"I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight"

- A. Rich

"Everything I say, falls away...."

We never did make it to Santa Fe, did we?  Instead, we settled for getting drunk at La Rumba, where you whispered to me a cross-eyed "I love you."   Alcoholics are so dramatic.  And usually liars too.

Sometime last week I dreamt that I was elected mayor of Denver. "Apples In Stereo" played at my inauguration (its all about the local when you're mayor.) Except, of course, when the local becomes national -- Newsweek had me on the cover looking over my shoulder with the cityscape as a backdrop with the question, "Coolest Mayor in America?" And I gave the interview at Adega, eating veal cheek and speaking on solving the homeless problem downtown. Afterwards, we went for drinks at Flow.

In metafolics yesturday, as I sat with foil in my hair, I read an article in Esquire by Rudy Gulliani. In it he commented on how it was a mistake to think parts or your life end, that everything should be viewed in context with continuity. Along those lines, I suppose its a mistake to expect something more from the weekend then I do during the week -- to view it as something different. Still, I try though. I fill it with all sorts of things, but it hangs suspended both unsatiated and unremarkable.

I drove to Boulder last night with vague hints of plans that never came to fruition. What grew in its place was strange fruit. I did see someone for the first time who I use to adore, only to find out I still adore him. Maybe more then I knew at the time. Its odd how someone can simultaneously seem completely present and very far away. As if they're there, but just not for you. The grace of connection can be fickle. It's like in Six Feet Under, when Brenda talking about life turns to Nate and say, "You know what I think it's all about? It's all about timing ."

It's difficult when you sense that the moment is no longer eminent, isn't becoming -- but, instead, has been missed.

Until the designated light
Repudiate the Forge--

The good people out number the bad people.
Or so I'm finding out....

And to the boy that sent me the Emily Dickinson, I adore you for it.

red wine is fast / at the lip of your glass/ saying "im gonna ruin everything"

I once read somewhere Neko Case describing a dream where she had a threesome with Steve Earle and Madonna after a show in Vancouver. In the dream Madonna leans over and says to Neko, "Your hair looks like a wig." Freakydreams.com had this analysis:

"Attraction and Sensuality. If you dream of hair means (sic) that you are careless in your personal affairs and will lose advancement by neglecting mental application."

Funny how hair is associated with vanity like nothing else. We cut, we grow, we dye, we comb, we pluck, we shave, we gel, we spray, and we weave. With the promise of attracting others, hair tricks us into attracting ourselves. Vanity. And with that slick whisper of a lie, our hair gets taken care of.

Until, of course, it falls out.

"Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away."

Crisis can sometimes come quietly, with a crawl. Few things I am sure of, but of this, I'm positive.

In the K-mart as we walked downthe aisle with all the clocks, I asked you why they were all set to ten after ten.
The answer is so we think they're smiling.

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the insturment
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky.

And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

Between forseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind, the wind wil rise,
We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.

"The coming of day promises a change; it is only when the day has fully arrived that the watcher suspects it is the same day returned once again -- the same day he has been living for a long time, over and over, still blindingly bright and untarnished by time."