Hierophany

Fox does say nutrition in there...when he's talking about grizzly bears...

What??

Anna Brook Haley

Talking w/ Brook about going to get donuts

At something like IMSA again, a reunion.  Maybe.  And Elijah from the xtc study is there.  Matt Baker and him are a hybrid character...

                                                                   *

Elijah tells other people that they should take a little walk and then he can sell them the 'cigarettes' he has on him.  Who wants one, he says.  I say I want one.  You can't want one, he says.  It upsets him that I want one because he wants to believe that some people don't want or need it.

He walks off with a few people.  I look for money in my bag, wondering how much it'd cost and getting what I think exact change would be.  I thought six or seven bucks.  I had a one, a five, a two—and a one hundred which I took out of my wallet and put into my pocket so it wouldn't get in the way.

As I'm getting my change together a woman came walking through our 'area'—other schools were meeting at this thing, too.  She caught a suspicious air about us and must have seen a bunch of the guys take their walk.  I got a bad vibe from her and I guess I decided to take my time getting my cigarette.

I got roped into listening to some story Eric Lubeck was telling.  I was bored with it and disinterested and finally said, Eric I gotta go do something.  And he broke off the story mid-way through.

Just as I was getting ready to head out in the direction they went off in, a police officer brought one of the crew back.  Busted.  I sat back down.  Eric said something like, You wanna finish the story now, don't you?  Someone else coming back who wasn't busted said, They want us to bring all our stuff up front.  I wondered if I had anything bad in my bag.  I think I had a Dream Catalyst cigarette but I wasn't worried about it.  Out front was a big room where all the students were assembling.  For a lecture maybe.  A speaker.

Representatives from each school held a sign with the rank of each school in the state on it.   Nick Adams—who was a college not a high school mate of mine—held the IMSA sign and our number was 399.  How could we be ranked 399?  I wondered.  Sure, there might be some Chicago Schools ahead of us, like New Trier or something.  But 399?  I thought maybe the sign said 39 and I had read it wrong.

Groups started entertaining themselves before the speaker started.  Members of an Af-Am section began some music and in-seat dancing.  People clapped, including me.

                                                                   *

Aside: back where we had our stuff, one of my schoolmates was looking at a guy sitting at a table.  This guy had a wave of hair—the table was like a ballroom and we thought he was our piano player.  It's great to have a good piano player, we thought.  We had just gotten back from prom or something, gotten off a bus and my date went poorly and I still had an unopened bottle of champagne with me.

We were coming back to this ballroom/convention center/meeting spot for our high school.  A mate of mine was sitting at the table writing.  He looked perplexed and we/I asked him why.  I'm trying to describe this guy's hair, he said.  The guy had a wavy quaff of black hair.  Looked like David Lynch, a Muslim David Lynch.

I said, Well, it's definitely a wave of hair.  There was surfing on TV.  I said, His hair looks like a move you make while surfing.  What, said the writerly fellow.  I repeated myself.  He had written the same exact description.  It wasn't too big a coincidence with surfing on TV but still.

I found out he wanted to go to Law School at the University of Georgia.  They have a good Law School, I said.  He talked like, and reminded me, of my cousin Jason from Athens, GA.  I told him my uncle was a professor at UGa.  This scene preceded the pot deal gone awry.

                                                                    *

Also something about a view of a decrepit, spooky brick building out the window.

                                                                   *

Finally, something about making spaghetti with a new pot apparatus with a colander built in on the bottom that my mom used but my dad made her stop.  I was making spaghetti.

And Jason Wood called me and I told him about having spaghetti for dinner and he remarked how spoiled I was and he had to make his dinner every night—and I said I made the spaghetti—and he said how he also had to buy all of the ingredients and work full-time and his parents never did anything for him.  His mom didn't give a shit about him.  All of this on the phone and I was saying, No Jason.  You have a great family and they love you, etc.  My dad was overhearing the conversation...

                                                                   *

Later on, I dreamt of Eric Peters.



[1/15/2003]