Magic Carpet

Magic Carpet

I got it from My Dad. Ozzie the rug merchant. It is not the only way to get from here to there, but it works as well as, say, the pons asinorum. Or wings. A carpet of the magic kind is dual-use.

The point is to achieve the impossible. It can be done, but you must have magical aids. Magical aids are fanciful but/and must be believed without stint or hesitation. In my case, I must believe that I am a genius and/or that the goddess/muse will speak through me. That I can, if I work faithfully, produce a magnificent monument: a real sparrow a-warbling on a golden bough. This is difficult since for all my life up to the age of 18 or 20, I was told that I was unworthy, if not beside the point.

Lucky I got that magic carpet. No, not from the rug-merchant (mechant) dad, but from my Cousin the witch. Now, if only I can make it work for Her. (Yogis use a rope.)

*

Today I actually picked up the phone when it rang. It was a man asking for Jocelyn. (I know it was really Fred.)

15^th Ave «Bux 4/7/04

Small Things

And easily overlooked. Like the statue of a woman holding a water jug with water upwelling & overspilling that I had walked by a hundred times on Harrison. But today I stopped to see a sparrow bathing in the brimming cup chased away by another one, and then up fluttered a goldfinch—bright yellow—but not fierce enough to displace the resident sparrow. Well, I’ll be, I said & one block later almost fell over Hilda.

I wrote a letter to JHY today but must go over it. A beautiful day (Good Friday) & I’m going now for a long walk.

Last night—vivid dreams. I was working as a temp for a developer (or? –anyway a very nicely dressed Jewish man) & his exec. asst. in a building half-finished—oh, probably they were remodeling…but as I went somewhere (wishing I’d gotten a cup of coffee before starting) & got into the other wings, then it was a hospital. And I wasn’t being given good instructions (from the snotty black woman)--& so on. Long, detailed, epic.

15^th Ave «B’s 4/9/04

Tell it, sister

One night of bus detour dreams (Seattle Metro buses going down the SF’s Sunset Highway) & me complimenting the driver on their dispatch. The night before, a crowd out on 119^th Street in the dark & when I called the sheriff to report it, they wouldn’t respond. Then I looked out again & it was lighter (early morning) & raining (oh good, that’ll discourage them) & I saw the crowd was coming from the direction of Marge Gidley’s & there were lots of families & well-dressed African Americans—probably a Jehovah’s Witness convention and family reunion. OK, good, not rioters, but they wanted to come into the house to get out of the rain. Uh…

*

Then I got to work on Part I of Matryoshka & it got hot outside. It’s still hot; 75º & I ran into Arlene P. again, in front of the Starbuck’s w/ 2 friends. Today, I talked to Mom—she won $12 gambling & wasn’t she pleased. Yesterday I talked to Lee, who was fine. Got some new medicine—pot in a pill. Says he’s planning to come back out here (but he also said he was never planning to move to Florida, so…)

And Friday, after I wrote, that large mannish woman, Sue, who’s always here (or all too often) asked me what I was writing. And when I told her, she asked, “Does it help?” I said, “Help what? What’s to help?” And she sputtered and I stomped off.

Now, some high clouds are stretching for the skytop. There’s lot of flesh on view.

I’m ready for the finale. Easter.

15^th Ave «Bux 4/11/04

What I Love

I stopped at the big white house on 16^th Ave E (at Prospect) where sometimes there is a Mas style cat & said “pss pss psss” & s/he came running out, & I said the usual things & looked up to see another, even more Mas-looking cat coming out. I broke out in a total goon, though I did not actually drool. I went & sat on the steps & the less Mas looking Mas rubbed against my legs & the more Mas looking Mas flopped over on the sidewalk right behind me so I could run his/her belly.

God, I was happy, I smiled all the way home. It was 75º, too.

*

Then last night I dreamed about diabolical machinery, including a murderous electric razor that I plunged into water to disable it, but it kept going—you could hear it buzzing. There may have been a possessed electric typewriter too.

*

Now it’s overcast. I poked at a lump on my lip so it bled, and all in all I feel depressed.

*

A father sat next to me w/ his 13 y.o. daughter & friend—they keep laughing in that 13 y.o. ♀ way. Father made lame jokes—about Grandma having amnesia. Didn’t sound too funny to me. Sounded like a stroke. But then I don’t know Grandma.

I want a new life.

Will it get better?

Will it get worse before it gets better?

Or will it get worse until it just ends?

15^th Ave «B’s 4/13/04

Circus

So I looked outside & there was an animal, a big one, running up 119^th Street. It looked like a trunkless baby elephant. Well, you know me, I called the sheriff & asked them to contact animal control. They wouldn’t do anything—they never do. Then I looked out the front window & over by the mailboxes, there was a baby elephant lying on its side & an animal keeper with him/it. (You can always tell the circus animal keepers. They look like Cockneys in their shirtsleeves. Like carnies.) So I knew/remembered the circus was in town — I think staying down by Katie Arntsen’s house. Woke up pleased.

Bway «Bux 4/14/04

Don’t Tell Me

It feels as if, as if….

unbeknownst to us, our ruling planet rolled into watery Scorpio.

or as if turning a corner I find myself in an alley. It’s not a dead end, it seems to turn a ways down, but what’s past the turning?

No, it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like the plotters are plotting & the bad cells are dividing & six committees voted “No” on my submission and I’m going to get a bill I’m not expecting. Is it my ill-wishes? Out infecting the chickens & the pigs & the mosquitoes & the crows & the horses?

Why are those women talking about pregnancy?

Ans: Because they are young.

Actually, what it feels like here is that my faith died. I still hope but I know I hope in vain.

If I ask for a sign, somebody else will try to run me over. I know.

This is the opposite of the moment when the 2^nd Mas cat appeared.

I won’t ask for a sign.

15^th Ave «Bucks 4/14/04

Prescriptive

I go home & yodel along with Eddie Vedder & immediately think I should email Jean & tell her she should do it too. Now why do I think I need to tell Jean ways to be happy? She doesn’t want to be happy, she wants to whine.

I think she may take some small pleasure in refuting my suggestions. (Maybe that’s why I bother?) (I don’t bother.)

*

There’s sun dust on the tables outside & on that sickly bush, and all I really want is to make pictures. Pictures of old pumps, and weathered benches & scenic bums &… pigeons? Pictures of rock doves?

Pictures of Lily.

Instead I have the pug-nosed aging blonde whom I hate (she’s limping – good) from stifled…not affection, oh all right, self-assertion. I can’t bear to be ignored. A nod is as good as a wink. Willy B. used to chant to the trees & the children thought him cracked. So, maybe I need to use my voice for something besides singing Eddie Vedder’s songs—or (like now) Bob Dylan’s. “Tangled up in Blue.”

Trouble is, I can still hate to be laughed at. Laughed at, ignored. Who did we forget to invite to my christening?

15^th Ave «B 4/15/04

Terminal Annoyance in EveryDay Life

1) Twenty-four messages in my Junk email-box

2) The self-complacent man yakking on his cell-phone at the Cap. Hill library who, when a woman (patron) asked him to go outside, conveyed the whole thing to whoever he was yakking to.

3) The wispy librarian who didn’t tell him to go outside in the first place, as she should have. (I stayed out of it.)

The guy kept saying (when I was on the computer) “Animal Control” – which was odd because I had another dream in which I called (or wanted to call) Animal Control:

I had gone to bed telling myself to dream of FSP. I dreamed a big black dog (cross between a Lab & Great Dane?) was running around 119th St. & left a big pile of shit in the side yard. And as I considered uncoiling the hose & washing it away, I noticed big piles all over the yard. Well, ugh—somebody should call animal control.

Then it was today & I rewrote Dave, not happy w/ it.

So I walked to Swedish w/ my resume & found out they don’t take resumes, but you can paste it in on the computer there—but I hadn’t brought my disk.

On the way back I stopped at the faux 7-11 & bought a $1 mega ticket, but the computer “read” 2 empty panels, so I had to buy a $3 one.

And I didn’t have any emails except one from JHY that didn’t say anything. (I’d asked him for a word & he won’t give it & won’t refuse—just answers not. Most annoying.)

God, another cell-phone yeller. Time to go.

[But it was, all told a beautiful day. Everything in bloom. Lilacs and all. No rain. Big blue & white clouds.]

15th Ave«Bux 4/16/04

Toad & Toadstool

Toad & Toadstool, Sparrow & Sparrowhawk

Category Safe. Ah, no that’s not it.

Multitude, Magnitude, Amplitude. Quality joined. Ah…

“Safe” could yield safe-deposit or safe-cracker. Safe-house. Safe-days. Not at all the same. While toads & toadstools share some quality of, oh witchiness. Unlike, say, sun-dress, sunburn, sun spot, sun-dried tomato.

I don’t know why I’m writing.

Sun hot at quarter to 7. Pony-tail bouncing on 6 y.o. skipping girl. Hilda asleep in the chair. Money is spending (itself!) too fast. I have no luck. Feels thus.

15^th Ave«Bucks 4/17/04

The Worst Day of Spring?

What I want is an earthquake & look up hopefully each time the building creaks. Not hopefully, with eroticized breath—Bated. But the wind is blowing the umbrella outside & there will be no earthquake until I am thinking about something else. Toads & toadstools. Cat dreams.

Got a rejection today, the first of many, no doubt.

I want a good head of hair, I have Hilda slumped in a chair. Eating whipped cream. I didn’t think I thought something good was going to happen, but I must have, because now that I know nothing good is going to happen, it feels a long bump down.

I’m tired of not having to do anything I don’t want. As always happens, my freedom is tainted by my idleness. I spend too much time inside my apartment, inside my head.

I need to find the back door that leads out into the garden (where the toads & toadstools are real & a cat dreams in every patch of sun.)

What’s wrong with me is that I think so. What’s wrong with me is that I want some more. (That was clever of them only to let me sing freely in church…)

15^th Ave «B’s 4/19/04

Just in Case

And then, just in case I’m not feeling bad enough, I get a rejection from the New Yorker, the only rejections that really hurt. And why? Because if the NYer took my story, I’d have agents calling me up & saying, “Well, hi!”

Would be nice if something/anything would happen to counter this massive annoyance. Something spare & strange? No, baroquely ornamented & yet familiar.

Something, I suppose, like April along the avenues & lilacs in bloom. Yes, yes.

But I want/need out of my apartment much more. Much further. To New York? No, I hate New York & everybody who lives there with maybe 3 exceptions. And I don’t care if….hush, don’t say something you’ll regret.

All right. But everything that is wrong w/ America is concentrated in NY, except that which is distilled in Washington D.C.

15th Ave «B’s 4/20/04

I Know That Back

It was Fred’s back that I was massaging. He could hardly feel it, but didn’t he tell me years ago that he only had one nerve ending left. Where was he though? Not at my place. I think I was on his daybed with him. Anyway, we were friendly, companionable, nonsexual, and I woke up happy enough. Unlike—was that early last night or the night before when I dreamed…something bad enough to taint my consciousness. Big loss of some kind. Well, that’s what reality is all about. (And what if you can’t escape? What if the afterlife is just more of this?) (Well, Jesting Jesus, I hope not.)

Fred came 3 or 4 days after I invited him. Now, who should I ask? Jean? (She doesn’t email.) Tomas!

The weather is good. Blue sky. Blue & white clouds. My mood has been bad. Then better, but only a little (won $5) (looked at Smoke/Duty & didn’t think it stank.) Then worse. (The novel is lame & I don’t have the power to make it throw away its crutches and walk.) Then I sing at lung-top & am blessed. Being blessed is almost as enjoyable as smoking a cigarette—& in the long run better for you.

*

Then I think about writing about JHY & me. Starting the 70’s story. More fun than Dave? If the words will come & stand on their spots.

15^th Ave «Bux 4/21/04

Trubba

The trouble with the good moods that come over me is that they go away again, yes, rather in a tidal manner, only dryer. I win something & get happy, but that happiness runs about $20 an hour. So if I win $20, I’m happy for an hour, if I win $5, 15 minutes & so on. Or I’ll grab at hopes like handholds on a (crumbly) sandstone cliff. I dream I don’t get any of the #s & wake up thinking that the law of opposites may well apply.

*

I’m reading a bad book on an interesting subject & pushing on in hopes that it will improve.

Does this sound like my life?

I keep hoping: For a story to sell. For 2 stories to sell. 3. 3 & an essay.

Why not?

The weather is bunny-love perfect & that helps. I can get an email from Jean, like I did yesterday, and go a-hummin up the street.

I just need more people/cats to love.

So humble & so bristly. That’s my trubba.

15^th Ave «B’s 4/22/04

Protean?

We are the shape-shifters, and we don’t even try. We just cooperate with time… cooperate means merely not to rebel, to stick around. Anyone catch hold & hang on long enough---- Grandma!

And so I look through Starbuck’s front window to see Tom M. & a gray-haired woman…my god, that’s Judy, what happened to her… Well, she cut her hair & let it go grey. Does age a girl—like me. I miss Judy at the Cap. Hill library, but I’m sure she doesn’t miss us. Maybe, when the new Cantilevered Library (need a wag to name that sucker) opens…I’ll probably go down more often.

Squishy Sue is talking to the Soppy Latin Tutor. They’re talking about Emotions. It makes me want a cigarette. Another rejection today & some pelting-down rain. Makes me want 2 cigarettes. But right now, the sun is shining On My Head, so I will walk.

15^th Ave «B’s 4/23/04

What We Need Here

Besides field trips, 2 a week, we need one warm & funny conversation per day, 2 friendly encounters, one nice surprise. And of course, a good book to read before bedtime.

Now if I could draw, I’d never trouble another word, connotative, denotative, descriptive, or even metaphorical, as long as breath draws me onward. I swear it.

Two cats & a piano, I’d never bother anyone else either.

Unless my fleshly infirmities kicked up too much, which I think we could safely say, they would. They did for Einstein—but did he complain? He sure did, I read it in the paper today.

Also that poets ruminate too much, yes, like scared cows, excuse me, I mean sacred scow. (Better a scow than a scull? I think not.) (I think [a] ton.)

I’m getting so I can see my own lens opacities when the sun reflects just right, they look like magnetic fields of light—isn’t that nice? (no) Why do they take such a form (I’m seeing it thru plate glass window—is it—the concentric shimmer in the window or my eye?

Or—ha ha ha—somewhere else…maybe it’s WiFi microwaves visible.

Spectral specters. Specks on spec.

15^th Ave «B’s 4/24/04

Not-So-Funny-Feeling

Not-So-Funny-Feeling

I win nothing. I get no mail. The library computer won’t open my document. After a 75º + day, it hails. Now it rains. I don’t think I ought to risk any more money.

The grocery stores may go out on strike. If they strike on the 1^st I have to buy plants & salad greens (for Dad’s inhumation party). I don’t want to have to think ahead.

I get no phone calls too.

The Latin tutor is teaching a 9 year old. He’s better than the high school kid who was here yesterday. Enthused. I pass on my specimen sentence: Monstra mihi pecuniam.

She appreciates.

It’s early. Hilda’s here already all bent over. Yesterday I talked to Marcus who tells me all about how much better Linda is (though I hardly know Linda & don’t much care.)

A high school girl sits on a high stool studying & her low-rise jeans leave her crack visible. The new cleavage. Tch tch.

15^th Ave «B’x 4/27?/04

Little of This

After a windstorm blew through yesterday snowing leaves & samaras & those paper hearts that have flowered on the maple (?) trees all over & even downing a few limbs & branches, today is warm & sunny again.

The pug-nosed woman who ignores me sits just outside the window in a SAM sweatshirt & a hankie tied around….I think it’s a wig, her blonde hair. It’s all the same color & doesn’t seem to have a part. but…it’s not coifed, rather shapeless in fact, so maybe it’s really her hair. I don’t know. But what’s that weird little wet looking tail at the back. Oh how I hate her & how I enjoy hating her.

Yes, she probably is just like me in some of my less appealing aspects—like Beth from Probation. (I liked Beth tho, just not enough to hang around with her for more than 5 minutes.)

And so—

Nothing continues to happen

I become intensely Yes/No about what I’m working on (“Dave”). I wonder if I’ll ever write anything new. Fresh. Perhaps something funny about the 70’s.

Otherwise I keep pedaling the same old round. Yes, like a circus bear on a tricycle.

Hateful apartment, enjoyable books. Blurry vision. Boredom. Disgust. Mild (very mild) euphoria. Good sleep--& even a dream about Joni Mitchell. (She had short hair too.)

What I want is a good thing. Money & recognition. Reinforcement.

Otherwise…well, what’s it all for anyway?

15^th Ave «B’s 4/26/04

Auntie Ev

And analyzing my boredom.

I suppose it is boredom that tends to make me look to my dreams for messages. From beyond? Well, from somewhere.

This morning I dreamed we (me & Mom?) went to Auntie Ev’s—Grandma B’s, I think, complete w/ stuff all over—& I looked in & Ev’s head was gone. She was lying in bed obviously dead—well, I mean headless…. but we crept further in & I saw that it was just her head was turned at an angle (oh, an illusion). And she was alive, though very old of course, & she got up & was so skinny I could see all her vertebrae. And then there was something about the guy…delivery guy, what was his story…who had come to stay and…it was going to get complicated (it always does)…and I woke up & it was quarter to 5 & the birds were chirping already & I was too warm. Took me a long time to get back to sleep, wondering if Aunt Ev had died.. Also I dreamed #’s like 10, 14, 16. But I didn’t quite believe it.

Have heard nothing about anyone dying. It’s very warm this afternoon. I still owe the dentist $95, which makes me mad, it was for nothing. I’m bored & broke & want some distraction—pleasant, please. I have Part II of Mat all but (badly) finished. Just have to distill the 10 p. of Dave’s insomnia down to maybe 4 or 5.

Café Ladro 4/30/04

Something Different That’s Also the Same

I take a long walk on a beautiful warm May Day, stewing in my dissatisfaction, arrive at the Starbuck’s on 15^th at 5:30 to find it empty & baking w/ sun. Empty, that is, save for Hilda sitting in her usual chair. And oh, I made an ugly face before walking down the hill to the Boston Market/Olive Way store. To find, besides Pablo, Chanticleer (turns out his actual name is Brett) from the Broadway store. So we sputter with foolish talk & I sit down, almost resigned to my miserable existence. See, I just need some distraction. I have to get Dave off my lap/hands/sofa/mind too. No matter how long ago Julia left. Year & a half. Long enough.

*

Oh, we laugh about bathrooms, talk about writing—then some big fat bozo starts yapping—to no one that I can see; the woman right next to him is also yapping while turned the other way. He’s got the ear-wire. Must be a cell-phoney.

And sorrowful looking Asian girls are lined up by the bathroom door—blocked by the bus cart.

I feel better. I feel like gambling. I must go buy lettuce for tomorrow.

O.W. «Bucks 5/1/04

Drop a Tear for Dad?

Never know when one will overtake you…I didn’t mind when they (we) put his ashes in the ground on Saturday, but today was his birthday & I thought about how he was last year, just out of his coma & “celebrating” with a cupcake courtesy of his nurses.

Last night I dreamed I was at a house where a funeral was being held for Brian Irwin. All these high school people—all the usual & a few more (did Sue McMeechan know Brian?) (was it Brian or Jim Langseth?). And Cousin Donna was steering me around. I knew I should call Sonja because she’d want to be there & I was sure she’d be back from Walla Walla.

But I haven’t heard from her. Haven’t heard from anybody, and I don’t get any mail: oh, damn email. Where’s that earthquake?

I think I dreamed old Parkland + funerals (my brain is a Search Engine) because I read the guest book for Jim Birch & reflect what a different place Parkland was for those hell-raising prole boys than for us “good Lutheran girls.” Said Jim had been in rehab. How many of those guys are Viet Nam vets, and what was/is their Drug problem.

I cut it loose.

15^th Ave «B’s 5/4/05

Oh, help resign me!

Oh, help resign me!

That’s not a command (nor even a petition); that’s me realizing what this book, writing in it, could help to do.

And, after all, it could.

Well, cinco of May, and I want to write about how, how how

how unwilling I have been these midnights & mornings. And to figure out why. (I don’t consider “depression of spirits” an answer. No, nor even “age”). How about:

Because my joints hurt.

Because everything connected with—or to—my joints hurts.

Because my connective tissue hurts.

And also other nameless parts. Now & then.

Because I don’t think it will get better as long as I live, but only worse.

Because I look ugly. So—the physical.

But also

Because nobody loves, nobody appreciates me (And the feeling’s mutual.)

Because my apartment is small & ugly.

Because stupid people yell outside

Because I don’t have enough money to travel or anybody to go with.

Because I don’t have enough money to buy clothes, so I have to wear ugly old things.

Because I’m not getting any

Any what? Anything I want: amusement, inspiration, some answers. Some really good questions.

Because I don’t have a cat.

Because I can’t draw.

Because I can write, but not well.

Because it’s going to get slowly worse until I [die] (shhh).

15^th Ave «B’s 5/5/04

Now I’m Getting Nowhere

Having to listen to guy-drag squishy Sue & the fuzzy bald guy talking/arguing about school discipline. I can’t relate.

*

You know what happened today? Nothing. Well, I shuffled the Dave-goes-to-sleep section of unfinishable novel & held my head in defeat. (Maybe tomorrow—I optimistically set the pages by the computer.) I got a rejection—not one I care about. I found out FSP’s C. Lake # is disconnected. And I had no emails. Marian didn’t call me back. Well, that’s not bad news.

I read E. Waugh’s diary. Where he says things like: “A Scotsman covered w/ blood came to dig the pond.” And I smile. Yes. I should write sentences like that.

*

Women of a certain age walk by & give me fishy looks. I’m starting to get tired of it. The sky is parti-colored: blue & gray & white. No rain this week. Yet.

15^th Ave «B’s 5/6/04

What’s Left

What’s left, now that I don’t go springing off the springboard of my lusts—or smacking flat into the vault horses of my glandular reversals—what’s left is Reaction. When something good happens, I’m Happy, when something good doesn’t happen, I’m…mad more than sad. Only sorry that I don’t do anything about all this lack. (If I were a good monkey, would more good things happen? I suppose the idea of monkey is that you go make things happen.) But the He-monkeys got ahold of it way back & sent it off in the wrong direction. We do the best we can. That’s all we can do. Frankly, my dear, it’s not enough.

And so we go off the rails.

See, I’m a reactionary

Nursing? Early childhood education? No, too late. Too little. Too literal.

Damn letters. Too abstract.

Think I can think my way out of this one?

15^th Ave «B’s 5/8/04

Those Old Questions

Like: Why anguish? It has much to do with being pent. I need more space & I need a door outside. It has to do with insufficient physical work, insuff. input: Too much mind, not enough skin.

Or fur. I need a cat. Two or 3 babies to teach songs would be OK if someone else would feed em. But a cat amuses itself (& you/me) or sleeps. Bigger house though. I need more scope, simple.

Without it, with what I have instead, I fall into anguish, agitation and—ideas of suicide.

There’s probably a history to this…to do with a short fuse (born that way) followed by nearly perpetual thwarts (older siblings) & then the maternal rug-pull-out when mom got sick & went away, leaving me with thwarting sibs & dangerous (large, hairy, unsympathetic dad). By 7 I reacted to some rebuke by whacking myself with a sand shovel hard on the side of the head. Yeah, my 1^st suicide attempt.

Would I be better off dead? Well, no. …but I don’t think I’d be worse off. It’s just getting over that particular hurdle. Yeah, set it up at the edge of the Grand Canyon & it won’t much matter if I catch my foot…

But, then I walked out into the sunshine of a perfect May day. Big blue clouds over there, and even a tinge of…heavenly gray. Pleasant words with Seattle (my baker/Lotto man) & out on Broadway to see extremes of the yea & nay of views. (Yin/Yang)) Belle & laïd, in all its infinite variations. —and sun waxing the street-tree leaves silver & black. The sky above. I avoid that vile spitter. A red-faced looney calls me Mom.

Well, really, I want to live forever. I want to see how it all ends, to be the one to turn off the lights. & shut the door. But in the meantime, I’d like a better apartment & a cat.

15^th Ave «Bs 5/9/04