Things of which I dream

Tsumani, waves, sea, recurring, but it always passes and I always remain safe and unscathed in the house, but the house/etc are destroyed. The aftermath is pretty bad. In fact everything is destroyed except me.

Toilets, futuristic, impossibly sophisticated, mechanical, automated

Toilets, over-wrought sophistication (luxury, perfume and white flowers — someone’s lousy try-too-hard idea of faux luxury and sophistication, that did not quite work in reality, after several people had used the toilet. I also saw what it looked like before it was used. It was a dent in the ground, covered with perfume and large white flowers, which I guess you were supposed to pee over, but after you did that, it seemed like the flowers etc drained to the side, in a line?). Male basket and female basket. Female basket went down, Male basket was at same level. Male toilets converted to female toilets. Bunch of salarymen, Asian, possibly Japanese, in office wear (white, striped shirts, black pants) waiting to use the toilet ahead of me.

Lesbian sex, recurring, rape — I wasn’t impressed. Happened in the thick curtains before I got to the toilets. I felt the thickness of the curtains. He said, “It’s happened before, right? During 7-11.” But it wasn’t during 7-11, so I looked him in the eye and said no. His eyes were red. I tried not to cry after. Something he knew about me that he’s using as evidence against me.

Elevator going past the top floor of a block of flats, where it looks broken or unfinished

Escalators, rushing around looking for escalators going up, sometime to run into escalators that are both coming down (roadblock), confused, hurried

Spiral staircase, white sheet metal, not grills, very clean minimalist design

Another staircase, with polished wood banisters, very smooth, sliding downwards.

“I am still a staff writer,” to Mr Leet, while undercover as a “client” (media, member, high-society people.)

“What is the push factor?”

“There is more a pull factor — the call of the wild / unknown.”

“The problem / thing with you is that the self-motivation is so strong…”

“To come back here only to find that everything and everyone is still the same, including myself.” — disappointment

Writing test, accused of cheating, but vindicated by CCTV

 

 

The odds

The odds of existence
of being precisely who you are
are slim

In fact, the odds are almost zero
but here you are
here you exist

so remember the next time
the odds are against you
that you’ve already beaten
the slimmest odds in the universe
before.

from

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations  —
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do — determined to save
the only life you could save.

 

from

more

Happy birthday, old fool

Dear T.,

1.
Dear self: today you turn thirty-one. Do you feel that? Do you feel your bones adjusting to the weight around your body, to the soul you carry? And have you found out what it meant, to want to be here?

2.
Another year older. I’m not very sure we’re wiser for it, but we definitely have made some choices, haven’t we. Yes we did. Perhaps that’s the thing—to continue making decisions that spur your life inch by inch towards some direction. It doesn’t even have to mean forward or backward, because didn’t we say we’ll try to live spherically, in many directions? Didn’t we say: moving without leaving, and didn’t we do exactly that this past year?

3.
Where are we going, self? Where will our feet take us, where will our mind lead us, where will our body agree to go? What are we willing to embrace this year? And do you feel that, the apprehension that murmurs in your chest like a fluttering bird, the uncertainty that makes you weak in the knees? And will you go anyway?

4.
Have you forgiven yourself for it, the fuck-ups, the constant undoing and redoing? Have you accepted that you will always lose something, and when that happens, the question to ask is: and what have I gained?

5.
Last year you said: Be good, forgive, exist. The year before that: I think maybe it’s time to be found. The year before that: You’re not alone. The year before that: It takes courage to live.

Do you hear it, all the echoes of your past selves trying to tell you that you are loved? The unknown yawns before us, and yes, maybe we’ll fuck it up. And maybe we won’t.

6.
Happy birthday, old fool.

 

after Encounter, Czeslaw Milosz

 

Needs and wants

“Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.” — Rules of Civility

Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. […]
The world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

From “Wild Geese”;
Dream Work (1986)

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

 

— Mary Oliver