series of nightmares last night that all could have fit into a bad slasher flick: storm, bodies spewed, creepy nurse, car that wouldn't work, 911 call that wouldn't go through, etc.

miserable.

strangers to change/window-panes

something about doors and windows and openings and closings.
yeah something about that.
--
I got two and a half hours of sleep last night. (I'm tired) (but everyone's tired/but nobody's tired enough). And I had a strange dream, with dream-water again.
My thesis is 45 pages in, and for the first time in a long time, I can see forward and inward and in front of me.

also, Iron & Wine's Daytrotter sessions are really beautiful. I almost like them better than the album versions:

"I recall, the sun in our faces
Stuck and leaning on graces
And being strangers to change

The radio and the bones we found frozen
All the thorns and the roses
Beneath your window pane"

On being unkind to yourself//and dreaming in reverse.

(Cause I sure can be unkind to myself)

(We can all be unkind to ourselves).

photos by Tom Chambers--dreaming in reverse collection. View it here.

Someone like you- by Doug Paisley.

I've seen you stumble
I've seen you fall

I've seen you brought down, feathers and all

Picked yourself up for the ones that you call
Your best friends.

I know you've been fighting

What we can't see

Sometimes it takes many faces to be

It takes a time and a place to be free

But in the end

Who would be so cruel
To someone like you
No one but you
Who would make the rouse
For the things that you do
No one but you.

I woke up this morning
Looked at the sky
I thought of all of the time passing by
It didn't matter how hard we tried
'Cause in the end

Who would be so cruel
To someone like you
No one but you
Who would make the rouse
For the things that you do
No one but you.

---

*This was hauntingly-beautiful at Nelsonville Music Festival, where Cheyenne Marie Mize sang duet, and played violin. Cheyenne and Doug both have Daytrotter Sessions where you can legally download samples of their work, unplugged.

And another thing.

"The poet and the dreamer are distinct. Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes. One pours out a balm upon the world, the other vexes it."

FROM John Keats' "The Fall of Hyperion"

----

In his dream, the speaker visits Moneta, the goddess of memory. He swears he's a poet. Oh, and she swears he's wrong.

(I will never be a poet).

----

There are two kinds of chaos: commotion, yes, but also the void. Today concluded with a sinking feeling of the latter. And I know this sadness is temporary, but the realization doesn't seem to be helping, because it's temporary-ness that's making me sad in the first place.

How am I supposed to 'vex' it when my agency's conditional--out of (my) control?

my brain and my body//my body and my brain

are in two different places.
(pause and let it load first).

woods || 5D mkii test from Hello Tomorrow on Vimeo.

a musing on bodies//feelings.

Maybe everyone will tire of hearing about my sleeping habits, but I haven't gotten real rest since I've come back to Athens (on the 31st) and I don't know why. And I've remembered every dream--sometimes multiple dreams per night--which is a little uncharacteristic of me. Last night's was really disturbing. I was caught in military state/ Thomas Pynchon novel crossing. At one point, I was badly beaten in a library; my father rescued me, but was later attacked at a road checkpoint, right in front of me, for listening to music. I felt so helpless. (I should probably call him). The whole dream was really invasive.

Lately I've been practicing making non-prescriptive, non-judgmental observations. I'm typically pretty attune to others (though, I certainly have my failures), but I'm pretty lousy at letting my own self just-be, at letting my own self feel whatever it is that I am feeling without feeling badly for feeling badly, and without holding onto Joy that is not mine to have--just to experience. And right now I'm in the midst of a shift, I think: one that I cannot fully understand, which makes it hard. I do not mind external challenges (or even carrying intense feelings/emotions internally) as long as I can understand them somehow.

I felt crazy Saturday night. I literally had six invitations to do six different things with six different people but for some reason none of them felt right. I think I just wanted to stay in and get work done, but then I felt guilty for that--like: it's a Saturday and it's the first week back, there must be something wrong with me if I do not feel like being around people. (Which is ridiculous, right? We're all entitled to feeling introspective). And suddenly I felt like a visitor and I felt really lonely for no real reason and it wasn't until I skyped Dale and verbalized it that I was able to recognize how silly and broody it all sounded. He's right: I'm just always diving for lobsters.

Then, yesterday evening, out of no where, my period started--10 days early. And I laughed because suddenly I was able to understand it all: the emotions, the sleeplessness, the acute tingling numbness in my fingers and toes...
I think I'm just a super-sensitive listener when it comes to my body. I can't drink caffeine--not even a single glass of green tea--without feeling jived at night, and stiff in the morning. And I try to pretty consciously recognize shifts in hormones that truly do effect my feelings (without apologizing for those shifts/feelings), but this time I didn't see it coming.

I do not know where this is going, really, except to point to the obvious: human bodies are magical (but confusing) things.


musing on bodies//feelings. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

an excerpt.

from Edwidge Danticant's The Farming of Bones.

"I close the door and lock out the tame night breeze that barely reaches my bare body, naked because Sebastian has made me believe that it is like a prayer to lie unclothed alone the way one came out of the womb, but mostly because I am hoping to feel the sweat gather between the cement floor and the hollow in my back, so that when I rise up, there will be a flood of perspiration to roll down over my buttocks, down the front and back and between my thighs, down to my knees, shins, ankles, and toes, so that there will not be a drop of liquid left in me with which to cry."

----
from my (own) last night's vivid-dream head:

I was holding a bird.
It was shedding its down and
my hands became saturated,
until I could not see my palms,
until they had become feathers.

not sleeping.

I'm still waking at odd hours. Sleep's been intermittent at best, but I'm really not that tired, and my dreams have been strangely vivid. By midday I forget them--like flashes. Last I checked I was running through the streets of Athens (as a visitor to a place I'd never been before) with my sister and my father. The weather quickly became tempestuous, and our running quickly became manic. The streets became garden rows. We had to pick all the cucumbers before the wind blew them away. I gathered four before I woke.



not sleeping. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.