because falling in love is really falling, there is the presicpice and there is the sea, and there is the strenghth of the sun, and that is the wind in your hair, and there goes the moment as precious and just as precocious as a..., and all the images that I can't record, like the music singing in the wires and the sailing hawks at eye level, and the sweet clover pelts of the hills melting in the distance, and the space where hands meet over the gear shift and the flash riccochets off the dashboard, just an early spring spent in the front seat, just a bit of razor burn, just some anticipated wildlife, just some breathlessness, and some bright ocean blue, just a minute between oysters and desultory service,just the minutes between him undone between my sheets and the heat I radiate.

And somewhere before the middle I remembered to quit smoking, just after tennis but before we had dinner last, I am heading into the seventy-second hour and I am this close to chewing on the carpet. With the Engineer at arm's lenghth, I can simply unfurl, and roll to consume - he has asked me kindly to stop humping his leg, but it is nothing I can help in his proximity, it's reflexive, it's want and hunger and desire and not stopping even when it's way past sleep, it's some deep seated need, it's the tide coming in, and the moon at bay, it's every last thing I would have told the engineer if I was only a little bit braver and a little less cowardly, if I were only a lot more tidal and less discriminating, but who ever said that the tides were the great arbiters of taste.

And whoever said that anybody else was ever interested in the banalities of falling, I am reluctant to speak of my good tidings, because they are my own, my own from the fartheset corner of his bed, my own for the dreams I miss at the expense of his breathing, and I've got no long list of complaints, I only want him curled into the right side of the bed, and I only want to him to catch his breath, and if I am really, really lucky he will reach out and pull me in, despite my 1000 degree ambient temperature, and I will fall asleep falling in love, fingers and toes as foot soldiers, territories and truces, brokered territories and secret spots on maps, the place that once belonged to d and I in the late afternoon and is now owned by the lichen an army of righteous bunnies, all that I was is swirling in the tides, all that I am is breeching the surf.

the Salton Sea and the Extraordinary Machine

Dear Fiona Apple,

I think your nuts and not necessarily all the way in a good way. Oh but how Tidal suited me, even though I was a late comer and needed some convincing. Then I was, and there I remain. Then, then the sophomore effort, which I ran and bought without hesitation, it was raining and the title was Guiness book of world record's long. It was some few tender minutes before the dawning of this century, I had on a pink cashmere sweater and leather pants, I took myself out to the newly opened 4th Floor to eat a four star meal and finish with a madeira before I went off to meet my lover. Of course four star meals take time between courses and a dame alone at a bar gets courted, even when she has an extramarital agenda, even when her spouse had his own. It was after the holidays, but it was still winter and it was raining and he was waiting for me while I was waiting for my dessert and I was late and he was angry.

Yeah, so Fiona, I pulled out of that parking lot filled with too much booze and a half life time of regret and a heart wrapped in gossamer for that heady French Chef and your endlessley titled sophmore effort which I found facile and too deadheady-ish (sue me) driving too recklessly with the music too loud toward near certain disaster, it was the end of the century and the truest spot of where I begin. Maybe I am flashpoint in those songs, maybe I was still too young and too lost in that first album, maybe I am the blue of my own oblivion as my own worst enemy or the best lover I could ever, never be.

But that was practically years ago, maybe some things are different now. Maybe I am awash in the perfume of delusion.(but he smells lovely, just like neutrality, he washes his hair with a bar of soap, he wraps around me, but doesn't smother, his kisses spark the swing of my hips and the curl in my lips)

And really, that is beside the point, because all I really wanted to do was thank you for making me an extraordinary machine that I always suspected I was. From the Kinks to the Glenn Miller band to Arcade Fire, I hadn't been shopping for an anthem and I haven't been shopping for new shoes, because I don't have any money, I haven't been spreading myself around because I've got an engineer who I'd make into my own private lollipop. If there was a better way to go than it would it find me, I can't help it the road just runs out behind me, I'll make the most of it, I am an extraordinary machine. I am an extraodinary machine. It's true, I am an extraordinary machine.

The Salton Sea and the dreams engendered will have to wait. wait for an arid climate, wait for the desolate and the desperate, wait for the gin blossoms cloaked in melanoma, alkaline dreams coming to a cinema near you...