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Monday, August 30, 2004

Nowhere Near Arizona

Sunday morning I woke up early and happy. The happiness vanished, of course, the minute I realized my joy had been born in my dream and not in real life.

I dreamed that Disney had made a second amusement park in California, specifically in a town called San Mario, which doesn’t really exist though in the dream I located it geographically next to San Carlos. This park was special, however, because it was, as my brain worded it, a “no-park amusement park,” meaning that you don’t ever have to leave your car to enjoy the facilities. Your entire car goes on all the rides with you and everything.

In the dream, I had read about this secret park in the newspaper. But, being a skeptical dreamer, I called my mom — again, in the dream — to verify whether the no-park amusement park existed. She told me it was real and that they had closed it down but had re-opened it, recently and secretly and that if I hurried I could visit it with my friends.

There’s no second Disneyland. There are also no no-park amusement parks, the logistics of which would boggle the mind. And, perhaps most disappointingly, there is no San Mario.

Me: Zero. Lier X. Aggregate: A million.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Pay the Rent

Written on a napkin during the drive back from Yosemite on the afternoon of August the twenty-third.
Somewhere in the joyless expanse of land called Merced, I began tracing some of the dead-end passages in my brain: things I’ve nearly forgotten, things that never quite entered my brain squarely, things strange and forget-me-not bits and pulp I’d like to retain but also refuse to let anybody else examine. A plane of Middle America agriculture, transplanted into the California landscape. It would stretch horizontally, infinitely if it didn’t end in the smog.

But what about those perfectly parallel row crops makes me wonder why my first masturbatory experience involved Lisa — why? — Kudrow? And why would I challenge my brain to remember my three earliest memories of something bad happening?

(they are, by the way (1) first grade: my mother getting a call from my grandma before just as we were getting ready to leave for school telling her that my great-grandmother had died, a week and a day after her one-hundreth birthday; (2) kindergarten: Sister Lois scolding me for incorrectly drawing a windmill; and (3) preschool: being too scared to walk down the hallway because I was terrified of a Halloween decoration of a witch — you know the kind, the ones with the paper fastener joints that let you pose them in the fashion that would best terrify a four-year-old.)

Why did I dream last night about giant sunflowers that turned out to be even-more-giant deandelions? Why were there men in blue hospital smocks and white Shyguy masks? Was I subconsciously perturbed by the historic Ahwannee Hotel’s resemblance to the Great Northern? And will nobody help Josie Packard?

Is the XM radio eighties station pumping into my eardrums as I write this coloring my recollections in neon green, electric blue and hot pink? Do I believe in heaven above? Do I believe in love? Do I?

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Standing Outside a Broken Phonebooth With Money in My Hand

Today i spent fifteen minutes picking foxtails out of my socks. I went to Gilroy. I had to break for a line of quail on the way home. And then I wrote Janine an email apologizing for missing her wedding reception.

This is not the summer of my dreams. How is it different from last summer? Exactly one year ago:
just when the heat relented and sleeping without a puddle of perspiration became possible, the church bells rang and rang and rang

sunday morning in rome
Forty days until Washington D.C.

Saturday, August 7, 2004

Strawberry Letter 22

A week later than I had planned, but I finally made it out of Isla Vista. I won't have to be there — like, live there be there — again until January. And I won't miss it.

But I think being an English major has ruined me for thinking about life like a normal person. On the road, all I could think about was the larger ramifications of leaving. I repotted the dragon plant I got in September two years ago. Initially, it had six stalks — six roommates, six stalks. One by one, all the stalks died except for one, which I put in a smaller pot and gave to Hesina until I get back. There's something to that, I swear. That sole dragon plant with its little palmy pompom head sitting all by itself in the neighbor's yard. I just don't know what that thing is. Drag.

But Not Aardvarks

Also, I made a Blogger profile and listed a good number of my interests only to have the end of them cut off. Double drag. So because blogger sucks with its lame-o space restraints, here's the list of my interests in its entirety:
alternately inhaling and exhaling, journalism, creative nonfiction, painting, linguistics, trepanning, lurid tales of Catholic martyrs, geomancy, London, ampersands, urban legends, the 8-bit age of video games, noir, psychedelia, Birdo, anteaters (but not aardvarks), Legos, waffles, TV shows and movies I watched when I was a kid but now have only the faintest recollections of, Tina Fey, Antigone, etymology, punctuation etymology, profanity etymology, New Zealand, David Lynch, Boo Boo Tannenbaum, gardening, Animal Crossing, kung fu movies, twins, Adult Swim, duality and polarization, watching color broadcasts on black and white television sets

Tuesday, August 3, 2004

When Will I See You Again?

I’m heading north for the rest of the summer. Sometimes I feel okay, but sometimes I just don’t. Although I’ve realized that a lot of it is internal, I know my environment isn’t helping. I dropped my classes — a writing class with Petracca that I wanted to take and an English class with Vanessa that I rightly should have taken but had to drop. I quit Seasons until I get back to Santa Barbara in January. The Pasado House changed. I used to dread having to leave this place, but that stopped being an issue when these mutants moved in.

So I’m heading north for the rest of the summer. I’m resolving to stay off the internet so much. Less TV, too. They’ve been draining my time. This means no IM for a while, but I’ll be checking email. Please email me, if you’d like, at my usual address: (first name)(underscore)(last name)@hotmail.com. Or just call me.

It’s not such a big deal, I swear. I just need to be at home. Ob la di, ob la dah and all that.