Good news & weird dreams

Last night's entry from the recently incepted Hippie Journal:
21 August 11 days without any yelling after dark. I was starting to think it was all just a bad dream. But then [page break]
9ish: Stomping. [Meaning only that someone came home. -ed.]
10ish Too loud of talk on the porch.
10:31 Someone in the building yells QUIET! Twice. And this, someone on the other side [of the dupliced building], ALL THE WAY ACROSS FROM THE PORCH where Zoëaut; and 2 or 3 other idiot chicks are yelling.
10:45 A scream/yelp like someone put ice down her shirt. Then talk of a dead grandmother, fairly quiet. Cackling. Lots of loud laughter. (About a guy who's "going to have a heart attack any day now.")
10:53 Now I'm watching Bond too loudly to hear. I'll note when the others leave if I'm [still] up.
11:40 [A g]ood time to get louder. One's leaving.
11:45 She left.
11:58 Are they wrestling? Falling bodies, yells of pain, OW, OKA-A-A-AY- what is wrong with them? BRAK. Nice burp, Lady.
12:14 Fuck? Suck? Something -uck, that's for sure[;] that and more furniture-dragging sounds.
Also, someone's a is he crazy? STONER. (cackle.) Going to bed.
Mostly it's the other idiot, not Zoe.
Z. drones on & the other yells & "laughs." They're rude even to each other, talking over each other. [Apparently the journalist failed to go to bed, despite his intentions -ed.] 3 of them; Z. is on the phone (yelling into it) [on the porch, so she can hear or so everyone else can?] & the other's still talking to someone. Z & arone [?] are having a really serious talk. Etc. Goodnight. It's 12:20.
"And everything was great EXCEPT one of the bedrooms didn't have any windows."
She's looking to move out!
[end transcript; I went to bed and still couldn't get to sleep until after 3, due to no fault of their idiotic own]
I never thought it might be a good thing to have the cunt yelling her business after midnight on the porch. Good news at last.
    I dreamed, after I finally fell to sleep, about a girl I once(?) had a crush on. I was talking to her, apparently from the porch of my soon to be ex-neighbors, and she was on my porch. I leaned my head & shoulders (more of which I could use, flake that I am) over the edge of the porch, hanging my face upsidedly down in front of hers, in breathsmelling, breathfeeling distance, and asked her Why don't we get married?
   And so on; you know how dreams go. It's only occurred to me while transcribing the weirdity that this was half of the exact behavior the hippies' cat exhibited to me when I was on the porch below him. He was pissed off, though; my intent was purely amorous. But I wonder. What a Christlessly weird piece of impenetrable symbolism.
   For the record, I think the dream evolved in such a way that the hanging down was itself a dream (whoa, man), a dream that I subsequently tried to make a reality, but as it turns out, even in a dream it's very difficult to stage such an absurd pickup line.
   Peace out in the middle east out, with the west coast jews moved out afore al Lah show he clout and smite the cutcock motherfuckers with the yeast gout.

A still life with insects and vegetation

The dear reader must forgive me for my protracted absence. I returned from a visit to kith and kin at the beginning of July and was bluntly informed by your man that the Journal of Improbable Allegory would not be publishing the article that he and I co-wrote. It having been longer than I care to recall since this author has published, I had been in the highest spirits at the prospect of getting back, as they say, into the game. The rumor on the streets is that gross mis-management bordering on the embezzlous led to the publication’s insolvent status and thus precipitated my crash of spirit. Thus thoroughly dispirited, I took heed of your man’s for-once-reasonable advice and took holiday at an isolated mountain resort.
   There, away from the hustle and the bustle, the worries and the woes of life in this modern world of ours, I was (at last!) free to sit of a night in an en-screened enclosure, listening enrapt to the randy creatures of summer serenade forth their swan songs of desperate lust. A man can want no more than these three things: A cool beverage, a smoke-able stick of some type, and the symphony of insect-oid love, as plays nightly in rural Vermont. And they do have fine tobacco, as well. On more than one occasion I was courteously offered a cigarette rolled of what I am told was the locally grown (“home-grown,” they called it) Nicotiana. I must say, I found the smoke far superior to that available on the market. I fain wonder why they don’t sell it themselves? I one night, musing on the trans-portation costs of moving a truckload of the sweet leaf and of how many individual leaves would fill the space in the truck, asked the donor the same. He demurred to answer, modestly claiming it was available “if you knew where to get it,” what-ever that means. In any event, the tobacco was finer than any to have graced my palate in at least thirty years. At that time, I was in residence at Boston College and tutored a bit on the side, by which means I came to meet a young man by the unlikely name of “The Nuge.” He was a bit of a “long-haired” sort, if my meaning is clear, but a fine man and a fine mind. After the sordid commerce of tutelage was transacted, we would sit smoking and talking of all manner of things, of the nature of time and space, of brotherhood and love, and of the infinitely rich taste of Hostess' Twinkies. Such stimulating and intelligent conversation we had that I was aghast when, after he abruptly began skipping appointments, I learned that he had been arrested on narcotics charges. I suppose that even such great minds as Coleridge, van Gogh, and Huxley could be dope-addicts, but ah! such a waste.
   On my last night of sortie, as it were, my new friends gave me a handful maii-take to add to my salad. The name is Nihonese for “dancing mush-room,” which strikes me as charming. These mush-rooms were most unusual: dried and blue-stained. Evidently, fleshy fungus is unstable unless dried, which I had not known, although it now occurs to me that I have seen packages of dried shii-take at the grocery. The entrée was sauté'd bean curd garnished with whole soya beans in a rich shoyu sauce, but all I could taste was the mushrooms from the salad! Worse, I presently found myself in the uncomfortable position of suppressing gastric gas at the dinner table, which, when released, also tasted like the maii-take!
   At last, we were excused and I quickly made my way to the screened tent, powerfully anxious that my manners might not hold my weak old flesh back from further offense. There I found the crickets and cicadae even more melodic than usual, as if they were saying their good-byes to me- an odd gesture, as we had not even made acquaintance of each other. Or so I thought; having the notion in print before my eyes, I realize what an absurd conceit it obviously is. I am therefore even more embarrassed to have thought that the very trees, sinewy willows, were waving at me- but of course they were pines, not willows. It seems my gastro-intestinal distress had “gone to my head,” if I may make a novel turn of the old phrase. How very peculiar. I recall even at the time being wary of the strangeness of my condition, in fact, I even mentioned it, repeatedly, to my new “friends” the crickets. Or did I merely think it?
   The walk back to my cabin seemed to take much longer than usual. This is due in part to a rubber-necked lolly-gagging on my part: I was staring at the sky, having never seen the aurora borealis. Such beauty I have never seen- crawling and slinking sheets, spirals, and nets of light. In a word, it was wondrous. There was a peculiarly kaleido-scopic aspect of the phenomenon, as though I was seeing tessellations of color, a mosaiac, the tiles of which were constantly changing shape. Perhaps tesseraction would be a better term, as if the tiles were rotating in an unseen dimension, and I beheld only their three-dimensional cross-sections. The sight was rather captivating; indeed, I stared for what I give my word was hours, caught in the natural beauty and my own imagination, like to watching clouds but much more convincing in strength of analogy. I had no idea the phenomenon was so rich- Lovely colors in the sky are one wonder, but faces, animals, entire landscapes in the sky?
   I finally made it back to my room, where I found with wonder that it was only 9:00 in the evening! My walk could not have lasted more than twenty minutes. Perhaps the mountain air had at last over-whelmed me, accustomed as I am to the polluted excuse for an atmosphere of our urban centers. Exhausted, but paradoxically enervated, I lie down in my bed. My attempts at sleep were futile. Aside from the facts that the aurorae were still visible in my room (even after I lowered the blinds!) and the walls thus a-wash in crawling color, I found my hearing sensitized. I could hear multiple conversations in the rooms around mine, but could neither make out what was said (although I some-how felt it vaguely sinister) nor exclude them from my attention. At last, I left the cabin in my robe, returned to the screen tent, and watched the crickets and listened to the trees until four or twelve in the morning. (My watch said mid-night, but I can not believe I was there only for less than three hours.) Here the aurorae were subdued some-what; I found I could ignore them if I focused on other stimuli. But in their shifting light, the trees them-selves appeared oddly angular and fragmented, like one of Louis Wain’s cat-paintings later in his schizo-phrenia. At the last, I returned and collapsed in my bed, tasting with relish the sweet nectar of sleep that feeds the just and the damned alike.
   I was fully re-covered from the episode on the morrow. All-in-all, I am recuperated from my upset, that strange last night aside. The aurora was much more than I had been led to expect, and I suppose once in a life-time should sate my appetite. And on the topic of appetites, I will avoid maii-take mush-rooms when in polite company.

I have found a hobby.(Sort of.)

Tonight, after I listened to it rain, I picked up a Stephen King short storybook or collection. It was like learning to read again. Skeleton Crew, featuring I think (1) story made into a movie (Monkeyshines, née The Monkey) and one that made it to one of the Creepshow movies (The Raft). And (2) painfully blank verse poems, (1) of which is from a paranoid schizophrenic's paranoid schizospective, which makes it more tolerable, but that has (1) slant rhyme that made we waste upwards of (2) minutes looking for another; (1) formulaiac Like, Creepy Tales, Man story about a dude who got cursed by a Hindian holy man (the holy man threw a dead chicken at the dude; you know that Hindoo voodoo) and which claimed that the natives have things "undreamed of in our philosophy"; and the (1) about the shipwrecked d'ago surgeon-cum-drug smuggler who progressively snorts his blow while amputating and eating more and more of himself.
    My introduction to the King of Horror was in (2)nd grade, with the illustrated "novella" Cycle of the Werewolf, which I recall as being not as laughably absurd as its Nick Nolteized cinematization Silver Bullet (recently featured on AMC). I first read the present monstrous menagerie of Spooky Shit Stories way before I read IT, which was in (4)th grade. Speaking of WHICH, I wish someone had read it in advance to forbid me from reading it, esp. with the whole (6) (10)yearold dudes banging a (10)yearold girl in the sewers. There has got to be here (1) or more lessons about Liberal Permissive Parenting.
   Not that this collection is entirely unreadable. The one about the guy who went on a murderspree with his girlfriend whom he met that night who (SPOILER) didn't really exist (END SPOILER) was alright, like if Horatio Alger started writing after Freud and had less faith in the American dream and more faith in the awful incorrigibility of human (America inclusive) nature. And then there's the (1) about Gramma, which scared the fuck out of my (8)yearold ass and which I realized in highschool is full of Lovecraft references. And there are (2) that I actually like, The Jaunt, which I like to give its apter Phil Dick title 'The Trouble with the Teleporter', and Mrs. Todd's Shortcut. The latter is the author doing the only thing he can do: writing about weird shit that takes place in Maine. With dialect and stuff.
   But don't take my word for it: Read the book! O, awful horror and Reading Rainbow, what hell hath you wrought.
   I would like to found the notion of a disposable hobby. Something you do and then throw away. But it's likely that I'll pick up this shitty split-binding book again within the next (3) years.

Guinness, Arthur. Irishman.

I recently came on good enough fortune to get a fourpack of the Guinness of the old country. I was probably inappropriately already drunk when I drank it (most of), but it tasted pretty much identical with our (canadian) Guinness on tap. Which is surprising. If their cans taste like our tap, not at all like the chocolatey murk in our big black cans, I can't imagine like what the real thing might taste. It's really quite Platonic: We drink shadows at the bar, and shadows once removed out of cans. Now this artifact from the real world is packaged for transport back into our dark vale of tears and tastes like a shadow. So the Ideal remains elusive. Also, the cans were a full 500 mL, not our sorry 454.
   With only one can left for posterity, I've had no choice but to pick up lemon juice for the turbid deaths befitting my dank and cobwebby state. Which reminds me that I need a hobby. All I've been doing of a night lately is lying edgewise on the couch watching whatever crap is on the shitbox. Just tonight I've mustered the will to stay at least on my ass and off my side. But there must be something else to do. Somehow the eternal bitching about the spotty hippies leaves something to be desired, and if even I'm getting tired of my complaining then the writing is clear on the magic 8 ball.
   The hippies & the roomate both were out of town all weekend. It was a peace that passeth understanding, and then didst drive around the loop yet to pass again. Life in a small town, cruising the strip.