Dreampepper

"Why don't you just put some clippings together, get a press pass, get in legitimately?" He is obviously more straight laced than I am. I haven't sneaked into anything yet, that's for later tonight, after dinner, but even the idea of breaking the rules is making him nervous. I offer that I haven't kept track of my work. I try to spin it like it's an airy topic, as if there's no reason I would care, a faint mask of a ditzy girl, but he knows better, he presses, and so, uncharacteristically, I lay it all out. Everything. My project, what happened to it, how it failed, how it ended my life, how I've only just barely scraped by, that I bitterly swept my work away, deleted all of my writing in a harsh wind of regret and hate. This is the first time I've ever admitted what I did. He offers very little in the way of commentary, except to occasionally ask small questions, the better to clarify details, and allow me pauses to pick at my food. He is an exceptional listener. I am struck by his understanding, how immediately he grasps the heart of the thing. I think, "This is why he has me, absolutely completely. He is the rarest of creatures, one who not only looks, but sees."

"That must be impossibly hard," he says, "How do you survive?" "I don't," I reply, and he nods, "Of course." He looks at me as if I am a wonder, a myth. He says, "It is incredible that you can bear it, that you don't fall apart." Gently, he teases more from me, as if delicately pulling threads from a loom. I am Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, unraveling at his feet, spilling everything across the table. He describes how he thinks it must be, mentions the word brittle, and it is so accurate I almost cry, but not quite. He keeps me balanced, he keeps me safe. It is amazing. "So this is part of the shadow underneath your skin."

When I am done my story, terrible in all its grand detail, he sits a moment, somber. "I understand why you stopped writing." A rush of heat, not quite anger, flushes up my throat, "I wouldn't have stopped unless I had a good reason." It tastes bitter. What sort of person does he think I am? But then he continues, "So. This is the point where if I were to answer as a woman, I would offer a similar story about my life, the better to offer empathy and make you feel less alone. Shared understanding, emotional community support." I laugh. "I don't think you have anything like that." "No," he says, "not really." He gestures, one hand, then the other, not quite smiling. "Or, if I were to answer as a man, this is where I would try to offer a solution, something constructive, to address and fix your problems. Make everything better." I am blinded by adoration. This is precisely the sort of reply I have always needed, but never been given. Just like that, I am relieved of my burden. He is sublime. "Which kind of answer would you prefer goes first?"

Apple Store Paris set to open under Louvre Pyramid.

For a moment of amusement, I went and took a look at the yahoo-search referral terms that led people to my Flickr. In order, the top thirty are were: postsecret, cute puppies, maine coon cat, topless, oralsex, tiara tattoos, apartments, oldboy, alien animals, lesbianism, opus bloom county, gamelan, goths, animated club gif, cannibalism, sex oral, cute puppies wallpaper, maple leaf tattoo, dionysius god, pussy licking, steven meisal photography, blind eyes, beetle plate, tattoo koi, kris millering, columbia sailboat, lung, licking pussy, ferret, and topless girls.

Now we know. Go team internet.

I want to take a day soon where all I do is take pictures. Where I get up, shove furniture out of the way, do ridiculous things with random objects, cover the floor in newspaper, pin sheets to my ceiling, and treat my apartment like a set. I haven't done it in a long time, though really, we haven't had the greatest weather lately either. It's like winter just never got the hint to sod off. If I owned even one light, it wouldn't matter, I could just set it up and call it the races, but serious as rain, I'm stuck waiting for sunlight in a city where the cloud cover is so thick that two in the afternoon looks like dusk. And the cold! All of the local pundits have dubbed this month Junuary, as if it's sort of cute that our seasons have shifted by a solid three months.

Hotel Elda offers a fifteen percent discount to bloggers.

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation's beginning production.

Fourty-five minutes until freedom. There's a loud show downstairs, lacing the air with frantic piano, lathering the foyer with a nervous energy. Some student thing. It's the sort of music I would choose to unsettle an audience with, as if I wanted to dislodge their perception of time, kick it disjointed and paste filters all over the lights. In my head, the dancers are testaments to fanciful make-up and Cirque-style motions. They kick, scream, and astonish.

It's actually a ballet performance. Something bleach-blonde and mild, culturally appropriate for the family and friends in attendance, many of whom were too old for the stairs. Many of which, I'm sure, are currently wincing at the thrashing rock music that's replaced the piano, that's begging for big hair and glittery tight pants lined-up outside of cheap bars where the floors are perpetually sticky with spilled and stolen beer. Of course, any minute now, this will all segue into something hideously classical.

And, yes, there it went. French baroque, rather, and overcooked, dreaming of soulful arpeggios that might travel barefoot on horseback in the rain along the Seine into the sunset. And it didn't do the dishes, either.

Oops, no. Now it's faux-traditional Irish rock, a la Riverdance. Mixed with beat-mix 60's remixed retro-pop.

Thirty-five minutes until freedom.

Looking for a Green Light: "Lighting is a greedy user of energy, and public projects can be particularly heavy consumers. But many lighting designers are in fact trailblazing the use of low-energy technology."

I sent you a letter with only one word, Hold. A train ticket word for long distances, a place to put your baggage, to put your arms, the embrace awaited, wished for, forgotten. I picture us as if through the lens of a camera, floating in glassy space, anchored by places we have been, where I have touched you, streets that have been warmed by our breath. It is as if an echoed copy of you is still here, imprinted inside the tiny fractures we left on reality with the molecules of our voice, our motion, simply waiting for you to come home. We are clips from some greater film, the title of which is beyond me. (Before the screen, there was the stage.) I think of our constant tired laughter and your sly technical hands, the way they drifted, fidgeting, up and down the hems of my skirts. My imagination wonders about the airport, wonders at my apprehension, (as it creates shaky lists of reasons why I might not like you again), asks why I feel so dreadfully shy.

I have been refusing to count down days; instead we are down to my Cassandra test of silence and all its implications. (Really we are down to fingers now, less the number of a clumsy butcher. I can feel my panicked heart constricting.) When, to combat my almost professional anticipation of misfortune, I sent you flowers, I irrationally felt like I had betrayed an unspoken agreement, yet my smile supernovae bloomed when I discovered the accompanying note had been garbled through a game of florist telephone. It was like discovering a new favorite song, transforming the simple into the sublime, with my eyes wide open.

I am looking forward to seeing you again.

Some electric companies have created tourist interest with their manatee populations. "... conservationists say the potential closure of aging electric plants is an unsolved problem for the survival of the species."

I didn't get home until four in the morning, but I finally got to sleep at my own house for the first time in something like twelve days. I woke fully dressed, pigtails still in, one forlorn glowstick still clasped around my left arm, remembering only at first that Antonio has pictures of me that will further guarantee - "no career in politics". I think I was on a table or maybe in a cage. Either way, I look like I'm a lot of fun.

Now to go drag Breakfast out of bed. Alastair, Duncan, Andrew, and Dani. Yes. We'll be there for awhile, different people at different times. You're invited too.

Metal Walls.

You know the way.

David Bloom cheers me up.

D: Who was it?
J: An accordion playing morris dancer.
D: You should have known better than to sleep with a morris dancer.
J: What? Why's that? How do you know?
D: I just know. Something about the little bells.


So does Michael Green.

M: Too different? That's like saying a diamond is too shiny, that it's too precious, too rare. Wait, they're not rare. They're terrible. Forget everything I said. Except the good bits. You're not blood money. Are you sure you don't want a drink?