i was in a sleeping bag next to a house when i woke up to discover not only a party with a bonfire in the middle and people dancing around, but a small helicopter hovering overhead. it was the sound of the helicopter stuttering in air that woke me up. when i looked over, a man was wrestling the copter, trying to get it balanced so it could land right. i realized suddenly that if this went awry, i could very possibly be in the line of an explosion. so i jumped up, went around a barrier and scrunched up to the house i was previously sleeping against. as soon as i got into position, i heard a crunch, and then saw the helicopter blade spin out and spin around and around on the ground. except it went out, and then it wheeled back around on the ground towards me.

it came closer and closer and i squished closer to the house and ducked down. it came towards me, and then it was in my face and i was looking at the metallic hone. then the blades sliced into my cheek and my forehead.

but stopped before they hit my bones. everything paused as it sat there in me. and i realized the helo-cog wasn't coming any closer, and so pulled my flesh off the blades.

in the dream, it didn't hurt, but i could feel my skin relinquish the metal. and then start bleeding. i cupped my hand to my face where the blades entered, and ran over to my mom, who was in the house, and said, "I think I might need stitches."

when i took my hands off, she said, "I think you might be right."

we paused and she added, "But what doesn't kill you, builds character."

later in the dream, after the stitches (i was more scared of the stitches than the helicopter blades), i called my sister on a cellphone and got back into my sleeping bag. as i talked to her, i watched two shooting stars pass through the milky way and the atmosphere, and she told me, from Washington, that she had just seen something burn through the sky.

*

in recent news, i decided today to go back up to Alaska and fish this August. an odd sort of decision. but i miss it up there, and my mum told me my boss had told her that if this fishing season goes well, my boss thought she'd be able to sell the fishing site. it made me horribly sad, that i would never get to go back up there. and so... i just wrote and told her i'd join them. which means temporarily abandoning my decision to stay in Chicago for the summer, but i'm not sure i'd make it without the universe of summer green and ocean and things so much bigger than me anyway.

*

have you ever experienced something that doesn't quite make logical sense? or even emotional, etc, sense? i mean reality sense, i guess. there is this thing that happens, where i'm occasionally looking where i don't normally, past the everyday daylies, in a direction i just happened to glance towards, when/where this person i only vaguely know turns up. it's beyond odd. i mean, i tend to be looking in lots of directions, paying attention or trying to, but i always see this person far off in the distance whenever she's in the vicinity. i always look just the right way at just the right time. through doors, out subway windows, down the street. each time it happens, it feels like i was doing it on purpose, only i wasn't. i was just glancing and saw. it drives me nuts.

*

today was a good day. i showed the rough draft of my travesty piece to Beth and she had some very good structural observations. she mentioned what she did and didn't notice happening, and it made me think about what was important for me to have my readers notice. how you can bury an event sometimes, but you're hoping the reader will catch it, but why did you bury it then? something about a puzzle, and the question of why the puzzling is what counts. or how to get your reader to invest in the puzzle, to want to know, to want to catch it.

also, some observations on how one of the characters went linear in time, and how the other character doesn't seem a part of time, which made me really excited. is this possible?

i'm starting to realize quite a bit about what fascinates me, what patterns show up again and again - patterns different than just the depressing sad repetitions, but in terms of themes i tackle from as many different directions as i can muster. something about many-voices, about getting outside a one-voice, about rendering experience beyond my experience, and making it all come together. people have been recommending Bakhtin to me lately, dialogism in lanaguage, and perhaps that will be one of my readings this summer.

i want the fascination of the simple, non-convolute, non-clever direct; but combined with an eternal and unanswerable puzzle, one that makes sense for the reader and me to work on. an emotional and spiritual sense, not simply intellectual.

i am thirty-years old, and i wonder when i will find my voices. when i will feel right with them.

*

registered for classes today - advising in writing department, two classes in the print department. i'm really excited about the print classes, although nervous since both are 6-hour, all day classes, and my experience with letterpress has taught me that means treble the time outside of class. i will need to generate quite a bit this summer to be in a place where i can produce the book project i'm thinking about. so, the classes are an artist's book class, and a class called "input-output," which is about combining digital print/photography/etc techniques with traditional techniques, but also about bringing in text.

i think i'm interested in the publishing arena, but never really realized it. i'm just so moderately interested in normal publishing companies; i mean, it carries prestige and the certainty that you are doing something that others esteem and of course read (validation), but it lacks in terms of the idea of producing something bigger than what you thought you were capable of, in terms of art, in terms of innovation, in terms of a vision seperate from the economy of money, class, or cultural howdy.

i can't help being both drawn towards big-name publishing or publishing outside of my own production because it means in a sense that "i've done it," that people approve, that i have achieved a certain level of certainty. a particular degree of professional stability. but i also disapprove of so much of the publishing standard, of the big presses pumping out their big deals that people read and then move away from, that people put on their bookshelves and gloat over, like books were hills that have been conquered, or symbols that people want to project.

it's like wanting to be beautiful because beauty gains you something, but what does beauty really mean? i've had girlfriends who've told me i'm beautiful and sometimes it feels really good, like thanks, that's nice to hear, nice to be sexy and attractive. but simultaneously, it makes me wonder about the inside, not the inside like the mind (such a beautiful personality), but about inside the experiences of the body, the moments of pain, of ecstasy, of smell, of sickness or aging that we can so rarely share. and if we share them, they are through some kind of form-content pure moment, when words or vision make you feel the content, make you ride the story like everything was indivisible. and when someone tells you that you are beautiful, most of the time, they just mean that via their gaze and vision, you match some picture they have that makes them all hot inside.

interesting that i never fall in love with lookers, with the look of things, but of the motion, the walk, the expression of.

and so, publishing sometimes feels like this, like i should submit to be beautiful, that i should revise to be beautiful, like i should censor myself to achieve beauty.

but the wondering side worries that maybe i just don't submit to this because i don't want to be told i'm ugly. that i don't want to go through rejection, that perhaps my stuff isn't up to anyone's snuff, and i'm simply fooling myself. oh hey, submit your stuff and you'll know, right? but what if i don't know, honestly don't know if that's what i want?

i mean, i want readers. i want people to pay attention. and more than that, i want discussions, intricate meanderings and banterings from people who've found something.

but i don't know if i want to submit.
submission.
sub.
mission.

anyhow, at least a mute point for another half-year during which i can focus on whatever my dreams are, wherever they take me, whatever crazy wild stupid blind avant wildness i can make the Art Institute into. after that, i guess it's about whatever i can achieve in the rest of the world.

not the real world, just the rest of the world.

anyhow, i'm off. cheers and good readings. (p.s. read: Geometric Regional Novel by Jonke, it's good. and i've heard that the new Carol Maso book, Ava, is also good, so that's soon on the list. i'm so happy, so much to eternally consider.)