dreamed last night of a woman upstairs berating someone in Mandarin, on and on and on, and a regular beating or whipping sound throughout it. we joked that they were having a heavy sex session, and the dream was titled "A Child is Being Beaten". soon a woman broke through our door into our apartment - I think she was distressed (even though it was the same woman who had been shouting) and I think she sat down with her face in her hands. there was a child being beaten upstairs but she was doing nothing about it. I was going to move but then the man came through the door with the young boy hogtied on a pole. his face was exposed and bruised and his eyes were closed but he was alive. the man dumped him on the floor. I was shocked, and I raised my hand to my face to cover it.

this morning, after my dream, someone told me about the newly adopted children, who have been here for less than a month. the father, finding it difficult, screams at them that he hates them, but in English 'so they don't understand'. it makes me sick, I feel sick about it. having known what kind of father he would be. everyone knew. could I have made an anonymous phone call - to whom? the embassy? to say what? that he shouted at me once at a party? felt me up? do I think the orphanage was better than that?

all felt words are spoken.

the crust is broken and falls away.

now breath comes easy

and in the liquid darkness drops 

to the pool as it fills. drops

collect slowly

along the face, drawing minerals

before their fall.

stormheads leave their children

to clean the snow

on snowy mountain peaks

and they do this work

licking it over like thirsty kittens

until they grow out of coldness

later their mouths are unclosable

their children go over them with moisture swabs

touching the lips, the tongues, the palate,
the inner cheeks, with care

"'The grey of mediocrity, the blue of frustration,' he suggested, less to inform an audience than to commit it to his memory. He added at once, louder and brisker than before: 'Topp has dared to raise a subject that has often occupied my mind: our inherent mediocrity as a people. I am confident that the mediocrity of which he speaks is not a final and irrevocable state; rather is it a creative source of endless variety and subtlety. The blowfly on its bed of offal is but a variation of the rainbow. Common forms are continually breaking into brilliant shapes. If we will explore them.'"

Patrick White, Voss.

Dream: We're running away down a square corridor like an airplane gate. Me and another or others. looking back to see a man looming at the end. Silhouetted but lit up - in light but no detail. That is the reason for running. First experience of fear for a long time. Relief or satisfaction in that.

"We may say: only someone who already knows how to do something with it can significantly ask a name."

   "'Thought' sometimes means a particular mental process which may accompany the utterance of a sentence and sometimes the sentence itself in the system of language.
   'He said those words, but he didn't think any thoughts with them.' - 'Yes, I did think a thought while I said them'. 'What thought?' 'Just what I said.'
   On hearing the assertion 'This sentence makes sense' you cannot really ask 'what sense?' Just as on hearing the assertion 'this combination of words is a sentence' you cannot ask 'what sentence?'"

Wittgenstein, Meaning and Understanding.

signs & portents - a weta on my toothbrush, insect eggs on my fresh-from-the-line underpants.... no, not incubating those for you, whoever-you-are.

dream of a butterfly that lands over my open mouth. how beautiful! wings get stuck to my lips - close my mouth and crush it, or open wider and tear the wings?