the problem with keeping a journal online is that if you're actually honest in it, at the end of the day, it just makes you seem totally neurotic.

recurring dreams are a gift from the subconcious. last night's dreams were a sneaky appearance of a theme i thought my subconcious had worked through - driving and being driven. after years of dreams where i was being driven by a car with no driver, or i was driving a car that would not follow my commands, etc, i thought i had it all worked out after a final victorious dream where i managed to drive the car and park it where i wanted and get out. not so.

last night, two vehicle dreams. i realize dreams are boring to everyone but the person who had them, and people who are obsessed with dreams, like me. tough shizz, it's my journal.

one:
i board the green tortoise bus to portland, with ridiculous duffle bags in tow. i realize after i'm on the tortoise that i don't have the money to afford the ride that is about to happen. somehow the driver divines this and he pulls over to let a bunch of people in the same predicament off - but i can't get off fast enough with the duffle bags. i try to yell out, but i can't talk? the bus leaves with me on it. i can't get to the front fast enough. the driver pulls a curtain and locks a door around his driver's seat. there's no window, he can't see me, and i can't talk. i bang on the door, no answer. i'm stuck on the bus.

two:
my friends are in a van going somewhere i want to go, but they can't take me with them. i want to follow, so i accept a taxi ride from a foreign black man with dreadlocks and very white teeth. he is not legit, and it isn't a real taxi, and i know that he could very well hurt me. but i get in. he seems nice, we ride and talk and follow the van. i relax. the van stops and so do we, but then the driver turns right and takes me down an alley not far from where my friends are. it's dark and grainy, red brick walls on each side. i've probably seen this alley in a hundred films. it's the alley where someone gets murdered.

i get out of the car into the darkness, and immediately see a dead woman under a quilt on the ground. oh look, there are dead people all over this alley. or are they just sleeping? i can't see their faces, except for the woman, who looks like a crime scene photo of a murdered movie star from the 30's. her face is black, white, and blue. i don't have time to decide whether the people all over the ground in this alley are dead, because the driver comes around to my side of the vehicle and shows me a knife, then stabs me deep in the shoulder. at this point, i realize i'm dreaming and i completely accept the feeling of being stabbed. i disembody and check out the dream, reeling in some sort of beauty from the pain of the stabbing. i watch him hold the point of the knife to my armpit, and decide i don't want to feel that pain so i change the dream, but my control is weak and all i can get him to do is move the knife to my neck instead. i reach up and clutch it with my fingers - they aren't cut by the knife. fuck, i don't want to die and this is my dream, asshole! i wake myself up and roll over.

...

i wish i was motivated to figure out why the date on all the previous entries is fucked up. soon.

...

i just got out of the shower. i'm pink:

3am found me reading what you wrote about us years ago. tears dripping off the end of my nose, missing you so much. the blue light in those rooms, how i always talked about photographing it. how you had no furniture, how the kitchen floor was so perfect and cold, the way your bed smelled, the way you smelled. your books and the shape of your hands and wrists as they gesticulated into darkness, i felt them more than saw them, i knew them so well. the mutual silent agreements to allow this pain to happen, to destroy everything together. hellbent. sometimes i would fall asleep while you talked, and as my heart became unable to contain the complexity of it all i would leave in the dawn. again and again. i didn't want you to see me in the light. i didn't want the light to see us together.

it hurts me to remember. it describes why i'm alive and i don't understand who gave this destiny to me. i felt so much like you were the one who pushed me, that you were the destructive one, that you did. this. to. me. and now, some three years later, the extent to which i am forced to reallize that was a lie is extreme. let my life be filled with lessons, but let them be held in something other than the perpetual absence of everything i love.

i am going to new york city.

being depressed and brooding isn't really an option. i began to do it, to pace, to cry. i don't like feeling trapped. i don't like doing things for the sake of safety and security. unless it's on my terms. actually, someone once said i don't like doing anything unless it's on my terms. that might be true. if i was a man, would you find as much fault with that? i think about that a lot.

in vegas, my mother stayed up all night with me before i had to leave the hotel at 4am to go catch a plane. we lay in bed together whispering for hours. giggling. there are very few people who can understand some of the specific challenges i face, and i had forgetten my mother is one of those people. we spoke of love, monogamy, commitment, being psychic, the connection between sex and death, and more. as i walked away from the hotel room, down the neverending hallways of the shabby stardust hotel in a las vegas pre-dawn, i cried a little for leaving my mom. no one ever wants to leave their mom.

there's a lot to do before i leave, and i'm operating on a budget of approximately zero dollars. i'm afraid, but not about being able to do okay in new york. i'm more afraid of being gut wrenched about what i am leaving behind in SF. i hate the passage of time, i hate that going into the future means saying goodbye to the past. why can't i have it all at once? WHY? i swear, most of the times i have ever been totally destroyed, crying, sad, hysterical, it's because of the horror of the passage of time.

i don't feel like i can talk to very many people about the specifics of anything i feel anymore. i'm very sensitive and stubborn at the same time - i'm going to do what i'm going to do and i need it to be accepted and supported. i don't want advice as much as understanding. i can't take value judgements. we can talk about what i did wrong after i fuck up.

<shadok> i dreamt i was conscripted and sent off to fight in france, but it<shadok> was half world war one and half world war wo
<shadok> two
<shadok> there were men and women soldiers in ill-fitting uniforms
<shadok> we were in the boats in the english channel, being shelled
<shadok> then it turned into this renaissance-type society where people were
<shadok> walking around with foils and epees, duelling, but there were
<shadok> skyscrapers
<shadok> people were trying to trick me into getting into the elevator to
<shadok> kill me but i knew not to get into one that was going to an
<shadok> odd-numbered floor
<shadok> then it turned into the tower records at piccadilly circus where i
<shadok> used to work, and then i woke up
<shadok> holy shit
<shadok> somebody answered my nerve personal ad for the first time ever

stephen and i saw lost in translation tonight. he told me he was going to cry but instead it was me sitting there crying. laughing at myself for crying but just crying. i have never seen a movie that is more real and more beautiful. i have never had a movie describe an aspect of my life so perfectly. the most perfect part was when he tried to tell his wife that he wanted to eat japanese food. a desperate attempt to somehow bring something home with him. the desperation of that conversation. the desperation and sadness of trying to have an entire life that is as beautiful as a few unlikely days.
when i got home, still very raw and feeling sadness/beauty in a lump in my throat, or somewhere in my solar plexus, toshok told me that elliott smith killed himself today. i checked a URL he pasted - a brief news story surrounded by ads, with a bright link at the end saying GET ELLIOTT SMITH MUSIC AT BLAHBLAHBLAH.COM. has the world not one ounce of shame?

i have a phone interview tomorrow with a web firm in NYC. i am excited, and i do think i am qualified for the job, but i am worried about the interview and about my work samples. i'm aware of the possibility of being dissed. i'm trying to not let my self worth get too tangled up in things.

the movie made me want to live my life in total truth and presence.

i've had a headache off and on for a few days. also, smells are bothering me more than usual. i can't stand the way anything smells.

...

todo tomorrow:
- christie's site updates
- interview
- begin reading for next essay
- clean house

me: i think i'm gonna go stare into space for a while
him: oh wait

me: ?

him: i had a dream about you last night!
him: when you just said space
him: i remembered it
him: we were in a backyard
him: and the sky was amazing

me: what kind of amazing?

him: like darker than usual and you could see the milky way
him: and we were looking at the stars

me: were you happy?

him: it was one of a series of strange dreams so i dont remember much of it..
him: but yeah i was happy

me: that is really nice
me: that makes me happy

him: it was cool
him: i find myself looking at the stars a lot lately
him: and the moon
him: sometimes i'll be out and be like wow look at
him: the moon.. when it's like a perfect crescent or full moon
him: and everyone is like "uhh whats the big deal?"

me: sometimes if the moon is really beautiful i will call
me: everyone i know and tell them to go look
me: so you can tell me

him: i think that's what the dream was about

...

today: two libraries. photocopies, books, progress. sadness and apologies to the universe. empty promises about change. unstoppable vehicles of personal chaos. shelves full of volumes, stacks, lined up in ways that make you forget time. chanting "i'm sorry" over and over in my head but not being sure who i was really asking for forgiveness anymore. given up on phones, chat; using them but not really. the house smells like something rotting. more job leads in nyc. image stress. the search for truth. being surrounded by those who i love but feeling like i'll never be able to really do any of them justice with my scattered affection. trying not to consider absence loss.

"The fields that need to be plowed are endless. You will never be done plowing the fields. Just plow what you can, and rest. Don't worry about getting it done, because it's never going to get done. And that's the way I am with my life. In my work, a lot of things never get done, and I'm all right with that. Most people think that they can't finish the fields, so they don't even start. By the end of the day, I've done so much more than anybody else that it's crazy, just because they're fretting about that they can't get it done. I just went out and did it."
- Ian MacKaye