Meet me over there

I've already got 2 blogs going at Wordpress, and a third with only a few meager posts. I'll give it a try over there to see who shows up. Join me, won't you?

Another Hour You'll Never Get Back

Not content with a mere 15 minutes of fame, my recent contribution to WMBR earned me 45 minutes more than that, specifically an hour of air time on The James Dean Deathcar Experience this past Saturday. It was my fifth consecutive year darkening the air waves over Cambridge, and as usual, it was a blast. This time around I decided to eschew my penchant for two-minute power pop masterpieces in favor of extended jams - not the self-indulgent solos of the sixties and seventies, but rather garage rockers growing up and stretching out. Here is the play list:

The Reports - Dinamo Cambridge (Dinamo Cambridge)
764-Hero / Modest Mouse - Whenever You See Fit (Whenever You See Fit)
Alan Vega / Alex Chilton / Ben Vaughn - Fat City (Cubist Blues)
Public Image Limited - Poptones (Second Edition)
Polvo - El Rocío (Shapes)

To hear a podcast of the hour's festivities, go to this link.

dream sequence - part 28

I didn't dream about trains last night, although I did manage to get lost in an old office building - also a recurring image. This isn't about that dream, however.

Minutes later I was in a field overlooking the ocean. There was a steep cliff at the edge of the field, with rocks meeting the waves below. Several strangers were with me. Suddenly there was a commotion directly above me. In an otherwise deep blue sky, explosions of earth took place against a background of blue ocean. Within seconds, the earth was formed into a lush green island, which, with the surrounding ocean, was suspended a seemingly safe distance above our heads. Knowing that all of this was impossible, I wondered if I was imagining it, but the others all around me saw the same thing.

dream sequence - part 27

another day, another dream about trains. once again this took place in a nightmarishly-misconfigured South Station, where I was waiting in a crowd of people for word that my train was boarding. When the track was announced, the entrance to the boarding platform was blocked, causing a confused throng of commuters to walk the length of an adjacent platform in an attempt to gain entrance from the other end of the train. Having never approached the trains from this direction (not even possible in real life), I was disoriented, but I followed other people who looked like they knew where they were going.

When the next stop was something other than Back Bay, I knew that I had boarded the wrong train. Before I could find a conductor to ask where I was going, the train continued to the next stop. Walking the length of the train, there wasn't a conductor to be found. Truth be told, I was the train's only passenger.

dream sequence - part 26

I haven't commuted via train to Boston for over five years, but I'm suddenly having a lot of dreams about them, most of which involve me chasing after a train that is leaving without me. Ironically, this rarely happened to me in 10 years of commuting, as I pride myself on being prompt and always try to leave myself plenty of time. In my dream world, I'm far less in control than I'd like to be.

In last night's dream, I had luggage with me, so my ability to move through a rush hour throng was inhibited. I was trying to remove some tag from my luggage when I saw the train pulling away from the station. I shouted and chased, screaming like a fool. Instead of accelerating away from me, the train kept a steady, glacial pace, just out of reach. I ran as far as South Station, which looked nothing like I had remembered. Winded and disoriented, I stopped running.

dream sequence - part 25

I used to spend much more time in airports than I do now, but for some reason I've been dreaming about them - mostly about getting lost in them, or otherwise getting lost on my way to them.

This morning I hitched a ride - presumably to Logan Airport - with a travel acquaintance who was dropping off his rental car. It turns off that the rental agency was off-site - presumably providing a shuttle service to the airport. This was yet another wrong assumption, as it turned out. "We're a routing station, not a full-service rental office" explained one of the workers there. 

It seems the women were more interested in talking about an upcoming wedding than assisting me with my dilemma. I had a car parked at the airport but I was several miles away at a rental car office with no shuttle service. My travel companion was long gone, having retrieved his car from the "routing station". I asked to call for a taxi, and then was told that I could get a ride if I could wait until closing at 10 p.m. Naturally that was unacceptable.

One of the workers turned flirtatious. "I can give you a ride right now if that's what you need".

I woke up instead.

I can radicalize

I can radicalize
any time I want to,
skinny fists raised
in some gesture
I can't articulate,
my open electron shell
brittle and transparent,
doomed to the isolation
of a universal solvent.