Carlos The Liar Dreams of The River

I woke up in the river, shivering and wet. A knot on my head, a terrible thirst. I drank until I could hold no more, then stood and began to follow the river downstream, hoping it would lead me back to the beach. Back to the others. To safety. Although I certainly had nothing left to fear. All that could happen now was that they kill me.

As I walked downstream I tried to remember what had occurred, what had transpired in the night, but the images were muddled and seemed too fantastical to have been real. I decided that I had eaten some hallucinogenic mushrooms while in the forest, and had imagined, if not everything, at least the most outlandish parts of what I seemed to recall. It was not improbable that I had stumbled upon some natives, and that we had some kind of exchange, but not of the sort that flashed on the screen of my mind when I closed my eyes.

After some time walking I heard noises ahead. Something coming upstream, quickly. I heard splashing and the rustling of underbrush. I stepped up onto a low branch hanging in the water and tried to hug myself against the trunk of the tree. My eyes were still playing tricks on me, for I saw Carlos the Liar running up the river towards me, but he was flanked by two other dogs, each as large as Carlos. Their eyes glowed red in the darkness, and their long canines flashed an evil yellow. They had my scent and made for me at a dead run. But as they grew closer, they resolved into a single figure, and by the time he was at the base of the tree looking up at me, it was only Carlos. No red eyes, no flashing teeth. Relieved, I climbed down from my perch and patted the dog on the head. I grabbed his coat and shook it back and forth, laughing. Carlos tolerated my attention, but quickly pulled away and headed off into the jungle. I followed the beast, and within a few minutes I was back with my comrades. I thought about waking them and sharing my tale, but I was so exhausted that I simply lay down in the sand by the dying fire and closed my eyes. I fell into a deep sleep, untroubled by dreams.


*

El Brujo De Los Arboles

The spell has been broken yet I am still dreaming. Bloodied and dazed I offered no resistance to the men who gripped my arms and lifted me from the dirt, then dragged me towards the fire and the strange woman whose song had led me here. I spit thick blood and bits of damp grass from my mouth and tried to stand, but the men jerked my arms back. One of them stepped in front of me and pointed, spoke orders to the others. His voice was deep and melodic, the sounds of his language like rocks rattling down a windowpane and falling into a vat of honey. He was naked except for a kind of mask or headdress that gave him the appearance of a monster, and the men who restrained me jumped into action. They bound my feet together with a rough, stout rope, then lashed me to a nearby tree, my arms pinned painfully behind me. One grabbed me by the hair and pulled my face up towards the sky. Hands forced my jaws open, and the masked one thrust a wad of something into my mouth. It was bitter and I tried to spit it out, but they now forced my mouth shut. Choking and sputtering, I managed to swallow the lump of stuff before I passed out from lack of air. Satisfied, the men laughed and relaxed somewhat, releasing me to my bonds. They wandered over to the fire and squatted around it, seeming to forget me entirely. The masked one was next to the singing woman, and they appeared to be talking in the manner of close friends. The sky above the clearing was awash in brilliant stars now, and they seemed to whirl and spin in disconnected orbits, as if they were drunk on wine, and as they wobbled and throbbed they spoke to me in the most delicious whispers, telling me secrets that had taken aeons to glean from the thin winds of the cosmos. I felt as small as it was possible to feel. My teeth began to twist ever so slowly in tight little circles in imitation of the distant stars. My nailbeds were hot and the soles of my feet itched terribly. I felt very concerned for the poor bastard I could see tied to the tree nearby, but my companions around the fire with me were telling the fish story again and I laughed as always when Meliota got to the part where Dinku fell out of the boat still holding the harpoon and was dragged so far out to see everyone lost sight of him, only to return two days later on the next tide, the ruined harpoon still in his fist. I strained to hear the rest of the story, but the buzzing in my ears prevented me from understanding what was being said, and soon I found myself trapped in the body of the man tied to the tree. I cried out for my companions, but they pretended not to hear me, and passed around pieces of dried meat to each other. Something important was happening, but I could not grasp the meaning of it. I cried and cried until I could cry no more and I fell into a kind of terrible sleep.

When I awoke, the singing woman and the masked man were standing before me and the others had left. The fire had died out, and the scene was dimly lit by the sliver of the moon and the wash of the stars, now still and cold and lifeless above us.
I tried to speak, but could make no sound. The singing woman slipped out of her costume and stood naked. She looked like a ghostly tree or a fish or a skinned fox or a blade or a piece of smoke. She pressed her body against me and her skin was soft and smooth and warm. She covered my face with kisses and touched me everywhere with a great tenderness and a consuming sadness. She placed her palm flat against my chest, and when she removed it the print of her palm was burned into my skin. The masked man stepped forward and drew a short, thick blade from his belt. He pressed the tip into the center of the mark left by the woman's hand. I felt the blade cut easily through my flesh and come to rest against a rib. He worked the tip of the blade between the ribs like he was opening an oyster, then twisted the blade to spread the gap wide. The pain snapped me back to reality. I was suddenly cold and frightened, and I knew these savages were going to kill me. I did not want to die and I bitterly regretted everything that had transpired. But the masked man did not sink the knife any deeper, and the singing woman put her fingers into her mouth. She pulled a stone from her mouth, black and smooth, and before I could react she placed the stone into the wound in my chest. The masked man removed his blade, and the wound shut like a trap door, leaving little more than a thin, weeping line in the flesh. Abruptly, the woman turned and walked into the darkness of the woods. The man cut my bonds and I collapsed at the base of the tree, weak and trembling. For a long while I lay there in abject terror, afraid to move, afraid to lift my eyes. When at last I summoned the courage to look up, I was alone. Utterly, completely alone.


*

Un Fantasma

The darker the night became, the sweeter her song grew. The lethargy I'd felt for the past several days had lifted, and I felt clear and energized, uplifted, uprooted. Whatever I had left behind on the mainland was gone to me now, a seachest of memories, a few letters, one cherished photograph, nothing more, nothing as real to me as what was coursing through my veins in the depths of this tangled mass of jungle, this intoxicating music that I hungered for with my bones trembling, the pores of my skin open like numberless mouths, seeking to drink in the melody that drifted through the gnarled trees like honey smoke, the burning of golden sighs of fallen angels. I moved unthinking through the night, deeper into the jungle, and higher. I climbed along the flanks of the Finger of God but never high enough to break through above the tree line. The canopy crowded over me, and when I looked up the jeweled yellow eyes of scarlet leemurs and the green eyes of the langorous, deadly vartuna cat flashed down. I kept moving, heedless of the danger, but I somehow sensed that I was enveloped in a protective cocoon, courtesey of the song propelling me onward. I was a guest of the Singing One, for she had summoned me. My lips were on fire now, my fingers ached to play, to caress or to crush. Like the need to shit the need to bang, to hammer, to drum, roiled my bowls and set my heart to thunder in my hollow chest. I panted like a dog, I shook as if my head were full of droning bees. The music flooded through the jungle and each tree absorbed it then spilled it out like sap, extruding from the bark, sweating off on each leaf and rolling down, glistening as each drop hung for a moment, bobbing in the inky night air before leaping off into the void and bursting into a perfect, aching note when it broke upon the ground. It was raining music, music was my breathing, music fired the sparks from synapse to synapse in my jangled brain and it rose to an impossible crescendo as I stumbled at last into a clearing, a void in the darkness, and I was coming undone under the force of it. Delerious, aflame, disjointed, I stood at the edge of the clearing, moaning like a broken dog, whimpering and pawing at the dirt while at the farther edge I could see her at last, the Singing One. Moving in and out of the shadows, an arm or a leg, the side of her face illuminated by the guttering light of a dying fire in front of her. She moved in a dance that ignited in me a violent passion, but I stood rooted to the ground and was struck mute. Tears flowed from my eyes and coursed down my face, stinging like kerosene. The woman sang and danced in and out of the light from the fire, her fingers marking out arcane symbols in the darkness that stayed glowing long after she had writ them, fading only slowly and falling as they did. Suddenly she stopped, stomping her feet on the ground, but still singing with great power words that I knew but could never understand or explain. I knew then that I must go the final steps, must cross the clearing and lay my beating heart at her feet, unscrew my bony skull like a apple twisted from the bough and toss it in her lap, if only she would continue her song. I stepped forward, but before I could take another step something slammed into me from behind, knocking me down. My face was smashed into the dirt with tremendous force, filling my mouth with earth and threatening to choke me. Then a blow, a flash of light, then darkness.

The music was no more.



*

Looking For Trout

It was on the island. I had been asleep under some palms, dreaming of my faraway home, when I was awakened by the memory of a human voice, or more than a memory, an actual voice. As if someone was singing a mournful song too low for me to make out the words. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, looked around. Millbrae and the others were asleep by the fire. I could see the lumpy shapes their bodies made in the sand, edged by the orange glow of the flames. Carlos The Liar stood and barked, then shook his head and circled a couple of times before lying down again. He looked into the fire and yawned, then settled his head on his paws, unconcerned. Now that I was concentrating on hearing the sound of the singing, or whatever it was, I couldn't tell if I was still hearing it or just listening to the remnants of a dream. Still, I stood and took a few steps into the jungle. I crawled over a tangle of roots and squeezed through a gap between two fallen trees. I walked for some minutes, then turned and looked back. I could no longer make out the campsite or even the glow of the fire. The sounds of water dripping from the high branches of the trees made it difficult to really listen, they were so lound compared to the haunted keening of the song I was chasing. I crouched down and cocked my head and it was there, I was certain of it this time, just at the very threshold of sound. A music like water rushing over a smooth stone, like the sound of a cricket breathing in his den, like the cry the moon makes when she breaks free from the earth and rises into the night sky. The sound of a mother's fingers caressing her child's hair. The sound of two earthworms entwined in the throws of their dark passion, eyeless and earless, their mouths full of earth. Someone was singing the stars into being, and I was being lured more deeply into the jungle, for it was impossible that I should turn back now. I had sailed the four corners of the earth and had heard the tales of the mermaids whose singing lured lovestruck sailors to their deaths in the reefs. I myself had never heard their singing but I knew it could scarce be more enchanting than this music I was following. Would follow to my death, if need be. I had the sudden urge to cut my chest open and uproot my beating heart, make a roost for it in one of the nearby trees, and go on without it. My teeth began working themselves free of their nests, restless as little birds eager to fly, mewling for their mother who'd gone days ago and was yet to return.

I stood by the river a long while, staring into the water, feeling my bones uncouple from their joints, my skull pulling free from its long root.




This music would be the end of me.


I set off deeper into the jungle.



*

Others Were On The Island

We were not alone.





*



Several of our party have gone missing. Nothing from them in several days. Our frantic calls have gone unanswered. We spend hours combing through their last letters, looking for clues, trying to decipher potential secret messages. Something about a house in the air, something to do with advertisments, salad fixings, royalty; the fact is we haven't a clue.

No one dares venture on shore. We sleep on the deck at night and listen to the creaking of the ship. Some forlorn beast howls in the depths of the darkness. Burning stars fall into the sea without a splash.

What is to become of us?


*

Setting Sail for The Imaginary Islands

We've set sail for an unknown destination. Our charts are out of date, our compass swings wildly from point to point, resting for a few moments on a course before spinning round again. The sun rises and sets reliably enough, but there's stormclouds and fog, and nightfall, and submerged reefs off the coast. Some say we're headed for Paradise, the land of milk and honey, where naked native girls will feed us and bed us and we'll never grow old. Others claim we're headed for a wild and godless place, where sea-monsters will wreck our fine ship and drag us down to the cold dark belly of the sea, where we'll shipwreck on the reefs and if we survive that we'll make landfall on a barren rock peopled with savages who'll boil us alive and make soup with our bones. Still others claim we'll sail off the very edge of the world and fall off into an endless abyss. Myself, I've no idea.


Now mind the helm, and make for the horizon!




*

Installation No. 13

If I had a submarine I could go to these tiny islands and take surreptitious photographs like this one and sell them to men in soiled, tattered trenchcoats for suitcases full of cowrie shells and glittery beads. Then I could anchor off shore of some tropical atoll and lock out from a torpedo tube and swim to shore under cover of darkness, guided only by the phosphoresence of a billion tiny sea-creatures that light up in the foam of the shorebreak. I could find a tree to sleep under and awaken in the morning with my cheek pressed into the sand and my back warm from the sunshine. Off in the jungle I could hear the cries of strange, exotic birds.

Then a monkey might step from the shadows. He might hold out a brass key in the palm of his hand, then close his meaty little fingers around it and slip back into the treeline, hooting and squawking mysteriously.

Of course, I would have to follow him.

If I had a submarine.


*

Spooner's Cove

I want you to be happy. I really do.


I used to have this recurring fantasy that I had the power to look into people's brains and see where their wiring was fucked up. I imagined looking in, diagnosing the problem, then reaching in and untwisting the crossed wires, plugging them in to the right places, bypassing the really burned up relays and tangled masses. Not so the person would be some kind of perfect, but so they would run the way they were designed to. And in my imagination it was always a rough fix, a patch-up job. Get things running again, a lot smoother, a lot more efficiently, but not turning a Pinto into a Porche or anything. Just enough so they could drive to work and back, get some groceries, not throw lit road flares into their beds. Maybe fall in love.

I have been thinking about getting out of the cop game and going into the head-shrinking game. I suppose it would be much harder and much less effective than my imaginary re-wiring game, but lately I've been feeling more and more like I would love to just sit down across from someone and listen to them and empathize with them and just sort of help nudge them along into a less painful way of being.

I probably shouldn't say anything about it.

One of the things that happened to me after about five years of being a cop is that my empathy juice ran dry. I really did see everyone as stupid and mean and greedy. Worthless shitbags, assholes, idiots, ass-kissers, or predatory monsters. And I respected the predatory monsters most out of the whole collection. At least they were going after what they wanted. At least they took on the world and didn't bitch when they went down swinging. After a while I was able to fly into sudden, violent rages at my wife and daughter when they did stupid shit like turn up the sound on the TV, or turn it down. Or leave the lights on in the bathroom. Good reasons like that. I mean, come on. They had it coming.

I came back from that brink without actually hitting anyone or eating my gun but it was a long, uphill slog.

Okay, I'm still slogging. But I'm mostly there.

After a couple of years I got unfucked and now things are much better. I don't know how realistic this idea is, but I don't much care, either. I'm going to school anyway and this gives me something concrete to focus on. Even if it takes me ten more years, that's cool. I could do it as a retirement gig. But if I could put up a shingle right now, I would.

Okay. Confession time's over. Go back to yr life.

I mean it though. I want you to be happy.





*

In A Mood

This night a dark wind blows, cuts
through the clacky trees, edges set
one against another.

Somewhere a branch bends. Somewhere else
one breaks, the sound like a shot, a hot light
in the shadows.

I hug my sorry self and it's my own bones I feel.
I grit my teeth and squint to make out
what lights are on the horizon, but I can't tell
if something's looming or receeding and
which means what or what's worse.

The screen door's come loose. It goes
bang, bang, bang in the wind.




*

Bull's-Eye

It helps to begin with something specific.

A bowl of fruit
in a slant of light on a wooden table.

A hat on a peg in a white hallway.

*

I started out heartbroken.
It wasn't nowhere else to go then.
In the cemetary in Plainwell there was a little statue
of a dog next to the headstone of a young girl.
Old Man Basil said when she died her dog
come over to the plot, sat down,
wouldn't quit the spot they'd put her.

When he died, they buried him there
and set the stone dog on the grave.

At ten I couldn't hardly stand it,
that kind of love and sadness. It seemed
a twin to what I carried in my bones
since I could remember.

I thought everyone felt it.


*

Today a old man came in, his palsied hand
holding out the same yellowed sheet of paper
he brought in to me last week.

"They're with the U.S. Customs." he says, pointing-
"This time they give me a number."

He looks up at me, his head cocked sideways,
his tan pants pulled up high over his belly.
Already he knows it's a lost cause, knows
he's made a fool of himself again. But maybe
this time maybe not maybe it's legit.

"I shouldn't have come down, huh?" He says
when he sees my face.

I invite him in and he watches me call the number,
some video store in Ontario. "They outsmarted us this time,
Earl. They give us a wrong number."

"That's just what I figured. Why I come down here.
Hope maybe we can turn up a lead."

Earl's given nine-thousand dollars to them trying to claim
his sweepstakes prize. I'd gut 'em right in front of him.
I write down his information again in my book. He likes that.
I give him the number to Victim Witness again, make him
put it in his wallet. Walk him out to his car, wave as he drives off.

I'll see him next week.

Maybe I can think up something good to tell him.



*

Or one day you wake up, everything's gone.
Busted up, drifting away like smoke leaving
nothing but oil on your tongue and a bad
scent in the air.

Or one day you wake up, the sun's in your window
and when you reach out to touch her,
you do.

You do.



*

The light's gone from the day and the smell of the grass mingles
with woodsmoke from your neighbor's chimney and for a long while
you stand at the back door and look out into the night where it is
cold for all things.

"What's hard is what's true," you mumble to
no one.

You go on standing there until your wife touches your shoulder,
says dinner's on the table.

Says go wash up.


*

Bucolic Ruminations

As I get older, I find that the art of the long walk brings me more pleasure than almost anything else. The simple act of stepping outside and heading off the pavement: into the woods, along the shore, up and off and out. My mind tries its damnedest to keep up with it's constant chatter, but after an hour or so it gives up and just looks around. At the sky. At the waves off in the distance. The grass underfoot.

It is silence I am after. And an unbounded view. And the smell of the earth, the wind in my face. Everything seems to fall into place. Even if it still sucks in some particular way, its just not that important anymore.

I am lucky to live in a beautiful place full of great walks. Here are some of my favorites:

Up to the cemetary and into the woods off Bridge Street, out to the top of Warwick and back home.
Out Rodeo Grounds, across the highway to the back side of East/West ranch, out Park Hill and back.
The Upper Walk of the East/West Ranch.
The beach walk of East/West.
Moonstone Beach and back.
Santa Rosa Creek Road to Lynn's Fruitbin and back.
Secret Beach
The Cove, out to the point and back.

You should try all of them if you have time when you're in town.


I imagine when I'm retired being able to do like Muir and just take off for days at a time.

Just walking around. Breathing. Grinning ear to ear.

You really should come with.



*

Homecoming

Headed out for a long walk on the cliffs of the East/West Ranch with my beautiful wife and our beautiful dogs. The wind is blowing and the sun peeks through the wild, dark clouds from time to time, illuminating the wild and wonderful world.

You can call me in for dinner, but I may never come.





*

Landscape with Imp

On display at the Natural History Museum of Hell







*

Stella's Bad Things

My daughter's recurring nightmare was the little orange and green Oompa-Loompas coming into her room through the air vents above her bed. She could hear their tiny, meaty little hands scraping away at the vent cover as they slithered through the ventilation shaft.

I have always dreamed of being in a airliner, coming in for landing over a major city and watching and feeling it wing over and begin to spiral in. I can feel the g-forces pushing me into the seat and the air is full of flying trays and garbage and people and the engines are screaming, screaming, and the buildings rushing up ever faster...the funny thing is I have this dream all the time and every time I have it I think to myself "Wow, I always knew I would die like this. I used to dream about it all the time. Now it's finally really happening." I want to close my eyes and think good thoughts but I always keep my eyes open.

I also used to dream about being chopped to death by a guy with an axe.


I don't know if Stella dreams about big, black, flappy things in trees, but she might.


*

Bar Crudo

This week has been a challenge. Our Mac was acting up, so I hired a guy to come in and unfuck it. He did a great job, but unfortunately we lost two years worth of photographs and most of my artwork. So I'm starting over, which is fine. A lesson in letting go.

Also a dark week for personal reasons. I'm not going to go into it, but I endured a long, dark, tea-time of the soul. Unmoored and adrift, I found everything I had been clinging to suddenly gone. Like a giant crack opened up in the ground and swallowed me whole.

So yesterday found me wandering out of the abyss, aided by the lamplight of love held out to me by my lodestar wife. Today I am blinking and rubbing my eyes at the New World. Filling my lungs with the sweet air. Falling to my knees in gratitude.

Was lost, but now am found.



*

Armageddon Bedtime Story

It seems funny to me that I feel happy of late but all I wanna see is flames when it comes time to do art. Holding up a mirror to something you think you know, you find out you don't. Lookit there.

I can't stay long. My wife needs me, she's having a bad day and I'm gonna go bring her some tea and rub her feet. Make her
some good soup. Do a silly dance.

Sit by the window and watch the world burn...




*

Baby In Hell

How do you know that what you dream of is not real?

All those neurons firing in the twisted deep dark of the skull's vault
are doing something, after all.

Snap, crackle, pop.


Now you see me, now you don't...


*

Mannequin Envy

Mannequin Envy has included me as their featured artist in their new issue! Thanks a lot, Jennifer, and thanks to Alex Nodokopa for the fabulous interview and write up. If you go you can see a bunch of my stuff, but you can also check out Mr. Lineberger's poem "Dancing With Hart Crane" in the same issue. And the collage in which he stars, "Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Spartanburg" appears alongside his poem, which I think is pretty cool.

Uhm, I would post a link but I don't know how. So tell me how if you know and I'll do it, but otherwise you can just look over to your right and click on the link under there.

Cool. I guess I can call myself an artist now.


*

Laurel

A couple of months ago Laurel agreed to submit to my dark art. You see the result above.

I feel very close to Laurel and always root for her. She's got a big heart but doesn't know it, or tries to refuse it because it is too big to handle. Something. She is in love with life and has a big crush on death, which I think is okay as long as she doesn't kill herself over it. She quotes Anna Swir- "A poet should be as sensitive as an aching tooth" and I think Laurel pretty much lives up to this description.

Anyway. I seem to be in a primarily visual mode right now, and my words feel like ill-shaped blocks of wood, so I'll shut up now and let you all look at the pictures.

Hope you like this, Laurel.


*

The Eight Pillars

*

Night Swim

* GOTCHA! *

Yolanda, 2006

My bones ache is how much I love her.
I am utterly, utterly undone.









*

Lucky Luck Prisoner

*

I Am My Own Man

Write The Following Poems:

The Birth of Tools
Dance of the Red Tree
Naked Before, Naked Again
Flood of The Night Belly
Incantation Is No Protection
Weapons Cannot Cleave It
I Am Against All Enemies of Change
Undoing is My Alembic
Artifacts Belong To Mother
Bang The Conundrum
Isn't Nothing Louder Than My Hammer


*

then get back to me.

Ben Has Two Dads

I wish I could have you all over for a fish-fry and some beers.
I'm glad as hell this week is over...






*

Instructions

"Within the parameters I will instruct you to do the following
exercises; however I must insist that my directions be followed
exactly without the slightest variance or serious complications
may result. Begin with a vigorous scream of rage and fear. These
are the emotions that have set up residence in your skeletal
framework and electrical nodules and they are intent upon
undoing you. Loud and continuous screaming will uproot their
temporary dwellings and send them, broken and bewildered, into
your blood stream. This is when they are most vulnerable. I used
to believe that I would never betray you. My mother did not deserve
the blame I placed on her and I have put a baloney sandwich in
your jacket pocket. Turn off at the next intersection and park the
car behind a dumpster. Take off your clothing and stand over a man
hole cover and turn in counter-clockwise circles until your nose
runs and your feet turn red. Get back in your car before your
blood can become re-infected. Call me tomorrow for the rest
of the instructions."


Today I added a couple of links to some places that I think are very wonderful and cool, although I am breaking all kinds of blog etiquette by doing without really asking if its okay or even talking to the people who run them or even really commenting on them.

So. Sorry about that.

In my defense I plan to go back and do just that.


I want to talk a little bit about anxiety. My least favorite of the human emotions, and my personal gollum. What I really hate about anxiety is that I feel it because I have procrastinated on some commitment and I seem to be willing to eat my liver rather than do what it is that I have committed to.

This seriously fucks with my sense of self.

I have an image of the ideal tearful dishwasher, and a guy who refuses to do what he's supposed to do and then curls up in a ball and whines about it does not exactly jibe with that image. What's worse is I think I should deal with my anxiety by doing all of these 'anti-anxiety' kinds of things so I don't feel so bad.

Hey, dummy, what about doing what you're avoiding?
Maybe that would aleviate some of your anxiety...

"Nah, I think I should take a hot bath and then meditate."

Yeah, okay. Or you could do what you're avoiding.

"Nope. No thanks."


Go figure.


Anyway, that's a peek inside my ugly head....


I was reading Rebecca's blog and she was talking about her urge to purge, to wipe away her blog. Mr. Lineberger does just that all the time, in fact he can post a blog and delete it as fast as I change socks. So, anyway, I hope she doesn't because I love her blog and I like to go back and revist stuff in it from time to time, even if she doesn't. Jenni was also talking about how she liked blogging because she could look back over the year and see what she had been up to. Which is also good.

The other day I went back and read through almost this entire blog, something I hadn't done. I thought it was pretty cool. It made me think that I'd like to hang out with myself, maybe go get a beer and shoot the shit late into the night, watch the stars spin around.

So, I might call myself up and see if I feel like doing that.