you can't stalk water
you wake up and the conclusion of your dreams, unusually violent
is this line you can’t stalk water which gets you up to write it down
and you are still jetlagged until the final day when you go back and do it the other way
and what does it mean, do you think?
in the dream you were taking drugs with people you used to know
and having sex with people you still do
and you think I love writing that alludes to the existence of other people
.
and in the dream it’s all frantic, desperate desire
all the things that require an outside
longing, lack
and remember for months the lake with the alcohol burning off, the water on fire
and you said that’s an alchemical image
.
and I think, suddenly, of this album I haven’t heard for years by a band you can’t remember anything about now called Shudder To Think and you find the record, because everything is findable now, and you put it on, with your headphones and you remember that this was something this guy you were seeing when you were nineteen used to like, and, Christ-in-retrospect, what was that about.
You remember a bracelet he gave you which said ‘Dream On Me’, one of their lyrics, which was funny as he was really quite pragmatic and not at all drawn to passion, although I suppose he did get angry, which is one.
and you think, are you just going to spend the rest of your life recalling things that happened to you, and that you happened to, in the first half?
I look up the dream on me man in real life. After a decade of compiling the music charts, he now does something to do with working practices and management style and transforming well-being through process improvement and personal productivity. He still loves music.
I think, in retrospect, that I was probably not very nice to him.
.
you can’t stalk water, and the stems and stamens are not lost on me
but I think we are made of water and people are unjust to Thales
you can’t stalk yourself
or can you?
if the superego was a friend, it’d be the most unpleasant person we’d ever met
mine is a cross between my mother - not my actual mother, of course, a gentle woman who deals in nature and organisation - and a manager in some godforsaken business park on the outskirts of a commuter town in an ill-fitting sexless suit (trousers or skirt?)
Another woman, the howl of ages, some absolute fucking bitch who is constantly telling me to make a list. Fuck off you harridan!
And I remember telling you, over and over again If someone you knew told you all the things that had happened to you, you would feel great compassion for them
You can’t leave yourself, though you can leave everyone else
[please stay]
.
so you think, hmm, we already have everything
water
more in fact, the infinite sun
the brutal excess
their politics and ours