thanks johnny

i had another literary sort of dream. it's been a little while since i've had one. this one was about john ashbery, my favorite poet, easy. i'm nutty for his work, truly. in the dream he was terribly aged, all lumpy and pocked and puffy. and yet i recognized him! he had given up writing poems but was spending time with local youths, perhaps in something of an eccentric big brother capacity, and i don't mean orwellian. he was very doughy and friendly but i was sad that he had stopped writing.

maybe he was writing dorothy-parker-esque doodads but probably friendlier ones than hers, and on construction paper, and as inspirational gifts for kids. the setting was kind of sesame-street-y, but a little darker. if you can imagine such a thing. i was just visiting, or i was new to the area, and i could tell john had his eye on me.

in reality, i saw him read at the university of washington (in seattle!) not too long after i moved to the area. so this was 1999 or 2000. i really enjoyed his reading and then he signed my copy of "self-portrait in a convex mirror." a wee thrill.

so the dream makes me want to go back to writing poems. i have this urge twice or three times a year, maybe. stop with the fiction (the novel isn't going so smoothly at the moment anyway) and say whatever it is i'm wanting to say through free verse.

poo. i don't like these conflicts. poems? fiction? where am i?