Cloud Illusions

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all


joni mitchell, both sides now

inverted commas: quoting mt. timpanogos

i'll leave this to dr. rorschach

calfshead

ghost of thomas jefferson

run little rabbit!

18 May 1989, Tübingen

I move among a group of baby hippos. Their skin is wrinkled and baby-soft. Two of them nuzzle up against me, nipping and sucking pleasantly at my arms. When one of the heavy mouths pulls at my left arm it frightens me.  I call for help. I begin to panic. The dream ends.

Nine a.m.  I sit on a bench atop the Österberg, remember the erotic beauty of a quiet morning in Seal Beach, California, the summer of 1972. A week's vacation from the clanging steel and chemical mud of the drilling rig. In the VW hatchback I had just bought for $600, I drove with Steve, our derrick hand, from Arizona to California to visit his sister. Driving through Yuma we disputed the meaning of Joni Mitchell's song "Both Sides Now." I remember vividly the evening with friends in a garden where we ate vast quantities of pasta, I watched them drink what seemed like gallons of wine, and we sang “Roll me over in the clover, roll me over, lay me down, and do it again.” The song, in endless rowdy variations, aroused my desire and my inhibitions alike. I had never been intoxicated, nor had I really, thoroughly rolled in the clover. Still, shyly, I savored the evening. Up early the next morning while Steve, his sister, and her partner still slept, I sat in the kitchen and scratched the slant of the morning sunlight onto paper.