"j's kitchen floor in the mission. she's asleep in her bed. i'm not quite ready to sleep. we watched Wings of Desire tonight, a wim wender's film that takes place in berlin in 1987 about angels and it was heartbreakingly beautiful and set something in me on fire and suddenly it's like i'm seeing everything for the first time and like i've been seeing it forever, such a familiar feeling... life is so amazing. wings of desire left me so open -- not that knawing longing, how beautiful films usually make me feel -- but just so full of love for the beauty of life. the way the film captured that experience of existence in the eternal plane, unable to touch the material realm, sleeplessly wandering the streets and through libraries and alleys...a conspiracy of angels. stepping over to the other side...of course it's not just me talking to myself. the things you don't remember right now inevitably become part of the Grand Story in your head - the pieces fitting together mixed with the resonances of other people's dreams on the screen or manifested in the streets around you - it becomes a trip into the archetypal realm, the realm full of shadows.
we dance together with the ghosts of our dead. i am a bridge speaking through symbols that others forged - i am a living breathing piece of the collective vision.
i am not alone. we are never alone and this is the meaning of the angels.
but what of my own sleepless wanderings through late night streets, my own trips to the other side?
mostly i try to forget them because they confuse everything.
fairy tales i told myself because i was scared of the dark, scared of not existing anymore, scared of being forgotten.
but why else are we hear in the material realm if not to shine, to light up the sky, to make use of these bodies while we have them?

today walking on the beach in bolinas with jwe pick up a seashell and examined it in the sun. it was black but where the black rubbed off it was rainbow translucent, really subtly glowing in the sunshine where it was rubbed away. secret new year's resolution mr. 35 year old man with the hairy ears squatting on a kitchen floor in the mission on capp street with the beautiful brilliant woman sleeping sound in the next room at the edge of a new decade:

i resolve to be patient enough to scratch away the top layer and let the little bits of faint rainbow shine through."