Meet me in the desert.

Road trip, short track: the rock 'n' roll classic Action Packed by Ronnie Dawson. It's the only R&R number I can think of that expresses the view that a car is too slow and dull, and Ronnie wants a rocket ship instead. It's about 1:40.

Josh: I don't have to like *everything* you like, alright?

no explanation to follow

yes.

(not that it makes any difference NOW)

Mitch come back and post to yer blog!!

how can i refuse double exclamation points! so, here i am.

today is one of the coldest days ever in jhb, and it's my thursday-evening job to stay here and keep the computer room open till 9:30 for some hypothetical student that never comes. whenever i come out of here i have one frigid 'mouse hand' that's been exposed to the elements (i think the white walls retain the cold or something) and one warm one that's been in my pocket.

on the way out of university, i was listening on headphones to jay-z's "regrets" (a beautiful, sad, small song) and i noticed a new noice - a kind of swoosh, or a shuffle maybe. when it became more pronounced, i realized that it might be coming from outside my headphones (which i didn't expect, because i was walking across a deserted parking lot at night). so i take them off, and i hear one of the strangest sounds i've ever heard: a high frequency buzzing, at a regular rhythm, a bit like an amplified cricket. i walk on, following the noise (at times i was convinced it was RIGHT next to me, even UNDERNEATH my feet) and then i see, standing on the raised sliver of pavement that separates the parking lot from the road to the university exit, this long legged grey-white bird, standing very still and talking this noise. after some fascinated moments, i began to laugh, and then tried to get closer. i did, but i didn't maintain my observational distance and the bird flew away.

just had a strange, turbulent, unique dream. excuse the 'automatic writing', it's less an ilx aesthetic pretense of inconsequence this time and more genuine half-dazedness. i quite like hearing people's dreams, but if you don't then ignore this. it's a 'personal exercise' in recollection.

i fell asleep while reading sons and lovers, and at least 2 consequences of this emerged in the dream: firstly, i was doing a bit of landscape exploring, poking about some abandoned patch of land (note: i cannot be certain if this section of the dream actually existed, or i invented it as backstory in phase 2 of the dream), not unlike the bucolic hills and meadows that twentysomething paul (note 2, an interlude: i was about to write the character's last name, and it struck me that a fellow student might discover this page while googling for essay material. i'm not sure when this page would be available, or if it'd rank any higher than #834258 when searching for info about sons and lovers, but somehow i'd never really considered that i've got such a naked account of myself up here on the internet, or at least never thought about it being actually discoverable by people i know, people that i've met) and miriam and clara poke about. i felt some presence of others in the dream, but can't remember anyone being present.

more interesting, perhaps (not that that's been a qualifier for the ol blog here in the past), is part 2: i dream i that i have worken up, but i'm not approaching lucidity - i've woken up in the restroom of some kind of school/prison complex, brown/grey walls, industrial-looking, something like a level taken out of the first quake game. my right eye's been giving me a little trouble in real life (a bad contact lense maybe or, worse, a nascent infection), in the dream it was caked shut with a sort of remarkably adhesive version of those eye crust things you may or may not have experienced (eww). and i can't move properly, i stumble around, like an invalid, or maybe as a man in a straight jacket (lyrical excerpt from eminem song i've been listening to lots recently: "i hate the straight jacket, it ain't latching, and can't lock it/so they stapled my hands to my pants pockets"). anyway, i'm holding a bottle which i drop to the ground, alerting a nearby guard. he's not one of those 'metal gear solid' guards that shoots you when alerted to your presence tho, more the helpful type that opens up for me when i need to drop something off at university at 2am.

so anyway i convince the guard that i'm not drunk/on drugs, in fact i'm suprised to note that i've only been asleep for two hours (it's 11pm, i note, so i must've been out at around 9). he seems amiable enough, let's me out the complex, even opening a window and watching me as a stumble out the door - a mix of concern and surveillance (i'm so unsteady that it embarrasses me, i'm glad that he didn't see me slip as i walked out the door). it's dark outside (being 11pm and all), and i'm trying to feel my way back to the place i visited in part 1.

at this point, the 'unique' bit i mentioned comes in - i realize that i'm at once acting out the dream in the first person and simultaneously scripting/reading it, composing my reactions with the same sharp, direct, language of emotion (emotional language?) that lawrence uses -"he shrank", "he was furious", "he winced". so i'm both inside the moment - there's a palpable sense of fear - and detached from it. i'm trying to pry my way into 'my place' (it's now surrounded by a rusty fence), and i become aware of a man behind me, coming to attack me (about 30 minutes before falling asleep, i found out that a friend's parents had been hijacked [carjacked, as you might call it] the day before). at the same time, i'm writing ABOUT my fear, describing how the arrival of the terrifying man was imminent. then i woke up.

i warned you that reading this might be of little or no 'value' to you.

alone, again, in the computer room. using ilx as a procrastination device. in the campus cafe, about 20 meters from here, they're filming something. probably an ad. lights, makeup etc. feels so remote from here.

i'm making an interactive movie. i'm having trouble working out how the different paths resolve themselves.

omg, these are the best doritos EVER. how do they make "cool spice"? it seems oxymoronic. delicious though.

i haven't resolved anything yet.

assuming it was ever 'on', mitchblog has really fallen off.

i haven't been home. i haven't finished. it's the morning of the exhibition day. i don't know if i can finish. i'm exhausted. i want to throw up. this isn't worth it.

i nearly destroyed myself finishing this in time. but my quicktime movies have been saved in a format such that they are unreadable on my brother's laptop, which i am using to show them. so i have nothing. three weeks of late nights and early mornings and stress and nausea and hard work don't mean shit now.

(maybe you can borrow someone's laptop it will work on)