duck duck duck duck...goose

matches had a dream last night in which he got cursed by something or other (the voodoo sort, not the new-yorker dialect preference). a red-black tribal marker was imbued onto his chest, and a hulking indian fellow behind him (in the market checkout-line, for whatever reason) gasped and explained that it meant that matches must go on a quest, and that he would accompany him and defend against evils on the road. he said that the journey was difficult and that one had to really affirm one's faith in the goodness of life to be able to brave what was involved. at the time it seemed like a novel prospect, like that was something obtainable because it was simply so obvious how good life was~ life is brilliant.

if you didn't know, matches uses the tilde as a punctuation; so he has the authority to end a sentence with it and pass effortlessly into the next~ you would get to do that too, if you had pursued an english degree. if not you're out of luck.

the dream was significant because mattress lacks a visionary quest. it has come to light over the course of many jobs and places....there is no specific job or place that he feels tailored for; no mission mapped for himself. and perhaps nobody does, but people seem to have general impressions of what will make them happy. this is the closest he can come, this 'writing', because it is an endless documentation of the confusions and tangles that we wake up to morning after today, with the todays and the tomorrows and the yesterdays constantly changing numbers and looping back upon themselves.

where is the real drive, the purpose; how can one justify doing something instead of another thing? instead of a nothing? the point spins itself somehow out of the doing, and who knows how or why that happens. refer back, perhaps, to crinkle-crush. it just does. travel the continent; what does it matter? we reduce explanation down to these very basic terms...'to see', 'to feel'. to experience. and that seems to be what it all comes down to...we experience, we engage ourselves in whatever manner possible, and then we mark notches in what we do not like so that we can avoid it next time, make room for something new that we may enjoy. they define us, these experiences, but we are also something separate. and that has made all the difference.

when matches thrusts ponderance upon himself..."who is matches?" it seems like one of those complexities that are overlooked, because one cannot function if one tries to sink into the question. but it must be answered at some point, mustn't it? or do we exhale finally, still hoping to find out? matches asks the question, and all his senses blur. the reel of time catches a nail; it smears together in flickering flushed colors; certain rhythms emerge and maybe if you're lucky, a cluster of papery thoughts somewhere inside is compressed into a rock that things can anchor themselves upon to start spinning again. certainly it does not seem to hold any definite answers...but it somehow makes sense. it just does, no verification necessary; somehow we carry these totteringly-overfull emotional knapsacks around with us, and it all keeps itself untumbled, cohesive, packaged. who's that? that's just matches.

this has absolutely strayed from the dream. but the question, of what would be important enough to have such conviction in the goodness and importance of life, hinges enormously upon identity. m wishes for some quest, something of water-tight nobility and completely opaque with weight and purpose. some experience so dense that it completely encapsulates the person experiencing it. he wants to battle a pack of wolves with only a staff and his courage; he wants some object of unimaginable value that has lingered just over the horizon to finally come into view. maybe that was why the fellow in the dream was indian...maybe it was most simply explained by the traditional "spirit-quest", the climbing of mountains and the discovery of some power within a person.

mostly he wants fulfillment as an end-result of the occupation of his time. it seems like a fleeting thing; it seems like a scarce resource in the modern world. one wonders how one would invest it, were one to find it, and what it ultimately would mean. but one can also knock at these doors all day without ever going through a single one.
is it all just coming to light? is this part of it?

"is there anyone out there, because it's getting harder and harder to breathe."