Something wonky is going on with d-land here. All my entries keep double-posting. Quit it.

Just handed in my NCAA picks and my one dollar bill to Jimmy Ray. I picked Kentucky to win the whole shebang. Jimmy said he picked Texas because he knew I�d pick Kentucky. I don�t even know what that means.

Couldn�t get to sleep last night. Sounds of war, anxiety seeping through the radio, thunder rolling loud and long as the exploding bombs on the radio. Me and Bash, we kept leaping from the bed, from the sound sleep, and then shaking, and then sleeping again.

I dreamt the English Department here told me that I had to get my hair cut by a professional (I said, �but I have a friend who cuts my hair!� which was a lie even in the dream but I was too embarrassed to say I cut my own hair) and that I had to show them receipts. The woman talking to me said, everybody does it. I said, I can�t afford that. She said, ok, I�ll pay for it. I said no. And she said, well you can�t work here then. I said, you�re right I can�t and then I stormed out and then I woke up and the rain was so hard and steady, I could hear it fall in my yard like it was falling into a body of water and this morning I see why. My back yard now qualifies as a body of water. And this song, which I haven't heard or thought of since I was sixteen, this song has got itself stuck in my head:

Here Comes The Flood

When the night shows
the signals grow on radios
All the strange things
they come and go, as early warnings
Stranded starfish have no place to hide
still waiting for the swollen Easter tide
There's no point in direction we cannot
even choose a side.

I took the old track
the hollow shoulder, across the waters
On the tall cliffs
they were getting older, sons and daughters
The jaded underworld was riding high
Waves of steel hurled metal at the sky
and as the nail sunk in the cloud, the rain
was warm and soaked the crowd.

Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
in any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.

When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds, within a flash
Don't be afraid to cry at what you see
The actors gone, there's only you and me
And if we break before the dawn, they'll
use up what we used to be.

Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
in any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.
��������--Peter Gabriel

At the lake last night, pre-storm, I thought, I am a warrior, or I want to be a warrior, a lone warrior, righteous and true and without fear and without violence and without sentimentality and silliness and sap. I want the hard truth, the cold truth, the hard love, the cold love, the love that does not want to be safe, that does not want to be trapped, that does not need to name itself. I thought, love got nothing to do with your hurt feelings or your happiness. Just like poetry, I thought.

Ok. So then I thought how Timalina said in the car that what every woman wants is a man to talk tenderly to her. She said the man she met who said that, said women need someone to talk tenderly to them, she said that�s the man for her. If a man ever said that to me I would probably gag. That is all that I do not want out of life. Ugh. Never talk tenderly to me. Never ever.

Last night at the lake I understood that sentiment is the opposite of love. In my definition, maybe not yours, but in mine, sentiment is the opposite of truth. The natural world is unsentimental and often cruel but always seeded with love. That is what I look for in life. That is why Basho is not my child, I am not nor shall I ever be his momma or mom or any of that bosh. He is my dog. And I am his. He is a grown animal as am I. We walk the roads together. That is all.

Why am I saying this? I forget. I forgot. The war is on and the rain will not stop and we are drowning.