Grat If Ication

We did this a handful of days ago. The point was supposed to be how quickly we could make up a song and deliver it to friends halfway across the country just to keep us all amused, but the poor internet here has kept this song's release down until now. Enjoy wegroes.

The Broken Guardrail

Vanquished! I am rolling over bridge now now through a tunnel I have to warn my mom the cars going underground before the signal fades Ive just explained it all to her and shes taking it easy after all shes heard this week she knows the whirls of wind can change can push a hurricane back across the continent Shes gone Im in the tunnel Over head lights the suns behind me now too Im out again into the light but its shadows rolling ahead of me until the river turns and the road turns and I can see on the curves slope a stripe of buttery light reflected bright earth and cedar back at the sunset and the deep pacific green shimmers across the river golden skipping the sun back into my eyes like flat stones.

I recognize this part of the river where I had rafted once as a boy. The raft was a big yellow raft, really big like for an expedition, and sturdy. Led by my dad’s sister or half brother maybe, but both my parents were there, and their mountaineering friends; they were like parachute adventurers then just dropping into the world for an afternoon or a week and pack up and back to the city; once had literally jumped with skis out of hovering helicopter onto unmarked downhill peaks, down and up. And my two brothers of course also rafted with us. We boys did some paddling but mostly played with plastic animal warriors. When the raft flipped over, capsizing suddenly with a burst or a jerk like a rage upsetting a dinner table, some of my favorite of those little toys were lost under the river. A military style cargosized rescue copter’s twirling teetering blades pulled at the air which fearing the swinging beams grasped tight to raft which came loose from the water startling the wind and we dropped just as the shock had lifted us but bottom up into the waves. Somebody told me a driver had leapt his vehicle off the highway over the cliff at river’s edge and the giant helicopter was there to carry that driver and his passengers to a hospital. I looked into the river which was muddy like a tea, searching for my little beasts and a fallen snorkel. When I did look up I saw a great dented boat, apparently crushed by the careening vehicle, its windscreen split and shattered. But it appeared the car itself had drowned and I saw the helicopterists hop from a long rope ladder into a nickel colored raft, while state police gathered above near the broken guardrail. I recall the water felt warm like soup but reeds or grass and fish bothered my legs. And why didn’t we just right our raft and go on? And sometime I realized the broken boat was a truck, a Chevrolet maybe, so mangled and angular, its canopy so collapsed, its hood squeezed to a prow; I mistook it for a water craft.

Crossing a wide break in the trees where the river comes right along the highway, along bends around the mountains, I look for that spot where the truck crashed years ago, to see if I can identify it from up here above the road. I’m also trying to imagine riding through these valleys back the other way. I know I passed like that just a few days ago, but it was night and I sleeping. I hadn’t seen it in any color. I pretend to go off on monologues about the places I pass and know. It is glorious feeling these places, being by the Yakima river, being on the edge of the continent with a full continent to go again. But that of course is also the sadness.

So as I drive now I’m looking in my imagination for the forward ride to the West as I make its way in reverse East along Route 90. I know these slopes these bends these signs these trees, even better than I will know the flat hills and farms and orchards that follow, and I want to tell someone, tell them what little there is that this has to do with me. This remains the place I am from. If it is an outer reach of it, it is still where I spent hikes and carwindow views when I was much younger, and where I will always envision the birthplace of man to have been like. My companion is gone. Christine Lagorio flew to San Francisco this morning. I drove her to the airport in my dad’s van. I drove back to my dad’s house thinking about Seattle rolling through its southern industrial end, separated only by the freeway from residential South Seattle — our own South Bronx South Side South Central North Dallas East St Louis West Savannah West Phila District of Columbia — its shipping yards its train yards and old airfields and new ballfields. I had a vision of myself with a radical freedom, the kind of emancipation broken loose by a disaster that severs you from all your dependents, addresses, addressers, appointments; the freedom to stay where you are or go wherever you want. So several exchanges of phone calls I’m driving this Saturn something, I’ve lifted my dad from work in his van with my packed bags in it and explained all on the way way out past the airport so I could drive this car for free to Hampton, Virginia, birthplace of Allen Iverson, and I’ve seized this perhaps because it must be right now to succeed this is a moment of action — literally includes a rush-hour race through downtown Seattle and far to the south before the Driveaway Service closes — the seizure’s victim this sudden end to the Seattle moment. My hours of boundless freedom closed, I am bound in the foster Saturn with my dad and Seattle behind me going exactly where I’ve already been. Taking Christine’s place beside me now is myself. And there being no one else, I tell myself stories.

I mentioned this feeling of jettisent free agency. I was like an ant whose hill is demolished by a step on the bluff. Like a crab lifted off the beach. I found myself in Seattle with no timetable, no contracts and few possessions. The architecture of my journey has been pulled off the river and dumped upside down. My meager toys scattered at the basin. This morning I rushed through those hilly streets, green even as the high summer sun gleams off skyscrapers, roared up Aurora, high above the canal— there are moments like these when the spirit seems to calcify and I feel not, like so often, in the world, but I feel myself moving on the world, a body moving at the surface of reality, apart from its trappings, illusions and debts. You must remember to remember because at times I will be prone, I know, and it is a shame, to forget to express that this journey is one of body and its vehicles, that its proportions will always be mansized, not godlike except when gods are humans, not universal except in the constellational sense, that is that every point or vertice connects to every other. But this spiritual carriage of body through time and place is always contained within the vessel of myself. This is a study of the body, as Henry Miller says the Greeks studied the body, eternalizing the spirit with human proportion, but a spirit that nevertheless swallows the whole world. At the moment of absolute emancipation, at which my arms and legs extend throughout this country, the world, as it tries to close itself to me, I can with the movement of my foot on a gas pedal convert all that energy into action, into transformation. This bright blue morning I might concede to stay in Seattle, to live with my dad perhaps rent free, survive on the propulsion of my writing. Or return to Missoula by bus, but strand myself there like the settlers who founded the place in that cauldron on the edge of the Rocky Mountains, and successive generations who found themselves similarly on the world. Might abandon the bar at Park Avenue, that safely expendable job. I might board a plane back to New York, where my Jersey City lease is up in little more than a month. Wasn’t the rent cheap on Capitol Hill? Might pay for the car, might save —this awareness swells as you chase the sun to the West. Something about the shadows change, the angle of the sun, but it has risen with the rising dusk all along my way toward the coast, this feeling that I might do anything, that every element of my carriage into the future is unstable. I read a comment a while ago by a critic whose name I never noticed, about minimalism. It said movements in art by nature head toward the edge of a cliff and inevitably must turn back and walk down from the edge. But I exclaim why not jump over the brim? Why is it not even in the conversation? Not a suicidal plummet but a leap into the air —a leap! The same muscle spring as pressing the accelerator. My heart is in the future nearly all the time and this trip is designed to spread tales and tie roots for later vision, but it has only until now led me through past places. Enough of the gravestones and dreams. My experience is a pillow and I am inside the fluff, tearing at its seams. Now I drive under the greening dark of twilight first to Missoula to extinguish the deceased.

Yesterday my mom was in Seattle. She’s still there I guess. She’s been up in Skagit country where I was born, and had a ticket from SeaTac to Detroit. It’s a coincidence she came to the city just as my path spiraled through. Otherwise she and my dad wouldn’t have crossed at all. It’s my dad’s town now, but he was happy to let me drive her downtown in his van. A museum visit and a walk on the waterfront with Christine. We two slept in my dad’s bed when my mom called, left her purse in the van. He and the van were at his girlfriend’s place; that’s why we’re in his bed. No answer there; adults sleep. Her flight was in the morning too, earlier than Christine’s. My dad got a late start. Thus the day began.

Beyond the Cascades I am without tales to tell myself. I don’t really know these fields. A peculiar smoke rises from somewhere its smell invades the air they highways flat and I cant see ahead into the night. I am bound, bound to bring this car to its destination, bound now to live in some loft in Brooklyn: have just this afternoon, while riding the fast dash to this car with time to take me everywhere, committed over the phone to a Bushwick apartment. I am thwarted, my agency now as much imagined as the opposite journey into the Pacific mountains, the roadside cedars, the red boulders, the river still golden with the drowning sun, its ghost now forever unavenged, its tale undetailed. I am defeated. Once believed invincible, I find myself down, oddly dominated, denied — but not destroyed. I am not destroyed — it is invigorating; I have new wheels, new legs for a new jaunt. This is how I am vanquished. I have thrown my arc at the Pacific and it rebounded me, sent me bouncing the other way. Night is fallen and I reach the end of flat East Washington. I am now on the deadly dark curves, reaching after 90, which may have done in my last chariot but Missoula awaits and I push the curves, dodge oncoming headlights. Into the freeing mountain darkness. Every command in my mind at sunrise at sea level is now distant as the wet Sound, where the road might turn suddenly and blindly as the day.

McSweeneys McGriddles

Dave Eggers dropped by town recently. Of course he used to live in Brooklyn so that isn’t such a big deal. The founding branch of his publishing house is here, and the fledgling second home of his youth writing centers. Eggers arrived for a fundraiser for the same tutoring hall, 826NYC, at its secret Park Slope hideout, the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. Aspiring literary moguls filled the seats and the standing room for an adult seminar with the symmetrically male and female lumps on either side of Chicago curly-shock framing California smile and downcast eyes; these three the 826 panel on Writing and Publishing the Novel, though the main draw was the brush with celebrity the McSweenies hosted for just $50 a head.

Never mind that most of the audience never read “You Shall Know Our Velocity”, Eggers’ only novel, or that once long ago the Staggering Genius mined our tender sides with his admissions of guilt about profiteering his family’s tragedy or that serious would-be novelists might have benefited more from an equally expensive but certainly earnest full house had the names of the panelists been unannounced. We’ve got to hand it to Eggers for creating such a valuable demonstration of his business model for franchising himself off the stakes of his publishing and movie contracts. Eggers has discovered precisely the gold mine that helped editorially and financially liberate rap music in its day of popular growth, the legacy of ownership against indentured artistry driven by the recording and publishing industries.

Fuck you. I know hip hop didn’t invent labor ownership. Examples range from United Artists to United Airlines to lately-noticed Ray Charles’ contract demand for his own master recordings. But somewhere between Death Row and Bad Boy rap realized it had something to sell to the mainstream in the very performance of artist-control; you can make money putting out your friends because your fans will buy their stuff. Ideally, you can bring up your whole community, whether it’s a block in Atlanta or your literary web journal. Once you have your own independent house, you can publish yourself and whatever you want, as in No Limit Soldiers, or you can break into other niches, like Rocawear. And the best thing for collared white typists who don’t have even have rek to protect is there’s nothing illegal or unscrupulous about it; it’s not misogynistic if you pimp yourself. Will we see a D. Eggers sneaker line soon? When does Lil Toph get his own book deal?

Again, that’s all well and good. Fuck I can’t wait to do it myself. You don’t have to be a fan of Jay-Z to recognize this artist entrepreneur shit is the way out. What the fuck were you going to do? Sign up with another gallery? Take your book out on tour? Play in that pro sports league forever? I know indy stuff seems kind of faky for capitalizing now but what else is revolution if not seizing power? McSweeneys played a valuable role in popularizing free internet publishing and exploring antiformulae for online literature. The educational programs and charity contributions are a useful product and double as an investment: a literate youth buoys the publishing market. Plus there’s a farm system. By all accounts “Happy Baby” is delightful. And “Rising Up and Rising Down” may be founded on the cheesy golden rule but as a chronicle of contemporary violence it’s the most necessary publication in years. McSweeneys is delivering itself to acclaim probably more swiftly than Eggers planned, but he’s right there with his name behind a book often enough to look convincing. Of course there’s the work with the kids. Building an operable organization independent of the publishing ensures a stable nonprofit to anchor further production experiments. As a web journal McSweeneys is seldom provocative. A smattering of contoured critique occasionally populates the Believer’s pages, amid the clutter of McSweeneys inbreeding and Eggers hustlers-in-league. But there was this one cover back in November…

A full-page John Kerry portrait illuminated by a halo of popsicles. Nine times the size of the usual illustrations, which traditionally share the front with three or four other artists, writers or images on a four-color tic-tac-toe square. The Kerry cover tipped the McSweenies as more than uninventive, adoring democrats, but as peddlers of a mythos in the form of political inclusion for subscribers. McSweeneys front page itself now cultivates pie-throwing as often as anything literary or particularly funny. The web journal is today more or less a synergistic portal to other McSwys/826/Believer ventures and events, the way porn sites funnel you to the paid members-only section. That is, instead of engendering social mobilization, Eggers has aligned himself more readily for mobilizing consumers toward his empire’s expansion projects. This is a structure for resourcing power verily similar to the republican party’s. McSweeneys literally sells itself to its constituents, growing more and more and more entrenched—as omnibroadcast as a political party, devouring its bloc, digesting its own tail with startling efficiency. That is what a political party does; it raises money for its own survival, and in strengthening its reach, empowering its investors, it reinforces its resources, capital resources. None has performed so well or so directly as today’s republicans judging by their swift sweeps last summer. It’s a fucking wonder the party doesn’t give up politics altogether and just get rich hosting fancy dinners, except —shit oh! I fucking forgot its donors want to rule the world. So why bugger Eggers about his attention to which strategies succeed these days? That’s how convergent evolution works. It’s how your favorite NBA team finally gets a title next year. Eggers’ capital is essentially artistic enthusiasm and the McSweeneys platform is awful benign. The most dramatic measure proffered by Eggers so far is a something like volunteer pyramid-building; and even the Kerry annunciation stands for little less than piddly reserve enthusiasm.

So what the shit? Eggers probably isn’t a jerk. At worst he’s a dork with too many people who’d pay to see him talk about writing. Jonathan Lethem, one of the lumps Eggers joined on the novel panel, is a repeated novelist and a Brooklyn product, and even he doesn’t draw SRO readings around here. I should give Dave a break. Fuck, almost all his family’s dead. It’s not like he’s going to shut down half of Manhattan in September or invade a country. But this motherfucker sticks in my craw. I didn’t really know why till I was walking through the park the other day. All those orange curtains were still up, all over the paths, and I heard that whole thing cost the artist more than twenty million dollars … and he and his wife raised all the funds themselves. If the fucking Christos can bring in so much cash just to erect metal poles in Central Park, without charging me a damn thing—Jeanne-Claude pulled the bills by selling copies of blueprints and sketches of the project, and photos and marginalia from earlier Christo works, privately to buyers and supporters—surely Dave Eggers can raise enough money for a literary academy without sharecropping his artist-politic movement to struggling writers who want nothing more than a glimpse of him. That’s how Alex Rodriguez supplements his income, asshole. Knitting a lattice of creative energies to put out ever-widening arrays of art is one thing. Trawling it behind your vessel like a wide-cast fisherman is another. It’s no fun reading hardcovers anyway.

Here Is The Garbage

This is an experiment with a site that will host audio files uploaded from my computer for free. It's not an original song, but I believe it's in the public domain. A friend described my interpretation of the song as a song for homosexual children. That description was not meant as a compliment. I took it as one.

You can go to http://www.purevolume.com/sbakken and listen to it in the "PUREPLAYER" on the right side. It's the song called "LondonB". You can't download it, nor should you, the option isn't working. You'll just have to listen to the stream. But it should sound a bit better than my usual over-the-phone posts.

Please keep in mind that I just mucked about with recording one night starting with a two part harmony that turned into four. Then I added one guitar part, then some vocals, then another guitar part with effects and finally a percussion track. It's not anything I'll probably ever use. I posted it because I remembered trying the site once when it wasn't working. It is now working so I wanted to throw something up and try it again.

Believe you me, I realize a couple of notes are a bit off. And I'm sure we'll have complaints about off-beat percussion. Don't let any of this explanation discourage you from criticizing it or telling me what you think about it in the comments.

I've decided not to post anything original that may go on my EP until it's complete. I'm currently grappling with my employer to get a few days off to finish it.

Enjoy! Have Fun!

SANPELLEGRINO

Of inferior quality, not complete, quite possibly a stolen melody that I can't quite place, but still the first piece of music ever posted on KeyChange. Have fun!

Balls Atop

The name's Balls--Balls Norwegian. And right now I'm here on top of a snow-capped mountain. My crew and I have been climbing for a good three days--spiking ice. That's what us familiar with the terrain call climbing.

Right now I'm considering what my poor Marcia must be thinking. I told her as I mounted the helicopter to fly to the base of this old snowy bastard that I'd never see her again. I had to tell her then cause otherwise she'd've tried to stop me. I told her that I'd be sacrificing myself to the mountain god--to nature. I'd been considering jumping to my death. What better way than to go out on top eh?

But now I'm realizing there's still so much more out there for me. There's still a lot of things out there for Balls Norwegian. I think I'll call Marcia once I get back down and take a warm shower. My God, I can't wait for a warm shower. I'll probably spend a good hour in a hot shower. And then I'll wear a robe and drink some coffee. Then I'll call my poor Marcia.

Stage Directions

Lars embarks into the room. Paul is on the couch with his computer. Lars speaks to his cell phone. He doesn’t know what he’s doing for the game. He just woke up. He puts the phone down and down he goes on the couch.

Paul to the kitchen making coffee. He leaps in the air then leans intensely on the fridge.

“Wait that’s fucking crazy!”

Paul brings Lars a cup of coffee and sits by his computer. “That’s fucking crazy. That’s what that dream was; I dreamt this when I was sixteen.”

“What did you dream?”

“I had a dream with Lars and there was something about football. And I was doing just what I’m doing now.”

“What living here?”

“No working on a web site like I am here or something with trees and branches just like on this screen. And then Lars and the Super Bowl or something football.”

Lars is laughing.

Paul says: “Do you want pancakes.”

Lars waits. “I mean I would eat pancakes if you made them but I don’t really care if I have pancakes.”

“Okay well I’m going to make pancakes.” He begins to mix pancakes.

Lars lies on the couch. He is in sweatpants and loose sweatshirt. Paul moves in the kitchen in slippers. He goes to the sink.

“I came home from that party last night and crushed like 15 cockroaches here. I pounded them here. One after the other. I think I woke Ken. It’s fucking nasty.”

“Bump Bump,” Lars says. “Had to murder ‘em. Ken was here?”

“He was sleeping. Here since you’re going to have some pancakes do you mind doing the dishes while I cook?”

“See that’s why I’m not that invested in the pancakes. I would enjoy them but I don’t want to have to move all that much now.”

“I just remember having a big breakfast with many roommates and everyone working together on the meal.”

“I know I would like that too but it’s that for now I can’t get so involved. I have to sit here for a bit. I don’t even care if I eat for a few hours this early. Here I’ll wash just the things, the pans for you to grill on.”

Lars goes to the sink.

“You had that dream last night?”

“When I was sixteen.”

“I was in your dream when you were sixteen?”

Lars is laughing. They eat.

“Ken seems better right?”

“Maybe I don’t know.”

“But he’s like in a better mood it seems. He’s not as angry or listless. He joked with Lucas about Richard’s work on the golf course. And we all talked about the environment at MoMA.”

“He stills seems like a bit of a guest here.”

“He’s done with the chemo now though. Isn’t he? Now he can do things. I expect everything will be cool soon.”

“What makes you think he’s in a better mood?”

”Just when I saw him the other day, the first time after he got back, when you were recording. He seemed more engaged. More interested in what happens now. I was going to say something but I haven’t had a chance to speak with you yet.”

“I’ve been going to Tommy’s to play music more often. I don’t want to disturb Ken too much. You can hear everything through that wall between our rooms.”

They quit the food. Light a joint.

“Yeah I bet. I was going to move my typewriter from right by that wall. I figure if I’m going to use it it’s going to include late at night. And the head of his bed is right there.”

“There’s something unsettling about Ken. I feel odd wearing his slippers.”

“After he moved in before, before he left, he started showing Richard and I these paintings he was making on packaging plastic and he was saying how much he thought they sucked and it was just a piece of shit for now but he’s just trying it out and so on.”

“When I told him about the work I’m doing for the web site he was like you mean you accepted a job you weren’t qualified for?”

“Really? But I thought he didn’t seem as grouchy this time.”

“I thought it was strange. At the gallery even yesterday and then he just came back and watched videos, didn’t want to come see the party at all.”

“What was the party like?”

”It was only okay. Not that many girls. And April’s friend didn’t come. I just got really stoned.”

Here comes Ken through the door. The boys offer the joint. Ken won’t have it.

“What girl?”

“This tall beautiful girl Lebanese or something. We were talking two nights ago, April’s friend.”

Ken stands at the approach to the room. He wears a small hat over his skull and narrow jeans.

“By the time I came back there wasn’t anybody anywhere,” says Lars.

“Yeah your phone message was really funny. Especially the part about the latest edition of us at 3. Here listen to this:”

Paul holds his phone. It says:

YO PAUL WHAT’S UP WHAT’S UP I’M JUST CALLING
TO SEE IF YOU’RE STILL OUT AND ABOUT OR MAYBE
YOU’RE TRYING TO GET A GOOD NIGHTS SLEEP LIKE
MOST AMERICANS IN ANTICIPATION OF THE SUPER BOWL.
IT’S LIKE 6 IN THE MORNING AND I’M WALKING
AWAY FROM WORK. MAYBE YOU’RE STILL PARTYING TOO HARD
TO HEAR THE PHONE RING AND IF SO CALL BACK.
BUT I’M NEARLY IN THE TRAIN STATION. THE MAIN
THING THAT HAPPENED TONIGHT WAS
I ACCIDENTALLY GAVE YOUR PHONE NUMBER TO
THIS FAT BLACK GIRL AT THE BAR. I MEAN
I GAVE IT TO HER ON PURPOSE BUT I WAS TRYING
TO GIVE HER A FAKE NUMBER AND I ACCIDENTALLY
GAVE HER YOURS. SHE WAS CRAZY. BOMBAYED
SHE SAID CAUSE SHE WAS DRINKING BOMBAY SAPPHIRE
AND SHE WANTS TO WATCH THE SUPER BOWL
WITH ME TOMORROW. SHE LIKES THE EAGLES.
SO SHE MIGHT CALL YOU. I THOUGHT I’D WARN YOU
BECAUSE IF SHE DOES DON’T TELL HER
YOU’RE MY ROOMMATE OR SHE WONT STOP CALLING.
ANYWAY SORRY ABOUT THAT. I UH UH WELL
WHAT’S UP WITH YOUR NIGHT? DID YOU MAKE OUT WITH GIRLS?
DID DEVIOUS SEMANTICS PLAY? DID YOU EVEN GO
TO THAT PARTY? I’M GOING TO CALL YOU AGAIN IN CASE
THE MUSIC IS TOO LOUD OTHERWISE I SUPPOSE ALL THAT
AND MORE ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF LARS AND PAUL
WAKE UP AT 3 IN THE AFTERNOON. PEACE OUT

Lars is smiling. Ken smiles and stands in the approach.

Lars begins setting a chessboard.

“Is a big black woman going to call me?”

“Maybe. I gave her your number.”

“I’m going to give the phone to you.”

“Ken do you play chess?”

“I know the rules. Are you any good?”

“Yes. I usually beat Paul. I haven’t played Richard yet.”

“I don’t like games where if you figure out a certain technique you can just win it.”

“Chess isn’t really like that. Someone who knows some strategy has an advantage but there’s no key to winning like tic tac toe. It’s more like football.”

“I think the field is too small and the motions too restrained. It’s formulaic.”

“It’s not though; the basic principles are central control and covering angles. But the best results come from unpredictable play.”

“I don’t like it.”

Paul says: “Where are you coming back from Ken?”

“Oh I left early and decided to go outside for a while longer. I was having a hard time sleeping. I feel fatigued but I have a kind of itchy nervous reservoir of energy I can’t relax. And I could hear the music from down the hall all night. I was miserable. I was having a tough time and I finally slept.

“Then Paul’s phone started beating.

“It bumped for a while. I couldn’t sleep. I left my bed and tried to eat a sandwich I had from yesterday but I had no appetite. I walked outside. It was light already and warm but I had misery in my eyes and it was on the walls of the neighborhood.

“The dirty mounds of snow between the sidewalk and the street were melting and flooding toward the intersection. Humped on the edge of the curb they were flat in the light, greyish brown and falling into dark puddles, or channels really, heading down the street. The water was like in caves, almost loud as an echo, but everything else grew light and opened up. Everything else caught the new sunlight and relayed it.

“Kids were up early, tossing a football across the street by the driveway. Splashing errantly in the wet delta of the driveway. They wore bundles like snails but it wasn’t cold. I passed those kids. Like I say the walls of the street were bright but miserable, like a misery of desertification, a slow emigration of rooted life and with it tendrils keeping the landscape from disintegrating.

“I crossed Brooklyn and as the day grew I saw more and more people in the streets. Families went to church. I saw Puerto Rican grandmothers herding children. Black men and women lined Graham Avenue to enter a chapel there. Everywhere was warm and snow disappeared with the people heading to church. But it was so early I seldom saw a car. Everywhere was quiet even with the people. Over by Havermeyer gangs of Hassids, children in uniforms and curls, walked broadly by. I followed the rapid melting streams to the river.

“There is a kind of feeling I get sometimes and I don’t think its something I’ve had just you know in the recent time, where if I’m walking its as if trees or bushes keep striking me in the face and across the chest, and winding up my legs. I don’t really feel the pain like that, like a whip or scrape in the face, but it’s like the annoyance, the disturbance of branches reaching across and wrapping me up, a kind of auric bramble. And if I have always felt that I’ve been made aware of it by this thing, I think. And it’s not just when I’m moving but that interfering reaching at me, getting in my way, even when I sit down or stand in the kitchen. But here I was walking between all these old storage yards, warehouses, shiphouses, sheds. Sticklike trees punching out of corners in fences and where the walls met the cement. The street was wet with the flowing snow but the walk and the trees, branches, the corners of walls, the buildings were dry with the winter. Drowned and dried out. These trees were scrappy, weedlike, reaching from cracks. Rooted in cracks, a cracked shell of a city. And I was reminded, even as I felt it still in my mind, of the feeling of those branches halting me.

“The trickles of water disappeared as the roadway disappeared into the fragments of stones and bricks at the edge where the water reappeared as the dark deep river. The branches were upon me as I pushed my way past a wire fence but there were no more real trees here, just yellow grass out of the mud leaning at the river.

“I hopped along the wet broken beach, the glass and block beach.

“I stood on some damp pile, leapt onto old dock planks. Fighting the branches. My sneakers sunk lightly into the soil-soaked woodwork. Snows had left their deposits and rejoined the river. I was a fiber of ice, a crystal of water, held in place by a wrecked bough from the earth. The landscape will be carried off, bright and miserable. I touched my hat on my head.

“The ecology of dry land, surveying the place because the place is a niche to fill, is an ecology of defragmentation. The land is swept from above and excavated below by man or crooked water, undermined, brought back into the water. Like computer files. Whole grain to grain alcohol. Everything consumable, the carboniferous world broadcasts like digital music, amplified by its reducibility. Those godlike tentacles don’t reach to the water as I’d thought; they are from the water pulling into the deep. Cast out like Super Bowl advertising. Exploding like a tumor and then wrung out like a narcotized mind. The soaked detritus drains to the deep. The deep atomic core.

“I wept.

“I dove in, splashing water to the shore. Everything fills above me.”

This Shit

A dream. I'm out of town somewhere with my father. How you can be out of town in a dream I don't know. But we are.

We are staying in a house. Staying at a house because we are not at home. If we were at home I'd say, "We are at home." But we are not.

We're staying at a house. There's some sort of goal or plan or engagement that awaits us outside of the house for which we are currently preparing.

I've glanced into a room across the hall from me and see my father. His hair is damp and a towel is wrapped around his waist. He is wearing his glasses and applying deodorant and aftershave while looking in the mirror.

I am in the bathroom in the hall. The bedroom my father is staying in must have its own bathroom attached. Mine must not. That must be why I'm in the bathroom in the hall.

The thing about this house, well I haven't seen the rest of it, but it's...

Well, it's like the houses some of our relatives had—our relatives from the older generation. My father's parents', uncles' and aunts' houses or condos.

They're clean places, sterile places. There are always tablecloths on the tables and candles lit for dinner at these houses. Children don't and did not live in these homes. Accept maybe in the one unfinished room in the basement where there's always a cabinet near the floor filled with worn-out toys. The toys were scuffed and some were dirty, but nothing else in the house was. And you had to put the toys back in the cabinet when you were done and the matriarch of the house always preferred if you played in that room. Leave the toys in that room. Don't take them out.

The house was like those houses and condos we stayed in when we took trips from Illinois to California or Oregon. We'd drive straight through. But Mom would wrap presents, little games and things, for my brother and me. We got to open one every three or four hours during the trip if we "behaved". Those trips were always during the summer. Christmas was seven months past and five months away. I'd heard friends talk about half-birthdays. Those car rides were half-Christmases.

But I'm not a kid now, I'm my age. We could have taken the trip last week in conscious life. But I know we didn't drive. I see carry-on luggage in my father's room. He'd packed less than he would have if we'd driven. I need to go get my soap and shampoo out of my suitcase.

I know we didn't drive, we flew. But where's Mom? Where's Marco? His name is Mark. Well, his first name is Marcus, but he spells the shortened version with a kay. But I've called him Marco ever since we played Marco Polo for the first time. We probably played it for the first time in one of these wealthy relative's pools. With their kids' kids that were sooo lucky.

But none of that matters since I'm in the bathroom right now. I'm in the bathroom with this terrible kind of wallpaper plastered on its walls. I seem to remember this wallpaper from Grandma's old house. It has a gold background and there are these vine-ish designs on it growing out of the carpet on the ground. Who carpets their bathroom? Older relatives from my father's side do. Whoever put the wallpaper up made sure everything was straight but made mistakes lining the pattern up horizontally at the corners. The vines are green. But there's only just enough blue added to yellow to make these vines' green. Yellow-orange flowers sprout from the vines. The flowers either clash with the background or they match. It's a dream; it doesn't quite make sense or matter.

All the cabinets in this bathroom are stained dark brown. And the mirror isn't just a mirror but four mirror panels that each act as a door for a section of the medicine cabinet. The outside edges of the sectioned mirror are framed in wood, stained the same dark brown. The mirrored doors on the medicine cabinet are the ones that you press in until the little latch inside lets go and they pop open.

And I've done just this to one of the mirrored doors and see the shelves inside and on one of the shelves I see a bottle. I see a plastic bottle. The wedge-shaped kind that stands upright on top of its cap. I see a bottle of green-tea face wash. I close the medicine cabinet door and look towards the other room at my father.

Holy shit. I know where we are.

Now he's sitting on the bed in there and the TV is on in that room. The comforter is pink with turquoise wisps and flowers and flourishes. Are we in a hotel? Dad looks up from putting on socks and looks at me and raises his eyebrows and makes his mouth into a perfectly straight line. I puff my cheeks and roll my eyes and wag my head from side-to-side at him. He looks at the TV and I shut the bathroom door.

I don't want Dad to see me invading privacy. I lock the doorknob and walk back to turn on the shower. Would she let it clash like this in here?

The bathroom is longer than it is wide. The cabinets with the counter on top and a sink built in, the medicine cabinet/mirror above them and the toilet are all on the left side when you face the back. There are towel racks and bars holding damp towels on the opposite wall. At the back of the bathroom is a bathtub with a shower head and a shower curtain. The toilet is between the sink and the bathtub. The shower curtain is either off-white or gold. Everything really does clash in there.

Standing outside of the bathtub I turn its handles, adjust them so the water runs hot as I like it and pull that rod on the faucet. Now water is coming out of the showerhead. I press open all of the mirror panel doors starting at the left and moving in sequence towards the right. All of the doors swing open to the left except the farthest right which swings open to the right. The backsides of the left-most and right-most doors are also mirrored. I walk back to the left side of this contraption and look at myself in the mirror on backside of the left-most door. I mouth, "Don't do this," to myself knowing I will. At least I think twice.

Moisturizers, that mouthwash and toothpaste mixture, tweezers, Q-tips, Kleenex, that deodorant also infused with green-tea, Sudafed, that acne stuff that burns at first, that lotion, that lilac-scented spray.

Holy shit. I know where we are.

I've looked through the first three sections of the medicine cabinet. I don't want to keep going. My stomach is empty. My stomach is full of nervous and nothing. I'm having trouble swallowing. I have a ball of air in my throat. I don't want Dad to see me doing this. I don't want to keep going.

---

You know...that's the thing with dreams. I'm not sure I want to tell you the rest. That's my unconscious. My neurological privates. Vulnerable, open, exposed. Fleshy. Open to attack. You sometimes dream things you don't even want to tell yourself about. That's all the shit. The brown shit that embarrasses you. That's for me to know and get over. I defeat it myself or create an identity that doesn't have or think this shit.

But you've come this far so I'd better deliver. Otherwise you may not ever listen to one of my stories again.

I mean I've told you that I haven't talked to her for months. And that I'm over it. And I am. I'm not lying to you. I'm not that. I guess there's just a little bit of shit left over in the unconscious that needs to be cleaned up.

---

There are four mirrored doors that cover four sections of the medicine cabinet, and I've looked over the first three and closed their doors immediately after. And the mirrors are fogging up and it's humid and I'm sweating.

And my father knocks on the bathroom door.

All of the muscles in my body, below my chin, flex simultaneously and I swallow the lump in my throat and I bite my tongue. He knocks again.

"We gotta go in 20 minutes so you should get out soon."

I lean my head behind the shower curtain, careful not to rustle it, and yell, "Yea OK."

I am looking at the mirror on the third door which is shut. I stick my tongue out. It hurts, but there's no blood. Nothing serious. I look at myself in the eyes and grit my teeth while inhaling through my nose. Then I raise my eyebrows and open my eyes wide and curl my lips into my teeth. And I'm making this face at myself. And my self is making this face at me. And I stop looking at myself and glance over at the shelves exposed by the fourth door. And I see them.

That deodorant, that hair pomade shit, that Chapstick, that face wash, that shaving cream, that after shave. These are products I use or have used in the past. But I know these are not mine. They're his. They're hers. They're theirs.

Holy shit. I know where I am.

I slam the fourth door shut. It is loud. The entire cabinet shudders. Things fall down inside. I expect a knock. It comes.

"You all right in there Steven? You really should hurry it up."
"Yea, yea. I'm almost done."

I look in the mirror and notice that my hand is clasping my cheeks. I'd better be sure to put everything back in its proper place. They'll know I looked through. And that's what they'd expect. They'll make that suction-click sound pulling their tongue from behind their front teeth and they'll say, "I can't believe him," and they'll widen their eyes and part their lips after the em for effect.

Holy shit.

The shower's still running and the steam is billowing out from above the shower curtain. The steam runs across the ceiling with little smoky legs and feet.

I start from the left again and open all the mirrored doors. Click-click. Click-click. Click-click. Click-click. A couple of her things fall out. Most of his things fall out of the fourth section. Their things fall out onto the yellow Formica counter and some fall into the sink.

Another knock. I expect it.

"Come on Steve! What's going on in there? We really have to get going pretty quick."
"Nothing, nothing. I'm almost through."

I realize each "nothing" must catalyze his suspicions. I put the things back where I think they were and I can't remember their exact places and they'll know and now I'm touching THEIR things and what AM I doing?

They were nice enough to let us stay here on our trip. Where are we going? Why are we here? Why is my shit in these cabinets? That's not my shit. My shit is still in the suitcase.

I'm doing my best to re-place everything correctly, but I don't remember where it all goes. I'm found out. I'm fucked. I'm not actually found-out in the dream, that's just the sense I have. All of the mirrored cabinet doors are closed. Everything is standing or lying down in the cabinet. Not everything is exactly in its original position, but everything's close and everything's there.

I step into the shower. Just to wet myself so it looks like I've been in the shower. I get out. I dry off. It’s a dream. Skips and jumps. I'm following my father out the door of the house. Now I'm awake. Conscious.

---

Now don't fucking psychoanalyze me—I'll take care of that myself. Just don't to my face at least. Well, I guess just don't do it right now. I mean, I told you the whole story for a reason. Obviously I want your opinion at some point.

What the fuck is this thing? I think I'm disrupting her stability in some mystical way? Fucking self-involved narcissist.

I mean, SHE wasn't in the dream. It was just me and the idea of her and the idea of her with the other. Consciously, I remember the relationship like I remember a trip to summer camp. I'm only remembering the good parts. It's not like I want it back, but I do remember it and get tender. Not crying but saying, "God damn. That was pretty great at the time." But for some reason there's still this shit in my dreams.

Edification

i'd really rather not link things but
i think i'd have to plagiarize otherwise