we sleep. what else would we do? we curl up against each other, bare skin and thin cloth. the morning heats, slowly at first. next it steams, now it blackens: as if abandoned on the stove for the doorbell's ring.

i have friends. some are missing. some are sick. some are brokenhearted. some are broken. others, just broke. some are a) b) c) d) and all of the above. i can count the despondent on two fingers, but i can count them. why is everything so hard? years ago i lived in a room where the windows weren't flush to the trim. in october i'd lie on the bed with the lights out. i'd burn old incense on a cheap rosewood burner, and the wind would blow like the wind blows in the midwest in the autumn.

listening to the wind was something like this: i could listen.

sure, i could race masking tape along the windows edge. sure, i could stuff the corners with rags. sure, i could try to intervene in the natural unfolding of things. maybe i'd even get a minute of stillness for my effort. i could pretend, in that stillness, that i wasn't poor, that there weren't so many sorrows, that i was immortal but, more importantly, so was everyone i loved. then the wind would pick up speed or shift direction and i was just as poor and sad and mortal as the rest of my numbers, the threads of our lives gliding swiftly over verdandi's fingers.

it was easier, in the end, to just surrender to the truth that there are going to be cracks and the wind is going to blow through them. not easier, exactly? but necessary to survival. "there is a crack in everything, it's how the light gets in," but these new realities are not so bravely comforted with leonard cohen lyrics. entropy is a destructive force and it does take over people's lives. it is true that a crisis ultimately surrenders an opportunity, but it doesn't always offer it to the person who is in crisis. does prayer help? does visualization work? does living your life as though the problem isn't really a problem solve anything at all? pollyanna pockets her blood money. there's a crack, there's a crack, again, again, again. a crack in my toenail, a chip in my favorite mug. cavities and car payments, i don't know what i'll do. criminal records and predatory loans, i don't know what they'll do. how can i help? i'm far away, i'm broke, i'm feckless. what can i do? let the light in, i guess. except, in my case, it's not so much the light but the wind.

i call, i listen. in my dreams the telephone and computer are wrapped tight in red electrical tape. i know my anguish is insignificant. as it was, so it is: at least i had my room, my old incense, my cheap rosewood burner, my bed piled up with books and notebooks. so it is, my lover wrapped around my shoulders, this breath sliding decisively into the next. i'm here, that's what i can offer. it's something. maybe a something just this side of nothing, but a something nonetheless. in so many cases, i'm just pressing rags into the window frame, hoping for one laugh, for one moment of stillness. a break in the humidity. a lull in the wind.

judy: you know, those "steep grade" warnings for the trucks, they'd make a more dramatic impression for me if the cab had a stick figure coming out of it with a scared face and flailing arms.

ben: i want all highway signs remade in LOLCATS.

judy: oh! like, when you cross the state line from pennsylvania into maryland, it says O HAI! I UPGRADED YR PA.

ben: [nods] and when you leave, KTHXBYE.

judy: ...OH NOES!!1! DANGEROUS MOUNTAIN!**

ben: on the exit signs, replace the burger king with YOU CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER, EXIT 16.

judy: WE'RE IN YER LEFT LANE, DETOURIN YER COMMUTERS.

ben: MY SIGNAL, LET ME SHOW YOU IT.

judy: for toll booths: YOUR OFFERING PLEASES HIGHWAY AUTHORITY CAT.

ben: in areas where there are cameras and speed radars, there could be a warning sign that reads BIG BROTHER CAT IS WATCHING YOU VIOLATE.

judy: and when you get ticketed, the form header would read STATE TROOPER CAT IS NOT AMUSED.

ben: ...it's probably a good thing that we aren't in charge.



__________________________________________________
**there really are a set of signs just outside ohiopyle that warn (with progressive intensity) "DANGEROUS MOUNTAIN AHEAD." we would have stopped to take a picture as proof, but really. there was a dangerous mountain ahead. it was important to stay vigilant.

queen & bowie's "under pressure" has become to movie and television ads in the aughts what "o fortuna" was in the nineties.

sadly, after the spot with the dog chugging water out of a toilet in time, "o fortuna" lost much of its dramatic edge for me.

*

my parents had this microwave, see.

the button for the door, when you engaged it, there was a metallic turn and release sound at the exact signature and pitch of that repeated percussive hit in "under pressure" (you know, the part vanilla ice didn't sample.)

for years i walked out of the kitchen singing the song to myself. even now, when it turns up in an advertisement, i get a craving for campbell's "tomato and rice" soup.

yeah, you heard me. it wasn't the microwave controlling my thoughts.

i succumbed to the hypnotic power of a microwave door.

*

if ever there was a more appropriate opportunity to use the damn tinfoil foxhat icon, i couldn't tell you what it might be. enjoy it, liam.

1. i've wanted to say to you: old one, we are different now. years have crossed our brows. shadows pool under our eyes. i've wanted to say: i don't remember what you look like, all my pictures from half a lifetime back. who looks like they do in photographs? certainly not you. what can be done with a properly trained desk lamp and slight underexposure: we became flawless, well rested, we became carefree. i scanned a black and white negative once and played with the contrast. in the print, you smiled the sphinx, every mystery owned where earlobe met the jawline. you were impossibly seductive in minimalist line. in the scan, zoomed and compensated, your smile became strained. your eyes weren't nearly so sure. you looked tired. you became human, for a beat. one person being photographed by another person: no mythos, no stigma. maybe i started to remember what you look like, at least when i shifted the balance.

2. i marvel at people who claim to have no regrets, who have reconciled every mistake to the here and the now, to the necessities of the person they've become. more truthfully, i'm terrified of them. are they for real? are they full of shit? who has no regrets? sociopaths and preschoolers. victims of selective memory loss. i regret. i regret not buying an album i saw at the record store. i regret not making it to visit my grandmother at the hospital before she slipped into her last coma. i regret my tendency to mute enthusiasm. saturn is strong in my disposition--i regret that, too.

regret (v.)

"to remember with distress or longing," c.1300, from O.Fr. regreter "long after, bewail, lament someone's death," from re-, intensive prefix + -greter, possibly from Frankish (cf. O.E. grætan "to weep;" O.N. grata "to weep, groan"), from P.Gmc. *gretan "weep." Replaced O.E. ofþyncan, from of- "off, away," here denoting opposition + þyncan "seem, seem fit" (as in methinks). The noun is first recorded 1533. Regretfully incorrectly in place of regrettably is attested from 1976.

regrettably, things did not work out. regretfully, we left it that way.



3. from so many years down the road i've seen there is no real satisfaction to be found for a regret. we've all strayed the path in the wilderness of loose ends. we've all returned with dubious boon. one spring a long time ago i wandered from the path in attempting to let a former lover back into my life as a friend. i'd be depressed if i had your life, he said, some weeks later, not a friend. i hung up the phone. what did he know about it? the same nothing he ever did.

i have a friend whose long-time beau cheated on her. the day he came home and announced that, within a 14 hour period, the entire landscape of her universe had changed, she drew a breath and caught something in the weight of the coming april storm that, years later, still holds the power to make her physically ill.

may can still be like that. just the way the light can fall, the way the humidity shifts, just those first blossoms in the air can set my teeth and my shoulders. it was six years ago, but only six mays ago. weren't he and i involved for six mays? there's still a subtle atmospheric readjustment negotiating its way to oblivion; maybe it'll never get there, completely, maybe this is as far gone as it will ever be. after all, there are things from much further back that still loan a strange complexity to the late spring air.

you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did, someone told me once, and maybe i agreed: both of us obviously HIV negative and still in possession of a full set of functioning limbs. it's a necessity of the person i've become, this story, though it is as true for the story as it is for others as it is for myself that there are parts i wish i could revise. but i can't: as pointless, as predictable, as much wasted time and energy as it was, it was what it was. and as sniveling, bewildered and ignorant as i am, i am what i am.

4. eye of the beheld. overexposed for the shutter's pop and sealed in silver halide. old one, we are different now, as different as we've ever been. a notion as comforting and unsettling as it ever was: i can't rewrite another person's perception of me. i can't even know what that perception really is. whatever it is i've been for them, for you, for all the people i've known across time and space: that's who i will stay.

in my dream i was living in my parent's house in the chicago suburbs. i was virginia woolf.

there were two teenagers, usually two girls, sometimes a girl and a boy, in period costume running through the upstairs loft. they were threatening me and calling me names, vandalizing the house and trying to get into my room, where i had filing cabinets, desks, boxes and just piles of paper stacked to the ceiling. they wanted to get into the room in the hopes of stealing some my work to take credit for themselves.

i knew most of the papers in the room would make no sense to anyone but me, but my journals and some progress i'd made on a new novel were in the room and i couldn't risk their being stolen. i physically blocked the door and told them they were not welcome. they wouldn't listen. complicating matters, i apparently hadn't slept, eaten or showered in days and hadn't been able to get to a toilet for hours.

eventually they went downstairs and after a half hour i decided i was safe to use the toilet, take a shower, and get ready for bed. while i was away from my post, they got into my room. i came running back tried to haul them out, then tried to barricade them from my writings, which was impossible--my writings were everywhere. ultimately i just watched what they were looking through and snatched anything that looked valuable from their hands.

my journal was waiting for me on a shelf by the door when i walked in and i discreetly took it to my side immediately. i kept dropping it behind furniture so they wouldn't see it, so they wouldn't even know what it looked like. every time i turned away from a stash spot, however, the journal was back in my hand. it didn't really seem to matter--i slowly recognized that they weren't particularly gifted readers and in fact didn't seem able to tell valuable writing from gibberish.

i found this both a relief and extremely unsettling.

the girl at the desk started to get bored with the whole thing. "see?" i told her, as she crumpled up pages and tossed them aside. the other girl dropped a box of folders she'd been riffling to the floor and stuck out her tongue. "not so interesting to see ideas in their most primitive form, is it? don't you think it's time you left me in peace?" she shrugged and pulled the cushion off the orange theosophist chair to use as a pillow. the other girl laid down beside her. they closed their eyes and pretended to sleep.

my head was pounding. i could barely stand, i was so tired. "get out," i said. "goddamn it, get out!"

the girl smirked and snuggled into the chair cushion deeper. the boy pretended to snore.

i exploded with rage. i tore books down from the shelves, kicked piles of notebooks to the floor. girls again, they rolled their eyes and shrugged at each other, sneeringly labeled me a "dangerous psychotic bitch," wondered when i'd stopped taking my meds, then left the room.

i burst into tears and collapsed to the floor. ira glass came quickly around the corner and knelt down next to me, helping me scoop up stray papers with one hand and smoothing my back with the other.

"i'm so tired," i told him. "i just want to sleep," i sobbed. "i have to get up early tomorrow and with everything that's been happening i just don't know what to think."

ira hugged me. "i know, i know," he said. "it's okay. we'll get through. you'll be fine."

*

i woke with my neck at a sharp angle, my head pounding, more tired after seven hours of sleep than i'd been the night before. this dream has stuck with me all day, too, even the physical sensations of it. i've been so worn out, it's strange. even strong black tea can't fix my head.

yes, NPR personalities make regular appearances in my dreams. yes, i'm a certified dork, and yes, and you can shut up about it now.

i honestly couldn't tell you what this dream means, but wow, persecution, paranoia, and fits of unbridled rage? my subconscious is sure trying to sort through something.