I dreamed I killed someone again last night. It's becoming almost a monthy thing. This time it was a police officer. There was a knock on the door and there he was, pointing a gun at me. It was just like in George Orwell's 1984, which I have been reading. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong but I felt guilty anyways, and he told me to put my hands on my head, but I got the gun away from him and shot him in the head. It jerked me out of sleep at 6 o'clock and I laid there for awhile thinking about it. I wondered if it would be that easy to kill in real life. I thought it must be easier if you have to fight him hand-to-hand, because then you aren't thinking about killing, only surviving, and killing would just be a logical step in the procedure. Then I wondered if it was healthy to be thinking about this.

I want to live in Venice. I want to ride across a canal in a gondola and drink coffee and watch the people in the market.

As prophesied, the results of the cabin on the brain (Note profanity not censored):

One time he had told me that he dreamed he'd been granted one wish. I laughed at him, but he was serious. One wish of anything at all. Hell, I didn't have anything else to talk about.
"So what did you wish for?" and he looked at me for awhile and then looked out across the street and grinned a little bit and looked back at me, and I could tell that he was kind of wishing he hadn't said anything now.
"World peace." And I laughed at him again and he sort of laughed with me and tried to explain.
"It was like I had no choice, okay? You know how it is with dreams."
"That's awful stuff, man." I said, laughing. "So did you get your bloody awful wish?"
He now was wishing he hadn't brought it up at all and he was tired of me laughing at him so he punched me right in the mouth and I went down pretty hard. I'd stopped laughing now.
"Nope," he said. "I guess not." I was pretty mad at him, but I laughed at that, and so did he and then he helped me up. We stood there awhile and he lit a fag.
"So, you ever dream your own death?" I asked.
"Shut up!" he said, "is that all you can talk about? You're so bloody morbid. Death is all you ever talk or write about."
"Sorry." I said, and I was. He blew some smoke out of his nose.
"Want to get a beer?" I asked.
"Hell, yes."

Does anyone read this any more? Just, you know, wondering.

I was off to the lake for a few days, to a cottage that a widower at church lets us use. It was about a year ago or so that his wife committed suicide there, and this week was the first time I'd been back since that. It was a very strange feeling, and one I've logged away for a future story. I really have never liked the place, I can't sleep and there's just something about the atmosphere that is disagreeable to me. This makes for great writing, and I formulated several ideas for short stories and wrote out a narrative that I'll share sometime later this week. And I finished The Sun Also Rises

Also, it's my father's fiftieth birthday today. Weeeeeird.

I've rewritten it. Slightly.

He felt funny watching all the bodies being loaded onto the trucks and him without a scratch, and he felt funny again when he stepped off the boat back at home and a kid who pissed his pants down in the trench praying o god to please let him live and got his leg blown off got the girls and the cameras and the reporters and him without a scratch, walking alone down the dark streets and it felt funny watching people moving about around him and not needing to kill any of them any more, and wondering what he was going to do now, because the only thing he could do was kill any more, and he hadn't a scratch on him but all that would pass, wouldn't it?

He went to a bar that he knew well, but where no one knew him now and drank to the health of war, and war heros everywhere who hadn't a scratch to their name and when the bar closed he left back into the cold street and when the knife went into his back he knew it was all wrong, that it should have gone in higher and when they took his wallet and searched him over he let them, thinking of all the krauts he'd done the same to, and almost laughed to himself because it really was funny and when they'd gone he did laugh a little and rolled over onto his face so he could feel the cold cement on his cheeks and nose just once.

Well, its official; I'm going to Thailand. Been busy with that and not much else. I don't know what to say, actually. Oh, wait, yeah I do, oh, wait, no, I lost it.

I dreamed this poem. Yes I did. But only the first three lines, the rest I forgot, so I made it up (conciously).

Ultimate Success
The cannibal looked through stolen eyes
at the world he'd made
surrounded by lies.
And he felt his own tears
spring from those eyes
and he felt other's fears
stirring in his soul
and he realized with a laugh
to keep himself alive
it was himself he'd killed
wallowing in wrath

I got some black and white film from Edmonton City Centre on my way home from guitar. The lady at the photo lab was surprisingly cheerful. I don't know why it surprised me that she was cheerful, I just expected her to hate working in an underground mall downtown. I asked if she had any black and white film, yes, the kind that could be developed anywhere, and it is 39mm, right? Not advantex. Actually it was 35mm. Of course, the 39mm is a handgun, I laughed. I thought that since she was cheerful she would laugh, but she didn't. I work tomorrow and I think I'll take a walk down Whyte Avenue and snap some black and white shots of all the colourful people.

V

The next day was quiet. We found our host cleaning the tables, and Joe, thinking he might be more of a morning person than an evening person, tried to engage him in some light conversation.
"Nice morning it is." No reply. "First night I've ever spent in a pub. Haha." The barman stopped his wiping to look at him. After several awkward moments, he spoke:
"Have a pint?"
"Er," said Joe, "Don't usually before noon, actually."

We found out the name of the town, squeezed painfully it from the barman. Joe said he knew where our destination and the end of our journey was from here. Some holiday this was. No lorries were on the back roads that we took, that Joe insisted that we take. It was where he grew up, so of course we had to leg it the whole way. For nostalgia. Bloody Nostalgia. Finding the body was still heavy on my mind, though Joe seemed to have forgotten it. Of course someone would find the cross and the rest of it and then all hell could break loose. I tried to talk to Joe about it.
"Supposing someone finds the grave," I said over tea. It was beer tea.
"That what?"
I leaned closer. "The grave."
"Grave? What?" He stopped. "Oh," he said slowly. "Well its over now, innit? We gave him a proper Christian burial."
"People are bound to come looking for him."
He hadn't thought of that, but it didn't seem to bother him. He took another sip of beer before replying. "Nothing we can do about it now."
I was about to say something, but the door opened and a man came in. We both turned to look at him, but he only looked at Joe. It wasn't actually so much a look as a hard stare. He ordered a beer, and I thought it was remarkably like last night, as we three were the only patrons in the pub, and both times Joe engaged in intense nonverbal communication with the unknown. Only it was in the afternoon this time.
"Joe," I said. He looked at me.
"D'you recognize him now?" He said. "He's the one that was in last night."
"No. Sorry." I wasn't really. I didn't care. "Getting late," I said.
"Let's go."

That night we got a ride with a fellow that we'd found out was going to our destination, the small hampton of Derrewich. It wasn't easy though. First Joe asked our barman, who we found out was called Norman, if he knew of anyone heading in that direction.
"Where the devil is Derrewich?" He was clearly offended.
"About east of here."
"Never heard of it." He was sullenly aghast.
"It's small," he tried again. "Smallish, that is. Like this town. Which is very nice, by the way."
Our boy Norman eyed him suspiciously, as if he'd insulted his character.
"Will you be having another pint, then?" and the topic was abruptly closed.
"Er, oh, yes."
"Absolutely," I added.

Haven't been writing too much poetry lately, in the strictest sense of the word, of both words, "poetry" and "lately." So here goes.

Eraser shavings everywhere, and
paper with a thousand tears
throwing it away you know ,
don't know, how far you want to go
to lose it all like hemingway
or do it voluntarily
at some point you will have to choose
unless you really want to lose
it all.

It must be because God hates me. No, no, God loves you. Naw, he totally hates me. Maybe you just hate him. Then wouldn't he hate me? No, I think he loves you anyways. Pfft! Even when I hate him? Well, he's supposed to anyways. Does he always do what he's supposed to do? Haha. Yeah, well, I mean, he's God, right? So yeah, just accept it. I still think he hates me. Shut up.

I've never been really honest with my writing until now. That is, It hasn't been about me, but rather things that I know very little about, or things I wish I knew more about. Hemingway has made me realize this. He said that one true sentence is all you need, and if you can work with that you'll have something that you know and you can develop into something real.

I've known there was something wrong with it all for awhile, because it just wasn't good. There is so much useless crap that you have to get rid of, and I have a hard time with that, but if I spend a lot of time with it I can make it good. Also, the better I focus on what I'm writing and not get sidetracked the better it'll be at the end, but apathy is my most dangerous and constant foe, and always will be.

IV

He led us silently to a back room, turning on lights as he went, slowly, and trying to indicate that he never came back here except in war times. The room was decent, and Joe went straight to sleep on the bed.

I sat on the floor for awhile and thought about the dead body. We should have checked it more carefully, I realized now. What we mostly did when we saw him was make sure he really was dead. Joe knew it was dead, he claimed, because the eyes were still open. I thought maybe he was just meditating, because he was propped up against a tree, so we poked him a few times. When he still didn't move, Joe felt for a pulse and he thought he had one for a second but it was just me poking him again, and we both chucked about that. I suggested we try CPR, but neither of us wanted to, not only because he had a lot of facial hair, but he was kind of drooling out of one corner of his mouth.

It was Joe's idea to bury him. He said it was getting late, and we couldn't just leave it out here for beasts to pick at in the night. He was right, so he gave me his small spade to start digging with. I didn't know he kept one in his pack, and it surprised me. Joe said that since he had carried it all this way, I should do most of the digging, but we switched on and off, taking turns with making the grave marker, too. Joe said he'd never done this before, and neither had I, and we didn't talk that much. Halfway through Joe said him staring at us made him jumpy so I closed his eyes.

We almost forgot to check his pockets even. He was ready for the dirt when I remembered, and as Joe was off taking a pee, I went ahead with that. I guess I should've checked him all over but the novelty of it all had worn quite away and I was ready to move on. I felt bad about that now.

It made Joe feel good to have done that for him, and even prayed over him, and he felt even better about finding this town in the dark, but the man at the pub made him uneasy.

III

Joe said he knew the way to the next town, even in the dark, so I let him walk in front. We followed the river for quite a ways I thought, and I began to wonder if Joe really didn't know where he was going when he suddenly found a bridge. Halfway across he stopped and said something, but I couldn't hear for the river. I caught up to him and asked him what he said.
"I told you I knew where I was," he said. I didn't say anything at all. After the bridge was a good solid road that had to lead somewhere I figured, so Joe was doing okay. I was right and ten more minutes of ignoring the bright stars and night silence and thinking only of beer and bed we were in a pub called The Mossy Stone. There were only four people inside, and that included Joe and me. I walked up to the barman, a tall, thin, unfriendly looking man, and asked if he had any spare rooms for the night.
"Drink first, talk after."
I walked back to Joe with two beers. He was staring at the one other patron in the bar, who was, in turn, staring back at him.
"Sorry to interrupt," I said. Joe turned his gaze harshly on me.
"Come off it," he said. I sat down and passed him his beer. "Do you know that fellow? Does he look familiar to you?" he asked between sips. My thought was elsewhere, though.
"There is a standard for barmen," I said, "And our boy doesn't measure up, I'd say."
"Maybe he's having a bad day. Hey. I asked you something."
"Too thin. Too tall. Too blunt."
Joe banged his fist on the table, sloshing the beer, and the suds began their journey southward to settle in pools around the base of the mugs.
"Fuck sake!" I said, and turned to appease Joe with a look at this fellow. But he was gone. We drank the rest of our beers in awkward silence.

As soon as we'd finished the thin faux-barman came up to our table.
"Still want those rooms, boys?" he asked as if he thought the beer would have changed our minds.
"Yes," I said apologetically, "If you've got some."
"Just one," he said, hoping to deter us.
"Let's have a look then," I said, parrying.
"Just one bed."
"My mate'll take it and I'll be on the floor." Feint, thrust, block.
"Right. This way then."
Victory.

Today I was reading over a list of Oxford pub names. My dad came up behind me.
"Wow, long list," he said, "Or is it a poem? It kind of looks like a poem."