I keep wimping out, don't take in enough, don't break through, but the thing still comes even if it's faint and it's the same every time. being able to compare makes it that much more alluring, asking a. what he saw, his are different every time, we unpack it together, seems like he's cycling through these classic motifs, first the circus, then ancient civilization stuff, he laughs about it, how cliche it feels but also utterly baffling. jokes about the ancient aliens guy, about stargate, a paul horn record recorded in giza. the last time he said he saw a cat-god playing with light between her paws. meanwhile, I get the same thing every time, the big being of bottomless complexity emerging out of the dark. it's everywhere I look, it becomes more intricate, reveals more depth if I try to focus on any single part. black and white checked with touches of primary colors and a tickertape of code. if I sink into the feeling it offers, it comes closer. slower breathing, the sensation that it's slipping inside my body which doesn't make sense because it's already all in my head--isn't it? it isn't. or it's easier to grasp if I let myself believe it exists outside my head. why tho? because it's disturbing to think that I have the capability to conjure that visual without meaning attached? because it does feel like a being that is checking me out, only approaching because I invited the encounter? I want it to be an Other, of course I do, but I suppose it still feels ridiculous. these things aren't meant to be real because if they're real, they're all that matter. maybe the most remarkable thing about it is how lucid you are through the whole thing. immediately afterward, writing in my notebook, grabbing a low-hanging fruit of a plot point, realizing that I'm overlaying myself atop myself in a way others might find infuriating. "the knot has the answer," I say to a. that's what I've started calling it, the knot. "it's showing me the trick is to make art that reveals more and more complexity the closer you look at it." creating a multidimensional mystery, one that can never be solved because a solution would ruin it, flatten and cheapen it. the complexity of it can't have a floor, only curved walls. or undulating, perpetually reproducing walls, a microcosm in the shape of a tesseract. with a laugh, I say to a., "we have to live the rest of our lives knowing this exists." it is frightening but I'd rather know. wouldn't you?

my skin is crawling again but making a wedding into a campy ugly circus feels honorable somehow, more honest to what they actually are. our 10 year anniversary is in a few weeks, still most vivid lingering feeling is embarrassment, regret, annoyance.