Ready Made

In bed that Saturday morning, I felt like a ready made sculpture with her lying next to me. Something simple, but elegant, like Duchamp's Fountain, only we were more than porcelain, just shy of perfect. We were two people locked together like a pair of shoes tossed in a corner, their laces caressing their soles. I didn't move for fear of disturbing the serenity of our sculpted, affectionate stillness; I just smiled and, every now and then, maybe every five minutes or so, pressed a gentle kiss on her cheek, her neck, the bridge of her nose, her lips.

The six o'clock sun shown through Boston into my bedroom, decking us in hues of gold, lighting my navy comforter and casting the fine silhouettes of our arched backs, shoulder blades, and legs up on my wall. 

I hesitated the calm and moved to put some music on. Radiohead rippled through the golden room, and with my eyes closed, I fell further into the dream of being a sculpture with her. Maybe we were two pencils, one lying at a slight angle over the other. Perhaps we were the pages of a weathered book, together through years of pressure under a pile of other novellas and works of fiction. Or perhaps, ultimately, we were simply two people, affectionately happy in each others' arms on a Saturday morning in February.

Another Dream

The following is another dream I just had. Maybe a daydream, maybe a dozing kind of dream... either way, I just thought this, and I'm trying to write as many subconscious thoughts down as possible, to identify myself.

Imagine a city of canals and black water.

I am stationary on the corner of a bridge and street, peering down a river to a distant point that's not really important. 

On both sides of the river are buildings perhaps six stories tall, maybe more, maybe less, but their windows are dimly lit up by black lights, giving the air a terrifying, dark look.

Reflected of the black waters, there is nothing. No stars, no lights.

But.

I see the ripples become like hair.

Deep black hair, waves of it. And of course it reminded me of your hair, and you told me how you used to have it extremely long. 

I leaned over the edge of the bridge, the concrete must've been ages old, perhaps from an old world city like Dublin or Berlin or Paris or Madrid.

Bits of the rock begin to crumble, but I don't care; because I am peering deep into this pitch black river water that is your hair.

More rock is crumbling off.

Suddenly, milliseconds before I fall, you appeared before me, on the other side of the bridge. You shouted very quickly, "Don't fall off the bridge! Don't fall too quickly into the rivers of my hair!" But of course you shouted it so quickly, it sounded simply like "DERP!" 

As I tumbled down the bridge, I saw you extend your hand as if to catch me, and, amazingly, your pale thin arms almost did, but I fell too quickly.

It was only until after I fell, after I landed in the soft rivulets of your hair and after I was quickly washed downstream like shampoo on to the banks of your neck did I begin to understand what you said.

I fell asleep on your shoulders, the harbor of this city with black lit buildings; and of course, in dreams when you fall asleep, you really wake up.

So I woke up.

I found a sticky note next to my bed with a picture of a city, and a canal and bridge, and in the water was written "The canals of this city know more than the streets and all their infinite cobblestones because the flow of water is a black mirror reflecting the depth of everyone and everything  that's ever peered into it."

A Dream

I had a dream of an abandoned house, and an island with a ferry.

My dream began with me following a friend, or at least I believed it to be a friend, it might've been one of those dream people who has a distinct body and fine details like fingers and tattoos and such, but no face, as dream people often don't.

I was following her through these streets of, initially green trees, lush and rich, then slowly the trees became barren, and dark, then slowly, the trees turned to bombed out brick houses.

I ran after this friend, I still have no idea who it was, and she led me to this house.

In the house there was a terrible green glow, who knows what that means, it's a dream, maybe it's just setting the mood. 

But the next thing I saw was another friend sitting on a bench playing Tetris on an old skool game boy. She was remarkably chill, despite being in a bombed out house. 

Then she turned at me and said "You're looking for someone, aren't you?" I nodded, but I think I must have fainted, or passed out, or maybe my dream just decided it was bored, so it changed things up a bit, because the next thing I know is I woke up on this island which reminded me of Martha's Vineyard.

Pablo Neruda was speaking on a porch somewhere, it must've been Edgartown.

He told me to swim the channel to Woods' Hole, the port on the mainland. If I swam, he said, I would find happiness, a pencil, a book of love poems and infinite pages for writing on, and another person.

I arrived on the shores of the island, near the bridge where a scene from Jaws was filmed, where one of the Kennedy's had been drunk driving and killed a girl, and looked on in the distance, it was a clear day, it might've even been summer, who can tell in a dream, really, you know? But the distance seemed immense, because I couldn't see the port.

But Neruda said I would find happiness, amongst other things, across the shore, should I choose to swim.

But the Ferry seemed mighty tempting.

I took the Ferry.

And as I sat down, I realized everyone on the Ferry was me. They looked just like me, and as I got up to mingle, so did they. One jumped off the boat, and 4 or 5 Me's called out "Man overboard!" However the crew, also Me, didn't do anything.

We kept on going, and I felt sick, as if part of me had died.

Well, I suppose it had.

We came into port, and as I stepped off, the 200 or so Me's on the ship dissipated, and I found myself very alone. 

I never found Neruda's prophetic gifts.

I never found my friend, either, or whoever she was, and I guess that's who I was really looking for in the first place.

I sat down on the shores of Cape Cod, and looked out at the Atlantic. It was very cold, and it felt like a movie, like the end of some hopeless journey, yet ultimately, the atmosphere was clearly that of a place you would take an intimate lover to, as the Atlantic slowly crashed on the shore, and a lighthouse in the distance shone bright in the fading daylight.

I woke up and it was Monday.

Galileo and Us

Galileo's middle finger is on display, somewhere in Italy.

 

Is it odd that I find that poetic? 

The digits that knew the subtleties in glass, and discovered planets in return, are visible from a podium in some museum.

His eyes, having gone blind while under house arrest, are even more intriguing.

The eyes that saw the difference in 4 of Jupiter's moons from his villa in Florence,

that saw the 'Ears' of Saturn, 

and that saw the passing of 4 popes in the Vatican over his lifetime;

became void in his old age - from staring at sunspots, no less.

Is it odd that while I look at my fingers, and yours, I see in them two souls that have measured countless other glasses to discover our own heavenly bodies.

 And when I reflect on our eyes, I can't help but see the brightest stars in the universe of our Solar faces.