Novels

I have published one novella, Blue, and am in the final revision of Daydream Nation, a full-length novel started in 2001.  Below are the first 45 pages of the new novel, recently revised and edited.  Part of this section was read recently at Art Explosion's art and text show in San Francisco.

Daydream Nation

copyright 2011 by Charles Keatts

"Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much
as your own unguarded thoughts." - Sutta Nipata

Endtroducing

Cities of the perpetual white night. Snow and ice. Miles of cold. An old stained mirror, smoke, a match being lit, flaring flame, as if in a movie, as if, not real, not her normal life. Cloudy. What was she watching? Someone with flowers, holding up hands, in black and white, moving behind her all the blood, all the fluid, sucked out.

This story started with Ann's death. Drug overdose. We, or I, did not see it coming, she was a good friend, should have been ongoing, always, more. Mentor, teacher, guide. Then suddenly and we did not know why, what happened, the details. No obituary, no notice of a funeral, nothing. It was weird, not right, what could we do?

I am telling this story, more or less, based on what I can remember, these flawed images. Actually that's not entirely true, part of me believes I remember everything exactly as if I were an advanced computer, as if computers were flawless, which they never will be, I don't think.

In Ohio, yes a long time ago. Back when there were trees, grass, almost everywhere. It was very warm then, unnaturally warm.

It was an email, John Richards, the director of the art department at Kent State, got it from somewhere in California, maybe. Ann Jackson died on such and such a date of a drug overdose.

That was it. I had not seen her in months, we knew of some problems, through our mutual friend Bob Walden, meds, depression, her new marriage. She was married in an LA ashram, nothing bad or weird, we just thought the marriage was sudden, and she kept it a secret for a while. We knew her through a healing ashram in Kent, Ohio, where we had all gone to get our lives back together. Some were worse than others, almost beyond hope, like Bob and I, but we got a lot better.

Now she was dead, apparently, based on just the email, just what I heard, no funeral, nothing, no memorial, not for us anyway, I had no idea how much she meant to me. We had gotten close, she had become a mentor to me, as a painter, writer, maybe a spiritual guide. Teacher and friend. My best friend's girlfriend, partner, wife, ex-wife. Maybe I had a crush on her, so I was told later.

I didn't know what to do, after the time period of almost mourning, wanting to mourn, wanting to know what happened, no recourse. Of course, I could write, make art, that’s all, language as conduit, as key, as prison, as virus, image, visuals as freedom, visions. I tried to describe my feelings for her. It was like some sliver of the blue Nile, of the diamond snake, the steel copper. I have no clear or definite explanation. I didn’t know what I was doing really, still don’t. No grasp of the rules, really, no comprehension.

Berkeley, California three years later. Hispanic guy across the street reaches under his shirt, scratching the side of his abdomen, as cool kids walk by. He worked today. My name is Mark and I am watching him as I drive by going up Hearst Ave to my room in the Berkeley Ashram.

I got out of my old VW bus with the homemade lowering dock, out onto the quiet Berkeley street, a sunny morning after a run to the coffee shop for the mocha, now in its cup holder as I wheeled up the driveway, the softly lighted tunnel of old green trees with their warm July leaves and vines and bushes over broken concrete and gravel with a few small plants growing up in there. And rolled up the ramp around to the back of the house, worked my way through the clean but cluttered kitchen, and past the bathroom and into the computer room where I came to the laptop docking station.

“Do you still love me?” he said. They will talk together, trees, grass, moss, sound and silence, ripples in the mud, footprints. Alex talking to Ann.

She said over the phone to him before she expired, “drug overdose.” Was it accidental or intentional? He was lost now, saw the edge, moved past it. Disjointed hallucinatory worlds of past and future. Piece by piece. Before she left her body. She was a guru to some. Became that way. After passing through fire, etc.

The gesture of the eyes avoiding desire, moving into fear, the looking away.

“I moved to Berkeley about 2 weeks before 9-11.” she said. That was in 2001, when terrorists opposing the US Government destroyed the World Trade Center using large jets as bombs. Ann was about 20 when she first moved to Berkeley and then San Francisco.

She had a psychic connection to tsunamis. One year she dreamt of tsunamis every night. When the first big one hit in December 2004 she was very upset.

She read my first novel as painful record of my traumatic childhood. She was sensitive and strong, and was a foremother of the flaming chakra girls, a creative post-feminist art collective and political cell.

Heat and weather was a big concern then. Average temperature in San Francisco was 65, compared to around 57 when Ann first moved there in 2001. Water levels had risen. Alex, my best friend, her lover, had done some research and decided that a runaway greenhouse effect was more and more likely. The planet Venus is believed to have experienced a runaway greenhouse effect, which led to its oceans boiling away. He convinced me that this was a possibility.

The day after the inauguration, sitting in the back of the Vivekananda store. Nice to be able to sit. She'll be here for a while. I seem to be thinking about sex a lot, more than I thought, but I do like Alex, not just in a physical way? Or maybe just physical.

She had a band too, of course. Various names, settled finally on Rock This Bitch: a cross between Sonic Youth, Rage Against the Machine, and Godsmack, and they did a killer version of Pink Floyd's “In the Flesh”. Alex sang and played drums, Ann on bass. It was fun…as fun as the rocknroll lifestyle can be, drugs and all. Usually fun at first, at least for most. Not so much for me, only brief moments, then numbness.

I can't eat that apple right now. Need water. Back to work.

That was around the time, after she died, when I started to imagine a different world, a world of ice, machines, where almost everyone is gone. I knew that this was some way to help myself in my grief. Because what was happening with me was, as you will see, not so interesting, or painful, or both. The ice world, and my future as a cyborg, seemed to be much more interesting. I have only to ask myself what the relationship is between this real life and the world in my mind?

Ann had girlfriends and boyfriends then. Sometimes only girls. Her main focus was on becoming an artist, or using the talents she had. She began as a painter but soon moved into conceptual art and installation. She read as much theory as she had to for grad school. Beulard was the same age as her father, she had a truce with them both in a way...more feelings about her father, more annoyance with Beulard and other male theorists. She liked his idea of copies, or copies of copies, orders of simulacra. It made sense to her.

As Ann read Alex would make love to her: various books, once the old testament, the Torah, maybe genesis, later chapters. Said it was like a perfect fucked up fantasy as he fucked her. He did not feel left out: she never read aloud. But he never asked her to. He felt a little left out.

Waiting to see “No Exit” in the Tenderloin. A new production.

Now in this moment listening to Fatboy slim's version of magic carpet ride. Tall skinny blonde made me a chocolate heart. Hell is...all you have to write about is your unhappy childhood. Tomorrow I want to buy glitter and stars, but mainly I want to hang out with Lenina Crowne. Asian tattooed goth goddess. Actually she is half-Asian. Half green. Martian? She never told me. Beautiful.

He was cute, tall, Caucasian. Trendy metal glasses a little too small for his head. Skinny, probably early thirties, messy morning grayish hair, they had the same cute button nose although her died black hair matched her long black coat. Ann hated them for being together, comfortable, possibly happy a good chunk of the time.

Ann forgets how beautiful she is, doesn't believe compliments most of the time, just once in a while.

Dig it a night of bands music blondes and alcohol, bleach and bass and drums, severe insecurity, realizing I am back in this thing with a bloody vengeance.

I lost the use of my legs in a climbing accident, crippling, wheelchair.

It was an xperimental film, Daphne filmed Alex's death by virtual overdose.

Ann is protective of her feelings...I try to be but still put my head on the chopping block.

She apologized for not swallowing...said that she didn't want to ingest all the drugs in my system into her.

Feeling fucked up on Sunday, day off. Waiting for mocha to kick in. The earth is partially covered in ice again. A new ice age. Ann and Alex are gone, more or less. They are no longer real in the sense you and I are, or were. I'm glad you're here.

Daphne said she was annoyed and acted annoyed about the video/short I just made of her. She was great though. Obviously a natural.

Online and in Eris I was usually eno23, a reference to a favorite film character, jumbled, a favorite musician/producer, and a favorite number pointing to the conspiracy behind all the others...

Alex asked me about my recording and writing and art making: what does this have to do with saving the world? Biding your time maybe? After his virtual death. You never know what's real anymore.

Shoes, chalkbag, that's all you need. I'm still a climber. Somewhat damaged, yeah.

Jump back and forth between life, writing and film.

Everything we have done and experienced has led up to this moment, the only reality. All is leading, leading to this, now. This is why I was born, quit ROTC, moved to California, got married and divorced to sit in the back of a cellphone store, reading and eating lunch.

In the future, when you take BART under the bay, the tunnel is clear, and you can see the fish. The express goes too fast of course. The slow people who don't take it don't always look but it's nice to know they can.

I have been around for over eight hundred years now. This fact is still amazing to me. Alive, not sure.

All Alex and Ann talked about was film: not in the sense that most of us do, as some focus of conversation or fun way to interact: they only used film as a way to communicate: if he was hungry he would say "how many times have we seen Babette's Feast" etc.

If he wanted to make a film he’d say what were we doing 8 and a half days ago?

She would say that’s pretty Bergman when she couldn’t relate to something or thought it was lame/flat.

Language is a virus and a prison from which I am trying to escape. Is there a cure? His gay/androgynous appearance mannerisms gestures were totally endearing to a select few.

I must ask that girl out, she flirted with me I think, maybe strongly. I must relish and adore the thought of the sweet pain of rejection. And be ecstatic over the thought of acceptance, the possibility.

What it is, what it shall be, memories, footfalls, down the hall, time forgot, forgetting, forgotten, soon. That was what he was like, soon, sooner, soonest. In the dark room, behind the keyhole, the tired metaphor, magic carpet. This was the keyhole, this was the key that fit. Fit, fitted, fitness. This was the day. Interested, introspective. I thought of this story, as I tell it to you, as a keyhole, I can look through it, into the past, get some understanding of what happened, what has led up to this point, see things now more clearly. My thoughts have been frozen, like the earth, for a long time now.

When in doubt, here it goes. They spoke in films. He was nervous when he first spoke to her. "Have you seen any good films lately?"

Alex writes for magazines about anime and games...

Daphne's quote about games and porn. “Guys in San Francisco seem to be into one of two things,” she said, sitting on the stage of the Cafe du Nord. “Games or porn. Which one are you into Mark?”

I'm addicted to making art, I said.

Porn porn everywhere...

She said that when she used to live in San Francisco before she mostly knew drag queens on in the Castro and now she is meeting all these straight guys who are either into gaming or internet porn. The reality was yes I was addicted to women, relationships, but not porn so much.

That would change somewhat.

People at that time were so inclined to wear headphones everywhere in the city, on Bart, the subway, they became much less aware of their surroundings. People in cars were insulated. Windows up, radio on. Spoon fed mild centrist fragmented propaganda by public radio. But the rest of us, with earbuds, just as bad, music, podcasts, insulated, protected. I can't hear you. I'm on the phone. Shielded. Was it the same outside the cities? The suburbs, if they still exist? I don't know. All these divisions became irrelevant, more and more, later, as you can imagine. People walking around, talking to themselves, the air.

Rushing out the door, running for the bus. Nice lookin blonde punkish girl gets on, distant look of possible hangover. Daphne comes over tonight. I made the bus. Closer to the cell phone shop. Closer to Geary, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park, the ocean.

I remember things, took photos, films, wrote things down. Fragments of journal, a novel, from then. Back then it was called Daydream Nation, after Sonic Youth.

Alex and I went to 16th and Guerrero to check out food, punks and tourists from all over. He was surprised when I told him that the girl in the grey dress was checking him out. There was a guy there checking me out. Indian/pakistani food. I wanted to sleep with the guy. Cat power, shiny black boots, I missed Lenina.

She had a psychiatric dream. Death is not the end, or the beginning.

It's chilly this morning. Too many puppies this morning means too many women...that is the key to the code. I am obsessed with women this week. (more than most weeks? Just out of perspective?) I feel sightly out of control. Keep looking at their bodies. Like turntables, beautiful, functional, curved. They speak in forked tongues of beautiful beats. Sisters of my lithium lens.

Waiting for Daphne at top of BART escalator, 16th and Mission, someone left small brown wooden chair here for me to sit in. Buses, Walgreens, a few people but it's quiet tonight. 16^th and Mission in San Francisco, then and for many years after was a hub, like some shifting locations in the Tenderloin, of drugs, prostitution, poverty. Dark and dense. But close to chic restaurants and bars, so many diverse folks came by there to check out and partake the many varieties of interesting ways of checking out and going out.

Lots of drama, conflict, pissy, ridiculous, walking away, Tom Waits, sex, touching, menstrual blood, Borges, talismans, the darkness, film festivals, Alex and Ann, talking, crazy hippy sushi place, overpriced. Long tortured silences, I've put up with worse, much worse, give her and her St Johns Wort a chance. And that toe sucking was out of this world. Long alley in the Mission of murals and other pieces of art. Sushi and silence leading to drama again.

Warm here in the tunnel, Black Sabbath and resisting the urge to bail on her tonight. Who will it be? Why is that in spite of being happy being alone I prefer to be with a woman in spite of the difficulties? Soft, warm, hot, wet, smiling, challenging. That's what I like, apparently. The usual.

Ann and Alex pulled into the gas station on Geary and Stanyon, matching scarred white helmets and puffed black down jackets, he flipped up the seat of the scooter to put gas in while she went over to the washer fluid to clean her face shield. They were pretty happy at that point. Before her depression started to really kick in.

I miss her now more than I thought I would. Thinking about women of the past a bit. What is the key, tying it all together?

Basic evil. Mysticism.

Blue diamond, destroyed and then rebuilt with nano, to bad effect considering it has mystic power.

Like the Frankenstein monster.

The lovely charming young man is possibly trans, it seems, maybe. It’s all good.

So based on reading a synopsis on back of Criterion Ikiru the Kurosawa film, I had the full idea for flashbacks, that my novel's present is actually the future and the present is the past...right before, after or during the next ice age. I speak about the distant past...hundreds of years...

Darling girl sits next to me at an ashram meeting, dog with 3 legs, Camille, Izzy, Alex in front of ATA doing radio pirate performance art about indecency vis a vis Janet Jackson. 80 kw and a big antenna.

Talking to Daphne about 9-11 and greening houses made me feel more comfortable writing about environmentalism and the chickens roosting theory.

She felt like she had tsunami water moving in her veins, mixing with her own blood.

I'm actually in the mood for this version of Comfortably Numb this morning. With Daphne's drama I have been thinking of the ultimate drama queen, my old real actual friend Nadja, and the climbing gym.

I remember then having ideas for a novel: just add plot elements from “fasting” into “daydream”...blue diamond contains his personality in nanotech...hidden for a while in the blue gems of Julie's mobile...the actual prop of Blue...the film within the book.

The film and the production...

Embrace the idea of insanity and delusion as writer/protagonist allows his insanity to structure the novel in the same sense that he tries to control the illness: art, language as virus, plague, illness. The novel as an illness set out to infect society. Primitive idea of mental illness as contagious, still relevant? Boundaries, walls, fences, gates, gateless gates, spinning among fields like Mary Daly who asked me "What do you do? How do you make money?"

She saw a movie poster for "blue" in the goodwill and almost bought it for him but had to rush to work, she was late. When she went back it was gone.

Around that time he saw the body double for Binoche in Oakland, along with Michael, the double for Gere. Michael used to be a prominent heavy metal dude.

What kind of insanity is it? Delusions. Nonlinearity. ADD?

Why does he go insane? News of Ann's death by overdose, pushing him over the edge. Sort of Pushing Alex, for sure, along with other things. The state of things in general.

Ann seeks an absence of memory...the opposite of Proust. She doesn't believe in it.

Her voice, I can hear it in my mind, she’s not here, now. She is will be later and always as I create her now in my memory-mind.

Do you want this? She said, as she inserted her fingers in my ass. Yes I said, yes.

This is the way it is, we can’t go back and change it, spontaneous bop. I bought ribbed condoms today "for her pleasure" it’s warm in here, in my studio. Here, where it all happens, the writing, the dying. The disappearing. Hacking, coding, it all makes sense to me. Anything but make art. Like paintings, for example.

With her death/overdose/disappearance my ability to paint, that sensual of all arts, dropped off a precipitous fucking lot. Like the bass swallowing up the treble. Trembling in the needle dawn. And his works clattered about him. Yeah I did that but I was mostly a juicer. Alcoholic. I mean I loved lsd, special k, all that stuff. We were both clean, for years.

When I turn the glass of chamomile tea the bag wants to stay where it is, it doesn’t want to let me drink away from it. In the milk. It's time to blog, to tell the world, or at least the 100 or so people who read my blog that Daphne inspires me, that she is my muse of musical prose sounds. As I seek to escape language, the basis for our reality, the structure which is not really language but being which gives rise to language and all things in its image. Except painting, we can make painting not like a language. Maybe. It's worth a shot.

Shallow. I thought I was, was to some extent, true, needing that ornamental value, she was not attractive enough, to me, to fulfill that, to be part of the look good, the accessories, the watch, the gold chain. Must look good. Not something I even want to let go of, will not, it gets better, but not gone.

Like the crow, the comic, I am haunted by dead beauty, love, kindness, warmth, intelligence, tenderness.

I have to break out, be free of this isolation, hopping on Craigslist, Tribe, messaging women. K8 is bleach blond and bony and fiery and half Mexican and a poet goddammit and fuck you if ya got a problem with that. Moody as all hell yeah I’ll tell ya.

So the first time Ann looked at Alex it was out of a car, her yellow Alfa Romeo GT Veloce, eyes kind of locking into his, or trying to, he was focused on the job interview, then she seemed to ignore him, as she does now, mostly. Then the obsession, for both of them, the breaking down of the old, mostly good if tainted reality.

Then, eventually, they had to have this conversation.

I don’t expect you to stay, he said.

Well, what do you want? she said. He could hear the pain in her voice, of course, and see it on her face, in her large white brown and black shining eyes. She didn’t hide her feelings well and he didn’t either.

I want you to stay. Desperately.

And?

But I don’t expect you to.

You said that. Why?

Because you’re young, and I’m old.

That’s so patronizing.

I know. It sucks.

Fuck you.

So they fucked, again.

I was in my twenties, then, at the very beginning, in the wheelchair, dark hair, long, pulled back in a ponytail, Japanese-American, large frame, long arms, strong of course now that he used them for wheels, when he didn’t use the motor, which was most of the time, but even before, when he was a climber. Lines on his face, careworn, that look, tired, concerned, a good therapist look.

Like red-hot iron steel claws digging into his mind. Her mind. It was the same.

Daphne was thin, strong with pale skin, hair now shoulder length, blond with red and black streaks in it. Skin a bit dry from years of smoking, not healthy looking but tough, like it had been beaten. She was tall, elegant. Was about to get involved with the Flaming Lotus Girls, then eventually with the Flaming Chakra Girls.

Alex, good looking. Thin, fast movements, dark curly hair. Sharp, insane piercing eyes. Like a moon, like Jupiter, like a vampire. And he was a vampire, the kind that would drink your ideas, your vitality, your spirit, if you let him, if you weren’t on guard, and most people weren’t. Just manic enough. Like I was, could have continued to be, theoretically. Hypothetically.

This was who we were. Insane, but in different ways. Ann was short, dark short hair, often dressed in black, punked out. No tattoos, a few piercings. I had the tattoos. Dragons, cherry blossoms.

Long day of climbing in West Virginia, New River Gorge, sometime in August. Saturday. Alex and I spent the day climbing in a climbing area called Kaymoor working on “Hardcore female thrash” a Dan Reel route that moved up to the left up the rock to a steep section, the hard move at the top, just could not get that move. And even after that it looked a little run out, no holds, no end in sight.

That night it rained. Not a lot. The next day they went to Summersville Lake. Started out on an easy crack that ended up being a little wet near the crux. “Black and tan”. As I was trying to make the hard move at the crux, a long reach up to the left off dime size footholds with a gaston in a finger crack, I fell, the last piece protecting me (a #2 cam) popping out, and Alex began to run back, to take in the slack in the rope, but it was not enough. I hit a rounded ledge, almost like a dish, but hard, my back, just before the rope tightened, a flash of pain, then "fuck, fuck, fuck" over and over again. Alex lowered me off the nut that had held, the second to last piece.

Then a few years later in grad school, working on a Masters in psychology. After the accident I had the usual depression, thoughts of drinking, suicide. But had pulled through, just like I often pulled myself up off the floor, because I had to, really, better than the alternative, depression, being a victim.

Then I wanted to try to understand why and how Alex died, after a recent move to California, the year before. They had been friends for a long time but things had changed. Ann's death was probably the crux.

Alex called Mark on his cellphone just a few weeks before his death, or virtual death.

Hey Marko, what's up, he said, signal just clear enough.

Not much. you?

Oh not bad, wrecked another car, got busted.

Nice. Using?

No. just drinking, a bit.

“Ok cool. Good to hear from you.” And that's ok. That’ll work. Was that how they drifted apart? The rapid cycling, the mixed episodes, the relationship problems? Was that it? They were both in their fifties, both acting younger, feeling younger, not really much more mature than thirty years before. Most people felt years younger these days, looked it, if you could get the decent anti-aging drugs. The good stuff would take 25 years off your life, but it had side effects, of course.

Film that Daphne took of Alex. Mark watches it on his computer screen. She was going retro in some ways at that time.

Alex is lying on the ground, sidewalk, syringe of jade near his arm, a few drops of purple liquid, on his arm, in the needle. The jeans, new, black sport coat with silver stripes down the arms, tribal tattoo around his neck, various piercings, very Oakland hipster boy. His body quivers and then is still, his arm starts to flatten as if it is a balloon, losing air, his body becomes red, then gray. His head separates from his body, rolls into an alley and then into a gutter. Berkeley. On the edge of People's Park...somewhere, filmed by Daphne, his death, modified, but how much? Whatever the fuck they were using, developed.

Fade to a bowling-alley, a symbol? The inanity of the OD? The suburban stupidity of it? Hear Daphne’s voice in a Kim Gordon punk monotone: "He thought he had control, thought at least part of his life was under control. But he discovered ultimately that control is an illusion. Pretty stupid, huh?"

What was it? Depression? Addiction? There was more, a sequence of events, a narrative. This was Mark's obsession. Here was a certain amount of chaos, of unruliness, because of the subject, the focus of the investigation, at least the nominal one, as opposed to what we are really interested in. Ann's death followed by the weird virtual death of Alex.

Mark had watched the scene before, studying it. Perhaps elements, imagery, had some kind of meaning. Got access due to Daphne filming it for a film based on Alex’s book, Daydream Nation. Fucked up shit. filming her friend's death. But he wanted to die so there you go, he had plans.

The difference now, as he watched it, was that he was planning to watch it one more time before he attempted to go into the world that Alex entered at that moment, to try to understand what had happened, what had led up to this. He pulled it out and inserted the disc that would lead to the panel of options. Did not know what to expect, experimental program. Something tried and true would not be interesting, now would it? Put on a old vinyl record, Stones, Some Girls. When the whip comes down... people did stuff with VR these days, but going to the network where Alex most likely was, that is different. It's like going into the african jungle, the heart of darkness again.

Now as the film played his brain being manipulated, drawn into that world, that time, based on what was there.

Nano-workers going into his brain, manipulating the neuro-transmitters, creating his new inner reality, he was there. The street, watching the death, the bowling alley, crash of pins. Smelling the urine, the trees, the fumes of Telegraph, People's Park. Just as nasty as part of the ashram there as it was in 2000.

What happened when he went in, experienced, into Alex’s world, his past, his mind, research of writing, films, emails, journals, the novel, Daphne’s stuff. He would sit on the balcony in Walnut Creek, listening to REM, sound of the pool, a fountain. Drive, over and over again, "Hey, kids, where are you?

Nobody tells you what to do, baby." .

With their virtual supernetwork, which they called Eris, connected to the international networks via CIA snoopers, worms and superworms, Alex, Mark, Daphne and Ann, as well as some of the newly reborn Flaming Chakra Girls, were able to infiltrate the nano labs of MIT, with the agency’s full approval and interest of course. The CIA as it was then was only loosely affiliated with the US Govt, such as it had become, and they really wanted to monitor the activity of all the ashrams, comprehensively. But then secretly on their own the group, led by Alex, subverted the experiments to create Quantum Neural Alteration Machines.

No real names, no names, nothing real, not any more. We’ll see what happens.

Alex existed now on a symbolic level. Maybe.

When entering Eris, the new Matrix-like home of Alex and maybe Ann, Mark sensed, watching him backing up, in reverse, pulling the needle out of his arm, as Mark manipulated this dreamlike lucidity, that, unlike himself, Alex had never had a clear sense of who or what he was. Therefore he found reassurance in relationships, especially women, who saw him a certain way, seem to see him as something more than a body, something coherent. Going in...

That’s what happens when your memory is so sketchy, incomplete, so goes your sense of self. And the present, so thin, the future, predictable only based on the past, intuition, frail reality. Only certain labels stick after a time: filmmaker, writer, alcoholic, addict, junkie, bipolar, manic-depressive. Artist. But they float away, like balloons.

Working on something, some wire, a box, various objects. A box filled with canvas. Shredded, burning. Trying to revise, too noisy in here, she’s young, twenty-ish, but looks good, something showing through her sweater...a bra, a nipple, view of skin. Mark was now completely immersed in Eris.

Eris is different from other vr worlds because it is based on language, pure linguistic thought. Using even basic quantum computers trillions of miniature worlds can be created at ultrafast speeds using text that is plugged directed into linguistic neuroreceptors in the brain. The images of the film act as a catalyst. VR technology began as a visual medium or connection and the real value of connecting visually at least in the beginning was not lost on the inventors.

Mark's understanding of psychology and neuroscience complemented the hacker skills of Alex and Daphne's nano skills.

What's there, modified, totally run down, this is it. Raw, fuck it, this is what you get. Make it bad, or let it be bad out of spite.

Going off lithium. Doctor’s instructions. See what happens. No more side effects from that. Withdrawal effects? Talking to the camera, self-consciously. It’s like some late night radio show, mystery, spooky, doors creaking shut, sleeping bags and pillows, before my father drank, when we were kids, before Dungeons and Dragons. He hated the cyberpunk shit but he wanted to sell something, needed money.

Create simulated therapy session: Alex, Daphne and Mark:

Daphne: You were kind of mean to that woman this morning, she was just trying to work with you.

Alex: Yeah, whatever. I was just stating my opinion.

Mark: So, how do you feel, Alex, when Daphne criticizes you, like this?

Alex: Oh fuck off.

Everyone laughs.

In the kitchen. Water dripping in the porch, coffee brewing, decaf. Hands shredded, white from climbing chalk. Magnesium carbonate. Keeps your hands dry. Sweat. Facing the wall, a hot wall, burning white hot now...tendrils, wires, hanging, forming a shadow of something broken, something smashed. Cat, mother, and yellow kitten, fighting. Hanging out with the climbers again. Getting ready to go to Seneca Rock, West Virginia. Drinking decaf. Some things don’t change. A story. The farmhouse.

Random images, Mark has no control now over what he sees, it all gets recorded, supposedly, we’ll see. Uncharted waters. On the hard drive. He can change it later, go back, cut and paste.

DNA Building Blocks for Molecular Nanofabrication. Practical components for three-dimensional molecular nanofabrication must be simple to produce, stereopure, rigid, and adaptable. DNA tetrahedra, less than 10 nanometers on a side, that can self-assemble in seconds with near-quantitative yield of one diastereomer. They can be connected by programmable DNA linkers. Their triangulated architecture confers structural stability; by compressing a DNA tetrahedron with an atomic force microscope.

Alex and Mark were computer nerds growing up, hackers, never got into anything big, were more interested in creating than breaking in. They developed Eris and sold it to Lentfree, a division of Allys-Curtain, a contractor for the military, in 1997. Mark's aunt and uncle had been with the CIA many moons ago and he used this old connection to crack open a door. In reality to infiltrate, create a platform for Eris. Young geniuses were quite in vogue then. Security was being breached by their teenage peers on a regular basis. They needed money for drugs. The suburbs were boring and oppressive and girls were not into computer geeks at that time, still a problem, so here they go, with Eris and all its ramifications. It was designed to basically take on a life of its own, enveloping the government and corporate networks it could access and then creating a new network of self-replicating nanotech/vr/genetics. A drug/computer system world, make it work. Make the world safe for drugs and hallucinations.

They took the money that the government gave them and went on a serious drug binge, ended up in Amsterdam, New York, the east village, smoking heroin and bragging about their government connections and exploits. In the ensuing chaos and paranoia Mark got really wigged out and they ended up coming back and he checked himself into a treatment center a few weeks later. He was extremely paranoid for months. Alex lost his best using buddy so he followed him on the recovery path just a few months later, after a few suicidal moments.

Raining. Mark is wearing his bright orange poncho. Ready for an epic, says Alex? Didn't happen. I definitely felt more like a writer than a climber that day at The Grove in West Virginia, the "secret" climbing area near Summersville Lake and the New River Gorge, sitting by the fire, drying out my socks, bouldering with Mike, watching Alex drill.

It will happen, I feel, manically optimistic.

What has happened. Resentments. Against Daphne, for helping me to be in this position, of having less money, of being obliged to support her to a large extent, food, rent, etc. but does she really need me here? Not sure.

I am Alex in his other mind, recreated. I am fluid, moving, I cannot be pinned down, shifting, flowing, jumping. That's just the way it is. I am not an image.

The technology is still a work in progress, experimental, beta. Anything can happen.

How much of this is true, how much is he/she just letting me see?

Alex into the camera: so how is it being alive? How does it feel, to feel and know real things. all philosophical bullshit aside?

Nanostructures manipulated by the mind to recreate themselves, trained to absorb the mental processes of the individual, transmitting the information to the core database. Storing the self in a way that is more substantial than its “real” existence, without memory loss. The first time Alex felt solid, real.

Bondage

In my new jeans and t-shirt, happily tapping away on the edge of the Castro, (good title for something) listening to bloodflowers the cure song. Not too bad. How are you? Feeling ok? We should hit the next Porchlight for sure.

What would Beth think? Two in a row? Oh my!

She just stands there, dark curly short hair, Italian looking, dark sweater, driving me crazy with that little butt. Greygreen pants. Clear lines, the shoulder blades.

Resisting interpretation, theory. The more I try to make it simple the more complicated it gets. Oh well.

Hy·a·lo·plasm n. The clear fluid portion of cytoplasm as distinguished from the granular and netlike components. Also called ground substance.

[Greek hualos, glass + -PLASM.]

Ground substance. n. 1. The intercellular material in which the cells and fibers of connective tissue are embedded. Also called matrix. 2. See hyaloplasm.

Damn. Resent, Alex, me, myself, his speedy delivery designed seemingly to leave me in the dust...more photographs, in the back. Addressing that directly, people learning how to maneuver, how to get through life, stuff, things. Woke up this morning to dog vomit, don't really want to go to church, need healing, not conflict. Daphne would not argue with that. Paris. Beer, a pen, a small pilgrim church, sleeping on the lawn, glasses, fashion, the Parisian women, trendy glasses, here first right? Die here, in Paris, like Morrison. Well that’s been done.

I have an idea. Found language. The woman on the internet, the submissive, trying to justify her insane lifestyle. Random passages. Chance. Later, maybe.

Eris is taking up more of my time. why bother with relationships of any depth when you have no time...unless she's really hot...then a torrid, tortured sex/love affair would be worthwhile. Or just random sex in general.

Torrid. adj., -er, -est. 1. Parched with the heat of the sun; intensely hot.

2. Scorching; burning: the torrid noonday sun.

3. Passionate; ardent: a torrid love scene.

4. Hurried; rapid: set a torrid pace; torrid economic growth. [Latin torridus, from torrēre, to parch.]

Clearly torrid and tortured are not the same thing, although they can be connected...

We are told that death is what gives our lives meaning. I’ve never understood that. We create meaning in our lives by choice, through freewill, action. To not do so is to do nothing. Emptiness. Not always a bad thing. Like zazen, meditation, not-doing, non-gaining. Balance, form, emptiness. Kensho.

Thinking about Daphne…even here, oddly, in this place, this table, print, reminds me of my grandmother somehow, my hair more gray it seems each time I go to the Asian ladies on Shattuck for a cut, $14. I feel ok, my mind wants Daphne, to interact, her mind, so sharp, sharper than a needle, more dope than heroin. What is her name now? Who will share my table today, a stable one, brown, old, scratched. Not unlike the one Robert refinished, although that one was bigger, more solid, also perhaps grandma's. Refinished, like her old Victrola, and the woman with her hair stacked up, she might do, his cellphone rings, and she is cute thin, drives him away, he can’t stand it, his mind racing, her hair soft and just a little brown, small hoop earrings, his Prana shirt and pants. What would they talk about? Print, stitched, but nice, on the Victrola, Robert, or his lover, they collected old cylinder and 78 players, I saw him right before he died of AIDS, I was shirtless on the Penn lawn, he was with a friend, not his lover, as far as I know, who had dark hair, Latin. He was nice. His sister had been my babysitter.

According to Bob Dylan’s autobiographical Chronicles, Woody Guthrie gave his unpublished songs to Dylan but Bob was unable to get them from Guthrie’s family (he tells a story about a reluctant babysitter).

The deal with me and women, how I get so into them, hurt so bad…how can I change that, with Daphne, with anyone? Ann was telling me, how it is not something I can change, I am hard-wired for that. But is that true, isn’t there some way to change, however difficult? Of course you have to really, truthfully want to change. and even then, blah blah blah...here come Eno's warm jets.

As Ann became more involved in the Vedanta society, Swami Vivekananda, the temple in San Francisco, you could tell something was happening with her, something fundamentally was changing. We were always I think drawn to her, as many were, not a zillion people but a few. Now as she became more involved in that Hindu tradition, very open, all religions, I think she had found her path.

We all got sober in our twenties. Since the president of this USA at that time inspired the Hindu ashram movement, it was easier to fall in with these groups, and Ann was already involved, so she became a leader. Her relapses into drugs and drinking were horrific but she survived. It made her stronger, like me, I think, but different. She truly got stronger, but there was something missing.

More time to myself. New York. You would do well there, he said, seriously, in the gay clubs, broad chest and all. I was into weights then, a different look. But I have nice climber arms.

Scott gave me his number, why did I toss it? Did I really think it was more than a gesture of friendship? Well yes in those paranoid times. Autobiography in the context of sci-fi, certainly part of my childhood, and technology that seeps into all our lives.

Recording, audio and visual, for himself, for Daphne, even when she was not there, so self-absorbed, self-obsessed. Now Daphne will try to rewrite his book, Daydream Nation.

Sci-fi

 

It makes sense: Mark read sci-fi as a kid, to escape from his insane household, mother, relationship, wanting to be a scientist, which is encouraged for boys in America of course, math and science, grow up and work at Woodtimes Inc., make rubber, design tires, blah blah blah, but more important learn to imagine, learn to write, to create stories. To construct basic sentences with no sense of literary style, artistic merit, etc. Basic stuff. Simple though, maybe the best, like Kafka, Bowles. Readable. Pulp fiction. A popular film. Someone told me I looked like Tarentino the other day.

It's definite, definitive. I'm being crushed by this. Give in, let the air out, perish. You are perishable, all meaning gone.

Mark realized, because he was no fool, that perhaps all this was fiction, that Alex was making all this up, or it was some constructed digital film reality. He was working on that.. he made shit up in real life, even to him, his best friend. And he lost him not to aids, he was too healthy for that, HIV virus and all, other stuff, pain, escape. In this world it was easy for Mark to begin to question his own existence, while watching, his own concept of self. Watching “Alex”.

Bringing a girl or guy to work, to climb in the gym, the climbing gym where Alex worked, would be like bringing someone home to the family. California, Walnut Creek.

 

Some terms that are useful when reading Julia Kristeva, the famous French psychoanalyst, theoretician, Lacanian, writer, novelist, thinker:

• jouissance - total joy or ecstasy achieved through the working of the signifier implying the presence of meaning.

• (fear - mark of the failure of language to provide symbolization.)

• chora - a Platonic term for a matrixlike space that is nourishing, unnameable, and prior to the individual. Chora becomes the focus of the semiotic as the 'pre-symbolic.'

 

Her mind, he loved her for her mind, sometimes. Daphne.

Alex wrote in spite of the fact that he had no clear idea of self. That old movie, seeing through, from a few years back, the drug they had, lucid, maybe, now that would be a good thing. This idea that somehow lucidity would mean a coherent view of self. Why are disparate parts not clear and coherent? What is wrong with this? But she saw him a certain way and that was all that mattered. He was addicted to the sense that she viewed him a certain way, he could fall back on that, even his diffused “self” really just dissolved into thin air at times, like now, on film it was worse, no body, no self, less to go on, new memories all bodiless. He felt like a freak, a postmodern dada existentialist hybrid freak of course no one felt or thought like him just a few other freaks, grad students, his friend Kevin a genius who wandered the streets of Hudson but did great visual art and knew Derrida and Foucault and Bergman. Compared him to Guston at one point, he thinks.

Her relatively normal life influenced his, added some normalcy. He craved it, the appearance of normalcy. It was as good a template as any.

Anyway I don't know what this is about. Reconciliation. Of the past. With my childhood. Which I can't recall for the most part. Don't want to remember. Too painful. Incest. Mark felt his own memories blending with those of Alex.

Mark: I have really developed/am developing a real hatred of Alex. He is the one who made it difficult, or almost impossible for me to do the ministry thing, his intensity different from what I started out with. Current big lie: hey you can do whatever you want. Then, the truth: here is what we need, want, expect. Biggest lie I tell myself: I don't mind some interference. I can handle conflict.

Alex was into women first, last, always. A string of women. Did a lot, writing mainly but also music, theater, film. Powerful personality. Anarchist. They loved each other, those two. Ann came between them for a while, but not in a bad way, really. At one point Alex was tested for HIV and they told him to come back and he never did, just kept going. He started to study Jainism at one point, which Ann was glad for at first, but then had a harder time with, as the differences between their paths became more clear.

Eris as coffin.

Eris being the project, the digital filming project that we were working on. a series of films, short films, about each other, about life, using various modern modeling and sculpting techniques, special effects if you will. but also retro stuff. you’ll recognize it.

Anxiety 

Judging the lefties at the Berkeley Fellowship as naive activists, which they are not. Wanting to age out of the young adult scene, since I am 35, since I should do so, I don't have to be like Sam, the older leader of the group, 39, leader of the church too.

Crash. There's that word again. The stress of driving from Berkeley to San Mateo, back, 5 days a week, through Hayward or the city, doesn't matter. No easy way. The back way, 580 to 13, ok but long, I think. Going to meeting with Bill tonight, reading the beginning essays of "Word Virus", collection of Burroughs' work. A tenth of his total output. So we continue to put out.

Watching Alias. My how we do jump around. Funky. Forgiveness. Far out. Reading great book about Paul Bowles: “You Are Not I”. It is easy to be obsessed about him. And his work. Daphne never looked at other people while we were together. Amazing. But I did not stray, not until recently, not bad for nine years. Although I did stray at the beginning, before things solidified, from a distance, Philadelphia, preventing things from solidifying.

 

Revelation

 

I let Daphne read surfers sometimes, or the idea of them...do you love him?Suppose. There you go. Two of them now know I am heading for divorce, one will know soon, the one I was so close to obsession with. Joan asked me to sit with them, offered, I will probably tell Daphne this tomorrow, in keeping with our honesty/open-ness, she needs to know who I am attracted to. She wants me to read Les Mandarins to her. I would. Interesting idea. I want Daphne a lot. Holding her last night was so peaceful, complete, kill me now it would be ok. Someone was touching me and I wasn’t freaking out, flashing back, going out and away. It was a revelation.

I can talk to her about sex, almost no shame. I'm a lot better now...after the mother, the men in the shed, the years of fucked up using drugs, sex, drinking and possessed demon sex.

As she was reading this, she told a story that freaked the shit out of me, I feel ok about it now, was dreading the telling, very Poe type shit, very Jacobs Ladder, bad acid ptsd flashback like.

Why do we live in a sea of references? It’s the lazy way out, instead of describing something you slather it in references. “They were very beautiful, rain, color, jasmine, sex, virginity, sales, bidding, diet coke, bladder, tea, gong li, helping my half-asian cousins set up their ipods they just got for xmas.

Story of guy at gym who reminded her of cool guy but once that guy and her old boyfriend Sam the one who abandoned her in a burning building and some random guy “fucked” her and she was fucked up drunk and they video taped it. Sounds too much like rape to me, she was 18 but come on, I imagine as always that she is and was my girlfriend at the time and it is terrifying. Too much like my memories, in general, and also I've always been empathic. Good to transcribe it all, get it out, she was so cool tonight, I think I detected a possible interest there, I look good enough, have enough confidence, enough mystery, not verbose like Robert, was able to talk to Ted, who may be gay, is attractive. Not too old. And of course Kat who I can never stop looking at in the ashram, she lost weight too, has new lover, oh well, lives in Santa Barbara anyway. Telling me how she is getting too much sex, glomming onto the new lover, I would like to know what that is like again, it's been a few years.

Love

 

Daphne called me twice tonight. To say hi? And to report that she had talked to a dad whose daughter was named Daphne but sometimes they both wrote their name dafne.

After Ann died Alex lost it, as you can imagine. They had been together for many years. After he went into this virtual world where things are more easily manipulated, reality, technology, merging with the Eris network, he took on some ideas he had for a long time. Create nanotechnology that would reverse global warming, but take it to an extreme, causing a new ice age. Also nanotech that would cause infertility in most but not all women.

At first his program to reverse warming, which was quite severe was welcomed. He was a genius. Other techniques were stopgap measures. He was a hero. A few people, especially the flaming chakra girls and their superhackers, were suspicious.

I don't think Ann would have appreciated what he was doing, but there was no telling him that, not the virtual Alex who was actually nuts.

The nightmare continued in marriage counseling tonight, which, mercifully, looks like it is over, at least for a while. Had a nice talk with Sara tonight, she was quite non-judgmental especially for a woman re the Daphne thing, the almost cheating which was real cheating, real intention, real karma. Who knows. Robert was the same way. I may not be talking to Joyce, my soon to be ex-wife, much for a while. She wants me out of her life. Ironic since I wanted to leave. I tried to explain that I had some restraint with other women. She did not seem to buy it. I am quite over the experience of watching her not be able to cope. Oh well, I don’t have to deal with it.

The story of the videotape was profoundly disturbing. I felt that fear, as if I was going to have my head cut off, or something. Pain. As drunk as she was, did she enjoy it, or was it rape? Thinking it was wrong, to do, too much, but then somewhat aroused by it, thinking that’s wrong. Afraid that Daphne doesn’t see what the problem is. Just that Sam was an asshole. So I bowed and burned incense at my alter, pictures of Buddha, Kali, hoping that Daphne would be healed somehow. And she called me twice today.

But now when I think about the tape almost like the weird fascination with the ring, the tapes, it almost turns me on because I don't care about her anymore...I wish I could...she has long hair now, is married. I can't go there, I can't go there at all.

Here in this virtual language world things get twisted around, don't make sense. Little things, disjointed, out of place. Walls that don't fit, like a vampire movie from Germany in 1932...

Try to sleep, go to Zen Center in the morning, then climb. Pick up Larry then meeting at the ashram.

I see her floating flying down to me, an angel white, the soft wings brightly shimmering, as I lay on the floor, just tired. Allowing myself to see the wings and fearful teeth.

“You’re making a big mistake,” said the psychiatrist, who up until now had only been annoying. “There’s nothing wrong with you pathologically” he said, “and if you end up meeting someone as good as Joyce and being happy down the road I will write a scientific paper on it I would be so amazed. You will regret this.” He got canned a few months later after I filed a complaint. Fucker. He was wrong. I hope he can work on that paper while he is looking for a job.

As I walked down the street, after Daphne ran off, a butthole surfer song came to mind…

“Dad, what is the meaning of regret? Well, son, the funny thing about regret is, it’s better to regret something you have done, rather than something you haven’t done.” and if you see your mother tell her I said …SATAN SATAN SATAN…”

I am tripping cuz I have not had any food for a while and I told Daphne I loved her today. And then I got a deal with my chiropractor to trade climbing lessons for adjustments. Which seemed to be a good sign, also that Daphne did not run away, but squarely faced me, does not reject me no matter what. And then the fantasies, about her rabbit vibrator, like a big gummie bear, I could not comb my hair. My friend Paul had her in his bed, for weeks, weekends, she wanted him to kiss her, at least, and he would not, held to the principle that he did not want to be part of her cheating on her boyfriend, and she eventually chose the boyfriend, which makes sense to me, but I would have fucked her in a new york minute, you bet, still would, I’m too weak, or maybe I wouldn’t see “just sleeping with her” as not cheating and might as well. My conscience is currently on hiatus.

Girl sitting at the table next to me reading a softcover book my contacts are getting dry they are old contacts she is cute, maybe Jewish.

From Playboy: re Underworld: Evolution: “If the bodacious Beckinsale kicking lycanthropic ass in her shiny black jumpsuit isn't enough to make you forget all the Goth-horror cliches, we don't know what to tell you.”

When Daphne doesn’t appear, she’s like the girl in white in that black and white film, glowing, serving mineral water, the spa, I start to feel the alone feelings, the fear, the heart pounding, what I should be feeling, what I am feeling.

Daphne is 60 now but looks 45. amazing. Wings of the angel of death, fluttering over my head from the valley of the fear…the classic Cabaret Voltaire song was playing in nano-pod implanted in my ear. song quoting kubrick of course. I can walk! Obvious connection, me still in the wheelchair. Eventually. Alex and I are Strangelove. How we learned to stop worrying and love ice and infertility.

Yeah, she is supposed to call tonight, it is getting later and later, some drama with her boyfriend perhaps, motorcycle boy. He showed up at the gym party Sunday. Leather, motorcycle club stuff on the jacket. It was odd. I told Tom about it today, he said, "Is he a sport bike rider? He's not a real biker. Those sport bike riders are pussies." I think they try hard to overcompensate for the fact that they are not Hell's Angels. More like Hell's mascots.

I’m feeling the addiction, the hook, it’s there. I don’t like it, can’t control it. Reading Burroughs, tonight, talking about junkies, I saw the irony. I’m addicted to women, to Daphne, to that gender. I have no money.

Dinner with her tomorrow night. Won't happen. She will appear more later? Hard to say. Cool it for now. But there is no one else I would like to see.

Talk about her writing. See what happens. Mention films, books I think she might like to see.

How could she possibly turn away, say no to me? So I’ll have to start over with someone else. Now just the longing. Alison, grabbing my hand, bending down to ask me if I was ok, she was the woman in white, handing me the mineral water. It’s what it is. What is the end of my marriage as it is, was, and impending divorce, the separation now. Thinking, if Daphne called, I’d say, I’m eating this amazing calzone, and it is big so you should come here and help me eat it. And at some point there would be a pause and she would ask me what I was thinking, and I would say I was wondering if you ever thought about me when you were fucking your boyfriend. She had told me about going to Good Vibrations and getting this vibrator, a rabbit with a bullet shaped vibrator in its head. And I was thinking about her, because she said she didn’t get too much sleep last night, how much will she say, I’m afraid to find out, and the rabbit. With the bullet. And how Paul did that, not even kiss her, with her in his bed. I have no fucking idea, especially in light of my recent lack of control.

And all those years with Joyce, my soon to be ex-wife, good times, bad times, just like the song, and the dog, and ups and downs, and work, and depression, and dishonesty.

I didn’t actually say that I loved Daphne, not directly.

Not quite sure what to do with all this. Sitting in a place where I shouldn’t be, whatever. Sunny outside. Distance, attraction, rules. Or very good at least. Some email friendship developing, I dunno, craigslist, I’m pretty reluctant.

Went into strong fantasy about her today, intense, don't know how long it lasted. Fantasies, good. Action, bad, sometimes. I could call her, what would happen, she’s in Las Vegas for a couple of week, I’m in California. She’s still a friend maybe not a bad idea, maybe she’d come to visit, we could sleep together, no sex, just relax. Togethering. Sometime, could happen.

Life, all this, filmed, digitally and on regular film, 8, 16, 32…changes, filtered, edited, realism, converted to NVR, rearranged, collage, art, they film each other, Daphne and Alex, taking turns narrating, just filming, whatever, narrating, talking.

A thought came, and went. Where did it go? Daphne, probably, she’s all I think about, besides myself. How I thought she reminded me of Leslie, and my feelings for Sara, and how I am always reminded of other women, whereas Alex never is, he sees them as individuals, unique, although he ends up often treating them worse, like objects, dirt. Ironic. You would think it would be the other way around.

The feelings, the aching, the pain, she says that she loves that feeling, longing for the person you adore, want, need. Your whole body aches, each movement, especially the heart area, the stomach, of course. But everything. What is it? A fucking nightmare if you are allergic to feelings, like I am, abhorring them. Music heals, soothes, relieves, like writing, like pepto bismol, The Pixies, Bossanova, not their best album/cd, but good. I think I picked it up on vinyl when it first came out, visiting my sister in Bowling Green, got her a Birthday Party cd too, not so appreciated maybe.

Daphne's boyfriend is getting her red climbing shoes for Valentines Day, and she was trying them on today. Funny, I would get her a book, probably a book of poems, something totally cool and/or inappropriate. Secret. Flowers of Evil. Maybe. Hide it somewhere. I’ll write on the inside flap something pretentious, “do not read any of this for at least 30 seconds, and hide it, bury it, like a bulb, to sprout evil flowers. Just ignore that last statement. Read this. Be yourSelf.” And what I did today, insanely, after telling her yesterday that I was “in love” with her, whatever that means. I brought her a mocha from starfucks, you know, soy, it was not very hot, typical starfucks, jeets is always hotter, and she was not sure what to write on it, her signature, to write on cups, and I said, I know, and I wrote je t’aime but I spelled it wrong, she said what does that say and I said I can’t say, then as I walked away I mouthed the words. Totally insane, no doubt.

I was shaking as she entered the office, I was working on email, I apologized immediately. She said I was like a little kid, being bad and saying I’m sorry right away. She said something about her little sister and I was not there, not believing what an idiot I was, am, had become. But it is what it is. Insane.

I know you are, she said.

I know you know I am, I said.

Mascara. She is wearing mascara.