I WAKE EARLY BUT I RISE LATE

Last night/this morning: L, M, Z & me. Lying in a field beside a seemingly-abandoned gas station out in the middle of the pitch-dark woods. Watching the Orionid meteor shower and eating clementines. Shivering under insufficient blankets, Z took my hand. I didn't know what to do. We were all crowded in close, talking about whether it was preferable to think of the stars as fixtures or pinpricks--the sky as a skin or a backdrop. Z, I barely know him. And it was not the ideal moment to say Sorry friend. You are interesting and you look like a rabbit. I mean that as a compliment. But. I have someone. Yes, he is absent. I don't know for how long. But I have him. The question being: when is the ideal moment to say such a thing? I took my hand away when someone asked the time. 3:15 AM. We left at the insistence of coyotes.

The aforementioned love being the one I flew to San Francisco for. There is perhaps too much to say here. See also: a room with sheer curtains. See also: being carried across a beach like some romantic cliche. See also: photobooth pictures where I unwrap myself like a mummy. See also: a museum of mechanical wonders, a city of Chagalls, a sadness called fog.

While on the west coat, I also visited J at Green Gulch Zen Center. It is so strange to see your best friend for the first time in five months. It is so strange to walk in a valley full of Japanese plants where few people speak and no one speaks loudly. A gong sounding every so often. He made us cinnamon tea and walked us through the Zendo. Bronze statues of Bodhisattvas and dim, natural light. Walking barefoot through their sacred space. My best friend has a shaved head and sleeps in a meditation hall with forty others. Otherwise, he is as I remember him.

Been daydreaming about tauroboliums. Bulls adorned with gold and garlands of violets before being slaughtered. The Roman who waits just beneath the stands, arms outstretched, as the blood runs down and bathes him. Purified, deified, feeling fine. How the loves of the first world were dangerous.

Ideal, ideal, ideal. Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge. Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom.

We finally discussed Dada in my Art History class. There was much scoffing from sorority girls. Joe and I decided to make Dada costumes for Halloween. I decided to only make art with a knife.

In other news, I am so disappointed that the Heene family hysteria was a hoax. I had this eager image of the moment when the balloon would be intercepted and opened up to find that child nestled like a baby bird, cradled in aluminum and sleeping.