In between planes at Chicago O'Hare, catching up on mail, so whacked from the time zone I can hardly see straight. Not really looking forward to the mission this time, anonymous hotels, taxis, jetlag. It's all starting to wear thin.
Have to keep my mantra going... Smoking outside on the platform, reciting the words from Ladytron, pretending this is still fabulous...
Foreign coins in a telephone box,
A question mark on a calendar,
An empty seat on the Alpha line,
A sorting code and account number...
Will make it through this time, come back with a story.
Heading to Dallas for work in two days, then will be on vacation in Florida afterwards, visiting my family and some very old and dear friends.
Still feel a little weird about the whole thing, first because I'm so far behind on sleep that I'm not sure I'm ready to face the convention circuit. I guess I'll get a chance to catch up for a few hours on the flight. Funny how I look forward to the airplanes as the only place in the world I can find rest these days. And the last time I was in Dallas on a similar trip three years ago was when I found out about Loraine dying.
Florida will be okay, great to see the crowd again. But my friend Ronn said it best when he mentioned that the drive across Tampa Bay from the airport always makes him feel as if he's just been divorced and is moving back in with his parents again. An experience neither he nor I has actually had, but that's exactly the feeling I get on that drive too.
Ahh, life...
I have no ideas what this all means, but I dreamt again last night that I returned to William S. Burroughs's house. I had a dream a few weeks ago where William Gibson and I visited him, and in the dream last night I wanted to return alone and continue our conversation where we left off. I was in London again, and in order to get to his house I had to go to one of the tube stops (I think it was Knightsbridge station because in the dream there was some semantic connection to "night-bridge"), and from an access hallway in the wall of the tube stop, I was able to find a series of underground passages, with steep stairs branching off from each room that led lower and lower into the labyrinth. As I travelled lower, the light grew dimmer and the passages older and more worn.
It's a place I'd been before, and not just in connection with the Burroughs dreams I've been having lately. I remember a dream from a couple of months ago where I had to organize an underground music concert in this same labyrinth (probably a connection to the New Years Eve 2001 techno party that Cecilie and I were part of, held in an underground labyrinth beneath some Austro-Hungarian fortresses that overlooked Budapest).
I eventually found the right set of stairways and found myself in the dusty and disused room that was the entranceway to Burroughs's house. But I was dismayed to find that the room had been turned into a storage room of some kind, and it didn't look like anyone had been in there for years. There were wooden beams and crates stacked on each other, and a lot of discarded religious-themed objects lying around, carelessly thrown away. There was a pane of stained glass stood up against one wall, charcoaled almost black with car exhaust (this one I could tell had come from an abandoned Orthodox church I saw in Simferopol, in the Crimea last summer, across the intersection from one of the streets featured as a central point of action in the book I'm trying to write). There was also a menorah lying on a crate with its outside arms bent askew. And in another corner of the room sat a golden Buddha figure, but the gold paint was flaking off revealing the dull lead casting underneath.
I pulled away some of the beams that were blocking the door to Burroughs's house and pushed inside. A few old lightbulbs were still lit, but the room was mostly dark. It looked just like it had the last time I was there with Gibson. Piles of books and different objects scattered around. Tin soldier figures, a military field mess kit, with metal forks and spoons attached to a silver ring, a square case made of thick leather that held an old glass syringe. An old bike up against a desk in the corner, and black and white photos hanging from the walls.
I called out hello, but no one answered, and I could sense that Burroughs was long gone from this place. I moved over behind the desk, to see if he'd written any notes or given any clue where he may have gone, but there was nothing besides hundreds of old books lying around on the desk and on the shelf and windowsill behind. I moved some of the books aside from one of the cubby holes in the shelf, because I could see some yellow painted metal objects, but the objects were only ancient Kansas state vehicle license plates. They were small and yellow, with only four digits of dark blue sans serif alphanumeric text, the letters KS, and a sticker with the number 34, which I supposed was the year they'd been registered.
Thanks to all you lovelies who have sent mail asking if I'm okay. I'm not really dead, just sleeping.
Actually it's been a really punishing many weeks since I got back from Seattle. I've been dragged into some super-high profile projects at work that have sucked all the oxygen out of this place. I still feel unfulfilled that I'm spending all this high-tension energy in a place that looks and feels a lot like the West Wing, but isn't. I wish I was Josh Lyman, putting my machine in gear to stagger the evil right-wingers when they least expect it. Storming into the GAO head office howling "BRING ME MY DOGS AND LAWYERS!!!" Ah, fantasy.
It's not all bad- they're sending me to a conference in the US next week (Dallas, for the love of Fox), where among my many responsibilities will be to use my pilot voice to be the "voice of God" (the Metatron?), that will play in between sessions to tell the masses about all our exciting product news. Hmm... lots of opportunities for irony and abuse there...
And then I've still been trying to spend whatever free time I can at the new apartment, tearing down the walls and now, finally, beginning to build them up again. This has been a longer process than I've anticipated, and the moving-in Tiki-themed boozeup I've planned is fading further and further into the far future.
So life is frustrating as usual because I have tons to write about- my head is exploding with ideas and experiences, but no time to get it down on the page. I'll have more here soon, I promise!