/Dilate/ 11.07.03

This is no way to get any work done:

First wake up late, rake the leaves. More leaves than I think there should be, in yellows and reds and some in greens. Push some back and I know I haven’t been working out. Under the clouds and the wind, greeting the “hey buddy” guy who asks if I am interested in selling my house or if I know someone who is;

Trash bags are not to be found. They are bought at cheap cost, unfurled and fingered open, laid on grassy firmament, leaves shoved inside with hands. Hands, concurrently become dirty. Dirty from the driveway to the neighbors’ lawn and dirty from the front bushes to the street and sewers. Too tired from last night’s music-trade-make out with Pixel to do much more. Bags to the side, heavy, pendulous, dragging, loaded with wet leaves—and down on the curb for Friday pickup.

Race, shower, dirty fingernails. Still scrubbing in vain. Toss on the clothes; hope they fit, into the Brooklyn.

Lunch with Po-Bair. We think it is a good idea to have a drink before we get to studying/ work; she is a Brooklyn Pilsner, I am Rheingold. We catch up over Thai and I realize I haven’t seen her in so long I’ve forgotten basics. Basic basics.

Pick up Eben. It’s hours later than I want it to be. We find a café a distance away. The place is okay and the woman at the counter is from Fargo-esque country. Sweet pound cake with apples on top. Coffee. Like-mindeds. The right steps to studying.

Except the background wasn’t background it was loud and blaring and we all recognized the Geechi Geechi Ya-ya-ya. Ce soir. The Moulin Rouge Soundtrack. A high volumes; we were near the speakers (where a wooden baseball bat also resides… hm) and suffering. The bleating sounds of danced up covers to Gloria Estefan’s Rhythm of the Night or whatever. Miserable. Writhingly. No work done. The player skipped when other cd’s were played. Also miserable.

And to the bicycle art opening (thanks Eben) with Nascar Anna and to Silver’s and some television and missing my ride home—and a long trip on the subways, seeing someone I haven’t in a year and a half—I think. I didn’t say hello to her—and not sleeping on the subways and standing on the bus and off into the rain—

A soft mist falls as the bus pulls out to reaches even further than mine with the sound of a blender two walls away. I stand, check my headphones, look for lurking in the night, check the lights of oncoming traffic and cross. My block is silent, sleeping. I am under the cover of mostly bare trees, walking between dormant cars and dormant houses, one or two with a television glowing blue in a living room. I can see the part of the sidewalk in front of my lawn, waiting for me.

And when I get there, my laptop heavy on my back, phantom aches coming on to poke at me in the morning, I see the path, once again delineated by the leaves from that verdammt tree on our property that thinks it’s so hardy it doesn’t have to drop its leaves until all the other trees are bare.

This is like an arboreal pissing contest. I know it. The tree knows it. I am frustrated, knowing that all the work I put in won’t show in a couple days’ time. At least I know it won’t take as long as it might. I turn into my driveway, looking at the firmament, already covered in yellows, patches of green peeking through in the reddish streetlight, wet with the mist.