Let the kids rock and roll. Like they need permission.

I woke today in this place that looks exactly like the place I just moved out of. Except it's not. And I changed where things go, so it's not the same at all. Hard to tell though when you're just waking. Strange. I like strange. It would be hard to say why. Something about the difference that makes a difference. Geese, as I used to say: flying information.

During the move, things surfaced, as things will. Last night, trying to find something in a box of bathroom stuff, I found half a box of tampons. I remember how proud I felt when I bought them for her. Taking care of my baby. Something deeper than that. Tending to her, as she would say. Did say, often. They'd gotten wet somehow, the paper wrinkled and dried. I threw them out along with some other things she'd left. It was strange, I thought later, that she didn't leave anything she'd really want back. As if she'd known before it happened and gathered up what she wanted to keep, leaving only bits and pieces of her presence. Enough to make it seem she hadn't planned on leaving. But maybe that's just me. Of course it's just me. Who else would bother thinking it. Especially now, after all this time. No one left to explain it again.

As I was tossing this stuff, I reached back into the trash and picked up a plastic bottle of some cosmetic something. Some sort of mousse, as it turned out. No water damage there. Attractivce bright packaging. A spray bottle with a blue label: Beauty Without Cruelty. I almost laughed. Yeah, I know all about animal testing and what this brand is supposed to mean. Stupid as it is. But sometimes the irony is just too much. Beauty without cruelty. Wow. Do advertisers hire semioticians? They do. Amazing to think about, if you stop to think. Think about it. Professionals in reading the cultural unconscious. Who is this stuff meant to appeal to? Why? Like the hand soap in her bathroom when I first started going over there: Kiss My Face. I guess everyone's seen this by now, on store shelves in better supermarkets everywhere. I hadn't. I couldn't believe it. Kiss My Face? You gotta be shittin me. How about Sit On My Face? How about kiss my ass.

In a lot of ways, I guess I'm slow. So many signs. So many signifiers. So much subtle sound and fury. Beauty without cruelty. Like a fish without a bicycle.

I left the bottle out on the counter, so I saw it when I was making coffee. First coffee here in my new place. I like it here. Two big pine trees outside the front door. And a stoop. A couple of them actually. Long shallow-rise concrete stairs leading down to the parking lot. Transistion at the entryway. A passage in the pattern language. Good places to sit, watch the nearly full moon sailing up into the night. Or going down. Mid-sky, what difference does it make?

In the middle of the night, rolling over in my sleep, I was dreaming of my angel. I haven't said much about her yet. Not the one I've been wrting about here. Not even close. Good thing. There was a time, not long ago, I couldn't write anything. Couldn't imagine love. I wrote to her about a dream I had, of a feathered demon. He was beautiful but dangerous. I wresteld with him, trying to get him to accept me. A contest of strength, of will. At one point I felt one of his talons touch my skin, incredibly sharp, powerful. I realized he could rip me to pieces in an instant, but instead it was as if he was embracing me.

After that, she called me demon. So just for the record, not angel the way some people talk about angels these days. Oh yes, my angel spoke to me and it was so amazing! Fuck that. This is a woman. Real. With a sense of humor big enough to accomodate our impossibility. I talked to her last night, sitting on my stoop. My stoop that I like so much. One of the differences that makes one. I didn't have a stoop in the other place. Just a flat sidewalk. So progress, as they say, not perfection. Dreaming of my angel who is not a dream. Who saved me. Showed me that was possible. To reach out of the deepest darkness and say... say what? Hello. Say what if I fell in love with you? What would you do? And what she did was show me that there was, in fact, in realtime, no bullshit, beauty without cruelty.

I have to go pretty soon. I should stop writing now, get ready to pick up Selene, once known to some of you as Self. A name she chose as a baby, just learning to speak. Now she calls herself Mirage and won't answer to Self anymore. That's cool. She'll flay me for telling you this. But that's cool too. She'll understand. I'll ask her to play the Good Charlotte tune that goes: tonight, tonight, it's on tonight. I don't want your boring life. And I don't want your 9 to 5. Or anyone to tell me how to live my life...

And we'll crank it till the windows rattle as we drive through downtown Boulder, thinking foolishly that someone here might get it. But not caring, really. Not giving a good goddam.

[to be continued....]