Echo

I got in the car today, turned on the engine, and in come the opening guitar riffs to Wake Up by Arcade Fire.

What the fuck, I said, under my breath.

This song is following me.

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you really have to pee, and you go to the bathroom and either you can’t get your pants off so you’re afraid you’re going to pee in your pants, or you have the longest, most amazing pee, yet it doesn’t assuage the urgent feeling of needing to pee? Then you slowly realize you’re dreaming and what your dream is actually trying to tell you is that you need to wake up and pee.

Am I being told to wake up? Awakening. It’s something I’m always moving towards. But I secretly wonder if truly waking up in this world means physically dying. Can you fully wake yet retain your tie to this plane of reality? Or does transcendence require extrication from unrealities? Is this song a messenger into my dream world to tell me to wake up from this plane of existence? Once you learn to willfully maneuver in your dreams, you find you’re able to maneuver the world of waking life with much more ease. So much of this world is projection and illusion. But to wake up from a dream means ejecting from the dream world. Would the same happen if I were to wake up from this world? Can I be awake and remain here, as one can in a lucid dream? I’m not ready to leave my identity in this world before I finish what I started.

Last night, I had disjointed dreams where I knew I was laying in a bed and dreaming, but I didn’t know where the bed was (LA, Seattle, Fremont, Florida, a boat, etc), and I kept chanting something that I thought was Korean…e-sun…e-sun…e-sun…e-sun…

Then I realized “e-sun” is Chinese for “doctor.” I woke up with a start, checked myself. Felt fine. Did someone need a doctor? I listened to the breathing of the house. My brother coughed softly in his sleep from the next room, but other than that, only that corporeal silence that pervades the darkness shortly before dawn.

A few hours later, my dad, eating oatmeal in the dining room, would report hearing my brother yell out my name in anger while submerged in a dream.

i’m jealous because you have more friends than me.

did my brother really just say that?

and he really was sorry. he was holding my hand with both of his and he kept pressing it to his cheek. i wondered, is michael saying this because it’s true or is this what my mom told him he was feeling?

when he loses control and then feels so sorry afterwards, it’s the worst feeling. like watching yourself die face-down in mud where no one will ever find you, just because that’s life.

somewhere in this universe, there are gods the size of humans, and humans the size of gods

somewhere, my brother exists

you can’t turn a deer into a tiger.

but can you turn a tiger into a deer.

just take care of yourself.

i have no idea what’s real anymore. to say that it’s whatever you want to be real reminds me of that sketch with The State where the prison has a wide open gate and the warden asks the prisoners to consider the gate (finger quotes) “off limits.” it seems too easy, but if all it takes is faith i will. but sometimes, it’s the not knowing that keeps me up at night.

i started a notebook earlier this year called my left-hand notebook. i was trying to train myself to write with my left hand, and found myself mostly writing things backwards. with a month of dominant hand immobility, i’m curious what i’ll fill that notebook with.

today was a cone shaped day that left burn marks

i no longer have an answer when people ask me what i write.

it has become unfathomable for me.

the other night, i said it’s like putting a cake in the oven and pulling out pancakes.

and i’m standing at the edge of a moment, realizing that to investigate this would require putting my head in the oven. i’m stuck trying to decide if i’m just another poetic cliche, or if i’m about to find the rabbithole.

my greatest difficulty is my attention span.

how will i build anything if i keep disappearing?

it’s important that people don’t get to know me

magic. clocks. time. strangers. light. death.

a surprising number of people also think it’s fucked up that pluto got stripped of its planetship. and calling it a “dwarf” on top of everything else. bold move, scientists. especially towards pluto, which has long been associated with the revenge-is-a-dish-best-served-cold movement. science had better watch its back.

frogs. somewhere in memory or dream.

can’t remember my dreams lately. only brief glimpses during the day when i find myself in a feeling like i’m in a movie i saw long ago but only vaguely remember.

how does one accept that some day they will go mad?

it’s usually illogical people who will accuse logical people of being illogical.

Playing with my shoulder today felt like playing with a broken wing.

Had some tension in a 2 on 2 game. Played against someone I haven’t played before…his friend was on my team and seemed nice but shy, but this guy was a little intense. They were both late 20’s. His friend was tall with reddish-blond hair, gangly and reminded me of Colin so I instantly liked him. This guy was shorter, but pretty solidly built–we collided once and it felt like hitting a machine. He looked like he was either a soccer player or ex-military.

I’d told them I would play but I had a shoulder injury so I wouldn’t play too well or aggressively. Yet surprisingly, I had been shooting poorly and awkwardly while warming up, but my shots were falling in the game like they were being pulled through with a magnet (that’s the way it usually happens–if I make all my shots in warm-up and people are impressed, I tend to suck during the games. I have zero tolerance of high expectations). My teammate and I had good chemistry, so we set a lot of screens and were consistent about getting the ball to each other in good places… he did a great job of getting me the ball where I had the best chance of scoring. So I kept scoring on the guy, and his teammate, who’s played with me before, would keep tell him to watch out…that I’m on fire. I think his ego got bruised. So after one play where I’d faked him into the air and scored, I got the ball on the next play, went up for the shot and he bashed me on my (injured) shooting arm so hard I felt it in my bones.

I’ve been playing basketball long enough to know a frustration foul from an accidental foul, and this was a frustration foul. I don’t think he intended to hurt me, but I think he was pissed and just outletted it into this blow. This foul may not have been intentional, but his emotion was loud and clear.

The way I deal with pain is to move my mind away from it, disown it until it fades. So I walked it off for a few seconds, thinking. I wasn’t upset. It’s hard to get upset during pick-up games unless things are egregiously malicious, because they’re not worth getting upset over. But I think the biggest feeling was…disappointment. There are guys who see another person do well and they think, good for them, because from their life perspective, they see the world as a big enough place to hold success for everyone. Then there are people who live and breathe out of their egos, and take it personally when another person is doing well, particularly when they perceive that person doing well as a reflection of their own failure. People hurt other people when they’re scared or angry, but they don’t necessarily need to know they’re scared or angry to still try hurting someone. I made a mental note. This guy could potentially get dirty.

I walked back and my teammate asked if I was okay, saying he’d dislocated his shoulder once and knew how bad it could be. The other guy wouldn’t meet my eyes. So we played on, but I was really careful of any plays that would allow contact.

Last play of the game, I got the ball in the left wing. Teammate set a great screen and I dribbled towards the free-throw line with my defender caught trying to go over the screen. He’d lost me and knew it. He reached around my guy anyway and tried to grab me, which is highly illegal, but I saw his hand coming and got just out of reach to drive and take a pull-up floater over his teammate. The shot came off my hand so awkwardly that I could even see it in the eyes of the guy trying to block the shot that he didn’t think it would go in. Yet, it went in clean with a snap of the net.

I felt like I’d been getting a magical assist from omnipotent forces all game to play so well, despite, as I said, feeling like I was playing with a broken wing. The entire game had felt unreal. Maybe the universe was using me to create an experience for him, something that could give him a window of insight. Maybe for half an hour, I was playing a part in his movie, not mine. Maybe the universe was challenging his ego and his feelings about women. Maybe part of his personal journey will be how to deal with deep-seated rage. It seemed pretty clear to me the game illuminated a deeper history inside him. A physically abusive dad? Co-dependent mom? You hated your father for his violence and your mother for her weakness in standing up to him, but these feelings are too dangerous for you to consciously acknowledge? What makes you lock your doors when there is smoke inside?

Every personal history is a private mystery. But what is shown to the rest of us is camera obscura–just a reflection on the wall of a cave, but somewhere in the man, a shadowed town anchored by things unspoken at the base of a cliff.

Regardless, I declined playing again, shook hands with my teammate, collected Michael and headed home. Arcade Fire’s Wake Up came on the radio. Again.

I look through the windshield at the full moon in the deep purple sky, floating above mountains and road, the only sign of life i believe in who guides me home.

What does it mean?, I ask it.

The moon treads silently through cloud whispers.

Time.