Structured Daydreams

The youth have a power over the world in the bedroom of their mind.

Venturing to the blackness, at the edge of the bed they lie, legs stretched, shoulders relaxed, spent, feeling smashing about all they gave.

They break rules. Laugh in the silence, gregarious in the closed mouths, living in the moment’s so 2002, with a slight of hand they split atoms.

Season Jumping, they sweat fall and rise cold, all in the matter of a beam of light.

Being an “old” and re-entering the bedroom, I’m startled to see her cringe at the moon, howl between the floorboards. I’m half naked catching her motionless, head tilted, watching the candle flicker.

They see meaning in everything. We only see meaning when it means something.

One foot behind the other, you tip toe (slowly!) out, retracing your steps and prepare to enter again hopefully upon a different season.

Yet how tiresome it must be for you to think you’ve contorted the universe and all the proceeding nanoseconds that got us here. It’s limited sight and in that respect not much is shared and sharing (an old idea) is what love is in the bedroom of the mind.

And it might be because there’s this dark matter where my heart pumps blood to my brain. But it also could be that in my room there’s a desk and a bed. When I’m writing, I’m at the desk, when sleeping, the bed, and sometimes I write in the bed and sometime I sleep at the desk and if i’m not doing either I have to go outside cause there’s no living room in my house. So I go outside and I have a smoke and all these people along 14th street are busy and excitable and walking and clapping and they’re heels are clicking and they’ve got to be somewhere now now now and they lounge around like every corner’s their own, and ringing are phones and I don’t know if i’m writing and I don’t know if I’m sleeping, it gets complicated, but it’s my world, as it were, so someone has to take a stand.

Let’s figure out a pattern to my behavior….

1. I have no patience for everyday pleasantries. Waiting in line, there was a man and his father behind me aimed to pass, and when they realized they did, they stopped and said, “Oh, you were here first,” and I said, “I know.”

2. I have the largest pimple placed sqaurely in the middle of my forehead and got roasted at work. Even the line cook who has two fingers on his left hand got in a few jabs. That sort of thing builds character but what doesn’t build character is when a quarter-way through the abuse I ask one of the waiters, “Michelle, do you have any cover-up? Seriously.”

3. I got tickets for a play and paid a twenty-five dollar non-refundable fee applied to my american express card and the day of the play, just two hours before show time I went to a bar and ordered a ketel one on the rocks with a twist, then another kettle one on the rocks with a twist, then went outside hailed a cab went home, fell asleep. Then, when Michelle asked me the next day how was the play, I said, “Amazing.”

It’s called Torn Parachutes, and was made by my cousin Allen who goes to NYU.

There are many things I have to say about it but… I think the title of this post says it all.

I am working on a feature length.

The day I moved out of the house, I put all my books in boxes, my clothes in bags, brought them down five flights of stairs before bringing them to the curb outside and into a taxi.

I pretended to be a flagrant playboy whose wife had kicked him out of the house for cheating.

Me: Hi. 14th and Third ave.
Him: You got it.
Me: Thanks. Moving a lot of stuff.
Pause
Me: My girlfriend. She kicked me out.
Him: Oh, boy.
Me: I like black girls.
Him: Me too.
Me: I eat em up. I had two of them.
Him: In your home?
Me: In the crib.
Him: You have a child?
Me: Yeah…
Him: In your babies crib or you mean, crib is your house?
Me: The babies crib.
Him: No good, man.
Me: I’m bad.
Him: She caught you.
Me: She came to say good night.
Him: You were with baby?
Me: There was five of us. It was crazy.

Trip #2….
Him: Where to?
Me: 14th and Third ave.
Beat
Me: Yup. Movin.
Him: Ok. That’s good.
Me: My girlfriend kicked me out. I like em big.
Him: Oh shit. You like big girls.
Me: Can’t get enough.
Him: She caught you.
Me: Yeah, she caught me. We got a kid.
Him: Oh, it’s no good for kid.
Me: Well, it’s better than us fighting all the time right in front of him.
Him: Yes, that’s true. She gonna take your money.
Pause
Me: Well I’m gonna give it to her, she’s taking me to child suport enforcement.
Him: Don’t let her.
Me: Don’t let her?
Him: Deal with her privately.
Me: We can’t. We don’t agree.
Him: Pay her.
Me: I’m gonna pay her.
Him: No, pay her not to go. You don’t understand. I have a friend, drives a cab, same thing with him. He can’t go nowhere. He’s broke. Five kids.
Me: Five? What was he thinking?
Him: My wife tried that with me. I said “no.”
Me: Oh, you told her, “no,” that worked?
Him: She said, “I’m gonna get, you know, percentage of your income,” I said, “Good, I’ll work in a field my whole life, they don’t give checks in a field, now you gonna get nothing.” She understood, backed off. I buy my kid whatever he wants.

Today is my day with rafael.
I enjoy playing with him more these days.

He used to be a chore,
when he’d whine and complain

and now we talk more easily.

Since i’ve gone,
he’s a better listener.

He’ll play on the green tire,
won’t let me share.

His diet is still the pits,
a cornucopia of hamburger and french fries.

Sometimes I think he’s behind me when he isn’t.

I don’t know what it is about these old songs I use to listen to over and over again and why they bring me so much comfort now.

Running along the east side, listening to this.

The pain in my left calf burns and curses and I keep thinking, “You deserve this.”

Doesn’t that sound like a real fun place to spend a Saturday?

And on the website, there’s a picture of a young boy and his mother, smiling, running into the ocean, kicking up sand and surf. But if you look a bit closer; just tilt the camera to the left, you ‘ll see that they’re running over the body of the father and kicking up dimes and nickels.

Gliding through the website in happy, happy, glee-like rapture, I found this lovely thread…

Paternity Establishment
When a child is born to unmarried parents, the child has no legal father. Paternity must be established before child support or medical support can be obtained.

Wonderful. Turns out I’m not a father.

Now what kind of a story do I want my child to tell when he’s my age.

“My father left the house when I was two, and because he and my mom were never married, she couldn’t get child support; So technically, he wasn’t my father and more importantly he got out of paying my mom a dime. If I ever see that piece of shit, I’ll punch him in his face.”

Or…..

“My father left the house when I was two, and because he and my mom were never married, she couldn’t get child support; So technically, he wasn’t my father and didn’t have to give my mom any money. But he filled out the form, they enforced an amount that was more than he could afford and every cent he ever worked for was handed over to my mother, leaving him a bitter, angry, failure.”

Well, at least there’s a good side to all this.

I went to begin my spanish class at the Queen Sofia Institue and found out my class had been cancelled.

There was a looking for papers, a series of mouth twitches, a scanning of computers all culminating with, “I’m so sorry.”

There, I met a teacher who told me about a book by Jorge Luis Borges. A story in particular called The Circular Ruins.

This morning, I sat in a tiny coffee shop, looked to my left, saw fourteen books for sale, one of them being an Anthology of fiction by Borges.

Is the name of a film I shot two weeks ago. It is nowhere near finished and I’m not even sure I’m permitted to put this on my website without the permission of the director, but it’s only the first scene and only a medium shot of the first scene without any close-up’s, so it’s not like this is going to end up in the film anyway.

Plus I’m excitable, and like the performance of the other guy, too.

Was the working title of my first screenplay. The story was given to me by my cousin, Allen, during a breakfast date at Les Halles. He told me a story. I asked some questions, we made some changes, discussed reasons for breaking the silence of the universe, and finally, went away from each other.

I thought about it for three days, then sat down to write. Two days later it was finished, a fifteen page rough draft.

The story is about three friends who go to the beach; frolicking, playful and silly then leave the beach, betrayed, cold and bitter.

There was a scene where my character (realizing he’d been stabbed in the back), tackles his best friend into the ocean. I wanted to get a dummy so I could really put my shoulder into the hit, and lift her up sending her backwards into the water. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a dummy, but the female playing the character of EMMA had plenty of fight experience and didn’t seem to mind me rushing into her at 18 miles an hour (I clocked myself), crushing her lower hips sending her sailing into the cold waters of Coney Island.

How hard did I hit her? Let’s put it like this… I wrote the script and didn’t allow the actors to improvise, but we only did one take of this, and I permitted the improvised line that shot out of her mouth while my shoulder dissappeared into her waist line, to stay in the film… it went something like, “Fffrroouuuygh,” whatever that means.

We filmed last Wednesday and if the footage is as good as my cousin thinks it is, I’ll end up putting it up on this site.

He directed the film and it was ultimately for a class project at his University.

I have been bit by the bug. I will concentrate on writing screenplays.