The days are hot, dry and bright. It's the monotony that's unbearable. Insomnia adds a flavor of eternal damnation to the whole stream of endless stifling light.

After the ecstasy, despair.

Honeybee populations are in drastic and accelerating decline, and bumblebees could be close behind.

Provide food: Native flowers provide nectar (carbohydrates) and pollen (protein). Butterfly larvae eat host plants. Fermented fallen fruits provide food. Plant in groups. Stagger bloom seasons from early spring to late fall. Use flowers of different colors and fragrances on plants of different heights. Native perennials such as salvias, as well as herbs such as mint, oregano, lavender, garlic, parsley and chives, and annuals all support bees and butterflies.

Provide shelter: Incorporate canopy layers by planting trees, shrubs and different-size perennials. Leave dead wood for nesting and dead plants and leaf litter for shelter. Leave some areas of soil uncovered for ground-nesting insects. Group plantings to help pollinators move through the landscape to avoid predators.

Don't poison: Avoid using pesticides and herbicides.

In last night's dream I win exactly four million dollars. And I don't think that's enough. I ask, why could it not have been forty?

Later my father is lecturing me about something. He goes on and on. I notice a fire breaks out right behind him so I interrupt his rant and yell for him to call the fire department. But I extinguish the flames myself with a water hose. The damage is small. I watch the ceiling tiles melt and slide along the wall like giant teardrops.

The first night in months without a dream! Or rather, without remembrance of one.

Oh the wonder of finding this beautiful space of blue sky! I escaped the oppressive holocaust of urban sprawl to find this piece of windy heaven, generously sprinkled with birdsong and whispers between the grasses.

I must find a way out of the concrete labyrinth. For good.

Yes, but this one is all mine!

1.28 centimeters

Sometimes there are weeks that feel exactly like this - all knotted and barbed. I've got a barbed knot inside me right now, nicking and tearing my flesh. And yet life makes use of them.

Dream 2/28/08

I was gathering up my things from the floor when something pricked my finger. It was a hypodermic needle. Oh fuck, I said and squeezed the tiny puncture wound hard. A fat, ruby-red droplet formed, which I inexplicably licked, then thought better of it and found a gauze pad soaked in hydrogen peroxide. Who knows who used that needle? Maybe I'll die soon. I packed the rest of my belongings into the car and set out into a lonely road. Its edges were covered in drifts of sand. I looked up at the sky and gasped. I MUST take a picture of this, I said to the driver. She stopped while I rummaged through the floor of the car to find my camera. It was buried under piles of books and clothes.

What's so important about it? she asked

The beam! The beam of darkness! I answered.

The world is not only crucifixion, it is also beauty. Or more precisely, the world's crucifixion is beautiful. This beauty reveals itself in the patterns and harmonies of nature, which the ancient Pythagoreans found so miraculous. The harmony of natural laws is what prompted them to speak of God as a geometer.

And I am full of smoldering rage. Last night I dreamed of two boys picking on me in church. I had put on a white dress, delicate, with pearls sown into the creases. It covered my everyday ordinary clothes. The boys were vicious, they scratched me, called me names. I was furious - I grabbed one by the shirt and told him he ought to be ashamed of himself. He stroked his crotch in response. I spat in his eye. The parents took him away to my relief, but then I noticed the priest was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned to the navel. A heavy crucifix hung around his neck on a thick gold chain, like a gangbangers's accessory. I went home to a beautiful room, polished wood floors, one bed too many, which, I concluded, needed to be removed to make ample space for a perfect life. My parents were just behind the wall.

I lie down on the hard cool tiles. It is sunset. The breeze sways the white curtains in the windows, which have no glass.

Bear cubs incubate while the mother is in hibernation. They emerge into the world of the den and her vast folded softness, to grope and squeeze and touch noses and suckle. All the while the steel gray sky and savage winter storms press in upon them.

......................................................................

He is dying - metastases in his thigh, his lungs, his brain perhaps - not having made it quite to eighty. He knew it when he dreamed about the strap breaking as he tried to play the saxophone. Now I am dreaming of a young man, still dying, but with a head full of hair and a sparkle in his eyes, grabbing me mid-waist and whirling us into a dance.

Every January the same tumble: colors drain, a fog settles between my senses and the objects they try to discern. And I can't help but contemplate that I was born in January when this collapse occurs. I don't feel like a spirit eager to lap up the stuff of things incarnate. All the love (carnal, of course), the greed, the hate, the passion even seem like such an overwhelming effort. Such a distraction from the sweet inner silence.

There is nothing like a bout of insomnia lasting three consecutive nights or so to strip the psyche of faith. Or perhaps what I call faith is illusion, and it is the illusory projections of future joy, happiness and satisfaction that are purified. All well and good. I need to discover whether I can experience beauty in the midst of this zombie-like drift among very-present shadows. If beauty can be discerned, then perhaps the other stuff is an illusion and good riddance.