Saturday, July 20, 2013

Poem

The following is a poem I heard, recited over an internet radio station one evening while I was drawing in colored pencil in my living room:

The Paris sky is burning bright
I want to fly with all my might
Her legs are long, her feet are high
Her jeans are strong, but so am I 

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Dream 20: Acid

7/14/13

My age is uncertain: I am at least 16, past the major developments of puberty, but I most certainly am still a minor. Therefore I am left with a generous two-year window to exist in tonight, and in which to experience all those feelings of anxiety, amorphous anticipation, and confusion associated with a sexual plot not even explicitly disclosed or defined between the two participating parties.

I have been driven here by my mother, to this vacation-style cabin, to visit some family friend, or perhaps just a friend of my parents. Her age is also unknown, but certainly different enough from mine. She's also about a foot taller than me---Amazonian wouldn't be an exaggeration---but she was dressed in fashionable outdoorsy clothing, relaxed, and her strong features, wide smile and eyes, and brown skin caused her to strongly resemble Carly Simon.

When the dream begins, the two of us have already telepathically committed ourselves to each other for the evening...the question of "how" was not consciously known to me, but the enabling circumstance worked itself out perfectly. It was late in the evening, a fire might have been roaring, and the seated conversations could be heard simmering down to a collective sigh. I was lying in a bean bag chair on the floor, eyes gently closed and focusing my attention on listening to the room. I was actually rather tired---enough so that the volume from my mother and this woman, and the other people with us, was wavering---but more than anything I was waiting for our chance. I didn't even know what exactly to expect, except I knew "it" would manifest into something that would consume the both of us together. And I was thinking about how beautiful she was.

My mother interjected something like "Oh, it's getting late, and we have a busy day tomorrow, so let's wake Joseph up and get everyone home." But this woman countered, so expertly, "But look at how he's sleeping soundly! Let him sleep over here tonight, he'll take the spare bed, and I'll give him back to you tomorrow, when we meet for lunch before going to...." and whatever we were to do as vacationers tomorrow was lost on me. Victory was secured. My mother caved too easily, moved by my peaceful composure on the floor, and she left with the other family members she was toting around.

As the cabin acquired a refreshing new tranquility after the last visitor had left the room, a warm glow began to permeate around the house, and low trace lights faded on to illuminate the doorways and molding around the fireplace. I opened my eyes to see the feet of this woman disappear into her bedroom at the end of a short, unlit hallway branching off from the main room. I kind of stared off into that space, satisfied that we had made it this far already...so far and yet still nowhere, but headed somewhere, is all I knew.

I get up and head for the bathroom, also in that hallway, and when I return she is setting up a makeshift bed in the middle of the floor, in front of the fireplace. Quilts are stacked to approximate a mattress, and even more quilts she is pulling back and already slipping under. Finally, I am standing over her as she casually reclines under the most welcoming and assorted array of blankets I have ever seen, and she acknowledges me for the first time with a few pats of her hand to the empty place beside her, coaxing me under. Ceremoniously I kneel down and enter the flap of quilts peeled back for me, and she says something, and I say something, and we proceed to awkwardly, clumsily grope at one another for a few minutes, still fully clothed and mostly silent. I'm feeling her---or individual parts of her in broken and miscalculated strokes---and she reciprocates by knocking into me with matched ambivalence. And although we cannot fully embrace even once, let alone find enough of one another in the dark, I am giving this all I have, because I could not have imagined wanting anything else from this moment, from her. I was inexperienced.

-

From my fumbling under the sheets, Sophia walks over and literally plucks me up like a ball of socks from a drawer. I am out of the cabin now, walking with Sophia along the Little Neck Bay around midnight, and the abundance of street lights from the nearby parkway give the illusion that the stars have descended to hover close above the bay. The night sky is dark and light at the same time, very golden while being very black. The rippling water is striped like a bumblebee from the lights' reflection. I am very happy to be with Sophia...it's such an uncomplicated and tangible emotion. We find my car parked near the dock, with a view completely unobstructed to the bay and the glowing parkway. From the front seat, the lights seem brighter than ever. The water and the sky are twinkling on a macro level from the density of bulbs lining the shore. Sophia and I have sex in the driver's seat of my car, and as I rock her in my lap we look out onto the water, and I am euphoric over the sight.

-

A bunch of guys and girls from Fordham have come over my Aunt Dolly's house---the regular Nick, Paul & Co. crowd. We decide to take acid, which Nick is amply stocked in. He starts distributing tiny paper wads to everybody, and as I receive mine I notice it is actually a series of individual wads cleverly folded over one another...Nick was stealthily trying to quadruple my dose. I said "Nick! What the fuck, why'd you give me so much?!" holding the unfolded strip of acid tabs out like an accordion paper craft in front of his face. His lips curl back in a wily smile, acknowledging that the trick is spoiled...he has been caught. I tear off one wad for myself and give him back the unused tabs, and take the acid.

A few minutes later, I get up from the plastic-tarp-coated dining room table and begin to pace the living room, anxious for activity and stimulation as I begin to peak. The entire group is vegetating on the couches or floor--- completely inert. I try to rouse them to action: "Guys, let's do something! Make something!" Anil responds for the group that he'd rather watch some television while tripping on acid, and I am indignant towards their lethargy and lack of inspiration. "Why would you guys want to watch TV right now? It's fucking pathetic that you all are just sitting there, when you could be creating something awesome." I give up on the group and enter the kitchen, where I dump a big barrel of Lego's on the table and begin to meticulously assemble this red-and-blue hovercraft-looking object. I am hunched over, holding the Lego model very close to my face and inspecting each individual brick before I place it.