the method is dropping thick.

My dreams have taken on a new direction the past two nights. Are they waving or drowning? I can't tell. There seems to be an upheaval in the works; I'm generally in favor and my concern is mostly with facilitation.

Oh, and I watched Zeitgeist over the last 21 hours, in installments. My inner conspiracy theorist wants me to tell you he's giving it two thumbs up. Rashid turned me on to this film a few weeks ago. And speaking of installments, Ken Burns, who I can never mention without reminding everyfuckingbody that he went to Hampshire, has a new documentary on WWII premiering this Sunday on PBS. I don't care if I'm the only person I know who finds this even remotely interesting. Ken Burns is a gem of a man.

And David Sylvian serenades with Orpheus.

Vlin, I can see your entries now.

We've all gone crazy lately

Trouble sleeping. I was up until about 06:00, wired, unable to shake some strange wakefulness, my head overflowing with thoughts, my horses bucking. Awake until 06:00, which was just a few minutes before my (goddamn) alarm went off. Past five and close to sleep, I mobilized myself to investigate two loud, sharp knocks at the door to my front porch. This deep into the night, there's no reason for someone, anyone, to be knocking on my door, but of course you have to check. I don't know though, maybe I'd only imagined it, because when I opened it there was nobody there. I'm not sure what I thought I was going to do anyway. I was only in boxers, and apart from my body itself, totally weaponless (I keep a natural wood Louisville Slugger by my bed, just in case, but in my sleepless forgetfulness, I opened the door without it).

So I did what I usually do when I'm home alone and can't sleep - I watched 2001, beautiful soporific masterpiece.

The other night, the night the weather changed (it's been cooler here than it was throughout August), I had a vivid, technicolor dream. I was standing in front of the Atlantic, on the porch of the Marshfield house, looking out at the moon, which was enormous - as big as the earth - and only a few feet away. The porch had no railing, and I almost jumped across, over to the moon. I probably could have. Part of the imagery came from a story I read by Calvino in '96 called the distance of the moon. I almost jumped, but I didn't. Something stopped me. It felt dangerous, maybe.

Now playing: Someone saved my life tonight, by Elton John.

I'm leaving in a few minutes to meet Rashid for dinner at Figo. We ate together yesterday too, at La Fonda.

Backtracking: on Friday I left work early and went to Jason's for a drink and to watch some early Beatles footage (I have a great weakness for all things early-Beatle). From there we headed over to Rashid's for more drinks and engaging guy-talk. Eventually we all moved on to La Fonda for dinner and even more drinks. And later we drove to Sheila and Tim's, et al, where there was a house party in mid-swing and the drinking began in earnest. And then, finally, back home.

There was something to celebrate - I'm now vested, after ten years at GSU.

My head has been a tumult again today. I'm going to try to get some real rest tonight. Wish me luck.