yesterday we passed the absolut ice ferris at sea. have you heard of this? fucking wild. its a giant boat, with a ferris wheel in the middle of it, round and round superquickly to the tune of bizarre trombone music, fast ride cymbals, walking basslines. its basically a huge pr thing for absolut vodka, so the place is swarming with girls in bikinis and guys with sloppy haircuts, snoop dogg, martha quinn. we set up a couple of slides and walkways between our boat and theirs, and i was off for the night, so i got to see the icing itself, a completely wild suicidal rite.

the ferris wheel is powered by solar dry ice compression; the exhaust is filtered off through a, you guessed it, vodka filter, off the starboard side, into a cordoned off section of the sea, about a half mile square. the cordons are tied to giant papermache icebergs, inhabited with audioanimatronic penguins, polar bears, etc. and of course, a triangle of subspeakers half in half out of the water, creating bulging eurotrance bassline ripples that involve the hips against their will.

so anyway, after a few hours of ferrising, the sectioned off water becomes a plate of frozen vodka and saltwater, and all the girls in their bikinis go running about, slipping on their bare feet, enjoying the wild contradcition of frozen ice and blazing sun, belly sliding with their mouths open to receive the salted vodka shavings, the men doing body shots, wool hats and melon halves used for impromptu booty curling, zamboni grinding, and the daring sticking their tongues to the teasingly placed metal poles scattered throughout.

its as the sun goes down that the weridness begins. the ferris wheel is shut down, and the delta t's of the chilling night air and the frozen sea begin to interact and lead towards the inevitable and incredible cracking of the ice. on deck, men in parkas sell you buckets of loose snow to mold into snowballs. but careful, careful...if you throw too hard, the legend goes, the ice will stay intact. you must pack the snowball loosely enough that the snow is still flowing through the air like confetti, held together by the lightest of promises. you can not hurt the ice; you can only fool it into hurting itself. throw the snowball just so, and the ice will begin to itch, and the ice will endanger itself by scratching, leading to the great splashing avalanches of vodka into the sea. cold air rushing towards you from all directions, and sounds like crystal bamboo. the dance party is still raging on the unfrozen ice, and men and women dare each other to stay on as long as they can, some making love on the melting ice as the world crashes about them. until the great spectacle of the final collapses, and the reckless slide into the sea, lost, lost. there are halflit searchlights and drunken rescue attempts, but mostly the passionate deaths are celebrated, even envied.

we are sailing through a hurricane.
storms on giant ships are just about the best thing this life (this cruise ship life, that is) has to offer. everything gets so fucked up. at night i went to sleep to a nice soporific rocking (ps in morning remembered six dreams), but was awakened in the night by crashes: first things in the bathroom, then a bottled water rolling off of my bed. and then, more ominous, the loud metallic far off crashes of more substantial things on the ship tilting. trash cans, chairs, guitar stands. there are so many angles at which the boat may tilt, that the crashes come throughout the night, each precarious potential waiting for its exact wave parameter to actualize its china shop disaster.

walking around is even better. relativity in action: from my inertial frame, the ship moves around me, this leg heavy, this one light. there are long hallways that run almost the entire length of the ship...the best of these on deck 2, crew cabins, tiled floor and harsh flourescent lights and water tight door lips that are drunkenly tripped over often. walking down these halls, you are treated to the oddest visual sight: people walking towards you at an angle, there feet as close to the right wall as possible, and then there bodies obscenely angled to towards the left. it looks positively supernatural. everyone laughs and smiles during storms, at their own idiot balance, and the seasick are urged to eat green apples, for the pectin.

but up top is where its going down, fucking wind spray wave sky ocean killer god power. theres a sun way off in the distance, backlighting these grey death clouds and streaks of wind, one burst of wind creating the waves, another gust ice shaving the spray off of the crest of each wave- sheeeeeeeeex//

and the officers are going nuts, theyre really tense. a group of three security officers up on top deck are wildly flinging tables and chairs into a barracade, yellow caution tape, worried looks to the sky.

theres a lot of this going on: ~~~~~~~

jan says that the other night i was screaming in my sleep. "like animal...animal. waahahah!" he falsettosaid. the dreams that i remember of the night seem fairly innocuous...a bowling match, photographs of small children playing in sinks, a jumprope-style-reversable tuxedo shirt of light blue tree bark. but i also remember a state of half sleep, in which a dream, still flowing, was being observed by my conscious eye for dream journal inclusion. and in the midst of this mental recording, i questioned myself: if i was semiconcious at the moment, did this really count as dreaming?

could this moment of blur have caused my screams? it seems doubtful, but one thing certain is that my recording of my dreams is affecting the dreaming itself. for one thing, a consistent geography is coming to light. a steep forest hill, a vortex of wind and surf, a physics laboratory on a dark cliff, a vast mall, a store for blue dresses and old record players. a labyrinthine house of strangers and drywall, a purple ballroom ship, a german train, a school with hidden closets and bizarre security designs. the characters too have a consistent personality from night to night, both the predictable cast of family, friends and lovers, and more bizarre, the phantoms that i create out of thin night with rich complexity. in the bowling dream of two nights ago, i had to ask a fair hippie sitting on the floor behind me to move over so i would not backhand him with the ball (the pins, giant red dice, were set up five across in a wicked split at the front of the lane). his blond curl shine smiled at me and revealed puzzlement at my activity and sadness at his exclusion, mystification and irritation, but then an internal shift, and finally a compassionate decision and a smile and a scoot scoot scoot so i could execute my spare. this insignificant moment detailed and full of contradiction and humanity.

the evening following the screaming, i was daydreaming on stage and missed the entrance to scotsman jack walkers blitzkreig of miss saigons "why god why". which was really a damn shame, because the beginning is just bass and piano, a really pretty and mysterious rocking Bo to Am thing over an F pedal. (i frantically sandwiched the first three notes into a sickening mockery of a triplet starting somewhere in the middle of the second beat. but by bar 2 i was on the scene). where was i? i dont really remember, because i was trying to remember more details of the previous nights dreams; but the exact nature of the reminiscive investigation was as lost to me as the elusive dream details themselves. a moment of remembering, unremembered. daydreaming of dreaming, recalling the past and forgetting the present, asleep in wakefulness. and a memory and a dream are in the end the same. why god why, he asks, why did god send me this beautiful vietnamese girl on my last night, why now this love, why?

a memory and a dream, the same. both stories in my experience, in my library of thought, that shape my present actions, reasonings and raptures. are these dreams then real? once they are etched into memory, what difference in contribution to my vastness do they have from waking experience? the cause, the intention behind the experiences themsleves is different, clearly, in that i am actually creating the dreams in a more complete way then i create my living experience. but after, when only the memory remains? and why god why am i creating these particular things? does my secret heart know what memories it hungers for, what will keep my velvet belly shining and full?

and then. the next morning, this morning, and the dreams are lost. i am robbed. i have a pretty good method for recalling dreams: since i almost always dream of people i know, i just go through a mental rolodex of everyone ive ever known, starting with the big guns, then aimlessly floating through different phases of my life, recalling faces and names and scents and songs, until a tickle of recall is awake. but this morning, nothing, nothing. my head a closet heap: i still had why god why running through my head (oh but fuck its a good song!), and i was thick with the jack daniels i had shared with the trombone player daniel the night before. (this trombone player, alcoholic, is a sad story that is slowly breaking my heart, by the way, and i dont know what to do). my head was crowded, gas station bright.

so heres what i did: i cleared my mind. ha!
i tried to do this by focusing on the breath, but im honestly just not a very good meditator, and this did not work, still mocking circles of invasive thoughts chased me. instead i focused on a single image. ah, a blackbird. i painted her loving on mind screen, facing left, still, zoomed in on her twitching head, deep eye, caressed her slightly, and then still. stopped the endless modifications that my mind insisted on for thoughts survival. still, still, breath and then spaced out.

images began to float in on the peripherals. i was hoping these images would be of my lost dreams, but they were not. they were new images, unpredictable and vibrant. a red and green tiger, an animated postal golf cart, a tall glass of passion punch. if i looked to one of these imgaes, the bird and her steel grey background would tear, vertical diagonal swatches of her realitys fabric exactosliced away by my inattention. in refocus, the new images to drift past half seen. and thus i allowed myself to only discern partial impressions of these images that were being created completely by my mind.

to only know some of what i thought.

now, was this dreaming?

and why god why, are you giving me this beautiful vietnamese girl on my last night, why this love now love? do you know what my velvet belly hungers for?

*********

in the morning, i stopped at the mess before going to the beach (oh yes, im in bermuda). i had missed breakfast, but was hoping to find a croissant or yogurt in one of the forbidden stainless steel cupboards of the pantry.

and what do think i found? belly growling, and there, on the counter, under a silver lid, a plate of untouched, still warm, eggs benedict.

why god why?//this velvet hunger//benedictus deo//

finally started that dream journal. four nights running strong. right upon waking, work it all out, get it down. the reason behind this, is, i feel like i have another life, a really rich and amazing life, that is all but lost to me in my waking state. i would like to be whole, and really know whats going on with me. how pretty can i think?

heres a good one form last week, predreamjournal era, so i can comfortably put it down here without fear of repetitous creativity:

worked out reversed time.
its always bothered me, that to make something happeneing backwards comprehensible, little parts of it have to presented forwards; that is, if you tell a story in reverse order, all the little scenes still run forward. if you write a sentence backward, all the individual words still read forward; and even if the words are spelled backwards, well still the letters are forward. and if you mirror image the letters, well then the whole thing is just incomprehensible unless you read it backwards, and thus forwards.

but ho ho, figured it out! i was in the ballroom of my dream cruise ship, which is much vaster and more purple then the real ship. i had giant geometric canvases and banners streaming about the place, almost ready for the big show, giant rectangles of orange and brown arranged in a challenge. the presidents were coming- reagen, clinton and kerry.

i had two hologram projectors on opposite sides of the room. the projection was a scene involving the three presidents, and some others in tuxedos, in rainwater trenchcoats. and streetlights, and a train. a noir chess dance. and heres the trick: the second projector was projecting a time/space mirror image of the first; so two scenes were playing out on the stage. but my moving the projectors just subtlely so, the images came closer, and when the two images were placed exactly on top of each other, the holographic bodies became these wild blurs of human essence. by overlapping the two timelines, past to future and future to past, the resonance created a timeless scene of noncausation and real truth, which we all watched over bloody marys. extra celery.

see?

a lot of delightful things happen when you do the exact same thing with the exact same poeple many many times, and all of these delightful things involve eye contact. eye contact amidst a sea of eyes that do not see your secret eyes contacting with the other, across the stage, smiling in a shiny motown dress.

im almost done with philip pullman's his dark materials trilogy. i started it saturday night, and will most likely finish tonight...thats two days. {contrast this with the book i just left, james joyce's ulysses, where i spent a wolid (yes, wolid) week trudging through the first 66 pages. i got over the stream of consciousness thing, and actually started to like it a bit, (though one night i was drinking irish whiskey while reading it and just kept laughing out loud at all the nonsequiters, saying to my empty room "hes just saying whatever the fuck he wants! look, he just said THAT!")...but all those fucking irish words!! i cant deal with all those fucking irish words!!} so, yeah, i havent finished it (pullman) yet, but it is reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaallly good. i cant beleive something so blatantly (BLATANTLY) anti-christian is being marketed to children.

my absolute favorite books are the great fantasy epics...narnia and the ring, of couse, plus gaiman's sandman and s king's dark tower and lil old popular harry potter. also just read white's the once and future king too, king arthur, and plenty more fun. pullman apparently felt that narnia in particular was sexist, racist, christian propoganda, and wanted to write a response. his trilogy ends up being more about fate vs choice than good vs evil, but its still set against a backdrop of dualistic christianity. the ring is clearly good vs evil, delves into the internal struggle of human nature quite a bit, has rampant christian symbolism which tolkien has denied, but still, dualistic for sure. potter: good vs evil dualism central, and even the attempt at ambiguity in snape has run pretty thin by now, i think (cant they see how good he is?). arthur seems to have a lot more to do with human nature, internal battles, the attempt to civilize society, let the god in man win over the dog. again, dualistic. king gets pretty metaphysical (though nowhere near as interestingly as pullmans take on quantum physics), but hes got his good guys and his bad guys locked firm. sandman is maybe the least dualistic of the bunch...the endless's ambiguous role as neither gods nor humans leaves them kind of free from normal moral rules, and dream is just so very interesting. but the christian and greek influence is super prominent (lucifer gives dream the keys to hell in one story), and there are always two sides in conflict.

and all of these series are strictly goal oriented. destroy the ring, defeat the bad guy, get to the tower, die, etc. maybe thats not surprising, as most narratives are goal oriented, but certainly twentieth century literature has shown us that non linear or even static narrative is possible and often really good.

in 10th grade, we read hesse's siddhartha. i remember really liking it, but i only found out years later that it had anything to do with buddhism (good fucking teacher, huh?).

so heres my thought: what would a nondualistic, nonwestern, nongoal oriented fantasy epic look like? think of all of the lessons of major eastern religions: presence, mindfulness, nonduality, acceptance, understanding, compassion. the destruction of the pairs, good and evil, light and dark, man and woman, subject and object. the though of living only for the present moment, the fool card, the future nonexistent. what about a story like that, but with lots of cool witches and shit?

what if you went on a quest to find out what your goal was, and atop a lonely mountain at the edge of the world you cleared you mind and dropped your sword and your whitehaired master emerged from a slowly flying dandelion cloud and cut your arm off, and you realized that your goal was to find out what your goal was, and with that realization you had gotten it, and your mind collapsed upon itself?

maybe im looking for a seven volume zen koan,
with lots of cool witches and shit.

such a simple thing.

the mess is a series of square tables, all diagonal to the walls, all coated in white linen with folded napkins and glass water goblets. usually when i go to the mess, the band is there too, so i have an automatic place to sit. it is expected that i will sit with them (except for the dangerously alcoholic trombone player), and they are welcoming, and there are odd bursts of converstaion that i am not compelled to either contribute to or resist.

but if the band is not there, i am faced with a weight and a weariness, for usually before me are two or three tables half full with acquantinces; mostly dazzlingly european women, members of the cast or youth staff. and too sad to face the silent sadness of halting conversation, i usually slink by and sit alone.

yesterday, though, the best dancer asked, in her melancholy english accent, "may i join you?". her dancing is amazing...while the others seem to be going through the motions in a plastic smile hangover thickness, she cuts through the air like fine russian scissors. her seven styles of red hair, her eyes done up for the show in a cats mask of silver and white. she sat next to me, not across, and ate her pineapple, melon and coffee, and we didnt say much, but just her nearness made me feel wonderfully present.

too often i find out that the people im most intimidated by are also intimidated by me. i must stop assuming that the rest of the world is stronger than me. i must remember that my ability to give love is miracle.

saw something that i have never ever seen before, never ever, ever ever, my entire vision filled, with this thing that i had never ever before seen ever. it was not a new seen thing framed by the typical background static of often seen things; this thing was my entire field of vision, that is, all i was seeing were these exactly two things, which thanks to a miraculous perfect synchornicity of color and shape had the appearance of being exactly one giant all thing, that i had never seen before, ever ever, and that i was immersed in.

this all happened on a perfect beach, secluded beach, half a mile long, with no one else on it, no one at all, a beach that i had to climb down treacheous rocks to get to, slowly, carefully, bravely, thinking to my foot, my white barefoot, all right, now, foot, im just going to have to trust you here, im about to put my whole weight on you and i am going to trust you that you wont slip and break me. all right foot all right foot are you ready foot. all right. here we go.

and then down and jump onto soft sad sand and theres the perfect beach with no one on it just white white sand, said soft sad sand and cliffs and caves and crannies rocks out my shoes and glasses and tshirt on a rock so i could go into>>>>> the water which was raging with the wind and giant perfect waves were smacking me just me
Iall aloneI

and then the suction>>>> into the sea knocked me down and before i even ever never seen knew it was way way way way out in the middle of the sea and the sun i looked up to or tried to but the water came laughing onto my head and salt was in mouth aw come on sand was in my thick rich hair really rocking me now you water you, growl and come on!! and when i looked up, over the water slaps looked up again to see , through my color senstive nearsighted human eyes when i looked up to the sky all i saw was the sea; and when i looked up to saw the sea all i saw was the sky. sea sky: see sky see sea, see sea see sky, because the water was so clear perfect and the sand so white perfect on this perfect secluded beach ever on this perfect day so clear and so white that together ever never `the light` and `the reflection` the water and the sky were, sigh, aw, come on, aw,

*the same color*

yup, yup, the same color, the exact same color, sigh again, *, foot cant believe it, with a wave over water underwater hardly breathe and salt taste tread to stay a float sigh my god perfect a ~baby~light~blue~ that rippled and heaved over me my blurry vision bluring the horizon line away and there the sea the sky both the same color the same color! the exact same color! never ever! so all i could see was rippling breathing ~baby~light~blue~, and i was /immersed/ in it and it was the only thing i could see, inhaling frantic salt water, up and down panic color never ever alive everything just this one color blue blue blue bluebluebluebluelueblueblueblueblueblue rrraaaaaaaaaaaahh on this perfectly cloudless day perfectly clearless water perfectly emptyless beachess.

later i lalala lay in the sad and alalalaughed uncontrollableable as the waves knocked me wash over and then swoosh slurped me back in ever ever ha ha ha!

i found some unexpected eggs today.

(its a classic paradox. a man presents you with 10 numbered boxes, and tells you that in one you will find an *unexpected* egg. you are to open them in order. the egg must be *unexpected*; thus, you reason, it cant be in the last box, for if you were to open the first nine and find no egg, you would know that it had to be in box 10 and it would thus be *expected*. so box 10 is out. by similar reasoning, box 9 is out too- since it cant be in box 10, when you get down to 9 and 10 it would have to be in 9- but that would then be *expected*. and it cant be in 8 if its not in 9 or 10, again, youd *expect* it. you can apply this to all the boxes, and safely say that it cant be in any of them. until you open box 5 and find a completely *unexpected* egg.)

friday nights the main crew deck, deck 3, becomes a maze of luggage, color tagged and carted into giant metal shark cages in preparation for tomorrows debarkation. everyone knows that luggage is the shittiest job. the housecleaners all wear back braces and sneak bites of cold pizza brought to them on white plates. old wooden ramps are placed over the stairs and the luggage slides down, helped along at each landing by one of these wearyeyeds, mostly philipinos. im pretty sure there should be a doubled letter in that word.

but there the occasional odd and lovely eastern european too...i was walking up the steps opposite a ramp tonight, and saw my beloved estonian, she of blond curls and small small voice and narcoleptic saunter. she gave me a pouty tired look and told me, in a >zabul dabo< voice like velvet taffy, "we push, we pull, mmmmmmm". i asked her if she ever slides down the slides herself. she said, yes, try it, and i did, but my shoes were too sticky and then an officer gave me a look. i had to leave, and wanted to leave with a graceful wit (this was only the second time ive talked to her), but could only manage: "you could sell tickets". which she responded with only a puzzled look. ugh.

i walked away feeling much like one of the rejected awkward teens wearing a signed white celebrity tshirt (signed by all his 'new teen friends') i had seen earlier that night up at the teen disco. (the cool teens were in the back hooking up). i feel the same about love as i always have- desperate, wildeyed, a fool. city streets in the rain, solo trumpet, hard eyes against the tears.

even earlier this night i had watched a bit of edward scissorhands. that is the kind of love i have always wanted, in a fairytale, a one who understands, an embrace of the pained abnormalities. at the end of the movie, winona is old and talking to her granddaugther...so she has clearly moved on. but she still loves him, she will always still love him.

and even earlier then that, lying in my bed thinking about an old old old love...an unrequited one that consumed me for years. one im at peace with; i love her friendship and have put all of my exaggerations about her and of all of the practical complications our history afforded us into their appropriately numbered boxes. we still see each other every rarely, and its wonderful and magic. but yet, but yet, today in my astral nap bunkbed world (specific song that did it was "wigwam", bob dylan, though i do not consciously associate that song with this woman at all), she stepped on my feet under a lowlit diner table again, and i was holding her hand and kissing her at last.

still earlier, at rehearsal, the husband and wife duo sing "to all the girls ive loved" (the willie nelson/julio iglesias(?) classic). just terrible, terrible fucking song. but still...

never fall out of love with someone. never not fall in love with someone else. that seems essential to me. i fall for the estonian as rapidly as i fall away from another on the ship (lazyeyed welder), but i still can taste her odd garlic (for health) kisses. then night i hear another song and remember someone else. theres such beautiful light in their eyes. everyone a different color, a delicate coral, an unsung evergreen.

now ive got my dreams of my one love that sings to me in a secret language and bites my finger and laughs me to the moon. i love her and want to take our grandchildren apple picking.

but still i love them all, all the rest too.
ive put them each in a soft box in my memory, with all of their letters and laughs and lipnesses, and ive closed the boxes, and i dont *expect* to feel that way again. oh but then, but then an oh.

i can reason through everything, i can control what i obsess over and what fills my head. i can let go.

but when i feel snow on my wrist, i shiver.

someones getting married tomorrow. and heres an unexpected egg--- i am so very happy for her. i love her and wish her the world, the stillness grandness of empty space, and all the blazing suns in between.

nothing really beautiful or amazing happened today. it was the first of our two formal nights. we do the captains toast (jazz standards) and the 60's show. we played stevie's "you are the sunshine of my life" first, and then i kind of went off on whole tone scales (the second chord of the intro is all whole tone). too symmetrical, i said, and wheres that halfstep edge, that sexy dissonant bite, that s-s-s-truggle, di-di-di-difficulty, zazazaconflict that makes life so -*yow*-. for the rest of the set the sax player and i played whole tone scales at every opportunity (ie every dominant seventh chord). skating up and down their space age slides!

we are up in a box stage left, looking down on the audience so we can see their gaping faces. they really love the shows, they get so happy. there were some nice moments out there tonight: a group of teenagers singing along to "help!", and a beautiful family in the front row, mother, young girl, father, the girl was maybe 8. she kept putting her hands up to her new hair berette (sp?) to make sure it was in place. formal nights are great for seeing young children in dressy clothes for the first time. so careful and gentle with their new precious things! she had really cute round glasses too, and she smiled and tucked her head into her fathers arm after the lead singer gave her a high five during "surfin usa".

but overall, nothing really, and i dont feel particularily happy or sad.

i had a child in a dream last night, the size of a pistachio. he was doing wild, digital fast breakdancing on the carpet. then another child, equally small, joined in, and they played pinballed across the carpet, bumper car twirling, and then swoosh! under the couch...we lifted the couch to find them, and they were not there. and then, there they are in the pocket of my cardigan sweater. we left to go enroll in college, enroll in geometry, and i took the long way down, a huge sandy path in the rain, the sand filling my sandals and the wind and lightning purple deep purple. later, my bicycle skidding on shiny asphalt.

i wonder how my child will be. will i indulge her in the materialist ecsatsy of fancy new things? let her grow out of it later? let her pretend to grow out of it...hm. i cant wait until i buy my new powerbook. though, i spent much of today making a gift, making, with pens and glue and the torn off covers of old hardcover books from the crew library. i noticed that i like using mistakes to my advantage-- this slip of the pen makes a really neat design, etc. it felt good. good for me. but will they like it? really? always selfish acts of love. sigh.

still, i guess that was beautiful, hanging out in the crew mess with a coffee and european cookies on a linen napkin, brushing glue on to avoid lumps, whistling "itsy witsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini" over and over again, fixing little mistakes by creating large abstarct blocks with black and silver permanent markers.

if you make a mistake in bingo, and call bingo, and then when the bingo commisioner comes over to check your card he finds that youve punched a number that wasnt called, you know what thats called? its called a bongo.

another thing my polish roomate does is comment on my comings and goings.
"you going?"
"aha! you come back!"
or, more perplexing: "aha! you come back?"

kenny, the conspiracy theorist trumpet player, asked me today if i beleived in reincarnation. i told him i didnt beleive in anything, but i thought there were prettier ideas than reincarnation out there. the book im reading now, "the third policeman" by some irish guy whose name...flann o'brien? i dont think so. one thing thats happens in this delightfully odd book is that in a bicycle obsessed town people become more and more bicycle like as their riding over the bumpy rocky roads causes their atoms and the bicycles atoms to mix. they dont actually turn into bicycles, they just can be seen leaning against walls and posts.

how many atoms would i have to lose before im not me anymore? ha.
is that my skindust behind the desk? ha.
when will i have a child? ha.

one of the crew channels plays a constant loop of csi, las vegas and miami. id never seen it before. i love the main guy in miami. he is so cool. he knows how to use language. "no. heres what youre going to do." i also saw the film "chicago" for the first time today, and i liked it too. really good braiding of the musical numbers with the real world. he had it coming! he had it coming! oh and that tap dancing lawyer at the end! man!

these are small pleasures that ease me and cool me and cease the pain of my useless and pointless knowledge.

the night before, after the drummer and i finished a really excitng, tight game of chess (the d column was a real traffic jam: black king d8, just a step shy of promotion white pawn d7, white rooks d 1 and 3. and a black rook stalking outside on f7, threatening [and eventually enacting] a dubious rook trade), we poured the pieces into the torn flat box and stared at each other for a moment.

earlier that night, we were watching pool in the crew bar, and this big guy from trinidad who can make the ball jump (and thus make me girlishly yelp) said "bloodclot!" as a curse upon missing a shot.

so now were staring at each other. and then i said, well good, im going to go to bed..and then tomorrow well just do this all again. and he said, yup, good luck with that.

then we ran up the steps, my sandalflops echoing all through the ship.