flooded raze over the years i've had the odd dream that's told me something i need to know. usually they're things i already know but don't want to face up to. emotional stuff. i don't have prophetic dreams. the closest thing to that was dreaming once that a lightbulb in my bedroom burned out, and then a day or two later seeing it burn out for real and thinking, "that's a weird coincidence." i had a dream this afternoon that was different. it's got me spooked a little. it started out in typical brain movie territory. i was catching up with an old friend i haven't seen in my waking life in something like fifteen years, and he was reminding me why we're not friends anymore. the tipping point came when he made a big deal out of wanting me to walk with him through my back yard. it was all wet back there, as if a heavy rain had decided it only wanted to fall on that small specific part of the block. i told him i was going in through the front door. i'd rather keep my shoes dry. he was livid. people get mad at you for the stupidest reasons in dreams. after a while i got tired of all the negative energy he was carrying around with him. i told him to get lost. he did. then i found myself alone, swimming through a flooded city. every once in a while a huge hunk of debris would fall from overhead. it was like the sky was raining scrap metal. there were a few close calls where i almost got my head caved in. i thought i could sense the homes of a few friends nearby. it was impossible to find them. everything was submerged. i might as well have been paddling through the detroit river at the end of the world. finally i came to a place where it looked like a few people had set up camp after finding a bit of dry land. maybe it was a dock, or a bridge, or something. it jutted up above the lip of the water just enough to separate itself. there was one person in a tent. a woman. i asked her to help me. she agreed to give me shelter on the condition that i somehow convince her i was her female best friend in the body of a man she didn't know. she asked me questions only her friend would know, about an unpublished book she wrote and the one song she always screwed up when she played bass. the dream faded away before i found out if i got the answers right. i woke up to a city that really was flooded. streets turned to rivers. cars abandoned. homes destroyed. i've seen pictures of washing machines floating in flooded basements like stranded rescue boats, and videos of people struggling to drive through water deep enough to wash them away. i didn't even know it was raining while i was sleeping. there's a bit of a twisted cosmic joke here. we rent the house we live in. our landlord lives just down the street. ten years ago, when we first moved in, he lied about the house having central air on every floor. there's no air movement upstairs at all. the side effect of an ancient half-assed ducting job. his solution was to have a friend of his who would work for free or next to nothing cut a vent in my bedroom wall so it would blow air into my closet. which is great if you sleep in your closet. i don't sleep in my closet. he waited years to put on a new roof, letting leaks eat through the ceiling to the point that in one part of the house you can look up now and almost believe for a second you can see the stars, so much wood has been destroyed. he's never going to fix that internal damage. he doesn't care. as long as he doesn't have to hook a new tenant or live here himself, it isn't his problem. every once in a while he'll trim our hedges or rip our plants out of the ground and leave the mess here for us to clean up. when the furnace crapped out one winter, he said, "open up the oven and turn on a fan. that'll keep you warm." so all in all, he's a real prince. he paid some people to flood-proof his house a while back. he didn't extend the same courtesy to us, because of course he wouldn't. we got maybe an inch of water in our basement, if that. nothing was damaged. nothing was lost. there was a bit of a mess to clean up, and that was it. a lot of people got hit much harder by this flood. we were lucky. the landlord with the flood-proof house? he got seven inches of water in his basement. serves the asshole right. 170829 ... unhinged ! (was your storm residual harvey? im glad your house is mostly ok) 170829 ... raze i'm thinking it must have been residual harvey. i feel bad for the people who got the worst of it. i can't imagine what it's like to come home and see half your house destroyed. but if this is what it takes to get me to wear slippers and stop walking around barefoot all the time... 170829 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Hey! Glad you're okay and I hope the flood goes down as soon as possible. That's the problem about living near a river. In June the St. Laurent flooded with all the rain, but that didn't hit my home or work - more the West Island and south shore. Right now the Montreal weather is nice, just to be contrarian. 170830 ... raze already the streets are back to normal and most businesses are open again, so there's been a pretty quick bounce-back. but it's a little crazy to think of these things that happen, and how they're catastrophic for some people, while we seem to luck into getting just a bit of the runoff. "there but for the grapes of rod stewart go i", maybe? 170830 ... raze one good thing has come out of it, at least for me. in the course of cleaning up the basement and cutting up ruined carpet, some long-lost relics have been unearthed: some written things i never thought i'd see again, and a whole lot of forgotten VHS tapes, including one that's home to footage of my first birthday. it's pretty strange watching video of yourself from a time before you were capable of speaking or forming memories (but very capable, as it turns out, of expressing sarcasm through body language). 170904 ... kerry simultaneous contraction and expansion, freezing and burning, swimming and drowning, flying and falling i was told that when it happens at night it's a hypnic jerk but i know the difference. it was december and i was waiting for you outside the bar. my hair was so short then. i remember i was wearing that camel coat with the standup collar, the one that desperately needs to be dry-cleaned. even though i'd been waiting for you, when i saw you walking towards me on the sidewalk it hit me, swelled up, i was doing somersaults, my ears were conche shells full of echoes and oceans and i had to duck behind a corner, pretend i was making a call, just in case it grew--in case i found myself on my back on the pavement. i'd told you about it, all of it, that day sitting on the curb on lowry street, talking too fast and too much. the spinal taps, the blindness, the dark. the fragility. i don't know if you really understood. i had another on your birthday, a couple of days ago. i wonder if you would have been flattered or appalled. paloma and i had gotten coffee, were weaving our way down a crowded sidewalk. it was hot out. i felt kind of high, though i wasn't. that was when i mentioned your name, offhand, that was when i remembered what day it was. your face and name, coalescing with the heat, layers of sound--so many voices and laughter, the traffic, a band playing across the street. my ears and mouth were full of cobwebs. i had to stop mid-sentence, pretend i was looking over my shoulder, that i was distracted. i gripped the strap of my purse so tightly my nails left marks in my palm. the leather was warm. i thought, stay here, stay in this moment, don't fly away. 210914 ... raze jesus, kerry. what your heart can do with words. (and i'm glad you didn't fly away. i hope you're okay.) 210914 ... kerry thank you so much, raze. and i'm okay, still grounded here. 210914 what's it to you? who go blather from