I sometimes have a fantasy involving portable shadows. More than ever these days when I try to trap shadows to experiment with the spectrums I end up taking deep breaths. Heres how it usually goes. I look down and down looks lower than the usual down. I see dark areas on the ground and have to decide if these are real: the dark areas under my eyes are just so much darker. Im getting older. I use to be able to drink mercury to calibrate my silver levels before I’d try, but now I get heartburn. I use to walk through the wading pools that gather, and find tiny lights at the bottom of them to put in my bag I got, but nowadays my feet get waterlogged and I get stung by the jellyfishes who swim in their own light.

But whenever I have this fantasy I remember that my cousin is coming in august. He’s lived in the shadowplane for so long that he’s nearly pass-through able. He’s coming because my baby daughter was born about a year and a half ago and he hasn’t seen her yet. Shes my only favorite light. Me and my fiancé found her soul sitting out there on the runway when were coming down last time we went to outer space. Her name is Judyta. She will always be climbing on my arms and asking me questions without words- about how our family lives all over the place- where are they and when will they come see her?

Specifically once she said (w/o using words) “I wanna meet our grandparents a lot. Don’t they live in Fiji? Wheres Fiji?

“Well honey, first of all we cant go to Fiji anymore. We were banned when we spilled soy sauce in the public library. Second of all, they don’t live in Fiji. They live in Fuji."

“Where? "

“In Fuji. They live in cameras.”

“I saw pictures of them, is that what you mean?”

“Yes babyta. We can only see them if we take pictures with Fuji cameras.”

“Why not daddy?”

“Because they died honey.”

“Why? D’they die?”

“Because the government still makes people die honey.”

“So… howcome they’re still in the cameras?”

“Because the Fuji corporation got the rights to souls. From the soul spectrum- the FCC took it over… it’s a little complicated. Your only 1.”

“Im not a baby. What’s the Government?”

“Yes. You’re still a Babyta Judyta.”

So. I want to carry shadows. And my cousin lives among them, He has a lot of properties. A lot of old houses and haunted hotels. He knows all about shadows. He shares a lot of their properties too- like how he changes where he is based on the sun going down etc…

So Ill ask him. But I know whats gonna happen. He’s gonna tell me about 40% lies. He’s always done that. Like Granpa did.

So. I’m still gonna have to get peer review for when I publish my research. That’s fine. The problem is Im not much of an academic. I work for an architectural consulting firm. My specialty is designing dark areas. Always dark areas. Deep down or locked always. Wherever no ones gonna even see them. So why does it matter? Because its federal law? Who knows? The inspectors fuck with the owners of the property. That’s about as far as I get into it…. Its just we have to do it before we submit the plans, and thats my job.

Designing the insides of nothing.

Judyta loves candy from the mountains. I’m gonna ask my cousin to go over Galaga pass to get some on his way here. I gotta remember to put that on my calendar. Im not that good at remembering things but, giving candy to little ones is among the morst important things. That’s why dentists are persecuted in our country.

They immigrated here from Europe just like everyone else but they get a raw deal here, everbody hates them.

I have lobbied for abolition of dentist oppression laws, but I love my sweetheart so I did it half-assed. I know, that in the next life, the meek dentists will inherit the earth with all the other meek service providers, so its ok.

I got one of those lazer pointers from my fiancé for Hannukah. You ever played with one of those? My cats love it and my dog is vehemently against it. Its needed for my research so I keep it. (And secretly think its like the coolest, most important invention of the last 10 years, the one before that being the smoke machine, and before that the drum machine.) I point the lazer deep into the areas Im traversing and see who’s there. I sometimes hear laughing and giggling (because lazers tickle ghosts). It doesn’t really tell me anything though. I have to rely more on my Night Vision lenses than anything because… well, I don’t really understand why but it seems that in pitch black the structural elements of the building become more formless. The lazer wont tell me the depth of the place I’m in, rather it will tell me where the furthest wall would be if the room were properly lit.

And it’s the same with me. My face doesn’t look the same in deep darkness as it does in light… so it doesn’t work the same. I don’t see the same things with my same eyes. My glasses become unnecessary and my heartbeat changes my ability to perceive things without fear.

Fear is the reason I’m doing all this. As the government use to say “The unknown is the only thing we have to protect ourselves from. So we must venture there. And put an end to it.” Now adays we have the shitty politicians, like Blagojevich and the like, who preetymuch spend all their time hanging out around unknown elements, immoral and dark and scandalous. But I bite my lips and go out there into where I fear, for people. People like my little candy eater. And other people like her.

My fiancé looks at me when I come home and have all that darkness on my shirts, and she knows it’s a good thing rather than anything. She works in retail, where theres always a lot of light. But she still spends a lot of time delving. And I know Judyta will too. I don’t know why, I just know.

Blood on the laundry. Face it.

There are days when you wake up in the morning, and those you don't.
When the business of your dream is far too urgent. And those days when you do open your eyes, wake up with your hand on your dick and your tongue rough from last night (vomit or blood sucking, who knows? who remembers?).
You know its time to actually change. Today gets to be a special one. A researsal for opening night. The day you actually see clearly, after all the foul air and fog has cleared. No more coughing or working. No more sitting down when its time to dance.
But not yet. First you have to come up with a transition plan. Finances and feasibility. Estimates. Rolling around on the rug. Wasting more hours while the planes fly over head and the icecream truck passes by.
Its ok. Tomorrows the day.
Then you wake up that fateful day. And you answer the phone. And it's the dream. You are needed, there can be no proxy. And out of duty you go back. To the frown womb, the bomb horn. The foible. The fax mask, the ask tell and the cask of montiado. The Tasks and objects that need no logic to be true.
And then its 48 hours or so and you wake up again. And your pants are on the floor. And the saxophone you stole from your neighbor's kid is on the chair. And you ask for courage from the winds that blow through your apartment, and they respond. "Hell no."..