dispatch to a distant muse from my freakish subconscious

I dream that my teeth are falling out, this terror the sole remaining stress of a traumatic spring. I awake, check my mouth (nothing missing), stare at the ceiling fan. Two dentists and a full set of X-rays name the nightmares for trauma and nothing more--yet when they come, they are real. Realer than many things I've felt in my waking life.

I go to the internet where I always have company, announce my sleeplessness to the gmail-o-sphere, check my mail, click here and there, and calm my breathing. I am reminded of you, of nightmare-speak, of facing the terror of a lucid dream. Soon I am ready to brave the bed. By now you are certainly awake.

Sometime between awake and asleep, you tell me I shouldn't be afraid. This works, I think, because I sleep. And perhaps it is closer to the borderline of dream, because in the dreamscape you send me a package--a message, a missive, a video. When I realize it is from you, I think maybe it will be you, but it is not--it is footage of other things. I wonder its relevance, this footage of things that are not you and that have no discernible connection to me, and then I realize: it's a project of yours. You are sending me something... from something you are working on... the details, the whats and wheres irrelevant, even the fact that it manifests as video in the dream... just the idea that it's something... something you are proud of.

"I did this thing and I am proud of it," the excerpts seem to say. "And I need someone to be proud of it with me."

And I just want to say that I am. Whatever it is, I'm proud of you.

And thanks for helping me sleep again.

On Birds, Blogging, Unanswered Email, and Magnetic Poetry

SATURDAY
Photographed by: Brandon
Posted to: Brandon's Flickr Account


MONDAY

Email: 1:53 PM
From: Peefer
To: Jill
Subject: Fresh, Exciting and New
[bunch of thoughtful stuff about web design]


TUESDAY
Photographed by: Jill
Posted to: Jill's Flickr Account

Location: Jill's Flickr Account
Comments
Scott : Too cool. You're like a National Geographic photographer now. This means, of course, that you have to stop shaving your legs and armpits. Sorry, it's a union thing. Hello, Jill.

WEDNESDAY

Email: 9:49 PM
From: Jill
To: Brandon
Subject: I feel so awful…
[...] Everything is coming out flat. This fucking sucks. I’m giving up writing. I’m going to move into the forest and photograph birds.

Reply: 9:25 PM
[Notice the reply is EARLIER than the initial email. This is because my computer is POSSESSED.]
From: Brandon
To: Jill
Subject: Re: I feel so awful…
[...] sorry, but moving to the forest and photographing birds is a position that HAS ALREADY BEEN FILLED, SISTER [...] silly [...]

Re-reply: 10:41PM
From: Jill
To: Brandon
Subject: Re: Re: I feel so awful…
[...] I’m feeling Silly Jill coming on tonight [...]
I am totally coming to the forest to join you.
Birds. Fucking. Love. Me.


THURSDAY

Location: Brandon’s Blog
Brandon’s post about… uh… not sure… “And By X, I Mean Y”. Just make up a sentence that somehow follows that pattern.
Brandon writes: Okay, someone please tell me what this ubiquitous rhetorical device is called, because it’s frickin hilarious, and by hilarious I mean enough already.

Comments
8:26AM
Jill: Is this what you were doing while I was suffering, and by suffering I mean not receiving a response to my last f***ing email?

8:58AM
Brandon: [...] Jill, technically, i was drinking. Yikes.

9:24AM
Peefer: Brandon, you'd better respond to Jill's last f***ing e-mail real soon, because only then apparently will SHE respond to MY last f***ing e-mail. Just saying [...]

9:30AM
Brandon: normally i'm very good about responding to emails and by normally i mean rarely. and by very good i mean very bad. unless used together in the same sentence.


Location: Jill’s blog
Jill’s post about… uh… not sure… there was a pen involved.
Jill writes: [...] the only thing you care not for in your hands, a pen.
Your words scrawled: a mere practicality.

Comments
9:52AM
Brandon: EXACTLY. I care not for a pen in my hands, and by pen i mean notebook computer. And that's why I didn't respond to your email, because my words are a mere practicality, and by mere practicality i mean i passed out 2 seconds after posting to my blog.


Location: Brandon's blog
Comments
1:01PM
Jill: /begin rant

PEEFER, answering your email has been on the top of my guilt-inducing-to-do-list, and by guilt-inducing-to-do-list, I mean STUFF I AM TOTALLY NOT SMART ENOUGH TO GET DONE THIS WEEK. But rest assured, I think of doing it several times a day. In fact, I just re-visited your blog, thinking, WHY CAN'T I JUST COMPOSE AN INTELLIGENT EMAIL????????

BRANDON, well I hope your drinks can leave you naughty voicemails, cause I sure as hell will not be doing so.

JILL, stop being a crazy bitch and go do something useful.

/end rant

Email: 1:53PM
From: Peefer
To: Jill
Subject: WHY CAN'T I JUST COMPOSE AN INTELLIGENT EMAIL????????
I believe you're making the erroneous assumption that intelligence is paramount.

Reply: 3:01PM
From: Jill
To: Peefer
Subject: Re: WHY CAN'T I JUST COMPOSE AN INTELLIGENT EMAIL????????
[...] Uh, yeah. Perhaps it's not intelligence. Perhaps what I should have said is that "This week, I lack the power to focus." And therefore, can't get myself to sit down and complete tasks that I have been planning to complete. I have completed many things THAT WERE NOT PLANNED but nothing that arose from previous intention.

In other words, my id has taken over, and my superego has been hog-tied.

Like, my id is totally babbling this right now. My superego wants desperately to open your earlier email and discuss [thoughtful stuff about web design], but my id is like "No way! I'm going to babble! AND THEN, you are going to take this pile of magnetic poetry and sort it into PARTS OF SPEECH. But not really parts of speech, because some words are several parts of speech; and some parts of speech we will separate. Like forms of "be" and other helping verbs must be separated from action verbs. Because you often look for the be/helping verbs for functionality, but the action verbs are more for BROWSING FOR INSPIRATION."

Reply, Continued: Now
From: Jill
To: Peefer and Blogosphere
And why I am sorting my magnetic poetry? Well, first, because I have a lot of it. And everyone knows, you can’t properly use something you have a wide assortment of unless you know what is IN the assortment. That’s why we have ARCHIVISTS, for God’s sake. Archiving requires degrees. That’s why LIBRARY SCIENCE is an actual course of study.

And besides just wanting to write some things with the magnetic poetry, I also had the thought that I would mail one of my friends a message in magnetic poetry. You know, to be reassembled. It would only be 2 sentences, and there really wouldn’t be any way he could get the message wrong, unless he can justify to himself some way that “rock told you remember” conveys actual meaning, and if so, I’d hate to think what he’d have to tell himself to make the remaining words seem like a coherent thought.

Because sometimes I send my friends random things. Like pictures of snow.

Or paint swatches.

Oh, no joke.

One of my friends received a paint swatch in his Christmas card; I’m sure his first thought was something along the lines of W.T.F., or maybe more like “Uh, Jill… W! T! F! ?” but the paint swatch had a message inked on it, and I’m thinking the message--which was in no way related to any sane message that one would expect to accompany a paint swatch, such as "Do you think I should paint my office this color?", or "Wouldn't this be a cool shade for edible body paint?"--made sense after following the proper directions, making the paint swatch make actual sense, given the context.

Though I can’t be sure, because we never spoke of it.

That’s right, we’ve just carried on for 4 months of emails and voicemails and assorted other interactions NEVER HAVING MENTIONED THE FACT THAT THERE WAS A RANDOM PAINT SWATCH ATTACHED TO HIS CHRISTMAS CARD.

And I can honestly say: Jill, W.T.F.? How do you find people that think it’s perfectly reasonable that you would send a paint swatch completely unrelated to a Christmas card, and they would continue interacting with you as if this were an everyday occurrence, that they get paint swatches in their Christmas cards? Or maybe I should say annual occurrence? Because who sends Christmas cards at all--let alone with paint swatches attached--at any other time of year, so as to make it possible for it to be an everyday occurrence?

[Note--Anaglyph, your Christmas card has been re-mailed. Coming Soon! Look for it in a post office near you!]

And--perhaps more importantly--how can we find more of those people?

And more people who will continue answering your emails after, in response to a discussion about web design, you send a treatise on compartmentalizing your magnetic poetry?

And--perhaps MOST importantly--CAN WE BUY MORE MAGNETIC POETRY?

Because we really don't have enough. There was no "rock", so we're going to have to MAKE a rock--that's right, MAKE A ROCK, one of us should call a geologist and find out how we do that--if we intend to send the aforementioned esoteric two sentence message that cannot possibly be misinterpreted.

Not to mention we could find no "very".

And definitely no "afraid".

Strangely enough, we did find "trenchant". Go figure.

When a Man Italicizes Feet, Then It Is Okay to Take His Suggestions

"Ruining your life...is an effective path towards writerly enlightenment. You should write a post of good ways to ruin your life for the sake of inspiration."

Disclaimer: It should not be assumed that Jill or anyone that confides in Jill has ever done, or ever intends to do, or even has ever had a situation that brought to mind the thought of doing, any of these things. Though it shouldn't be assumed the opposite, either. Believe what you will.

Good Ways to Ruin Your Life for the Sake of Inspiration

1. Regularly get drunk with one of your college professors who actually lives with his girlfriend and may or may not be certifiably insane. Let nature take its course. Let this develop into a long-term relationship. Write about it. Don't finish the project, though, because you HATE plots.

2. Regularly get drunk with one of your college professors who actually lives by himself and quite possibly is gay or at least bisexual, and most likely has some sort of crush on the professor who lives with his girlfriend. Sleep with him. Refrain from killing him when he decides to cut off all communication with you even though you are still in his class. Get an A in the class and then write about all the ways you could have killed him. Get grad school credit for the writing. Sell mucho tickets at a festival.

3. Date an actor. Write about his inability to accept compliments or express his feelings. Place very high in a writing contest with the result.

4. Become best friends with your ex-boyfriend, the actor. Write about how you get nothing done when you hang out together. Simultaneously, develop crush on 400 year old dead procrastinating fictional character. Write about how delusions of conversing with aforementioned fictional character dovetail nicely with how little work you get done when hanging out with aforementioned ex-boyfriend. Write an academic essay about your creative writing about your delusions. Get grad school credit for both. Sell out run at major festival.

5. Pine.

6. Pine.

7. Pine.

8. But, you know, don't admit the truth.

9. Truth, you see, is stranger than fiction.

10. Therefore, when you write the truth, vaguely enough, people think you're creative.

11. So, you know, why live the truth, when you could just write about it?

12. It's all in the telling.

13. Run away to someone you barely know.

14. Run away with someone you barely know.

15. Think of how many hits your blog would get if all in the blogosphere knew what you'd done, and couldn't wait to hear the sordid details. Think you, possibly, wouldn't care.

16. Self-publish your multimedia journal from the excursion.

17. Sleep with some guy who's probably gay, but at the least is unsatisfying. Become buddies once you get over it. Collaborate.

18. Leave that phone message you've been dying to leave. Sit back and wait for the response. Record the conversation. Transcribe. Publish.

19. Obsessively save all your email and IM conversations. Stop going out into the real world, so that you can stay home, cut and paste them, and turn them into a novel.

20. Ignore someone for as long as you possibly can. Then let sparks fly. Chick lit is hot market.

21. Wake yourself up every two hours and force yourself to write down all the naughty dreams you're having about the person you're ignoring. Sleep deprivation may be a torture method, but clit lit is a hot market.

22. Take a shower.

If you all have any additional suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Borrowed Words

It is as if I’ve always known you. The way the details fall into place—the tilt of your head, the line of your back, the crisscross of your arms folded in front of you. I watch you walk and know it is you. "Oh, THERE you are," I think. But I have never seen you walk before this day.

I think I am imagining things, the way I am imagining history to fill in the crevices—places you’ve been, places you’ve loved, the things you love to do. Songs you sing when no one’s listening, songs you sing in your sleep. Until they turn out to be true. This is more than imagining. “I know exactly who you are,” you tell me. I don't doubt it.

I have always known you. I know it, but somehow don’t believe it. Without you. I don’t believe it without you. With you, there is no question; without you, it is lost. Because I am afraid. What I don’t admit: I want someone to tell me it is more than just imagining. No one else can. The hints between two people who have known each other all their lives but only just recently met seem obvious to only them. No one else can really know this. No one speaks that language they share.

You’d tell me, if I’d ask. But I don’t. It’s not something I know how to ask. The words aren’t there. And in those moments when I could try, when you're listening, there's no need.

A heartfelt thank you to the insightful people from whom I borrowed the italicized lines. Cupcake and Brandon, if only I could sing on key, I'd serenade you both.