anagrams: another weird day in april

another weird day in april
(written in 1997)

i can smell toast in the air. someone is making toast. it's 67 degrees and i want to go outside. i've been reading email and waiting for my water to turn back on so i could take a shower. i don't know why i had no water, but i've got it back again, thank god..

people are fighting on the lists everywhere. i've been laughing at it. it brings out all the gliches in people. then, i've been fighting with one of my favourite people via email, named char. she's been my friend since i was 17, but she's nutty, so we get into arguments because she's so whacked and sensitive. we are arguing about email because she sees it as evil, and i see it as god :) and it IS great because i get to argue about this via email, and it sure is better than arguing with her face to face. she just can't stand the fact that i send her stuff in a group mailing. she wants it to be just all for her personally. she wants me to respond to each and every one of her emails. and she documents every one that i do not reply to. it's nuts. so she wonders why i do not get together with her face to face. she's a fabulous good soul underneath her quirks. a member of her family is the leader of a cult and she was raised to think she was the 2nd coming.. so that'll fuk wit ya. she's a mechanical genius. and i love her to pieces.she's very observant. she analyzes the crap out of everything and comes up with wonderful points of view.
she'll talk your ear off about any fascinating subject and just blow your mind. but she's really paranoid and takes offence at the strangest things. i can only take it in small doses, when she does that. but we have a good understanding of each other. she used to get insanely drunk and throw rocks at my window and leave cryptic whispery messages on my machine that i could not understand. and it gave me the creeps.. so i cut her out of my life for a few years until she stopped drinking all
together and apologized. so that's a bit about my friend char.

so yesterday i woke up all depressed-like. so i took more shrooms and i went walking off exploring into the rich neighbourhood with pooka. i found some really magical places. i felt so much fear yesterday, though, the whole day was taken up trying to rid myself of fear. i was in the park 1st. Walker park it's very downtown and filled with every sort of person. but the people that kept coming up to me spoke no english, and just adored pooka and would say stuff in other languages that i knew meant "what a cute dog!!!!". this one old lady loved my dog so much and had so much love in her eyes for him that i just about gave him to her. but she spoke no english, so she probably would have just been confused. people who would never give me the time of day, now talk to me because they love my dog. i thought this would be a really annoying thing..... but so far, pooka just brings out the best in people and people don't use him to talk to me. they just want to talk to my dog. so that's been very cool.

i found this little gazebo in the park that at each corner there was a standing metal sign that had inscribed upon it a different part of a t.s.elliot poem. i don't know if you ever played the game Myst, but all of a sudden it was like i was IN that game. and so i crossed the bridge that goes over the highway into the sculpture garden. that's when you cross over to the rich neighbourhood, and the vibe is immediately so different, you'd think you went into another city all together. there is a giant giant spoon there that sits in a miniature swamp and on this spoon is a giant metal cherry and this cherry squirts water. i used to despise this sculpture with all my might.. and it really is very hideous.. but i'm starting to kind of enjoy it's horribleness now. and i watch people take their pictures by it. it is kind of the def leppard of the art world, so it's good when you're stoned.

i looked real good and hard for a pleidian ship.. just a fuckin sign. something!!! i then laughed at my ridiculousness, that if there was a ship, why would it go way out of it's way and it's agenda just to apear to me? like i'm sure it has better things to do. and then i thought about that household saints movie and how that movie is applying to my life more and more. you must see that movie.. it's brilliant..

then i went-a-walkin...........into thee rich neighbourhood. i came upon the place that i want to explore, but i didn't have my gun. and i felt like such a chickenshit for not facing my fear and going right on in there. or maybe it was common sense. i don't know. but it's a big swamp that's crazy and wild and the highway goes over it, too. it seems like a place that a serial killer would throw the body. just tangly vines and rotting logs and the smell of mud and wood and spindly trees all growing together like a net. then a swamp in the middle. it's just awesome. i wanted to walk right on in there and just die. i wanted to walk right into the swamp and face it. it was perfect chaos. it was perfectlifedeath. i wanted to march on in there and lay down and be one with it. but i didn't. because i'm a chicken shit. or i'm very logical.

on the opposite side of this was perfect order. rich mansions with black plastic garbage bags all lined up neatly in a row, ready for the garbage to whisk them away into the chaos where they belonged. all that chaotic shrubbery, raked up and whisked away. i kept saying over and over in my mind "hi, i'm crazy, so let me in your perfect order" :) sorority girls jogged by me on the special walkway made especially for that sort of activity. and i realized how different i looked compared to them. dressed all in black with my big boots on and a big cotton candy pink fake fur jacket and my hair all fried white with a hello kitty lunchbox and a very cute dog. i looked down at my finger nails to see if my gold polish had chipped. was i truly white trash? and i felt like courtney love.

so i walked and walked very fast feeling paranoia. not knowing if i should have my sunglasses off or on. i decided, off. fuck it. and i ran into another park that i hadn't run into in years. i hadn't been there since i'd been there with my long ago best friend kristen (who also went insane on me and decided she could never see me anymore because i was mirroring back something in her that she wasn't ready to look at yet. that's what she said. or something. we were absolutely inseperable and i hadn't had that kind of friend since 10th grade)..
years ago, kristen and i had been doing acid and we ran into this park. it has really really big trees in it and a big scooped out basin. the trees, "at the time of kristen", were shedding their seeds in the form of those little white fluffy things. kristen always called them "wishes". usually we'd just see one or two of these white things and she'd say,"make a wish!" but this time this whole scooped out basin full of very large trees was shedding so many wishes it looked like it was snowing. so we laughed and laughed and made many wishes.
so yesterday when i ran into this same place again i just stopped dead in my tracks and was filled with meloncholy as if i could see kristen and i like ghosts under the trees smiling and thinking about major label deals and where we'd be a year from now....
now it's been many years and i still don't know where i am. but i sat there and made a wish to be fearless. not the kind of fearless that doesn't know fear. like the innocent kind, like when you were a child playing in the sandbox. but the kind of fearlessness that one can have when one knows that there are harmful things "out there" but one knows that no harm will be done to thee for one will not allow it to be so. a decision and sheer act of will and faith. more than faith, knowing. so i
wished for that and i felt like joan of arc.

then i ran into yet another park with an even bigger valley to it. kids were playing soccer. and i thought, god i'm so glad i don't have kids that want to play soccer. it's hard enough to have a dog. and i realized i'd been ignoring pooka. so i decided to go home. i went back into my side of the tracks up the 3 flights of stairs that now seemed alien to me and back into my messy hut. i ravaged cold pizza and flat pepsi and turned on tv to see that a hard day's night was on. and i STILL thought it was as stupid as ever, even on drugs. it must be a guy thing, because i think that movie is so square, daddy-o. i really love the beatles, but there movies are sooo dumb. except yellow submarine, which they weren't really in. yellow submarine scared me when i was a child. the sea of holes. like that swamp. sort of.

so then the rest of the night passed into an oblivion of bad movies, and i ignored all my phone calls, except one from the woman who is going to take my photos in new york. she's a 29 year old cancer. brian eno flirted with her. she is the same age as his daughter. she seemed very reserved, and a tough cookie to crack. but i think i convinced her in the end that i am not a threat, and we should get along fine now. today she is shooting pictures for mtv's the grind. today, i am writing this until my fingers cramp up. i wonder when you will read this. i wonder where you are. i wonder how you are doing. i wonder until my head hurts and the sun goes down again and then my wonder turns to worry. and tomorrow is my surgery, so i guess i should clean my house so i don't have to worry about that, as i'll most likely not be able to move much in the next few days, and i'll probably be pretty out of it on pain killers. in 24 hours it'll all be over with and as i write this my skin turns hot and my heart speeds up and my stomache hurts.
but i'm hanging in there, and i hope you are, too.