mom says they're taffy pullers

hot coffee at red's java house, it's windy. i keep drinking around my hair, sometimes through it. we try on wide brimmed hats that we can't carry with us and are impractical for our cold weather lives. we still think we live in california. dad wanted to go to city lights, so we went. it was mercifully near empty, so i sat upstairs and read 'thin kimono' for forty five minutes. dad bought me a book twentieth century french poetry. maybe i'll write my damn thesis about poems instead. i've had it with pushing my agenda around there and would prefer to just pusue it quietly on my own time, later, after they are done with me. maybe.

feels better here, even if i'm not being very brave like i told myself i would be. undeclared resolution. just working up my guts very late, sometimes too late. work in progress. couldn't sleep last night and couldnt write anything last night. everything is choppy in my head and i perceive everything choppily, like there are curtains and blinds being constantly pulled up and down over my eyes. i wish i could postpone my second semester. i keep wondering why not yet and now i know why not! not gaddamn ready! something deeply hidden is behind things, einstein said. i wrote you a letter with a quote from him in it, another one that i like less. quotes from him keep tumbling in on my life. i'm not seeking him out or anyhting. it was a good letter, but i wasn't brave enough to send it. it's in a drawer.

on the way to the bookstore we met a mortuary service memorial band. they play in chinatown for funerals. he said they were a marching funeral band. he said, 'we play for dead people' when mother asked what they were all about. he actually walked us all the way to the bookstore, he and mother really hit it off. he wanted to know all about england and why they moved. he lived in leeds for awhile, he said. he lived with a 'cat from wales' who everyone called chisel since he was dumb as a...chisel, he said, now works in internatiuonal diplomacy and speaks three languages. we parted ways and he put on his silly white sailor type military looking cap on and marched double time to catc up with the other members of the band. his red hair glinted in the sun.

fresh squeezed orange juice at breakfast. if i've ever ordered that before, i can't recall when. i never ate oranges until college. they reminded me of day care in pleasanton, where i hated them, and where chad and his friend would block me up in the highest part of their backyard playstructure. chad was winona's son, so he never got in trouble for it, until one day i tried to get down by just jumping off and got all bloody. i was so proud of myself, but everyone else was pretty upset. chad really got it then, and i felt sorry for him. he must be in his trities now. i wonder if he remembers me at all. i thought of him while i drank my orange juice. in a movie, he would name his firstborn for me and thereby rid himself of all guilt and regret. for making me panic so badly that i leapt from the palystructure. what a bad movie that would be.

i have two movies that i want to re-watch right now, mostly vincere because moti just watched it and wrote me about it. i miss moti. he stands on furniture and has more books than almost anyone. we used to go to the old communist's library and coffeshop in el centro, where they would smoke and drink coffee endlessly and i would walk around and touch things and listen mostly. they asked me about my dreams pretty often. sometimes i'd dream in spanish and they liked hearing about those the best. i spoke like i'd sustained a head injury. maybe i'm more interesting like that. the other one is japon, which i watched with moti and the gang at the architects' office.

i need to brush my teeth. i keep thinking about imaginary scenes instead of what is really happening. stop that. nearly opaque shade of fantasy that hangs loosely enough over real life that i think i can brush it away, which is not true. or maybe i can't admit to myself that i like it there and am not very committed to taking a few ateps past the damn thing. mental note to get a little more involved in my own life. where's a realist when you need one? maybe my life fits badly because i'm trying recently to be very pragmatic, except i have a poor interpretation of pragmatism, which is why the whole thing feels so affected and is a collassal failure. but also amazing, like a circus tent caving in.

mom says the skyline muses are taffy pullers. dad says they're measuring cloth. i've clearly already named them in my own way, but i don't care what they're doing as long as they don't let the skyline fall down on the job. no one knows what they really are. we're a sinkhole of pragmatism.