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with eyes closed

dreaming of ghosts. standing in the darkness. all around me, dim, pulsing orbs emerge from nothing. there is a malevolence to them; i know that they are manifestations of human emotion from lives that have met violent ends. i run; there are others running with me. as the pulsing flashes begin to solidify, i stop running and watch them take form. they become flesh and blood, physically indistinguishable from the living except for their languorous expressions of sorrow and bewilderment.

how can this be, i ask myself. how can the nonliving become real again? how is it that they exist? do they deserve my fear, or need i take a closer look to find out exactly what they are?

the dream begins to break down; the logic falters, boundaries crumble, coherence is lost.

the dream ends. semi-awake, i realize that the fear was a scripted reaction: by the end of the dream, i felt nothing more than curiosity and a strong sense of disbelief.

---

10.31: a short phone call from the payphone outside the whitney museum. i have three hours to kill before the night's festivities begin. again, the familiar feeling that my senses aren't quite binding into crisp awareness. i let myself go wherever the feet walk, taking in the spectacle of a city living out its fantasies from behind masks and costumes. looking into their eyes, people seem to have regained a kind of forgotten childishness; they laugh openly, shout, run, skip, jump, acting out their inner lives, invisible to the world and therefore free -- as if they are more recognizable in their everyday costumes?

"hey cutie," she shouts after me, part of a giggling group of teenage girls. her face is lost in the swirl of neons, reds, face paint and fangs. i keep walking. peering into the faces of others whose eyes are distinct and non-human; some converted to cat-like vertical slits, some are milky white, others are two pupil-dots fixed in an enigmatic gaze. downtown, uptown, crosstown, moving at a brisk pace, waking up in the darkness. i haven't eaten since breakfast, but a sense of refreshed calm falls over me. legs feel stronger, stride faster. vision and thoughts clearer. i feel a silly grin cross my face as i take in the scene. sexy 'witches' in fishnets are suddenly everywhere... i could swear that i walked past her before. every other female has a tail with a little devil's pointy tip at the end. why can't it be like this every day? lol

i arrive at the pre-party an hour late because of my wanderings. dismayed that i have no costume, she gives me a tight playboy t-shirt to wear. every time i turn my head, it seems like someone gets caught stealing a glance when they think i'm not looking.

later: at the entrance to the club with the twenty dollar cover and the fifteen-minute line outside... reality kicks in, i say peace to my peeps and bounce.

walking to the train station, i find myself immersed in a corridor of eternal daylight. glitzy visuals, loud images, billboard video screens washing the street from high above with split-second cuts of perfect people doing perfect things. buy our lives, they say. you too can be picture-perfect. on the pavement below and bathed in flourescence, flowing throngs of spooky monsters, happy goths and lipstick goblins abound. aesthetically enhanced creatures of the night are everywhere, and my silly grin returns.

i come upon a street corner where the human masses have formed a concave circle of absence. no one walks through that circle; why?

as i approach, i see blue uniforms arranged like the pillars of easter island, casting long pale shadows, numbering no less than six. they stare intently down at the gleaming steel handcuffs chewing into the wrists of the man lying bound at their feet. disoriented, he writhes in pain, half of his dark-skinned face covered in blood. momentarily transfixed by the grim vision, i walk past in perceptual slow motion until i step off the curb and feel myself whisked across the street by the impatient crowd.

was that a ghoulish smirk on his face, cap pulled low, hiding his eyes from view, the badge on his chest glinting darkly? if so, a truly disquieting sight -- yet strangely fitting for a night filled with absurd costumes and otherwise inexplicable behavior.

audio: josh wink . hypnotizin

written 10.29.2003

looking up at terraced wind formations roving in silent herds across the cloudy sky. the midafternoon sun shifts into view, suddenly sharp, a shining globe of white fire too hot for prolonged eye contact. i stare for a brief moment. as the earth hurtles through the dark small [ ? ] universe, my gravity-bound feet feel no tremor, memory recording the retinal slow-motion capture of clear ocean hues reflecting in spherical atmosphere. a projected illusion, and a welcome one at that.

as the sun pushes at the upper portions of cotton-swab vapor, my eye traces the melancholic rumble of an apparently weightless journey, wandering a ponderous shuffle past my field of vision. strobing its last strong rays perhaps for the entire rest of the year, the surface erupts in an electromagnetic storm; invisible particles blast a ravenous path through thousands of miles of space to eventually penetrate and be absorbed by the earth's surface.

my human body is oblivious, but i imagine a creature that could see and feel that section of the spectrum. would the earth apear engulfed in hellish bands of irregular energy, bathed in garish, searing, unstable waves of static interference? or, would the sky become a series of frozen moments displaced from paradise, chaotic immaterial angels dancing along refreshing crests of soothing ethereal wind?

audio: carol cox / josh wink . sixth sense