Dream 2: Exotic fezzes at the hoedown

See previous dream.

I'm at a gathering in the large yard & fields behind a country house. I think it's a gathering of Masons mainly, but there are others there, too, including Jolene from 66. I want to talk to her about working at Chama RIver Brewing Co, but she wants to play a game and makes me chase her out to the barn to get the scoop. Very flirty.

Later, we're back amongst the crowd, and two old guys are telling stories about a woman who had recently passed, who had been of great service to the community and to the various Masonic bodies in the area. One of them recounts when she was presented with the Crook of the Good Shepherd. They have two fezzes that were hers, I suppose, and they're showing them around. One is red with white stitching, which I don't get a very good look at. The other is a deep cornflower blue and has (four?) thin vertical strips of fleece running up the sides. Later I see the red fez more closely and it has what looks like a Moose emblem thinly embroidered onto the back, but it might be angelic wings, rather than moose antlers.

Dream 1: Eating mushrooms with Levi & Willy

Eggplant parm & other fried foods at DaCapo, a Pinstripe at Andy's while watching Severence, a bowl of Apple Dapples before bed.

Obviously inspired by Severence.

I'm hanging out with Levi and Willy in a very 60's chic home. I take a bunch of mushrooms and really start frying. The decide that it would be fun to mess with me, so they load me into this dentist's chair and restrain me. Levi takes a weird metal mannequin hand in uses it to pry my mouth open. Willy takes a very heavy piece of equipment, like an old TV sort of, and lowers it onto my face. The pressure on my tongue and across my eyes is really extreme, and I can't communicate in such a state that they are rather freaking me out. I decide to try to cool it, maybe it's not happening anyhow.

They let me up and I explore the house, generally dissolving into doofy giggles.

Three way sex and yard work

Fill this in later

Cooking Borscht

Spaghetti and salad at Lodge, a soda, a bowl of cereal at home and a glass of water.

I forget the first 90% of this dream. A big, long journey, it feels.

Josh and I, after the travails, end up at Regina & Cornelius' house. We're in their spacious, old, high-ceilinged kitchen, which has white walls and orange linoleum floor. We have groceries. Regina arrives and begins insisting that she is going to have borscht, and that for once she deserves to have it made properly for her. She wants the onions CHOPPED. There is a big pile of green onions on the cutting board. I have no idea how to make borscht, but apparently she wants these CHOPPED, so I get to it. There is a big cleaver, but it is depressingly dull, and it's tending to smoosh and tear, rather than cleanly cleaving through. It's very frustrating.

Homeless guys stealin' our stuff at the Flogging Molly show

Spinach sammies and homemade yam chips, water. Later, a bowl of cereal.

I'm at a restaurant with friends and family. On the way in, for some reason, I got in the trunk of my car and stash the red wood handled knife in a little space up in a corner where no one would find it. While we're eating dinner, I look out the window and I see some guys rummaging in our car, and others, pilfering. I'm in no hurry, but after a moment I alert my buddy (is it Josh? that doesn't seem right), grab my flight, and we take off running out of the restaurant.

We move quickly up on the guys. They catch wind of us and take off running. I chase one, my buddy chases the other. They're homeless guys. I'm chasing John the Baptist and my friend is chasing Rat Man's Friend. I think my guy is going to outrun me, but at the last minute, as we fly though a slightly uppity neighborhood, he gives, stops, turns around, tosses his roll or pack in my direction. It ker-chunks on the ground. I grab it and unroll it on the street. It's a big piece of khaki canvas, looks military, and has lots of little loops and pockets. It unrolls to be about 6 feet by 4 feet. It's full of knives, stuff, and surprisingly it's also full of small works of art on paper. I recognize some drawings that have been turned into lithographs by local artists, and I think I recognize some pieces I own, myself.

After, we head back and hang out waiting for the Flogging Molly concert. I'm surprised to find out that the scabby circus kids we've been sitting next to in the bar are the band. It's not how I remember them, but hey. They take off into the club to start their set. I want to get a drink first, and I can hear them playing. I get in a line, but then it's the wrong line, and then into another line. It's confusing, I'm frustrated.

Dream 2: Burying friends

Hot dogs with horsey mustard & relish, pasta salad, water.

This dream actually preceded the IV dream during the night, but no matter.

Some of the Brothers are in this apartment, virtually devoid of any furniture. In one bedroom there is a computer on a desk, but otherwise it's white walls and brown carpet. We're there to do our duty. Nothing particularly weird about it, rather matter of fact. Benny lies down and dies in the doorway between the room and the hall, and it's up to us to take care of his body. Lance steps over him, grabs his feet, I'm left to lift him by the shoulders. He's not the first, he won't be the last. It's what we're here to do.

Dream 1: I'm back at IV

Hot dogs with horsey mustard & relish, pasta salad, water

I've gotten shifts at Il Vicino, and I'm so, so excited! The restaurant is different, a different layout, there's a little room back behind, and a raised platform along the side, the bar is low and curves around this way and that. And I don't know anybody, but damn it I know what I'm doing and I'm so very glad that I'm back to work there. The dream gets in kind of a feedback loop, so I don't get to actually serve anybody really, though I talk to a couple of tables. My enthusiasm is getting away from me, and dour college girls think I'm odd.

No more dreaming

The petty theft dream here is the first dream I've recorded in a long time, because I don't remember my dreams anymore. Hopefully that will change. Ever since the chaos that preceded me losing my job back in February, my dreams have been blocked up, not coming through, not lodging themselves in my memory any more. I think that as I get more situated and back to normal, that will change. Still so much is up in the air at the moment, but chaos doesn't last forever.

I know that I've had several dreams about being a Freemason, but still, no details are readily available. Of course...that has a certain poignance, no?

Late for my my pickup, accidentally stealing

Who knows.

I'm just off the plane and JJ is supposed to pick me up. I wander around waiting for him, and it's down on Harvard (so-called "Bricklight Dist"), rather than around the airport. He will be a bit yet, so I take a look around. There are lots of new stores along there, stores I've never seen before. I wander into a framing business, set into one of those narrow, deep storefronts. It is structured so there are alcoves along the walls, with counter islands down the center. Each alcove is lined with bins, overflowing with parts and bits. The bins are al wood, painted a lightly greenish off-white.

There are signs everywhere, saying that the parts they are selling are only available to customers who have ordered framing with those parts, because why would they sell stuff to someone not getting their framing done there? Personally, I find this to be a stupid business philosophy, but hey, whatever. I'm fiddling around, and I have my hands in a bin of valve stems when I realize that I've lost track of time, and Josh is probably out there driving around cursing me. I scurry out to the street to make myself visible, but he's nowhere in sight. I'm nearly certain that I've missed him, and a sheepish dread overtakes me. I also realize that I have one of those valve stems in my hand, I accidentally ran out with it. Damn!

I get a hold of Stephanie and she picks me up, and we start looking for Josh. We drive all over, back toward the airport, along Harvard, up this way and down that. Eventually, we do find him. He's annoyed, but hey, sorry. I tell them that I need to take this valve stem back to the store. We go to the store, and the stem has turned into a large steel machine part, with a double-bar bolted to swinging solid steel weights or giant pins. I go to the counter, explain to the two women and one man there what I did, how dumb I feel about it. They are a strangely "wholesome" seeming group of people, very Anne Taylor meets Sears dress-up. No one really speaks to me, but one woman smiles knowingly and takes the steel implement from me, begins hitching green rope through loops and holes, as if preparing it to do whatever it might be supposed to do. She hands it back to me and rings up $10.00.

I have no intention of buying it, I tell her. I brought it back because it was the right thing to do, and I'm sorry. But I'm not buying it. This is going nowhere. Holier than thou and full of shit, they stand there smugly. I start to shout, I explain to them that their store is ridiculous, their philosophy stupid. I scream that I've been in framing for a decade, and I know everybody, including the people at the museum across the way, and I will make sure that absolutely no one takes advantage of their services. I slam the steel thing down onto the counter, and actually it cracks through and impresses itself into the plys of the wood. Josh and Stephanie have made their way back now, hearing my altercation, and we hustle out of there fast.

Hanging out with Joyce

Bus ride out to Baillos/Borders
Bike to La Cueva, in a different place and different look
Open house
Wander around the school
Go go JBriscoe's class, we catch up briefly but I'm not certain what all to talk about
There is cake, huge portions cut and put in large plastic bags
I eat as much cake as I can, but it is too much
Kevin Thornton is there, along with Tam, maybe
I think of talking to Joyce about being a Mason, but by then she is talking with others and I don't want to barge in
Gotta get back to the bus stop or be stranded
Get back, but there is confusion, if we get picked up where we got dropped, or if it's another place, behind the bldg
A guy frmo Baillo's comes out and tries to convince us that we should go back to our original drop off, which I agree with, but there is suspicion that maybe he's up to something, that we will get left, or that there will be a different bus owned by Baillo's and our other tix will be no good or something so they can get money out of us

We don't serve Masons here

Pizza and salad, water, a zebra cake and a bowl of cereal later.

There is deception. We're at a mechanic's garage, probably over around Washington and Menaul.

We're realizing that Masons are being Frozen Out. As proof, there is a newsletter, strangely written, which singles out "JW Master Benny Pankey" and "recently raised Brother Shannon Manson." I'm extremely frustrated by this. I can't just let it go.

Thread it through me, baby

Pasta with mushrooms, peas, water. Beers.

Someone is revealing the nature of the world to me, that things are not nearly as solid as they seem. Most things are actually just shells, full of gas. Several examples are given, knocking holes in things, even a person is broken open, their shoulder broken off, hollow inside. Like a world made of hollow chocolate Easter rabbits.

A black string (the poly string from the big spindle I've had forever) is threaded through me, gastrointestinally. It's extremely long, however, probably 100 yards. I'm at a grocery, I think the Smiths up at Carlisle and Constitution, and I realize that my string is out the door, in the parking lot. I follow it out there, leaving a good deal behind. I gotta put a stop to this, so I grab it and kinda rip-chord it through me. It comes out, kinda burning in my esophagus (don't know if I pulled the mouth end or the ass end, but it seems like I pulled the ass end). But I realize with some mild horror that that string had been on the dirty store floor, under foot and grimy with shopping card wheel, and I just pulled it through me, and now all of those germs and dirt are inside my body. (Do I vomit?)

(I did awaken this morning with a feeling in my esophagus like it had been burnt or traumatized.)

I don't collect Klan stuff

Pigs-In-A-Blanket, broccoli, mac&chz, water.

An early morning dream.

I'm with JJ, I think, and we follow this guy who looks like Alan Arkin into the courtyard of his antiques store. The whole place is piled with rugs and textiles, and there's a young hippie chick across the courtyard, wearing green and doing something dextrous with her hands, like playing an instrument or something.

He notices us behind him, but he doesn't realize that we follow him on into the shop proper, and when he turns around he is startled. I joke and apologize, tell him that I didn't mean to stalk him. The interior of the shop is very tiny, a long narrow room, but brightly lit from windows along the courtyard. It, too, is piled with rugs. I kind of realize that this guy might not have the kinds of things we usually look for.

I explain to him that I'm looking for photography, but I fail to mention anything more specific. He takes me into a side room, which is really a little nook, smaller than a changing room. He produces some pictures that are panoramic in proportion, but small, like long postcards. They are images of men at KKK meetings. They are interesting pictures, and in a way they fall into my fraternal collection area, but I'm just not into Klan stuff. The prices, I glance at them on the versos, are pretty high, too, in the $50-$60 range, pretty out of the question if it's not even stuff that particularly interests me.

Dream 2: I refuse to be bullied. I'm the freakin' Tyler!

Quesadillas and water, popcorn during the movie.

I'm at Lodge and they ask me if I'll step up to be Tyler. I accept, surely, and they install me and give me the sword. I park it next to the door. I'm looking at the sword and find that instead of it going to a single point, it actually splits into 5 points at the end, almost like sharp crenellations. Interesting. It's also extremely long, much longer and far more unwieldy than you would think. I can see where previous Tylers have let the tip rest against the orange shag carpet, and it's completely pulverised in a half circle against the opposite wall of the vestibule.

I have to take a leak, so I head down the hall to the can. The first is locked, so I go to the second. It's a gross, wet, locker room-like bathroom. I'm barefoot, but I say fuck it and walk on in onto the sodden concrete floor. Instead of a toilet there's a brown plastic box against the wall with a round hole in the side, and it's full of sewage. Holy moley. Well, I gotta go, so... I unzip and start pissing into the hole. I notice the door starting to open, and I try to push it closed, but the other person is insistent. Whatever. This guy comes in [where do I know this guy from?] and stands next to me to pee. Before I know it, he's saying something like "Did they take good care of you, huh?" And I know that he's there to start trouble with me cuz I'm queer and he doesn't want me as an officer. I can't believe what's happening. He actually turns and pisses on my jeans, all the while bad-mouthing me. I'm absolutely furious, I'm swinging, pushing at him, but I'm not making contact, and he's still pissing on me. How the hell can I go back out there covered in piss? I'm insane with rage, but I seem powerless to do anything about it.

Dream 1: gettin' it on with a guy in a storage locker

Quesadillas and water, popcorn during the movie.

I'm going with someone (Josh? Lissa?) to the Reggie storage space, which is in a multi-level building that somewhat seems like a converted shopping mall, a little bit horror movie style. We go in and around, decide we need to go down a few levels to the second locker. I run into my parents on the way, ask if they want to come see the storage. They seem pretty disinterested, as they think they have seen it all already. But I know they haven't seen the really nice locker with lots of interesting stuff, so I'm disappointed. But we go on down. There's this guy sitting in the locker on a folding chair. The locker is a partly caged- and partly walled-in space with a big column in the center. The guy is around in the back, somewhat out of sight from the door. He's got a thick head of dark, curly hair and is wearing a leather jacket over a grubby t-shirt, and he's a meaty guy. He's going on about how he's Reggie's son, how they told him otherwise but he heard his mom saying this and that. He's kind of morose, weird. I find him pretty hot. I jump his bones, start making out with him, undressing him. I ask him if he's ever [xxx censored! xxx]. I expect him to say no and think that that sounds crazy, but he says he has, and so I go for it. Why not.

That guy just painted over JQ's drawing

Sadie's giant burrito, lots of water. A few cookies and a beer at MarJar's afterward. Vic is in town.

The tail end of a longer narrative.
JQ and I have gathered up a bevy of drawings and taken them to a new photographer, kind of a trial run to see how he does. His studio is a small gallery sort of space with very warm, brown light. Seems like there's art hung along the walls. He's busy in the center of the room, we wander around and look at this or that. Then I turn and look and lo and behold he is painting over the JQ's piece, which is a light green affair in the Wallowa Waterhole sort of range. It's different, though, more of a Rothko sort of design, rather like if you took a single element form a WW and blew it up to 30x22. But the photographer is painting over it, doing his own thing to "make it better." I'm shocked and kind of amused. I get JQ's attention and say "What do you think of that?" She raises her eyebrows and says, "Huh. Well THAT'S interesting." We're both just stunned. Why in the world would he think he could get away with that? Who the hell does he think he is?

I finally go and stop him. I explain that these pieces are already cataloged, and I have no intention of cataloging them all again, to say nothing of the fact that JQ's work doesn't need any help from this hack. He's really flippant about it, says something about "Well, it's just this one." I tell him to knock it off, getting increasingly pissed off. Jaune has her hand on my shoulder, lest I tackle or slug this jerk. He's saying, "It's 136 of 160," part of the inventory number. He doesn't understand the numbering system, obviously. But the piece has #83 written on its front, upper edge, in sweeping charcoal. He gives in and puts the drawing into a water bath starts to remove his heavy blue paint and black pooled ink additions. I storm away. In a couple of minutes, though, he holds it up and it's completely restored to its original state. I have to admit that I'm impressed.

I am still dreaming

I seem to have gotten out of the habit of recording my dreams. But I am still having vivid dreams.

I do know that the other morning I dreamed about running on all fours, and I was turning into a ferocious, hairy monster, kind of werewolf style.

I go to Vegas alone

Joshie's open-face sammies with capers and cheese and red peppers; salad; ice cream; a couple beers. (Sunday night dinner)

I've gone to Las Vegas on my own. I think the plan is that JJ and I are going to be traveling there, and I want to know the loay of the land and the activities we should hit before we go, so I can act as guide. [The fact that Josh has been there before does not figure into this plan, apparently.] But for this, I've gone without Josh, and I feel kind of bad.

I'm there in Vegas, and I start to realize that I don't really even know where to start. So I go for a sit down in this bar. They're playing some sports game really loud on the TV. Harvey Levin from TMZ is there with some female friend. He notices me by myself and starts to talk to me. She's ready to go, but he's extremely interested in me. We go to the far end of the bar, behind the TV sets. He sits at an opposite table and keeps trying to engage me in conversation, pathetically hitting on me. His friend stands over against a trash can, looking bored. I smile at her, she nods in acknowledgement. HL says something to the effect that I'm another newbie on the scene, and a giant Viking of a guy at the table next to me thinks he's talking to HIM. Harvey gets flustered, trying not to get pounded. I really just want him to go away.

Will I ever make it over to Stephanie's so we can travel through time?

This was a few nights ago, don't remember what I ate.

I have to make it over to Steph's, cuz we're going to do a little time traveling. But first, I have to hang out with these other people and do this or that. I set off with this young mother and her 5 year old son, walking up the river bank. We choose to go this way, maybe for scenic route value. I'd really like to just get going. After a while I realize that we've diverted out onto this big levee, and it juts out into the water. Her son doesn't care, he charges on and jumps into the water to swim happily back to shore. I go in after him, a precaution rather than an emergency. He does dip under a bit, but he's really just having fun. I, on the other hand, am not particularly pleased to be in this murky water, my clothes soaked or even ruined.

We get where we're going, a restaurant or some other public place along a street that borders the river. I really need to head back and get over the Stephanie's. Someone tells me that there is a road closure, though. I was going to take the bus back, fast and easy rather than going the grubby river route. Well, damn it.

I do manage to take a shuttle or something down at least part of the road, which is rather like Nob Hill. And I make it to Steph's house. She answers the door, balancing a kid in her arm. Her house is an absolute disaster. Debris and trash is not only piled in the floor, but has been kind of bulldozed into a levee-like embankment that runs around the end of one room, knee deep. Her tim travel device is an old Nintendo model, and she can't quite put her hands on the right controller for it. I get down on my knees to peer back into the crumbling, grimy TV stand to look for it. I can make out dead roaches back there, and big dust bunnies. I'm surprised that their house has gotten to this state. We do find the controller and we're able to take our time jump.

Dealing with art & artists at the new print studio

Supreme Pasta Salad with olives, pepperoncini, mushrooms, tomatoes, feta, mozzarella, bell pepper. Water. Later, JJ made me a couple of chocolate graham cracker s'mores while we watched The Great Pumpkin.

Somewhat garbled.

I'm hanging out at this big house with several artists, which apparently include Claire and Elise. (cf Blonde Pie Mark's parent's sort of house) The lower floor or basement is converted to a printmaking studio, but is dimly lit and still has its carpet. It really looks more like an artistic teenager's space down there. The neighboring building, which apparently is owned by the same people as this place, is a sort of 2-story row house, which at one point was inhabited by friendly types, but now it's all headbangers & heshers. They are NOT going to be interested in buying any of our prints, in my opinion, but I'm forced (by Regina?) to try to sell to them anyhow. It goes nowhere.

Back at the house, I'm being ushered around by Archer, though she's more like Marnie from high school, in a long black dress and very pale. I find a piled up edition of these large prints, by Ray, I think. I take two and decide that they need to come with me. They are large, though, about 3 feet square, so I proceed to roll them up. I need to find some sort of paper to go around them, however, and I can't. They keep unrolling, as we wander around, and I keep clumsily rolling them back up. They are getting pretty handling dented.

Ray shows up, in full bike riding gear, all spandex and helmet and utilitarian BS. Some guy (Matt Tuttle, maybe?) heartily greets him and calls him Keno. Ray is chatty and friendly. We are all expressing some relief not to be working back at NG.

I'm a young Hogwarts student, and we discover the alien duckblind

Late night burrito sans chile after the Obama rally at Johnson Field. Followed by a beer and some Master Hunter.

I'm a newbie at a boys school. It's kind of like Hogwarts, I suppose. We're playing a game that is kind of like baseball. The woman who gave out uniforms said that I wouldn't fit into the normal uniform, and she gave me these big, baggy shorts and a different shirt than the other guys. It's pretty embarrassing. The other guys are a lot bigger and stronger looking than I am. My friend and I are definitely pipsqueaks. At my turn up at bat or whatever, though, I'm glad that I manage to make it to base, at least.

We break for innings, and we have to go change the color of our uniform shirts. We all go to the locker room. Kevin Thompson from elementary/mid school is there, on my team. He's one of the older, bigger guys. They're laughing and joking around. He chides me for my weird baggy shorts, while the rest of them have essentially boxer briefs instead. He jokes that their shorts are too small, and I look over and he's got a big erection in his shorts. He's threatening to bump me with it. (I'm not horrified, like he assumes I am, but I'm not particularly eroticized by the idea, either.) He does playfully rut against my shoulder a couple of times. I flatly ask him "Why do you have an erection?" to point out that he's the "gay" one in this situation. We all find that someone has been messing with our stuff, and our proper uniforms are largely missing. We head back out.

I'm in the outfield, which extends to a warm, yellow stone building façade with an arcade across the ground level. (An arched walkway, not a vid arcade.) Either me or my pipsqueak friend--I seem to be playing the part of both of us off an on--wanders under the arcade and suddenly I'm swept up by some magnetic force in the ceiling. It's not so strong that I can't push away and gently land again. I try it again. What in the world? Forget the game, what is going on with this? We call some of the other guys over. Harry Potter (himself) shows up with great tool in hand. He brings out a three-pronged garden fork. The magnetic force lifts him, and straightens out the tines of the fork. There is an intricate metal cap or dial, which is the real source of the power. The tines fit into the relief of the surface and he is able to turn it, unlocking the room above.

I think the ceiling opens, and we are able to get up inside this circular, secret room. We realize that aliens have been watching us from here. We decide we have to catch them. Pipsqueak friend and I are elected, as the ones who discovered it, to sleep in this place. We do. And I dream, in my dream. The aliens are in the room, they have the appearance of foam rubber. But they are biological. They are like bipedal frogs, almost. They have big masses of a green-black, salty caviar-like food that they are gnashing. On the floor, there is a little wooden open-topped box, with three or four compartments (cf the old divided screw box at the Art Museum on the framing table). There are peanuts and other little snacks in the compartments. My friend and I are eating these. Not certain if that is the best idea. We start to wonder if this is a dream we're having, or if this was the alien's plan all along. Are we in big trouble here? Harry Potter comes forcing his way up through the floor. Not bursting the materials, but more like it's a holograph and he emerges literally through it, headfirst. He's going to save us. We're all working on somehow getting that roe mess out of their mouths.

PD Rearick

DiGiorno spinach/mushroom pizza with home grown tomatoes and green chile on top, water, bowl of cereal.

[Simply put,] I run into PD Rearick, I think at the Los Poblanos store where he had his big sale. He's busy messing about with, indeed, a big mess of photography, rolling a big piece up like a poster [art herder's note: never ever ever roll up a photograph!]. I congratulate him on his architectural photograph from Detroit. It seems like maybe he's put on a little weight, and he's not dressed as smartly as I have always seen him dress, lo these many years. He's wearing a big, bulky tan coat, workpants, tan work boots. He's friendly as ever and greets me with cheer.

We can't possibly serve dinner to all these people

Stroganoff noodles, corn, baked potato, Sprite, an ice cream bar at Lodge (turned in my petition!), a bowl of cereal later after I got home.

I'm back working for NG again, but instead of a byzantine old meat packing building it's in a cavernous little old house with many rooms. There's a woman working there who looks like the mean one-armed mother from Boston Public, but she operates like Bubble from AbFab. He's pulled some tables out in a dining room, and instead of setting them up like hors d'oeurves and snacks, she's set them with place settings and pulled chairs around. As people start to show up, they think that we're serving a sit-down meal. And Bubble actually takes a step in confirming the misunderstanding, as she quickly plates up a little salad and drops it for each of them. I'm increasingly anxious, though-- we aren't serving a meal here, and we shouldn't have ever given signals that we were. Damn it. Now we're scurrying around the kitchen looking for dishes.

Bubble is scooping up some Adzuki beans into little parfait bowls. In a cupboard I find a strange pile of red and white pills, formed into a bowl shape. They only barely stick together, and I crush and crumble the whole mess in my hands. The tactile sensation is somewhat like crushing hunks of pomegranate seeds. I look back up into the cupboard and see a white sculpted polymer clay ring, formed like a series of foetuses, the whole thing about the diameter of e cereal bowl, and the pill bowl would fit down nicely into it. I realize then than this is one of Josh's sculptures, something from back in school, and I've just destroyed it. Damn it! But wait, oh my Lord, did Bubble get the pills mixed up into the beans? Has she been serving bowls of pills? I'm not certain.

In any case, people are starting to lose interest in our meal, as we obviously are hard pressed to serve them anything. I'm still scrambling around. R comes breezing through and is useless, only throws a further wrench into the works. I finally go bursting back into the dining room with armloads of plates and bowls, only to find that everyone has given up and abandoned the dinner tables. Sigh.

[This is obviously coming from a few different directions. The fear of not being able to feed a crowd is springing from me putting myself in Adam's place back at Lodge, considering how I would fare as JW, if I had to pull together meals. The crushed artwork issue references when I broke Josh's Child of the Earth figure (made of white Sculpey, just like the foetus ring), which is on the brain because of Kris Mill's Jerusalem Cricket (another name for a CotE) show at Harwood. That I'm stuck back at the gallery probably stems from recent professional frustrations with the OPS/IAS, and the lack of dishes, which equates to a lack of tools to achieve what suddenly I am expected to do, also ties in there...]

Lost with the dogs, help from a family

Cheese tortelloni with pesto, beans with butter and almonds, choco pie, water, all at Marsha's.

We're out somewhere with Marsha, maybe at her new house or something. It's out in a neighborhood I don't know, and I'm uncertain how the layout is. I end up walking with PeeWee and Guido, and sometimes it seems like they're not on a leash. It's a slightly older neighborhood, probably built in the 50's or 60's, like the area around Louisiana and Comanche, for instance. Suburban, probably working class that calls itself middle class, an RV here and there, the porches are cracking, the lawns are dry.

I'm pretty sure that if I head down this way I'll be able to turn right and get back to the larger road, which I'm certain will take me back to Marsha's place, but I keep going and I'm not finding the right turn I'm hoping for, in fact I feel like I'm probably getting forced further and further away from where I really want to go. At some point, I'm just thoroughly lost.

I run into a couple in their yard. They're older than me, probably in their fifties. I try to explain my situation without sounding totally freaked out. But I hate hate hate being lost, and I'm feeling kind of flipped out about it. He seems stern and reserved, but she is extremely friendly. They'll help me get back where I'm going, not to worry for a moment. First of all, she brings me this huge, complicated double leash contraption. We get it on the dogs, all harnessed in with a sort of bar up at my end to control the two sides. Man, they can really pull and go crazy when they want to.

Before I know it, I'm standing at a dog sled. The man has taken the time to pile it with dirt from his yard, ballast from his yard, so it won't turn over. The dogs are flipping out, they won't have any problem pulling this. He climbs up on the front of the sled, looking me in the eye, and we slowly sort of rock back and forth (more, front to back), somehow making sure that it is all secure. His wife comes over and scolds him, because there's some dog crap in the dirt he shoveled up there. I don't care, as long as I can get home. He picks the dog crap out and tosses it aside. They've saved me.

[I'm pretty sure this is about my mental process toward petitioning Sandia Mt. 72.]

I give birth to a little girl (this is maybe unsettling or crossing a line for some people)

Spaetzle, cauliflower, peas, water.

I'm in mom & dad's bedroom, on their bed. Surprise! I'm about to give birth. I'm on my back, on the bed, facing the window, a small table is wheeled up to the edge of the bed with a stainless surface. I can just see the top edge of my vagina; it's very dark. Suddenly I realize that I've pooped a little bit. I don't think anyone else has noticed. Damn! I've heard that happens. I reach down and grab it and toss it aside before people notice.

I can see the baby crowning. There's no pain. I'm nonplussed. Why am I giving birth? I'm not ready for this, and I don't want a baby. The baby is out. It's a little South Asian baby, a girl. It has an adult head with a short spiky haircut, kind of a Dravidian Annie Lennox sort of look. (I'm pretty sure that this baby is Nirmala, actually.) They hand me my baby girl. I'm still rather uncertain how to feel about this. I'm really just not interested in being a mother.

I guess I should feed her, right? I hold her mouth up to my (male--no boobs) nipple. She goes after it with a vengeance. It feels crazy weird and I pull her away. Sheesh. Okay, I gotta do this. I hold her up again. She clamps on and starts nursing. I can feel it, a little bit, but more than anything the sensation is one of taste. I can taste my own milk, through my daughter's mouth. It tastes like warm whole milk. That's strange, I think.

I'm up and walking around the room. I've left the baby laying on the bed and she's kind of squalling. I guess I should at least cover her up so she's not cold. I'm really just not into this whole thing. I'm really uncertain why this is happening, what to do.

Slow dancing at the airport

Don't remember what I ate. Had maybe 3 beers across the evening and retired after Weekend Update.

Josh and I have to go to the airport and retrieve a piece of luggage. We head down, and it's more like the Indian Health Services hospital by UNMH, rather deco. We have to go down to the gate, as it is coming in on a passenger plane. So we're waiting, and I see Susan Reid there, she's going to get on a plane. She and I hug and flirt a bit, end up slow dancing there in the terminal and I sing softly in her ear, I think a Damien Dempsey song, or maybe Crowded House. Something with harmony and I sing it beautifully. After a while we have a seat. She has some canvases with her, unfinished. The one I can see has the outlines of people in dots. It's a big canvas maybe 3x4 feet, a cheap, thin-barred number from the store with the staples exposed. She has it perched up on the deep seats there by the gate and it's bowing and torquing. I tell her to take care of her canvases, keep them safe on the plane.

I look around and realize that Josh is gone. He probably got the luggage piece and was tired of waiting for me, always talking with people and never just getting on the road when its time. I take off back to catch up with him at the car. It's not all warm colors and nice light once I get out of the concourse, though. I go through doors and it's all dark, there is a large body of water there, I don't know if it is contained of it they have diverted a river through the building. But there has been a massive chemical spill, and the water is luminously yellow, sulfurous. A great metal-grated bridge crosses the water; it's lined with people who are gawking and gossiping about the situation. I think there are technicians in the water, like the Guildsmen in the original Dune movie. I cross the bridge and find myself in a long intersecting hallway. I realize that it is a maze, that I will go through one of the doors into another hallway, then pass to another, but they are all parallel and I have to select the right door to get to the next, and on and on. Josh would know his way around these, I wish he was here.

I get through several of the steps and I think I'm near the end of this maze. Water is building up in these hallways, though. I Open the doors into the next and the release of the water actually sweeps me along with it. I skid like I'm wearing skates, and then my feet go from under me and I'm laid out. What a mess.

I'm nearly a Mason

Don't remember what I ate this night.

Fragment of a memory.

I'm hanging out with an older black guy in a spiffy suit and hat (kinda Tamany Hall. or maybe Prince Hall). He's talking to me about being a Mason. We shake and he gives me a clasp. but I assure him that I'm not a Mason yet, though I fully intend to become one.

My new job at the mall

Belgian waffles with bananas and the best mangos ever, water, choco cupcakes later. (Sugar, anyone?)

I have a new job at Coronado Mall. I drive there with my female friend. Perhaps she has a new job there, too? We don't really know where to park, if there's an employee lot or not. We're up on the north side, behind Sears sort of. There's a big hill and I think maybe we should park on top of it? I give it gas to get up the hill. The markings on the pavement suggest we're going against traffic flow, but it seems the only way. Hmmm...we continue around, and up much closer to the store I'm going to. Who knows. I just want to get there 5 minutes early, you know? I park, go in. It's sort of a mix between the entry to Pep Boys and a department store. I think I'm working over here in this mens wear/electronics area. There's no one to ask. Well, I'll just spruce the place up and start looking at the merchandise. It seems we have a huge boom box (about 4 feet long) that we play. It's giant and black, and sort of like a gorilla suit, soft and hairy. I get it playing. Still no one has shown up. I try to rehearse some charming excuses why I can't help a customer, in case I get asked a question. "I've only worked here for about 9 minutes and no one showed up to train me yet, so..."

Big Box Store City

Green chile corn bread, beans, an ice cream sandwich, water.

Josh and I are visiting this city. We only have a few days there, and we're not entirely certain how we will use our time, or even what all there is to do. Most of the dream is spent seeing the city as a map, grey and white with red numbered circles and details. The main area of the city where we are staying is a peninsula that juts to the south west from the mainland. Up along the center of this peninsula is a central core of three streets. I can't tell if they are one ways or what, or a mix. DiDi from A Store takes us down into the city, into the map, and shows us around. See? We can just be around, and she shows us what a pleasure it is to simply be there and breathe the air. The city itself, though, seems to be made of merchandise, it's like being in a city-sized Costco. I realize that the grey on the map actually is the grey of the riveteer metal shelves.

We can see that there is an aquarium, maybe we'll spend our last day there?

Nothing feels right

Pesto tortellini, salad, bread and beer and Marshas, a few more but not too many beers back at the house.

Nothing seems right to me. Somehow, I come to realize that my last blog at DCF has been deleted, and I can't imagine why. It has the word "birdshit" in it [in reality, it has the word "mousehit"], so maybe that technically violates some rule about "foul language." But I can't believe they would be so prissy as that.

I'm walking up Central telling Josh this. We're over by the new Jim White place. I look down at the gutter, and I can see into a car. The back seat is full of boxes and junk, and in the front seat are two white haired old people. Woman in the drivers seat, man is shotgun. They move jerkily, and I realize after a moment that they are really chickens, even though they are shaped like people. It's like they're down in a box and I'm looking in. They hug, the love each other. I show Josh: Look how sweet!

Jim White's seems to be gone. The flower shop is gone, too. I realize that in the place of the flower shop is some pyramid-schemey health food organization. And they have also taken over a small white building behind Humphrey's, so they have both sides of the street. I walk over, morbidly curious, and the street really becomes a narrow aisle, as if at an art fair. This place is on either side, all fake, laminated wood and harsh downlighting. They have a lot of large, fancy touchscreen displays [cf the Balloon Museum]. I sit down in front of one, a heavy, boxy affair that swivels at the waist. I start to fool around with it. An attendant comes over and says something to the effect that this is an old clunker of a display, that he wishes they could get new ones. It seems pretty fancy to me, but whadda I know? The whole time I'm turning it over in my head, why DCF would delete my work. I don't think I can retrieve it. Maybe Spring can help me.

"The Gift" (somewhat obscene & sexual)

Frontier poor-man's vegetarian burritos & fries, water, some beer & ginger vodka later.

This dream was literally titled "The Gift." It was presented in scripted, movie format, sepia-toned, with title cards.

I am a woman, and my husband and I are infiltrating some sort of group. The group has this henchman, a veritable giant of a man, rather like The Rock, but with the face & hairstyle of Ka Hekili from Quantum Redshift. He murders everyone but me. He knows that he is a Gift to me, and I know that I am a Gift to him. Our love is total and inevitable, a great romance. I turn back into my male self at this point, and I am concerned that now that I am male, he will not be able to love me any more. But he doesn't care, and we make love. (And it really is making love, not sex, not fucking. This is slow, sensual, movie lovemaking.) He's a giant, though, and I literally have to climb around on top of him. If I'm up gnawing on one of his big brown nips, my dong is grinding into his ribs. He is transported in waves of ecstasy. Some people come to get us, they know that all the rest have been killed, but we will make short work of them. Our love will not be denied.

paint your nails

Early dinner of a Subway veggie sandwich, water. Mid evening ice cream while I worked on data entry.

Earlier dream I remembered when the dogs got me up at 4 to go out, but now is lost. One of my war dreams, I'm certain.

Later, I'm hanging out with Tyra Banks and several other people, we're all sitting on bar stools [again?], I think in Aunt Betty's den. There's a group of us. She's challenging us to all come up with exciting new nail polish colors/patterns. I'm not particularly committed to this challenge, but I give it some work. We're all leaning in the direction of colors that match our outfits. The woman wearing purple and green goes purple, etc. Mine is a little bit more elaborate, yellow and white designs, maybe reminiscent of buttered popcorn Jelly Bellies. There's some reference to PeeWee's coat there, too. I think my design isn't going as far as Tyra wanted it to or something, though. I think I should have actually made them look LIKE PeeWee somehow. Oh well.

Throw me a party full of strangers, will ya?

Caprini sandwiches, fried green tomatoes, water. Later a minor, private beer bust with Pinstripes and homemade ginger vodka.

Maresa has thrown me a birthday party. Which is nice. Maybe I'm not so into it, but it's nice. I'm not me, though. I mean, I'm me, but the me of the moment being Ron, a skinny white guy in his 50's. Everyone else is their normal age and all. And otherwise I'm still regular old me. So I'm at the party. The main room of their house is a large space with old white plastered walls and terraced along one side, with barstools on the terraces. It's almost like a courtroom and this is the Jury box, just that the box aspect has been taken away. Lots of heavy, dark wood. Historical things are on the walls. Sheryl Wolf is there. I hold her hand and tell her how much we appreciate her has a friend, that she always is there with some helpful gift or suggestion, and she's really enriched our lives.

At some point, I look around, and on these barstools are sat a bunch of guys I don't know. I mean ANY of them. Maresa has thrown me a birthday party and invited strangers. Or at least I think they're strangers. I mean, maybe I've met them before somewhere, but I certainly aren't FRIENDS with any of these guys. I kind of chide her about this. "I don't know anyone HERE, Marsha!"

I need a break. Me and my buddy from my boys only adventure club are going to skip back over to our apartment. We start out and cross what is essentially a college campus, though much of it is boarded up. There's a lot of sneaking and climbing involved. At one point there is an area like the square in front of Zimmerman Library, and there's a couple inches of water in it. I've been running, I think on my usual all-fours, and now I dive into the water. It's completely shallow, but I can still body surf and kind of swim in it, much apparently to the amazement of those looking on. Some firemen are running their hose from the truck, the source of the water. They turn the hose on me, hitting me in the legs and back and the seat of the pants, propelling me faster. What a pleasure.

We get finally to our building. But the direction we've come from has put us in a place where the courtyard and entrance is several floors below us, apparently the complex is nestled into a hillside. I feel I don't have time to go all of the way around, so I simply resolve to climb down the face of the building. [I've dreamed this place before. See Everybody's Drunk Here, January 16, 2007] The face of the building is mostly windows, which protrude as casements only a couple of inches, and the windows open outward from the top, so I need to be extremely careful not to misstep, or pull one open and fall to my death. There is a thin lip just behind the frame of the window, I need to focus on keeping my fingertips on those lips as I lower myself down. I can imagine that a few of the mean old divorcees that live in these places are going to take exception to crazy old Ron climbing down the face of the building. But they should be used to it.

I do make it down without major mishap. My buddy meets me at the bottom. He took a safer route. We go up to our apartment. It's really kind of a dorm, and there is a common shower room. Nothing nasty about this place, though. It's a luxury palace. Each person has their own shower head, below which is a stone pedestal sink-shaped shelf piled with soaps and shower products. Each shower head is individually cast into the shape of an animal, the showers issue from their mouths. Mine is a sort of two-headed serpent or dragon. Some skinny kid is lurking around. I go after him, challenge him. But my buddy tells me to cool it, that this is so-and-so, a new member of our boys only adventure club. I apologize. We do really need to be getting back to the party, though. We've been gone a long time.

Volley!

Homemade Indian Tacos, melon, water, later some popcorn.

Lost a lot of this.

But I'm starting to understand that our mission is tainted, twisted. What we're doing to the inhabitants of this place is wrong. I consult with them, they give cryptic advice in long, lowing voices. Shadowy beings. I rally my shipmates to the cause, and the civilians from my ship are with us, too. It will be a fight, though.

At some point the other ships converge on us, to break our little rebellion and reestablish control. Our ship is a massive block smashed down into the side of a mountain, its side open. One of the other ships comes up over the edge of the cliff off to one side, a giant star-shaped vessel, 14 pointed I suppose, X,Y,Z, axes and four more on the triangulars. The alarm goes up, we gather our people back to the ship, get them inside for safety. Before the approaching ship knows it, though, I've ordered a volley, and a burst of missiles streaks toward them. Giant explosions and they nearly fall out of the sky, instantly crippled. Another ship, a sphere, approaches from another direction. This fight isn't over.

[Reading about the brutal repression of the United Irishmen in the late 1700's, the torture and cruelty. I knew that it would show itself in my dreams. The missile volley is courtesy of playing Homeworld 2 this weekend.]

Carving pumpkins before guests arrive

Dinner at Marsha's with pesto cheese tortellini, fresh bread, lots of melon, homemade muffins for desert, water. A few beers later.

Josh and I live at my parents' house, but it's ours. It's halloween and I've stayed in my pajamas all day. We need to get some pumpkins carved, and Josh is across the street at the Major's, working on some. I go and get one cleaned out, but I forgot the knife and marker, so I go back across the street. Some friends of Eric's are coming to stay with us for some reason, and we're not really ready. I grab a boning knife, but then decide to bring our nice one, too. And a marker. Where's the marker? I'm all over the place, a mess and wasting time. Then the alarm won't set, or it's making a weird noise. Has a message about smoke on the screen. What the? It's seeming broken.

It's getting dark by now. I go out the front door and there's this group of old people trumping across the yard and back along the side of the house. What the hell? I stroll up behind them, ready for trouble. They have a 4' step ladder and they're climbing over the wrought iron gate. I interrupt them, but they turn out (and into) be Eric's friends. I can't quite place who they are, but their faces are pretty familiar. They keep using the ladder and tossing themselves over the gate roughly. I mock them and simply open the gate; it is, after all, unlocked.

Running over to Andy's House

Relatively late dinner of Frontier breakfast burrito with beans instead of eggs, a side salad, water.

I'm going over to Andy's house, which is down in the ghetto rather than in Nob Hill. I'm running, and I consider going down to all fours, but since this is real and not a dream, I decide that would be useless. I do lean pretty far forward, though, compact myself. I'm using my arms as if I have ski-poles, and they do add speed. At one point I bolt forward really fast-- how did I do that? Verbal instructions in a woman's voice start running in my head. DIfferent gestures with my arms will have different effects. I start practicing a series of different movements, some work, some don't. But I am moving at pretty high speed, like a Jedi sprinting on Battlefront II.

I get to Andy's place, the apartments down at Cornell and Coal. I go up to his place, go on in. The place is a wreck. Where's Andy? I find him back in one of the bedrooms. There's a big Native guy in bed with a woman, but all fully clothed, the covers pulled up. Watching TV. Andy is obviously fucked up on something. I'm guessing some pretty serious acid. Someone asks me if I will take Andy to the bathroom. Sure. He's not entirely sure who I am, though he seems to recognize me. He asks if we know each other. I'm reassuring. I think about taking advantage, but I'm not that big a predator.

Pig Eugene from high school is there. We encounter each other in some sort of courtyard with columns and lit with floodlights. He's there to cause trouble, of course, but I have no intention of letting him. We fight. I mean, what can I do, but I jump him from behind, get him by the head, hang on for dear life. He struggles, and I am surprisingly strong. Eventually it is a draw. We sit and he smokes, I apologize.

Giant To-Do at JQ's

Pasta salad with "chicken", tomatoes, feta, basil. Cantaloupe. Choco cupcakes (several).

JQ and Andy are having a big to-do at their place, I think it's kind of a family reunion. The property has been transformed, though, it is vast and lush and grassy. The house looks more like Dr. Howe's old place down there. I'm around and trying to be helpful, though I'm not on the clock for this, just there for the ride.

Outside there are large tents set up with fields of white folding chairs, large bouquets of flowers. It looks more like a wealthy garden wedding than anything. People are arriving, parking on the far side of the tennis courts & trudging in. I'm pretty uncomfortable & don't feel like being friendly to strangers.

But I run into this woman who seems nice and we start to talk and decide we will hang out together. She forgot something back in her car, so we head back around to it. Seems like we took a long way around, but who cares. On the way we're talking about her divorce, how she's gotten totally screwed because her attorney was weak, and now she ends up with nothing and her husband gets everything. I'm sympathetic & comforting. She goes on to say something about something, "As long as it's not black and blue." I give myself a moment to take this in, but can't make head or tail. Say What? "You know, stamps." I realize that she's denigrating tattoos. I realize that I'm in pants and my sleeves are down. "Oh," I respond, testily, "you mean like these?" and pull my sleeves up. "Or maybe these?" I yank at the hem of my blue dickies, though I don't actually show her my tattoos there. "Or perhaps these?" and I make like to undo my pants and yank them down. [In the dream, this last one is an empty bluff to embarrass her, though it occurs that that is the way I can best show my thigh tattoos.]

I'm starting to wonder if I really want to hang out with this woman. She seemed cool, but now she just seems like a condescending, classist bitch. Do we really have to sit together at dinner?

Oaxacan soccer team (non)fantasy with really messed up junk

Dinner at MarJar's, tofu veggie stirfry with peanut sauce (recipe in Deb Madison, gotta try that!), water, a slice or three of chocolate birthday cake. [This dream is definitely a flash back to my crush on Pablo. We saw Mimo the other night on my birthday and Pablo and maybe his brother do make appearances in this dream.]

A young men's soccer team from Oaxaca has come to stay with us. We live in a meandering house, sort of between New Mexican Terrirtorial and Arts & Crafts. I'm out on the back porch with Evil Levi and we're joking about the guys, what crazy cats they are. Some of them are quite horny and firtly. Levi says so and so is married, and so is this other one, but he's watching out for this one or that. One in particular, Guacho (pron WATCH-oh; is this even a name or a word?), is the one to watch out for. Horny bugger.

I've recently had 33 of my 34 penises removed, however, I show him. (A surprisingly simple action on my part-- oh, look here at my genitals, see where all of this has been removed?) My junk looks like big flat head of cauliflower, but fleshy like those deformed goldfish faces, and pink. This is an awful image, but at the time I'm unconcerned. And apparently all of my penises were the size of a Mike&Ike. There's just one left, dead center. Before I could apparently have sex with large groups of people at once, but now, more appropriately, just with one.

I go to take a shower. The bathroom is cedar paneled, reminds me of the Cate's cabin when I was a kid, kind of. I get in and start soaping up my body, but then realize that I'm still wearing my shirt, one of my short-sleeved button-downs. Oh geez. Well, can I just rinse off the soap and keep the rest from getting soaked...oh forget it, I'll just have to deal.

Getting a job is hard

Native feast: Calabacitas, pinto beans, green chile cornbread. (This was a pretty great meal.)

I'm going for what I think is an interview process for a job managing a collection. But it turns out that this is some sort of application marathon, this place is chock full of people, mostly women about my age in uninspired pant suits. I already filled out an application for this gig, so I'm pretty annoyed that this is what I'm here for.

The place is weird, though. It's a very dark environment, with downlights illuminating our particular places, but otherwise...the environment is pitch black, we could be on floating platforms in the middle of space for all I can tell.

I go for a walk and end up somewhat lost in this office-y maze, still pitch black except for immediate surroundings. I find my way to an office with a living human in it, some guy in jeans and t-shirt and kind of long hair. Somehow we ascertain that he is the guy doing stop-gap on the job I've applied for. He knows who I am, and he hopes that I get the job, but it's not really his decision. He leads me back to the big place where I need to be.

Everyone has a sort of cheap-o laptop that has been handed out. It reminds me in a way of the "Computer for Every Kid" systems like Foutzy has. The keyboard is extremely narrow top to bottom, and the thumb pad mouse is strange. I have to input my info here and get it processed. Talking to that guy has encouraged me, though.

But what the fuck, some stupid woman behind me actually gets on her cellphone and is having a loud, animated conversation. (I think it's actualy Laura Ackermann from highschool, which is extremely random, and Laura I don't think would ever behave this way!) She's going on and on about being done already, and yeah, people are still working on theirs, and on and on. I turn around and trow my arms up and ask "Are you KIDDING?" She gives me a snide snarl and replies, "No." Back to her asinine conversation and she guffaws, says "You don't see THAT much...yeah this guy in front of me just told me to shut up, can you believe it?" But then a proctor-like woman comes over and throws her out. Laura's indignant. Score one for people who act like adults.

Josh's Granny and Her Used Book Shoppe (dream 2)

[see last dream]

Josh has taken me back to Missouri with him, to see where he grew up, see the towns, see his family. We're on our way to his grandma's used book store. It's in a below-street space on an elegant block of Depression era brick buildings. We go down in and it's sweet and charming, brightly lit and clean. His granny is really nice and very friendly to me. She sells books and candy and some trinkety stuff. Josh tells me of the irony that her friend runs another such shoppe at the end of the block, also downstairs and all. I need something, some product, that granny doesn't have, so I get sent down the block to the friend's store. This store is darker, more wood, and she has several people working for her, all young women toiling away at desks with ledgers or paperwork. I feel bad that I'm patronising another store, not granny's. But she sent me down here, so...

Shipping out to the Navy (dream 1)

Hot Caprese pie, tabouleh, hummus & pita, water at MarJar's.

I'm shipping out for the war, and soon, like tonight or tomorrow. I need to get everything ready, get packed, get set. I can't seem to pull myself together, though. We're at a bar or restaurant, crowded. Some guy that kind of looks like Judge Schwartz is fucking with me & my buddies. I jump up and mean to pummel him. I have him by the nape of the neck, my fist is poised to pound his face in. I hesitate, though. If I get arrested tonight, I'll miss my ship. I have to ship out, and if I pound this guy I'll let everyone down. I momentarily consider the up-side of that, but I can't let everyone down. I toss him aside. I'm too busy for this. I spend the rest of my dream desperately trying to get my things together. I make it down to the docks, but did I bring my uniform? Do I even have one? What am I going to do?

I work for Malcolm X

A few days ago, not certain when or what we'd had for dinner...

I work at a museum, not like any museum, I've ever really worked at. But it's sort of on campus. The environment seems more Explora! than art museum, though. Lots of black fiber/felt walls and red enameled pipe.

I'm supposed to meet my mom, cuz she's going to have a look around with me, see where I'm working and what I'm doing. In the mean time, I'm goofing off with the guys. I think Jonesey is there, some other guys. They keep pressuring me to go off on some fool adventure, when I'm supposed to be waiting for my mom. And I certainly don't want to expose her to these goons, either. She shows up and I kind of miss her, but I see her just inside and I go to catch up. I end up repeatedly diverted, however, between crap and apparently some official business.

In the end, it's time to close the place up. I think my mom has gone already. Malcolm X is my boss, and he's locking the place up. He's wearing the white garments of the Hajj, including a white prayer hat. I try to keep up with him, but he's really moving fast. There is a black family there that has been traveling a long time to get here, and waiting all day to see him, and now in his haste they they will miss him, and they are very sad about this. I tell them to give me a moment, let me see what I can do. Before he gets to his studio, I run up behind him and embrace him, stop him in his tracks. I whisper in his ear that I know that I ask a lot of him, but I need to ask one more thing. I explain the situation, and he's glad to take the time. He goes in his studio, which is JQ's studio, and sits down in the chair by the folding table. The family comes in and they are very relieved that they have the chance to meet him. I'm glad for them.

Please Don't Fire Me!

Chicken, pepper, feta sammies, water. Later bowl of LIFE cereal.

I'm starting my new job at a restaurant, which is rather like Lucky Boy, but with table service, maybe some ref to the old Jubilation Deli. The inside is a creamy yellow, the tables small (geez, Spoletto?) Marta and Claire both work there and got me hired on. It's my first dinner service, and I feel like I don't quite have a handle, but I'm a good server and I can wing it, and the girls will be there to give me some guidance and help if I land in the weeds. We serve the first, late afternoon rush. After that I have to just pop home to change or something, I think I wore the wrong thing.

I go home (to my parents' house) to change, and everything is chaos. We have unexpected company that's come to stay the night, there's people everywhere, I get trapped into one conversation and situation after another. I can't stand this. I have to go, don't you people understand? But I simply can't get away. My 15 minute break to change has certainly moved past an hour now. I'm so fucked. I finally finally finally get away and (run? on all fours? I think so.) go back.

I knock at the back door of the restaurant. The wife of the owner pair opens and looks down at me. I literally drop to my knees and begin begging for them not to fire me. She asks me something about it all being "totally retarded," and I agree, I think she realizes that obviously something beyond my control happened. I head in and down some stairs. But then I realize that maybe she asked if I was totally retarded, and I said yes, and now she thinks she's employing a person with special needs. And come to think of it, my speech does seem very halting through this whole experience. I don't think I'm retarded, though.

The game of torture

This from a couple of nights ago, I think after beer bust shenanigans at the Atomic.

I'm a woman, a mother, trapped with my husband and child. They've taken us captive, and we're going to be tortured, we know. We're led through corridors, the walls change around us. My husband is taken, and we have to watch. Though a green-tinted window, he is floated up in the air, somehow suspended horizontal. From above him descends brownish tentacles, eventually almost like the root ball of a tree. He's disoriented and screaming. The roots or tentacles suddenly drop, pound into his body. It's horrible.

I'm looking through specimen drawers, full of petrie dishes and jars, samples. They are failed experiments with my flesh and cells, all rotten & monstrous. (cf Ripley finding all of the failed clones in Aliens: Resurrection) I'm tempted, indeed, to go all Ripley & destroy everything, but I know they're watching and laughing at me, it's what they want. I won't play.

My son and I are taken to a place and turn into cartoons. My husband is there, too, and he and I become trees, we grow together, our roots move together, our branches. Our son is a turtle (Tootsie Roll commercial style). Suddenly, though, he turns into a frog, jumps up in our limbs and starts eating all the leaves. It's not our son, an imposter maybe the whole time, who knows where he is really. But now we're trees, we can't defend ourselves. The frog with eat our leaves and we will die. Sadness.

The Taliban donates a box of bugs

Brickyard pizza with banana peppers and olives, water, later bowl of cereal.

I'm in charge of the rec room for the troops, stationed out here wherever we are. There isn't much to do here, I have little work with. It's mainly a big open room, conference center sized, one side is bounded by a raised hallway about 3 or 4 stair steps up from our floor. There's a folding table at the opening of the main stairway down, and I keep going back to it to check some sort of ledger.

A local mullah or warlord is donating a game for our boys to play, a little-man game like Risk. I figure that these guys can get into a little war strategy game, blow off some steam, have some amusement. There's gotta be some old gamers here, right? The stuff arrives, and it's a big cardboard box, about 24x18x10 inche, and rather full of the game pieces. A little more than I expected.

But then I realize that this thing is crawling, full to the brim with bugs, because that's how the locals play the game, with a host of insects instead of plastic playing pieces. Holy moley. I gotta kill these things, our boys are never gonna play with a box of bugs. But I also don't want to offend the old man, tall, stern, long black robe and black turban. (cf Taliban Ambassador in Tree Cups of Tea last night) I decide that I can microwave the whole lot, kill the bugs, and solve the problem. So I put the box in a microwave and set to going for a few minutes. I take it out and the bugs have all turned into plastic playing pieces. Or not, from underneath the remaining bugs come lurching and streaming out. A giant black centipede rears up, waves in the air, before the rest of him slides out and moves off at a clip. I've dropped the box, maybe even turned it out. There's a lot of centipedes and roaches or beetles still alive, but as they crawl away across a surface covered with newsprint paper, they stop, they die, they give off fluids.

Bad tattoos and the heimlich

"Chicken" & mozz sammies, peas with dill and butter, water. Later bowl of frosted flakes.

I think this takes place in Buffalo, NY, which Foutzy and I were reminiscing about recently. I think it's mainly around that hip street by the hotel with all the little hippy businesses & restaurants.

My friend, this mustachioed sorta guido guy in a tank top, is going to give me a free tattoo, homestyle. We're looking for a place to set up, preferably outside. We settle next to this concrete stair that joins two sections of broad sidewalk. I can't recall what my tattoo idea was, maybe a solid band across my cheekbones & the bridge of my nose. Or was it something along the side of my neck and up onto my head? Maybe it was never a fully formed idea. I lay down on the top landing of the steps and he goes to work on me. I'm really excited, and I'm not really thinking about what he's doing, off in dreamworld.

But then I notice that he's down on my chin, and I wonder what the hell. I come up out of my reverie and sit up, ask what he's doing. He seems confused; he assumed he was doing the tattoo I wanted. Someone hands me a hand mirror. He's inked brown scribbles all over my face, from over my brows, down my cheeks, to my chin. Sort of a heart-shaped pattern. The dense scribbles are definitely reminiscent of Jaune's Porcupine Ridge color blocks. I panic. He's completely scarred me, it's hideous.

I run home or somewhere I'm staying. I'm certain that I have a book of home remedies that had an entry on how to get fresh tattoo ink back out before the wounds set and it's permanent. I can't find it, and my panic is growing. I try for the internet. I can't figure out how to find the information I know is out there.

I go out in the back yard and there's a crowd of people my age, having a barbecue. A really pretty girl that reminded me of Myra Brown, or maybe one of the Next Top Model girls, is talking and laughing, eating a hot dog. She starts coughing, and at one point I hear a pop noise, I know that the hunk of food just moved from her throat to completely blocking her windpipe. She might actually die, and another young woman tries to give her the heimlich maneuver, but it's not working. Does anyone else know how? I step up, certain of my strength and skill. I grip her and in one powerful jolt knock the blockage out of her. It makes the same popping noise going out as locking in, so I know that she's okay.

Kimo makes a guest appearance

Home made minestrone, whole wheat rolls, water. Later a bowl of cereal.

I haven't been remembering dreams lately, or more exactly, I've been waking up with a memory but quickly forgetting, though I remember remembering. Very frustrating.

I know that Greg Mortenson (3 Cups of Tea guy) shows up, I think in a sort of... I think he is an Idol or priest of some god, there is something on his lap, triangular, and reaches up almost to his chin. He is seated Someone else comes into view with the same setup, and there is definitely a religious connotation there.

At some point, I look over and little Kimo is there next to me. He looks up, rolls over for belly rub. I am overwhelmed. Someone (I hope it was Josh) asks me what's wrong, and I can barely get words out. It's little Kimo, come back to spend a moment with us. I know he can't stay, this is just a moment, but it's the most wonderous thing. I lean down and kiss his soft little fur, stroke him and muss his hair. He gazes calmly and intently into my eyes. It is heartbreaking but wonderful.

Alien Invasion (again?)

Veggie burger & sweet potato fries at the Blackbird, water.

Left my job at NGPWG/Matrix on Thursday, start with Jaune on Monday.

Another alien invasion dream. I'm at an old, bombed out school/ruin of some sort, with a number of survivors, many of them teenagers. The aliens are on the move and we're all trying to stay calm and quiet, attract less attention. Rob Thalmann and Chris Lucas are there, Good to see them. I think that Josh is with me. We all are talking, and we discuss that Rob and Chris have only been together for a year, so they're not sharing a bed yet. We all agree that having our own beds is nice. I look out over the horizon, a relatively green and lush, grassy environment. I can see movement like a swarm of birds against the orange sunset. But I know that it's THEM. Suddenly strafing fire is coming down, tracing its way towards where we are. We scatter and dive for cover. Seemingly a passing attack.

I go back up into the building, walls all blown apart, roof sections missing, so I can see from above down into the sections of building below. People huddled in groups, scratching around. There are wounded. A woman is kneeling over a man across the room from me, he's hurt and maybe dying. So it goes, it seems. Noise at the door,a small group of soldiers is there, two or three men and a woman. She's one of them, though, inhabited, and only I seem to realize it. But then she breaks character, comes at me, lurching and like a zombie. There is panic, but I lunge and grapple with her. I position my leg and throw her backwards. Her forehead impacts the edge of a table and is bashed in. I think she's dead, but I'm uncertain. We're obviously unsafe here, but where can we go? I feel increasingly agitated and nervous. The strain is driving me mad.

Pueblo Neo-Fascist Architecture

Pasta with "meat" balls, salad with yummy berries, cookies, water at Marsha's

(Wrote humorous post about Pueblo Neo-Fascist architecture on Duke City Fix, with a link to the Domeneci Fed Courthouse last night.)

Down by the Federal Courthouse. We're playing a boardgame, sort of a Monopoly/Trivial Pursuit/Cosmic Encounter sort of thing. I draw a card which has instructions on it. People won't pay attention, won't be quiet. I'm trying to figure out the instructions on the card, something about taking off my pants? Do A, then B, then C, then D. It's very complicated and I can't figure it out. A woman (Marsha?) is trying to read through it with me, but it's simply too complicated.

tornado cars

Grilled veggie sandwich & sweet potato fries at the Blackbird, some beers. (From Sat night, between the 2 days working at the home & lifestyle nightmare.)

I'm out on the west side, but it's different. Near the escarpment, and somehow I'm flying, in some sort of small craft. From a certain angle, I can see ruins tucked into rifts in the cliff face. (cf my downtown dream. what's up with the ruins hiding under my city?]

Transfer uptown to the bank building at San Mateo & Central. I'm there with Mary Sundstrom & maybe someone else. We're up on a pretty high floor. It's an observation level, completely open across the entire floor, with tables and booths set up and people can sit and have some coffee & a snack and see the city.

I'm telling Mary about the winds there at that building, about the wind tunnel of the canyon, the cables out from the building into the parking lot. She's expressing her appreciation for me taking her there, how nice it is to learn about this fascinating history. Then something out the window catches my eye. "What the FUCK?" It's a blue sedan, and old 80's kinda junker car. The winds have whipped into a cyclone around the building, and the car has been picked up and is gliding slowly towards us. As it approaches, it veers to one side as it enters the cone of the cyclone. I can see a guy in the drivers' seat. He is sitting very quietly, his head down. He knows he is going to die & there's nothing that can be done about it. I'm panic stricken, but I know that I'm powerless to help. And here comes another. A brown Honda is heading up from the ground, it has 2 people in it, they seem more panicked. And another. God, this is horrible. I can't tear my eyes away from it. We are going to watch these people die, and we can't do anything.

Don't get a root canal

Mac & Cheese, Broccoli, biscuits, beer.

I'm with two people, maybe Jacqui & some guy, we're all really punk rock. We're hanging out on and by a fence, sort of our side gate and sort of the white block wall from mom & dad's back yard. They're asking about my mom, about root canals. I tell them that my mom used to be the coldest, meanest dentist in town & you didn't want to get a root canal from her, lemmie tell ya. I make the international sign of getting fisted to punctuate my statement.

Before I know it, the guy I'm hanging out with has drilled open a molar in my mouth & is giving me a root canal, right there on top of the fence. He's really got some leverage into my mouth with this pik, and before I know it, I've fallen clean off the wall. They have to help me back up.

Past & Future Downtown

Boca with swiss & Mushrooms, fries, water at Mannie's

I end up downtown with Andy & Coach Etheridge. I think we have have flown there somehow, vague memory of feeling really uncertain & unsafe, descending from the east along Central Ave, near the Sunshine Building.

But we're downtown. It's a ghost town, completely deserted and weeds are grown up through cracks. Snow on the ground. Coach Etheridge and I are explaining to Andy about why he doesn't recognize it. This is the OLD downtown, from before he moved here. All of these skyscrapers were torn down, we explain. See here, this is where the Cafe (I think maybe New York Pizza Department) will be. We gesture to an absolutely huge black glass building, which must be 50 stories tall. They tore that down, too, we tell him, pointing to the equally huge building just next to the black one (this one white and stripey like the bank building at Central & San Mateo). We make gestures with out fists like we are swinging hammers, to indicate the past/coming destruction. (The buildings and sky have a very downtown Vancouver feel to them.)

And then down HERE, we continue... The street falls away and there is a long, wide, deep gouge back into the earth, into solid rock, like a massive rock overhang at Mesa Verde. It reaches under where the two skyscrapers stand. We scuttle down the slippery snow covered incline until we can see up under, and there are indeed cliff dwelling ruins up under there. I tell Andy that this is the Mission, point out where a mission church (California style, like off a salsa bottle) is grafted into the native architecture. I tell him how I would go down there and look around, but it's just too dangerous. Brave but smart, that's how I present myself. There are bright strands of plastic in neon colors stretched here and there, indicating the danger and instability.

We enjoy the view for a while, and then it's time to work back up the incline to the surface. It's a bit slippery, and coach Etheridge is wearing dress shoes. Andy and I try to give him a supportive shove up the path. It takes a couple of tries but he figures out a way to get traction.

Cloverfield Empire Spaceballs Video Game

Belgian waffles with berries & bananas, some sweets later on.

I'm with little Claire from the restaurant and maybe Josh, too. Maybe my mom? We're out at the east end of town, and the creature from Cloverfield is in the move out there. We keep running, through hills and through groups of little old adobe houses. There's a culture of these reptilian beings in a depression out there, and I try to lead the creature there. The creatures are shaped like the insects that hide as rose thorns, but with muscular, humanoid limbs, and they walk upright. The Empire (a la Star Wars) is there, and we have to stay away from the stormtroopers, too. And Vader is there, but in his Spaceballs-sized helmet. And he floats like Vader in Battlefront. There are several small craft around, and I try to fly in some, which affords me a reticle view like Battlefront. At a certain point, Claire is leaning up against one of the houses, she's exhausted, and near tears, but still wants to go on.

(A giant mish-mash of a dream.)

Iva has a skunk

Opening night for Coach Tristani's show, came home and Josh had made Chickn Parm sammies & chips, had a couple beers.

I have to go over to Iva Morris' house to feed her pets while she's away. It's not in the country, but kind of out in an area with some woods nearby. (Actually looks a lot like my memories of Seminole, or...?) A very little brick house up on a foundation that's painted sort of teal, and trim to match. I'm there with maybe Josh and maybe someone else. I'm not really certain what her pets are, or what I'm to do for them, but I'm certain I'll figure it out. We go in, and the house seems to be one small room, crammed with homey antiques. On a low table in front of a window across the room, a large skunk is relieving itself into a small litter pan. Bloop bloop bloop. I freeze, really uncertain of what to do. A skunk has gotten in the house? Or...is this like that PBS commercial-- is the skunk a pet? How am I to know? Panic or offer it a cookie? Fuck, Iva. What the hell? The skunk makes a run towards me, but really just towards the open door. Do I stop it? Try to keep it in. I panic and try to pin it with my boot. Somehow I miss and Ixopo is caught underfoot instead. She lets out a little kitty squawk, I have her just under the ribs, on her back. Yikes! Sorry! Hey, she's okay. But the skunk got past me.

Star Wars Strategy

Mac n Cheese, Brocco, Rolls with honey & apricot butter, a couple pieces of salt water taffy.

I go into the adjoining toystore. It's a long, narrow space that kind of curves, a counter runs the length of one side, the other is sutffed with merchandise off of pegboard hangers. The guy starts trying to sell me on some stuff, but I'm really insterested in these Star Wars models they're playing with. They come with these big pads to create an environment for the toys, which are cast and sort of fist-sized for the larger vehicles like the imperial walkers. The salesman wants to show me all about them, especially how the pads have this new technology where they lock together. The pads, which are dense foam and about an inch thick and in swirling pink, green, and white, have little tails off the sides. He's trying to just touch them together and have them lock, but I can tell that it takes but a simple twist, like a bread tie, and that's how they work. I show him. But I become aware of growing anxiety, noise. I think that the toys are analogs, controls for a very real and ongoing battle, and we are the puppet masters. This is perplexing, but I also want to do my duty, to contribute.

The Dogs of War

Antipasto salad, water, a couple of beers, later night corn flakes

This was part of a larger, perhaps somewhat epic dream.

My company of soldiers is hastily trying to organize the defense of our particular section of the wall. We know that they are coming, and we have our animals positioned. I'm not certain if I can see the attack, it seems like giant--deer sized --dogs. My view flashes between violence in the forest and tactical drawings in three dimensions. I keep seeing a diagram of a kettle-shaped human figure, with three red/energy lines from each hand, leading to our dogs, which are not represented. The fray is pitched and violent, and it comes up against the chili-red wall.

Then we are inside the compound [some references to Aunt Betty's house], after the violence. I find the sergeant washing up in a red bathroom. I have part of a harness from one of our dogs in my hand, and I hold it up stretched out, so everyone can see that in tiny rhinestones is lettered "U S AIR FORCE." This causes immediate consternation, the sergeant grabs up the harness strap and heads off to tell the commander that SHE is loose. My sense of smug satisfaction seems to suggest that I had been warning that these animals were too dangerous. I hear the sergeant shouting, and we need to act, because she [is her name Sylvia?] may circle back around and come for us.

two dreams from recently

Haven't been remembering much of dreams lately, and these two that I do remember I failed to put down here.

Several nights ago: No memory of prior foods...
Zombie attack. We're downtown, and we're trying to get from the area of the Launchpad, back east, out of downtown. A lot of people are streaming up Central Avenue, but me and some businessman realize that there's no one over on Lomas (which we can see, and to which there is a diagonal joining blvd), and we start heading that way. Fewer people, less attention, we're probably thinking. But as we head off and near Lomas, it begins to dawn on me that there might not be any people over here for a reason. Yep, here they come. (Mind you, this is all pretty academic-- I'm really not frightened by any of this.) All I've got to work with are my fists & my boots, which doesn't seem very promising, but I'm confident. Moving in our same direction is a South Asian guy in an orange plaid shirt & jeans. He don't look too good. I think he's right on the cusp of the infection taking him over, and I think he knows it. He doesn't speak, he looks at me with either resignation or the dull eyes of the reanimated. I grab for him before he can grab for me.

Last night: Frontier
Serious mish mash of images that I think are coming out of the final chapter of Shusaki Endo's The Samurai, which I finished last night.

Followed by... I'm around Nob Hill. Sadiki has given me one of his old skateboards, which he has refurbished, which includes a new coating of these weird rubberized felt scales (cf Katrina Lasko's black felt ball sculpture, I think). I'm going cruising up Central toward the center, really sailing along, even uphill. I veer off behind the center and go into the grocery. In there I think I lose a part of my board, a wheel or something, but I find it again outside. My car is there, and I'll probably drive wherever I'm going from this point. I love this skateboard, though, especially cuz Sadiki gave it to me.

catch the train back downtown

Olympia vegetarian combo, water, later night fruit loops

I'm way way up in the foothills and there's a woman who seems lost. She needs to get back to the train to catch it back into town, back to where she parked. I think she's from out of town. I try to explain where she needs to get off. I'm looking through the windows of this building we're in, trying to get a reference so I give her good directions, but all around is just the foothills of the Sandias, so I can't get a grip on directions.

I realize that she's parked her car in a garage downtown, and somehow that's near where I'm going, so I tell her to just stick with me. We get in the train and start west, heading down Central Avenue. There's only 2 stops between the mountains and downtown, though, and who knows how far to the next after that, so I'm pretty nervous that we get off in the right place.

Teeming with beatles

Teriyaki chicken bowl veggie combo, water, late night fruit loops & a (not scary) Robert Blake Lovecraftian story

This nightmare seemed to last all night, I woke up repeatedly & when I went back to sleep, it would start up again. Finally slept sitting up to make it stop. I don't remember all of it but, it was all about serious bug action, cf. the spider-infested corpses in The Mist.

The bugs are creamy white in color, the size of a walnut, segmented like rolly-polly's but more hunched. They're everywhere. I have a view of an old wall with peeling paper, and the bugs are absolutely swarming in and out of it.

At some point I both AM and can SEE this woman, an emaciated african woman, my eyes are sad, I am dying. I think that the bugs are killing me/her. I reach out and take her/my hand, and it is dry as paper, like crushed vellum.

All of this went on and on, I probably woke up 3 or 4 times. I think the last time I woke up, I was looking around my room and I could see PeeWee curled up in the top of my laundry basket, her head moving like she was cleaning herself. How did she get in there, though? Something's not right. What if the bugs are getting into her? At this point I plunged into active terror, the bugs aren't a dream, they're here and they're going to kill PeeWee. I switch of the light revealed no dog, no movement, no bugs.

Sleep sitting up, lights on.

(And yet I woke up feeling like I'd had a magnificent night's sleep. I often have this experience when I sleep sitting up, that it is very deep, satisfying sleep. Interesting.)

Travelling can be difficult to get going.

This was a few nights ago and, don't remember what I ate, think I drank some beer...

Josh and I are travelling in Turkey, with a tour group. We've decided to go off and do different things this particular day, so I've gotten Josh all ready & bundled him off on a bus to whatever his activity of the day will be. I'm left at the place we're staying, which is kind of a hotel, but instead of discrete rooms, there is a large, crappy warehouse-y space with beds & junk & furniture. (Looks like a hippy communal living space, actually. Might be a visual ref to Omar's old place in the former hotel in Bisbee?)

I need to get myself ready & I'm not even showered yet. The shower is in the middle of the big space, but is enclosed by some makeshift walls. Inside, it's a suprisingly nice stand-up shower, but with a medium-deep tb around it, and glass shower stall walls. I'm trying to indicate to everyone that I'm doong my best to get ready, that I'm not holding the whole group up. I strip down there in the open space while I wait for the shower to come available. I stand there naked, relatively confident. I consider all of my tattoos & that people can see them all. (And on my chest are my only-abstractly-planned birds, dark and graphic and strong, even though I can't remember any actual design!)

I get in the shower, and this slightly skanky woman follows me in, lounges about outside of the glass stall, trying to be seductive. I'm uninterested. She starts playing with a metaphor about maybe I'm looking for a new friend, if I'm not too god of friends already with someone else. I assure her that I am very good friends with Josh, thanks very much.

I finally get my act together, get dressed & out the door. I try hard to remember the digital camera, because I know Josh will want to see pictures of what I ended up doing. The bus leaves, but we pit-stop at Wild Oats (at Indian School and Carlisle), everyone wants to get coffee.

A woman drives by us as we cross the parking lot, in a strange open-topped car that looks like a car from an amusement park safari-themed ride, square with a bench that runs around the sides. It's an eco-car, I understand. I think that maybe Josh and I should get one for just neighborhood driving. They're very inexpensive. The woman looks like the Crocodile Hunter's wife, complete with khaki get-up.

Inside there is a little deli/bakery/coffee bar that we all crowd around. I'm uncertain of how this system works or what to order, but a young woman takes me under her wing and makes some suggestions. JD from the Rum Fits is there, too. But I look down and he'w wearinr teva sandals & I am somewhat taken aback. I thought more of him than that.

The Great Tokugawa Hijrah

Wonderful anti-pasta salads de la JJ, a few pieces of Halli's crispy chocolate treats

My dream is an historical lesson. Instead or mere intimidation, the arrival of the Americans in Tokugawa Japan brought invasion and warfare, and Japan was destroyed. What remained of the people and the few warriors left, i think there were 1000, took to the seas, however they could, in a great seaborn hijrah. They crossed the seas, and found the land of Palestine, deemed empty enough to take for themselves. But the westerners followed them there, not content with the land of the Sun, itself. And there in the land of Canaan, the Americans utterly destroyed the last ragtag remnants of the Japanese people, all the while railing against the "barbarians."

Frodo sings the blues

Frontier after the dec opening, followed by some gin and beer

(Kicking myself for not recording this earliwer, when I remembered more...)

At some point my mother is telling me, or I'm flashing back to her telling me, that demons and monsters have been revealing themselves to her.

The guy that played Frodo is going on stage to perform, he's sort of a guest vocalist. He gets up and the stage is very much a lecture-hall-like setup, he's actually in a button down and a tweed jacket, hunched over a podium & it's like a weird music video, his face awash with yellow light from below.

The musicians aren't taking it very seriously, though. They're sprawled out on a low grey platform below, barely picking at their instruments, and the guy closest to me is frankly being a sarcastic jerk.

Back to Frodo, but now he's gotten taller, he's stripped to the waist & sporting a pretty sexy swimmer's body, pearly white. He's singing a Tossers song, and doing a pretty darn good take. I'm intrigued, and kind of turned on.

can't we get this art show going?

Belgian waffles with blueberries & bananas, "sausage," water. Later a couple beers and some akavit.

A very scattered dream. In a nutshell:

I'm tying to get everybody together and over to my work, which is a wierd, nebulous building, its interior sheathed in black-painted chip-board.

We were supposed to get over there the day before, and I bought some pizzas for everyone, cooked som cheeseburgers. But now I've had to keep them all warm for 24 hours. Somehow, Jonsey has ended up with two of the four pizzas, and they're with him up in SF. We're trying to wait for him, but then it occurs to me that he won't be down before later in the evening & we should just take the two we have and go.

Sometimes I'm in my car, sometimes I'm on my bike. Pam is around. Josh is there. We have to meet up with Miguel.

We get to work and Miguel is trying to get people to listen to him, since it's his (fashion related?) show we're trying to get set up. He has informative instruction sheets to pass out, but I'm too chatty & he's frustrated with me.

I look around, and there's R. G ammons on the wall, paper-cutout pieces [cf his orthographic sketches, probably], but R has just taped them to the wall, strips all the way around, and some taped better than others. I'm frustrated. A swivelling camera is taking pictures of a woman who is touching the art.

Josh leaves me at the fair

Frontier early dinner, silent art auction at [AC]2, some beers & a movie with Josh after.

We're at the fairgrounds at the silent auction, it's over and Mike tells me that we've won "a painting by Beatta," which I surmise to be the round painting we bid on, since I know the other was Mike's. I didn't realize it was Beatta's painting, and I also hadn't realized it was only the tip of the iceberg, that the round painting represented an installation of an additional 28 objects, mostly chachkis, pennies on carboard, bits of this and that. Mike gets it all out & we take a quick look. We load it all into the car. Josh gets in to drive, and I'm about to climb in shotgun but something catches my eye and I pause for a second. Next thing I know, Josh has driven off without me. I run after the car, waving my arms, but the deep sand of the fairgrounds makes it impossible for me to gain, and he doesn't see me in his mirror. I know he's just spaced out & not being mean, but it is very frustrating.

Will he come back? Should I wait for him there? I wait for a few minutes and he doesn't return. Well, where can I go that he will find me? I don't want him to be driving all over creation looking for me and getting freaked out. Ahh, we were going to go to the post office, I'll go there and try to catch him. I have by skateboard [?] and I skate the short distance east on Central [the fair is somewhere around University in this scheme] to Cornell and go to the post office. I wait there for a short bit, but then figure that I should really just go home, where there's a phone and he'll have to come home eventually anyhow.

I skate south on Cornell, and Snoop Dogg is sitting on a stool in the street, near the gutter, with a gas can with a clock mounted into the top. Is this a bomb? Naw, he's just a homeless guy, and with the gas crisis [?] he's just there to give stalled motorists a bit of gas so they can make it to the service station, and make a couple bucks in the process. The clock is some sort of pumping system. As I skate past him, he turns and looks at something behind him, and I reach down and snag his gas can contraption and skate away. I head up Silver, and it occurs to me. "Did I just steal a homeless guy's only source of livelihood?" Well, too late now, I can give it back to him later, and I really want to get home right now. I suddenly have all of these packages with me that I have to balance. The second hand of the clock hits my fingers and I don't want it to break, so every 60 seconds, ostensibly, I have to lay my palm out flat so the hands can move over my fingers.

I get home, which is 406 1/2, and I approach from the far end of the alley. I pass Mikaela & Priscilla's yard fence, which has been replaced with chain link coops for large birds, like you'd see at the fair. We have a bunch in our yard, too, instead of the gate. I have to go through a series of these coops, which are tall enough for me to walk through, to get into the yard. I realize I ;ve left the first gate open, and a tiny black chicken and our little brown puffball puppy "Baby" have gotten out. Baby is chasing the tiny chicken, which is the size of a softball, and eats it before I can get to him and stop him. I'm calling out, "Baby, lay down' lay down, Baby." He chows the chicken and then "fffoooh" blows the head up in the air and it flies like a feather. I grab him and put him back in the coop and close it up.

While I'm in the coop, there is a song playing,
"Jean Vasquez, Jean Vasquez,
It's a period, I've read.
Jean Vasquez, Jean Vasquez,
It's a theory that I had."
over and over again

(321-123-436554b is roughly the tune, if you it were applied to scale, don't know the key off hand)

The phone is ringing, and I know I'll never get there in time to answer. Yet I can hear my disembodied voice on the phone, obviously talking to Josh. I'm yelling, but with humor. "I don't care if you did it chemically [by which he means automatically, without thinking], you left me at the fucking fair!"

And then suddenly Josh has pulled up in the drive. He bypasses the coops and uses a simple gate next to them, duh, and goes in the house. He doesn't speak to me. I follow him in. He's sitting on the carpet playing a video game or something. He still doesn't speak; I blow him a kiss, he doesn't respong. Is he mad at me? What the fuck? I'm dumbfounded. In no way is he allowed to be mad at me!

Kill the Bledders (warning: kind of violent)

Brickyard pizza with banana peppers, beer, later night cereal

My group and I are hiding out in the mountains, in a place of gorges and cliffs and dense deciduous forrest and forgotten buildings. We're on the run from the nasty forces of doom or something. We have to keep moving, ferrying across gorges, setting up camps. But at some point they've caught up with us. Someone calls out, "Bledders!" [the first vowel rhymes with "instead".] On the path, approaching us, are 3 or 4 men in uniforms carrying flat silver headed shovels, their vicious weapons that they can use as deftly as a sword. The others get moving, I create distractions and catch up later. But they're onto us, and at the next camp we again are approached, this time by a column of "soldiers" in plate-mail [def. cf to the Bodikka vs the Romans prog we watched last night]. They're led by an old wizardy man in white, and there are more Bledders in the area. On the chase. At some point an obviously underskilled Bledder catches up with me, but I'm able to get his shovel away, and I jab him in the gut with it. He goes down, but is still alive. In his wierd, fanatical, possibly drug addled Bledder haze, he continues to blabber on, spewing rhetoric. But he's a broken figure now, pitiable. I know the pain must be overwhelming. I strike him again, but only jaggedly gouge his neck. His suffering is apparent. I strike again, this time driving down through his throat, severing it open. The meat of his body is the color of, and his flesh becomes shiny and puffy like, cheap sausages. I move on.

cunundrum at the log slide

Tortellini with pesto, feta, olives, tomatoes; broccoli with lemon; water

I'm at the amusement park/terrarium/zoo place (I've dreamed of this place before). I get on the log ride, but it's very different than when I rode it as a kid. I expect a very Uncle Cliffs rollercoaster experience, but the new park has changed it into a long cruise of a ride. We proceed low along the side of a very dry canyon, the ride track fenced in with chain link fence on both sides. When I was a kid, it was cool to take off articles of clothing and leave them, to be retrieved when you passed by again. I relive this and take off my Lonsdale and my Sambas, and drop them in a neat pile along the side. I realize only too late that the ride won't pass here again, and I'm fucked.

Once the ride is over, back at the octagonal room with the reptile tanks in the rooms, I try to decide what to do. I'd better just walk back up there and get my shit, cuz the park is closing soon. My friends and I try to get back there, but it's much much further than I thought. We're moving through this uppity neighborhood, and my instinct is to just go back in the yards and try to get up to where the track passes, but I also know that the place I dropped my jacket and shoes wasn't by these houses, so I hold off, trying to stay out of trouble. We do finally find a sort of concrete paved gully to get back up the side of the canyon, but we have to be careful, and I'm starting to lose my certainty about where I left the stuff to begin with.

I think we go back and actually get on the ride again, since it will take me inevitably to the place in any event. But now the fences to the sides of the track hold back angry dogs, big Rottweilers, and I'm less certain than ever. I think I try to explain my situation to a young woman who works there, telling her about the old days and how it was, but she seems unconvinced and I'm not certain if I can get my stuff back.

calling forth spirits

Il Vicino calzone, spinach salad, water

I'm witness to some sort of deep occult event. A young woman is calling forth spirits. A great and powerful spirit will be the masterpiece, but she may not be able to control him. She has drawn the face of this spirit onto her notebook pad, deeply and layered, in black ballpoint pen. She is invoking the spirit. But he is struggling to take control, he is not cooperating. She decides to re-trap him. Her incantation begins and she heavily scribbles in a wall above the spirit's head, then one below, then one to the right. The only opening left for him is to the left, off of the page, into nothingness.

by plane or by boat

Brickyard pizza with olives and bell peppers, water, a few beers

I'm travelling with my parents and maybe others, a tour, in North Africa somewhere, but the visual setting is mostly my parents' house. It's time for the tour group to move on to Spain. We had a choice during the planning stages, whether to take a flight or a boat to Spain. Everyone chose the plane, so I chose the boat, figured it would be a neat experience and give me a little time alone in the middle of the trip.

But now the days is here, and I realize I never even told my family that I'm doing the boat instead, and I start to think that maybe the plane is a better choice, as far as time and just sticking together. Yes, I'll take the plane, after all. I'm all packed, [my suitcase is really my brown tweedy one, but twice the bulk, a pretty serious monster] and putting my stuff into the car. But wait, will I even be able to get a place on the plane now? Is it too late? I tell my mom what's up, and she's pretty aggravated. She asks if I'm sure that I even did the boat thing, or am I actually supposed to be on the plane?

That's a good question. I can't find my personal itinerary. Am I remembering wrong? Did I think better of it back then and am actually booked for the flight? Maybe I can go on the computer and call it up to check. I go in and sit down at my mom's computer, but how do I log in? What's the name of the tour company, even? Does anybody remember? I rip through my suitcase, trying to find a brochure. Time's a wastin' and my family is due at the airport, which looks like a dock, all whitewash and rounded industrial forms. The frustration is overwhelming.

can i get a dentist in here?

grilled cheese & tomato soup at mar jar, followed by some rice crispy treats & her fudgy bar things

I'm at the house (a wierd concoction of my parents', the wolf's place, and la cueva high school), where all of us live. I think that maybe we all have some amount of super powers. But that's all on the DL. In any case, I'm trying to do a little yard work [mom & dad's backyard], pull our some old, expired sunflowers along our property line. The fratboy jock assholes from next door come over, complaining that we're ruining their view, apparently they like the dead sunflowers. [note, they came from the chen's place, cf dad's yard work causing issues back when I was young?]

I go back inside, [Wolf's back porch/door] and I see Jason Wolf, maybe still dressed up as me, asleep on a bed in a room with a window that looks out onto the hallway. I go in to wake him up, I think. [narrative gets lost here...] Part of the house looks like the La Cueva cafeteria.

I take off for Dr. Simm's, I plan on doing like I always do: go in, tell Natalie from Facts of Life, who works the front desk, that I'll be back in a room, find myself an operatory, settle in, and do my own cleaning. But when I get there, Natalie is nowhere to be found. I don't want to just walk into the operatories, don't want to disturb anyone. Through closed doors I can tell that there are two meetings going on, probably the staffs of the two doctors that practice here. Natalie must be in one of the meetings. Forget it. I'm ready to take off, but up at the front now there's a couple of cops. Not certain where they came from, what they want. I try to play it cool.

Urkel is a human, sexual being

Bean chimichanga at Casa de Benavides with ma, da, y josh, water, later a cup of orange tea and a couple pieces of halloween candy.

Around 2:30 I woke up having chaotic flashing dreams about art, openings, and so on. Back so sleep after a while.

I'm at an indoor flea market type place. I see Tam (from highschool, or was that midschool?), she is looking at The Men They Couldn't Hang's Silvertown on LP. I tell her that it's a great album, but that I can burn I can burn it for her on CD. She does seem really interested.

Jason Wolf is there, and he tells me that the Urkel show is actually really edgy and funny, and I should check it out. I find an LP, but then I'm able to watch it somehow, like it's a laser disc. I have to agree, Urkel is a compelling character, far more complex than I would have thought. He's a human being, passionate, and sexual. I think that he's probably a horny bastard.

when things look up

buddha bowl at the corrales flying star with Jaune, Andy, & Josh, water, a couple beers later in the evening

I don't only dream dour things about work. I don't remember any details, but I know that I dreamed a very pleasing superhero type dream about working at Jaune's studio on the archive.

There. Sometimes I have very nice work related dreams!

unwanted visitors and chris simulates a penis-stork

horrible pumpkin stew, toast, a couple of Thompson treats

I'm at my parents' house with Chris. We're in a room watching a Buffy movie called _Buffy: Apocalypse._ There's a lot of commotion around the house, and I'm annoyed, I really just want to hang out with Chris and watch this movie. But then there's yet another interruption, a knock at the front door.

I go to answer and it's four older people (one played by Joan from Arts Business Assoc, but 15 years older). They really just start walking forward into the house, and I assume they are friends of my parents, but then I'm beginning to wonder, and I begin to ask them who they are, who they know here. They say that they know "Khannie and Richard," ("Richard" being a nickname for Josh for some reason.) and I'm increasingly dubious. I actually reverse their course at that point and herd them back to the door and ask them to just wait there. My dad is no help, he doesn't know if they're maybe friends of mom's or of Howard & Ann. I have to go track down my mom. I go in her bedroom and the door at the far end, next to the window, is closed, I think she's in the bathroom. I go knock and she says, "Just a MINUTE." Sorry mom.

I'm waiting and the bedroom door opens and I expect it to be the people, but it's Virginia Yen. She comes in and mom comes out and they're hugging & greeting & "glad to see you"-ing. I'm trying to get my mom to pay attention to address the old people question. I finally drag her into the living room. The old people have moved out onto the porch. Josh is there looking uncomfortable. I tell my mom that I'm certain they don't know Josh, and they certainly aren't in the crowd to be addressing me by _my_ nickname.

Chris reappears, bored, the movie is over. I sit in the den with my dad and watch Chris do a bad standup routine. But his big finale is a slight of hand that makes a bamboo pole, slightly conical, with a mouth cut and eyes drawn on, looking like a stork's head-- this appears like a dick-stention and he wags it at us. I think it's hilarious.

me and my trusty horse

Burrito, beer, late night apple dapples.

We're at a conference of some sort. I seem to be really just along for the ride. An obnoxious, wealthy character who seems to be in charge is offering some entertainment options. He has two passes left over from conference participants for a horse ride, and I accept.

I'm on my horse, moving up and down some serious hillside terrain. (Probable reference to Mesa Verde.) We're picking our way up a crumbling hillside gully. Somehow we end up going up and down several times.

Now to return the horse. I have to take him into this large storefront, which is stuffed with touristy cowboy stuff, leather goods. But fuck! I've lost the saddle & tack. Where did I leave that stuff? I start searching around, I know the saddle blanket was yellow with red and green stripes on it. I find something similar, but I think that belongs to this other horse here...should I just steal it anyhow? I don't want to get blamed for the missing gear, though I don't want to rip someone else off... I'm certain that the stuff is around here anyway, and not really lost. But it is frustrating.

me and steve get high and go for a run

belgian waffles, soysage, water, bowl of cereal for dessert

Long, rambling, multi-part dream, might be pieces of several dreams I'm conflating.

At a restaurant and hotel in the mall with my soccer team. I have some secret that I'm trying to keep from my mom, who is also with me. I go into the big lockerroom/bathroom. I take a crap and flush, but I don't flush the toilet for some reason. Someone comes in in a bit, while I'm getting myself ready in front of the mirror [?], and they flush the toilet and it overflows--and I mean overflows. Somehow a thin slurry of sewage gets absolutely everywhere. The person (a girl) is mad at me for some reason. Don't you pay attention to the toilet you use, I ask? Why did you use that toilet that was already [err] full? Sorry I didn't flush, but...

The restaurant has closed down while all of this is going on, as in gone out of business. Down a hallway there is great expectation and Joanne comes through a door, all light and vaseline lense style. Everyone seems to celebrate her arrival. A crowd had gathered during the bathroom drama, and we all exit into the restaurant, all the furniture is gone, the place is a big, empty room. (I think it's the space at Winrock Mall where the dollar store used to be, which was later a halloween store.) The woman who runs the place is lamenting, but they might try to re-open soon.

I end up at the grocery, trying to get the shopping done, and there's something about arranging art, too. I think there are Mike Egan pantings involved, trying to get them lit properly. Steve is there with me, and we have plans for hijinks as soon as we can cut loose from this place. We're moving through the store with a basket but not actually shopping. I have a huge hunk of acid in my pocket, as well as a tallboy of some crappy malt liquor. I start trying to surreptitiously break up the acid for us. At first, it's just a sheet the size of a playing card, light blue. I hope Steve doesn't think it's bunk, cuz I know he's used to the nice gel-cap stuff back up in Vancouver where he's from. But then it changes into, literally, a hunk-- light blue packing foam the size and shape of half of the top part of a hamburger bun. It's deeply scored in quarter inch squares, all the way down through, making for some really big pieces up in the middle. I tear off the edge shred and the adjoining smaller square, just like that for each of us. We pop it, and I pop my tallboy. I wonder what that's going to be like.

We take off, heading back toward my parent's house. The grocery seemingly was the one at Ventura and Wyoming, and we have to cross the Academy campus to get where we're going. It's night, and Steve is dressed all in black, kind of punk rock kid style, trim black pants, tight black shirt, scally cap. [I saw this very kid on the way to Smiths last evening.] We're moving along a wierd road, tree lined with a raised, broad, compacted stone path between, but the cars actually drive along the outside of the trees. We hope they keep where they're supposed to. We break into a a jog, then into a run, just trying to cover the distance. I hope that we can keep our shit together when we get to my parents'. The acid is starting to kick in, we're getting giggly and the mild beer buzz on top is a nice addition. Laughing and chatting and shooting the shit as we run along this compacted stone path.

I get a bad trache-tube

Chicken, pepper & feta sammies, beer beer beer (and a little cheap vodka)

I'm at a wierd villa, it has a sprawling layout and a central square tower that soars probably 10 stories. I don't know why we're there, and I don't know how many of us. R is there, myself, maybe Rob T? Maybe Josh? I don't know. It's art related, though, and there's some competitive aspect, or maybe even danger. I have very important skills. I think I have a cough or something, and R insists that I get a trache tube. I have my tube, and now she insists on feeding me through it. She has a very "How hard can it be" attitude. I'm dubious, but she will not relent. I'm seated in a high backed wooden chair, carved, in a vast, ancient hall within the villa, hung with red velvet drapery and golden light. R steps up and basically rips the breathing tube from my neck hole. A great howling rush of wind screams from the tracheotomy. We are all pretty unprepared for that, but R struggles forward and shoves the syringe-backed tube into the opening and forcefully syringes the contents down into my stomach. The clumsy trache insertion, however, also perforated my stomach, straight out through my belly. The liquid food sprays in a thin stream out of the perforation-- my stomach has sprung a leak. I'm tired of it all, and I don't want to deal, so I just put my finger over the thin spraying stream to keep R from noticing.

climbing fragment

pizza & salad, water, later some cereal

Some sort of chase/run dream, with a group of people, which seems to include Claire and Maresa & maybe some others of the kotex kastle old guard. At some point we're climbing up the side of the mountain. Up toward the top, the light is very dim, very gray, and we have to get up the side of some old stone block ruins. The last bit of the climb is perilous, the fall would be deadly. I'm up for it, but I seem to be carrying something that is restricting the use of one of my arms, and I'm in a difficult spot, not all the way up, not easy to get back down.

muddling through the art convention

Baked ziti with "beef", tomatoes, and capers; asparagus, fresh rolls & paprika butter, sour cream sugar cookies, water.

I'm at a convention. It's really not an art fair, it really is more of a convention, being held in a very corporate atmosphere, like a big, empty office floor with all of the cubicles removed. There are some booths, but mostly there are cheap convention chairs in groups, seemingly always a speaker, and there is stuff in alcoves along a wall that is like the cabinet wall in the Coke Gallery.

I'm there for two days, the first day I meet a woman running a booth, really just a couple of folding tables, really, with skirting attached around. She has some really interesting prints [which I can't quite remember at the moment], and I consider buying one. Maybe I don't have that kind of money, though.

The next day I'm back, and she has more prints, including some smaller ones that I'm really considering.

I decide to try my hand at making a drawing, myself. I get set up by someone atop a cabinet with some nice tracing vellum and a ruler. I start out with an oversized sheet of lined notebook paper under my vellum and after some consideration use the ruler to trace one of the double verticals along the left side, top tp bottom. Next I will make a boxy shape with a puckered side up in the top right. As I fiddle with how I'll execute this, I notice that my vellum is already covered in marks and lines, all very gesturally sketched, none drawn with a ruler and all accompanied with a large number of alpha-numeric notations. Where did all of this come from? I didn't make these marks. Ahh, I see, I had rotated my paper 90`, but I can turn it back straight and all of that disappears. Done.

I go back to talk to the woman about her prints she's brought today. But I get there and everything is different, she's excited as she tells me that she's quit her job (and I apparently inspired her?). She pulls away her tables and beneath is a big platform, the size of a queen bed. She starts rolling around on it, wants me to have a lay down, too. I really want to just talk about the prints, but that's going nowhere.

Carol Walker is giving a talk, and I go to look at her prints, too, along the cabinet wall. I really like them, but then I realize that they are all done in deep sweet pea pinks and purples and I really can't commit to buying one. Leonora is in the audience and Carol is having a friendly banter with her. Something about a loan that Leonora took out way back in college that she never repaid. Leonora is going cross-stitch and laughs it off.

At the art compound, making other people's art

Art opening, some butternut squash soup, followed by some gin & beer

I'm at the art compound. R is in chargre, but she is in the form of a man, I think, or might go back and forth. I'm getting set up to do some monotypes, though I'm not entirely certain I know how. But before I know it I have this magnificent line drawing gong on my plate and I'm starting to ink in the colors. It feels wrong though, like it's not really mine. Am I a scam, a cheat? I start to lose interest before it's done in any case. It's this grand image, looking through the rustic door of an old barn or factory building to the environment inside and the sky beyond. I quit. But then later I'm being congratulated on my print, which obviously someone has finished for me. But the sky is Collins', the industrial interior is definitely a Gammon.

Skip to the man who runs this sprawling art compound giving an on camera (my view is that of the camera) interview about how this place is the gateway to the Tucson art scene and to Tucson itself. (I guess we're near Tucson.) But cut in is bits of interviews with some of the participants, and they are more dubious, concerned that the compound is not the end all/be all of the Tucson scene.

andy needs surgery

fried okra & water at 66 diner, later a cup of atole before bed

I have to visit Andy at the hospital. He's having surgery on his heart or a lung or something. I get to his room and he already has a bandage over his heart, but I realize from what the nurse is saying that he's only prepped for the procedure, he's not done. He's sitting in a chair, and the bandage is on top of his t-shirt. He does seem really out of it, though. I can't tell if he's just freaked out and avoiding conversation, or if he's drunk. But when he starts playing serious air guitar, complete with an "I'm-so-intense" rocking face, and there's not even any music playing. I try not to bust out laughing, though I'm not sure he is even really aware of my presence. I kneel down and try to talk to him. I can't speak very well, though, due to my recent head injury. I wonder if the nurses know that I'm an agent.

Later I go out for a sandwich at a Subway type place. I think I'm maybe in Durango, some place with clean air and a brick mainstreet. While I'm in the restaurant, I decide I might as well try to land a job. They seem to be doing interviews, why not just get in line. My restaurant experience might be a little overstated for a corporate sandwich shop, but I'm ready & willing to work, and I can make them see that. The interview goes well, even though I think I'm still not speaking very well. The manager hands me over to a trainer. I think I'm supposed to be a cook, but maybe not. Or maybe everyone does everything around here. My trainer asks me if I can do dishes. I'm momentarily taken aback, but hey, I don't mind doing dishes. But my response was maybe a bit reluctant. My trainer doesn't know how he feels about that. I find mysef out in the street. I guess I don't have to figure out what to tell my current work about me getting a new job, after all.

i get quit-fired

had this dream a night or two ago, don't remember what i ate.

(no kidding about the content of this dream-- i think it was the night after i posted my last about not remembering much and feeling lame about work.)

I'm at home, which is my parents' house. Apparently Josh and I both live there. I've really overslept, and by the time I pull myself out of bed the phone has rung and it's R on the phone, wondering where I am. My parents hand the phone to me and I start to go on about getting there right away and being sorry. But R will have none of it and is really condescending and abusive, suggesting I'm a lot more trouble than I'm actually worth. I try to be reasonable, but she's really going on. She tells me to wear brown, but brown velvet (by which she means my brown pants, apparently), not the brown linen (by which she means the tan striped shirt I have), because she doesn't like that shirt and doesn't want to have to look at it. She keeps coming around again to something she won't come out and say, essentially that she doesn't need me working there anymore. I call her on it, figuring she will probably back off. "If you want to fire me, you can do it, it's your business," I tell her. "You can fire me just the way you hired me." I secretly hope she'll just take the bait and I'll be off the hook of the whole thing. She cuts the conversation off, asking why I'm not there yet. I point out that since we're on the phone I can't really be getting ready. We hang up.

I try to get myself ready to go, Josh has the car running and in the driveway (parked sideways, for some reason). I realize that I'm just not moving very fast & not very effective. The phone rings again, I know it's her. My mom takes the call to give me a buffer and a little more time. My mom tries to make small talk, complimenting the gallery, saying she really liked the Katrina L. show. But my mom doesn't know art speak and R takes it all the wrong way & apparently tells her off. I mom hands me the phone, exasperated. R repeats my mom's comments back to me, adding "How DARE she?" I won't stand still for this lady bitching out my mom and talking shit. I tell her to forget it, I won't be coming in. I hang up, and feel a great weight lifted from my shoulders.

not posting much

I haven't been recording my dreams for the past couple of months.

Two reasons for this.
1. I'm not remembering as many lately.
2. My current job doesn't allow me really a moment's personal time for such a thing, and I go in early enough that I don't have 15 minutes in the morning, lest I be late. By the end of the day, I almost never remember anything of my dream, and it's lost.

I don't like losing this habit. And it does bug me that I don't feel like I would be allowed a moment to myself on an occasional morning. Point #19 that I sort of resent about my job environment.

Of course, I had no recourse to sitting for a moment to record my dreams when I was in service, either. But when I was in service I went in later, allowing me time beforehand to get my shit logged, and I also wasn't working 9 hours days with no breaks.

By polling my own tendancy to bitch about a wide variety of topics, I'm beginning to get the feeling that I don't like my job. Or more, I think I resent my job. Which may be more dangerous. But as I related to little Claire the other day, I think I've gotten over the "oh God, I'm stuck here, my soul is crushed" hump and it's just grin & bear it from here on out. I know it is a job on a timer, though, and sooner or later the bell is going to Ding.

yehudi shows up to play a gig

spagetti & smeatballs, salad, a few cookies, later night cereal

At work, but the gallery is an old brick space with concrete floors and a stage, a smallish venue (i think it's were i saw the tombstones play in tucson in 2006). Yehudi is expected but there's some scheduling disturbance. He finally shows, with his band. I run up to him and basicallu mount him-- flying leap into a hug with my arms & legs. It's so good to see him. He tells me that their schedule got all messed up, or rather that his time slot at our place is as it should be, but the next place than evening, the first band jumped ship. so they are expected early, but they can't be there early cuz they're playing our joint instead at the moment. He starts packing up to go, I want to help and also just have a few more moments with him, but not seem like a pussy, either. So I start picking up pieces of art that I know belong to him and start hauling them out to his truck, a panel truck on the street behind, like Silver behind Josh's work.

Dream number 2: The Revolutionary Ape

See menu below.

I'm part of a revolutionary group of some sort. The cabal meets somwhere up north near Santa Fe (second dream this night about going north). In order to get there I have to jump a train and then hop off and run a long way. I think to myself that I'm running 10 miles a day because of this. It's night. I train up to the area and jump off, but it doesn't look like I think it should. In my mind, it should be a big, empty area, with dirt roads carved across the desert. But now there are houses, small adobe jobs, not in long rows like usual neighborhoods, but rather gridded out one by one. I think I can still find my way, but... I go around one house, but the road jogs off to one side and I'm uncertain. I start off anyhow, trying to be quiet so that I don't attract any attention. The cops are around, they're looking for us, and there may even be a chopper somewhere overhead. I get to a long stretch of road that finally looks right and start running. The dirt road is caked, cracked clay, almost bubbly in texture. I'm trying to stay upright, but my body simply insists that I go on all fours, loping like a gorilla. I keep fighting to run upright, switching back and forth.

(I have often dreamed about having to go long distances and finding that I can cover much more ground on all fours. Why is that?)

Dream number 1: Singing Soccer Player

Lucky 7 potatoes at O'Neils early in evening, pasta with cream sauce & broccoli, beer.

I play on a soccer team. We also apparently put on musicals, because we're at the house of one of the players (are we highschoolers?), and we need to get rolling to hit Santa Fe and get on stage on time. But no one can find the captain of the team, and he's the star of the show, the lead. I know most of his numbers, of course, since I have a real knack for the stuff. But I'd rather not try to jump in and take over, after all, I'm a loner. And although everyone is seemingly into getting this musical up and running, I'm not certain how well me belting out the numbers in a glowing tenor will go over with the other guys.

But we do need to get going, and by the way, where are we going to sleep tonight? Are we coming back into town, or staying up north? It's like herding cats. The dad of the guy whose house we're at is around and seems to be lobbying for us all to come back to the house and bed down there after, as a group. I'm mildly anxious about the whole situation. The dad is tromping around with plasterer's stilts on, but with only about 6 inch lift. But we really need to get going, and people are starting to saddle up. But now who's driving? I have my car there, and I'd be glad to drive, if only to take back osme control over the situation, but it's all still so muddy, what exactly we're doing.

Travel refused

Stroganoff, broccoli, water, a toffee ice cream treat, later night mini wheats

Several dreams throughout the night that I was travelling or about to travel but the ability was taken from me. Some were more disturbing than others.

The one dream I actually remember part of:

It's a very Willy Wonka sort of setting, there is a forked waterway that is flowing back together. We (who are we?)are floating along on small puffy stools of a sort, all in bright primary colors, plush. But the stream is leading into a wierd vagina cavern that is eating everything, we have to abandon stools, as it were. The cavern, also in technicolor hues, translates into the side of an airliner. I'm deeply spooked by this, and I woke up.

As is the case with my night terrors, which this was not nearly, I could still see the airliner, as if scorched on my retinas. In the dark of my room, I sat for a moment looking at this airliner, its details slowly dissolving into either elements of my bedroom or into nothing.

naked at work

Antipasti salad with breadsticks and beer.

I'm at NG/MFA, in the main workshop. There's a new business next door and we're all wondering what it is. The giant 3-storey antique mall is situated next to us now. I see a sign that it's a really sex-positive porn & sex toys shop. The girls that run it (obviously, it's a Self Serve reference) come over and we're all talking about it.

Suddenly, R and I are naked, she's stretched out on the big metal table, her back against the wall, under a blanket. I climb under, we lean on each other. Nothing sexual at all, just a nudist experience. There's an announcement that we should push the Dignity button. The title image from Diane O's show swims across my vision, booming out the message intermittantly. We can't figure out what the Dignity button is, but we're pretty sure that it is on the phone. A yellow button. The announcement sounds again. We should find the phone.

I haven't been remembering my dreams much lately

Night after night, morning after morning, I have mostly found myself with no credible memories of my dreams, only flickering impressions. Don't know why that is, but I guess it's happened before. With my life about to enter upheval, I can expect, I think, more nightmares, like the "Caveman" dream I just recorded. I always have nightmares when I feel like my life is somewhat spiralling out of my habitual grasp.

In mostly-google-hits-news, I have continued to recieve, at regular but long intervals, people hitting the blog by searching for "Sonya Erb," a highschool friend. And I've also continued to have hits from people googling "hairy nun," which I assume is some fetishistic, pornographic search, but I frankly can't wrap my mind around that one. Many of those hits seem to be coming from across the pond, too, the most recent from Jordan, if I recall. Hmmm...

Other google hits recent and worth mentioning: (quotation marks are theirs-- the general lack explaining why they get a hit on my blog)

midschool pussy porn

clown head "fun fountain" [this apparently from the guys at badpuppy-- I'm so flattered!]

dormitory punished for peeing in bed

"'i'm in bed with my mother"

tied ritual muscles pecs [sounds quite compelling, actually]

mr. peppers attacks the bajango

"gorgonzola pasta salad"

The Caveman came over today.

A home made burrito with the works, including guacamole, later maybe a couple of ice pops, a later night glass of ovaltine.

A Note: Some few hours before bed I decided definitively to change jobs; this kept me awake for a while, so I read a Thomas LIgotti story called "The Bungalow" (or something like that), on the second page of which I said outloud to myself, "Well, this is going to give me nightmares." The story turned out to be about something else entirely than what I had thought, but I do believe that it did, indeed, at least help inform my nightmare.

The new neighbors have come by, unpleasant girls we didn't like who later reported having been mistreated at our hands. I'm pretty angry about this bullshit. The gang is over and we are all at a loss, though most would just have me let it go. (Is it around Halloween, by the way?) We're at the house, which is actually more like mom & dad's backyard & neighborhood. Everybody has their dogs over, all big dogs, like collies and shepherds and such.

I can't make head or tail of the situation of the girls accusing us of assaulting them. It's as if the bitchy, mean girls who came over aren't the same tearful messes who are accusing us, like they were masquerading as the real girls-- and at the same time someone masqueraded as us, attacking these helpless things. I feel like things are starting to come together, and the picture I'm forming is pretty creepy and bad.

We're in the yard, and one moment all the dogs are together with us in the yard, and the very next two of them have somehow blinked over to the other side of the fence. I see it happen and start yelling. But something else spooks the dogs and they take off, out into the busy street. I'm absolutely howling, my arms waving. There's a huge crash, a white convertable has run over Anna, an old German Shepherd. I can't believe what I'm seeing. The young guy doesn't know what's going on, he pulls his car forward; and it's just as if she just laid down and ducked under the car and comes out okay. [Interesting cf of my childhood nightmare of my mother getting run over by a train, but she laid down low on the tracks and it passed over her. ?] Anna lopes off up the street, still spooked.

[At this point the dream ceases to be narrative per se, and the following images or scenes seemed to happen absolutely all at once, a firestorm, I can't untangle all of it.]

The guy with the convertible is out of the car and is lurching backward up a giant dumptruck pile of gravel in the street. I'm trying to tell him that it's okay, she's okay. He starts shrieking like a wounded ape, his head jerking around.

I'm on a cell phone in the back yard, a gurgling, evil voice says, "The Caveman came over today."

I'm cooing at Anna; it's okay girl, it's okay.

The guy on the rock pile jerking, shrieking. The cell phone voice. The guy turns into someone else. A dark, shadowy, sinister man, unshaved, sitting on an office desk chair, hunched, gripping the seat, eyes burning into me. The snarling mess that's his mouth, his jaw snapping and slathering, his voice the voice from the phone. "Get in the closet. Get in the closet." I'm in danger, we're in danger. What will he do if he catches us. He's the Caveman, he's the one that's caused all of this, he attacked those girls, he pretended to be them, he pretened to be us.

I'm absolutely terrified, utterly frozen. I can still hear myself in slow motion cooing at Anna, no one can see I'm trapped by him, simultaneously in the street and in the back yard, no one can see us. I'm trying to scream. I'm just outside the small window in mom & dad's den, I have to get someone's attention, or fight back, something. I reach down into the gravel pile, pick some up, throw it. It hits the brick, no good, I pick up more, I throw, if I can break a winidow someone will come and save me, I throw, I can't scream, my skin is screaming in terror.



I woke up absolutely terrified, to the sound of my own formless shouting. Sat for 30 minutes writing it all down. Afraid that I might have one of my more traditional hallucinatory night terrors [like the purple "fry guy" style monster from when I was reading Lovecraft, or the giant whiptail spider more recently-- did I record those here? Fry guy may have been before I started this log] I left the lights on, slept that way for a few hours.

a long crazy hash & mash of a dream

General Tao's tofu, water, bowl of cereal later

the never ending dream thread

I'm at the restaurant. The new menu has taken effect and it'e been on for a month, but I feel as if I've slipped througha little gouge in time, and now here I am and I don't know what these foods are, how to present them. The food window is a large, clumsily built wooden table, kind of low, about 6 feet by 4 feet, hastily painted plywood. Unfinished. I'm looking at the ticket, and it says things like "NEW DONE OLD" and "HASH AND MASH." Whaaa? I have two different places of potatoes, one of _huge_ roasted potatoes, cut in half and left giant, and a place ot small potatoes (probably the "new done old"). And then there's maybe a dish of mashed, and there's a chocolate cake, still in a blue pyrex long cake pan or casserole, turned over. And other things, too. I bite the bullet and call Jess over, and simply tell her that I don't know what these dishes are, or what to do with them. I've already wasted all manner of time just trying to find a towel or pot holder to pick them up, because the dishes are hot as hell. She tells me that they aren't plated correctly, anyhow, and the kitchen is going to have to take them back and replate, so I can chill for a moment. I want to hurry, but Jess points out that we're on a plane, anyhow, and there's time.

I start to deal with the cake, I lift the blue pyrex away, and it comes away cleanly. On the interior surface of the pyrex there had been a political flyer of some sort about the Right doing this or that, but when I lift it away, it's gone, and I realize that it was that new spray-on technique that disappears on the food when it's disturbed. I'm glad it's gone, because I thought it was inappropriate. Now to ice the cake. I have to layer the pink oatmeal icing with paper bits and stickers, mostly pictures of Jack from Will & Grace. He appears, and I try to keep him occupied so that he doesn't see that the cake is all about him.

There is a dream intermission here where I'm back with the potato dishes, but there's something strangely sexual going on. I'm dipping them in melted butter and dropping them into a giant, hollowed out potato. Somehow, this is maturbatory to me. I repeat the process. I'm frustrated.

We're on vacation, renting a hotel room with several people. Crazy adventures ensue. And are we in some futuristic city (one I've dreamed of before), or are we just up around Juan Tabo and Menaul? Or both? I don't remember the adventures around the city, but we get back tired and over-sleep. When Josh and I do wake up, we're late for checking out, and don't forget that we're selling the house today (maybe to Kelvin?). We HAVE to get going. The card machine is right there in the room, and I go ahead & pay. Though we're unsure if they'll charge us for an entire other day. It's almost 1pm, after all. I get the slip and sign it. The woman from the desk comes up and tells us that we _were_ charged an extra day, the cut-off was 10am. I'm pissed. But who has time?

We get to the new house, it's somewhat unfinished, but much larger and it's going to be fantastic. We're very excited. (It also greatly resembles the hotel room we had rented, which is confusing.) It has three bedrooms, strange angles, extra rooms we didn't know existed and probably more to find. But we need to go sign over the old house. And the car won't start. But we have a green VW bus that we can take, and indeed Chris is around, I think he dropped off the bus for us-- thanks Chris! But oh crap, we drove away without him and he has to walk all day to get back. Why'd we do that? And how will we get he car back? We're with Jess again, in the office downstairs. She gives me the good news that my mom is going to meet with Kelvin to hand over the house, so we can attend to other things. Thank God.

I end up back in the strange future city, now running though a huge department store. I get to the escalator, and it's actually a moving sidewalk, just at an angle. Instead of a long strip of black rubber like at the airport, it's an ivory-colored set of hard strips, a rolling track. It looks like it's going fast, and indeed I step on it and it whisks me away at an insane speed, and then about 20 feet from the second floor (the thing is long-- like a subway escalator), it suddenly decelerates, I almost go on my face, but hang on and am deposited safely. I'm in housewares now. There's a nice (too nice?) family up there looking at stuff. The parents are really friendly to me, want to chat, discuss, take me under their wing for some reason. I extricate myself graciously. I have my three little trinkets (no idea what they are-- they all fit in one hand). But before I go I find myself on the floor of a little room-turned-theater, watching a movie with other customers. The light is very peach. The talkative mom is right there in front of me. I realize that she's smelling my tennis shoe, which makes me really uncomfortable. Mom with a stinky tenny fetish? I try to shift my feet away from her.

am i an art fraud?

dinner at seasons with jj, roasted veggies, asparagus salad with arugula & mushrooms, potatoes with goat cheese, sesame string beans, water water water.

I'm at the Art Museum, and I look at a wall label or calendar and realize that they have changed the exhibition schedule. I'm opening TONIGHT, as in right now. Fuck, well, I guess I'd better get some art on the walls, good thing I've been working. The impromptu MFA show-- what could be better, no? And then all of the sudden, the Coke Gallery-- which no longer has the alcoves but is just straight on that side-- is lined with my work. A series of acrylic and maybe enamel paintings, extremely pop. [Obviously inspired by a combo of the Koch show at Matrix and the Obsessive show at 516.] Wow, I HAVE been working. I frankly don't even remember making most of these. I do know that I purposely made this series to be extremely pop and extremely commercial-- I want these things to be desireable commodities. Both for the money, and to prove to the sticks in the department that fun, saleable art can fly in this academic crap world, too. To my astonishment, before I even have all the labels up, a front desk employee comes around and stickers one of my pieces as sold. I didn't even realize that the museum was willing to sell from its shows. I look around, there are others stickered, too. But I don't even know what price I'd put on these. I just say $200, for the hell of it, go ahead and get rid of them I'll make more. But then I look back, and the ones I thought were sold aren't but others are. I can't really keep track. I go out into the main gallery and suprisingly my show continues there, all the way up the north side of the gallery. (The south side of the gallery is showing someone from Rio Rancho.) And they're still installing my pieces up toward the front. What a mess. The museum is filling up, people are already buying stuff, and we're still hanging? I go to help. A piece with a literal 3D wireframe box, 20 x 8 x 8", a triangular wire that juts up from the rear plane about 36 inches, an ostrich-sized eggshell half on the tip. A block is already mounted on the wall but why? How do I hang this? I don't have any recollection of this piece. I'm trying. People are talking to me. Where's Josh? I know he's here, I wish he was beside me. I finally figure out how the wire and eggshell piece goes on the wall. The mounted block is actually a sconce and it illuminates the eggshell half. I'm getting wierded out. Is my show TOO commercial? Is it not art anymore? My mom's there, I want to ask her, but she wouldn't really understand the question. I don't remember making any of this art. I'm really panicking.

let's renovate the boar pen

Frontier & beer

We're renovating the house, adding a new bathroom and a wierd hallway between our bedrooms, as well as some larger new rooms off the back of the house, all in adobe walls and brick floors. We also expand the kitchen, which is now an expansive adobe room with a banco, big windows, brick floors, and an island complete with a Micros system. I keep trying to sign in so I can order some fries, but it won't let me in and I'm frustrated. I think Pablo is there, and I want to make it clear to him that I want to take some pictures of him before he leaves NM, and maybe get it on, too, though I'm torn on that.

A guy that reminds me Issaq, or maybe Eric from Spoleto (or both?) is showing us around. He points out that the new chimney is absolutely massive, a brick tower with a scalloped hat of sorts on top, we can look up the side of it, and it must be 40 feet tall. The fireplace is the size of a bedroom, the metal basket for the logs as big as a bed, and there's a wierd swinging adobe wall that opens to it, so that you can control the incredible heat that it all pumps out.

We go out into the back yard, and it is now bisected east to west with a high adobe wall, as well as north to south with the old fence. At the meeting, essentially, the new wall opens. Back toward the house is an enclosure stacked with lumber for the fireplace, the other way is left wild & weedy. In t he lumber enclosure, there's a wild boar. We laugh about it, decide to test our luck. We go in, it chases us. Exhilarating, frightening, crazy. We finally run back out, slam the gate behind us.

plague after plague

butternut squash, spinach & goat cheese crepes, a little salad & bread, brownie cake with strawberries

two dreams.

first:
I'm back in college I think, around a building that is very hospitalish, all hard laminate surfaces and matching furniture. Navy blue and grey are the colors of everything. I think that Chris and I are playing hide and go seek or something, I'm laughing and searching him out. There's a clutch of white shirt tail sticking out of the elevator door, and I think that I have him for sure. I press the button, the door opens. But instead, there stands a young asian woman-- she looks like Sharon Volari from Battlestar-- and while I know that she's normally quite trim (though I don't know this woman), I can tell that she has swollen up because of an attack of some disease. She's huge and round, like Violet turned half-way into a blueberry. The woman mumbles something I think is probably her name, but I don't catch it. And then she keels over into the hallway floor. I think about doing CPR, but I'm not certain. Better to find a phone. I burst through a door and interrupt a tiny class (5 or 6 people) in a tiny room (maybe 8 feet square). The instructor is startled, but I ask urgently if there is an emergency phone in the room. He says no, but motions me back out the door, and I think we go find a phone together. But when we do I can't get it to dial properly. Do I have to hit 1 first? Can I not simply dial 911? I try agian and again.

second:
We're evacuating. The disease is spreading. I'm an inadvertant leader of a small group that includes Cornelius and my mother, maybe Josh, too? And others. We're heading out of the college area, working up Central. The chaos is everywhere, the roads are bogging down in cars and people and madness. We get to the area there by the NMSU branch office and we think we might be able to get into a bus. But there are crowds that are getting panicked and violent, and we don't know if we should try to risk it. Someone shouts that if we cross over the street we may be able to get into a bus there. Should we try? We struggle across the street, but decide that we should just walk. I think we're trying to get to the Brewery, for some reason. (Hey, hole up & get toasted!) We move through residential neighborhoods, Cornelius and I at the front. We start cutting through a complex of single-story apartments, kind of a warren of cute 50's townhomes laced through with footpaths and yards. Somehow Cornelius and I accidentally go into someone's house, and we only realize it once we're in the living room. We decide to just go straight through, not turn around. We find the back door in the kitchen and exit, making more noise than we'd like, but getting out. We circle through the little fenced yard and hop over the garden wall. My mom is waiting there and not pleased at our lack of attention and tact. She stares us down but says nothing. I think that we've gotten away frmo the house without being detected, but then in a big picture window just over our heads a young boy, maybe 7 or 8, appears, his eyes ringed with the red scorchy marks of the disease. He stares blankly, does he even see us? His eyes roll skyward and we take off fast. But we start to realize that we're ringed in, people that are infected but not gone yet. Still talking and making some amount of sense, but they'll be Z'd soon.

i hate doing parmesan

maresa's wierd but tasty pasta salad with grapes & herbs, some later night ice cream, water

I'm at the restaurant, except the kitchen is this rather giant, bright white room, a veritable expanse of prep tables and machinery, more reminiscent of a large hotel kitchen. It's several minutes past shift change and I'm waiting to be checked & let out, but I also have to block parmesan before I go, so I'd like to see this stuff get started. But in the meantime, people for the next shift haven't even started arriving yet, maybe one person, so I can't get going on my parmesan. I'm frustrated. Someone, a person that is there for the next shift, I think it's Matt or Issaq, asks me what's up & I go all ranty-n-ravey about people never showing up on time. As I go on about it, a see a young woman-- i guess a new staff member-- coming in. She hears me going on & gives me a sidelong glare. Half sarcastically and half as a means to turn off my crazy I ask, "Hey, how ya doin'?" She scowls and says that she heard me talking, so what the fuck do I care how she is?

FInally people are there, but then it turns out that parmesan is going to be a training moment today. Meg gathers all manner of people around, I just want to get it done and go. I have a giant box grater and I'm actually grating the cheese. But it's wierd and soft, like warm (cheap) colby-jack. I can almost tear it, like blanco. It's not grating very well for this reason, and I'm getting angry. Meg starts talking about how she doesn't care what happens to the cheese wheels, because she can just write it off inventory as damaged and so we can do anything we want. The implication is that instead of cutting it down methocially, she would just as soon see us throwing it against hard surfaces to break it up into hunks. I'm moving thick, sticky handfulls of shredded cheese into a large container. I feel like i could wring it and water would come out. None of this seems right.

trade in your candy

2 bocas with aguacate, tomato, lettuce, mustard, fries, water

first part is forgotten.

I think I'm at the gallery. There's a room near the workshop end fof the M space with white walls. There's a giant display of stacked candy boxes against one wall, a few different brands of mixed chocolates. Russel Stouffers, Whitmans, and so on. I have a small box with 9 pieces in my hand, but I think I can trade for another box that's larger. Which one, though? This one specifically mentions having lemon cremes-- I'd love it, Josh would hate it. Damn. There are other people shopping through the candy. I'm starting to feel uncomfortable about trading up in front of people. I can't decide.

All this time, there's two elderly ladies in hospital beds at the other end of the room, always jabbering at each other. One is going on and on about something she's seen and wants to show to the other. Something to do with a person wearing a baggy shirt over another, certain glasses...something. I become a rather husky teenager, probably 15 or 16. I'm wearing an orange t-shirt with another over it that sometimes is translucent, sometimes black, sometimes white. And giant sunglasses. I've been eating some of that candy, and I'm starting to vibrate, freak out, jerk around. This makes the old lady's point exactly, just like she said. They see something in, on, or through me, something psychadellic. I'm a convulsing prop in any case.

great new union card

mac & cheese, broccoli, rolls, a later bowl of ice cream

I'm pawing through boxes of paper stuff, ephemera, maps, cards. I think that Sullivan is the proprietor of this shop, or are we in her house? Is this a sort of estate sale? But I come across a small union dues card, dark blue & hardcover (teamsters size). I know that everybody else will want it, too, so I keep it to myself. I discretely thumb through, it is jammed with all manner of stamps & assessments, in varoius colors and designs. I see that the pencilled price inside the front cover is only $6.75. I have a greedy moment and grouse to myself, but then I think that if I hit this on ebay, such a full, interesting card would easily go for $18, so I count my blessings. I'm so excited!

pee wee has a seizure

a couple of nights ago
Chinese "chicken" salad, a couple of cookies

Pee Wee is larger than I remember, more boxy, longer darker hair-- kind of inverted colors from what she is, and shaped like a collie. She's being crazym running around, and then she lists over tight to one side, runs in a tight, skittish circle. I realize that she's having a seizure, I flip out, try to get a hold of her.

I wake up and Pee Wee has puked a pile the size of her head in my sheets.

the force is with me

cha cha calzone, romantic ice cream date at dairy queen after, then we watched revenge of the sith

and i think i dreamed that i was a jedi all night.

Flee the sea to the desert

hummus, pita, veggie sammies, a couple of left over sconettes from marsha, relatively late night cereal

I'm travelling through a tortured, dangerous place with a group of people. Mona from Josh's store is with me and I feel the need to protect and look after her, as she is quite pregnant. I'm not certain what the root of the danger is, but we're trapped in a shredded industrial district that lines a canal. I'm having deja vu, and I know, for the time being, what is coming next, so I keep trying to hurry people along. We need to get to higher ground, because when that ship comes barrelling through the canal, the wash could carry us away. The people don't really believe me untl it's almost too late, but we do manage to get away before drowning. We find ourselves on top of a tall building, broken brick, rust everywhere, broken glass, decay. How will we get down? Where can we go? I don't know if it's another wave from the canal, or if there is seismic activity, but the roof suddenly pitches and rolls like a wave, throwing us around. I hold onto Mona, determined not to lose track of her.

I come down hard on some glass, which shatters to powder and coats my hand. Not good. Now I have only one hand that I can use, any use of the other will grind the glass into my skin, and I'll never be able to climb like that. What can I do? Someone offers me a Swiss Army style pocket knife, I think they found it on the roof there. It's old, tarnished steel. I manage to fold one of the shorter blades and try to scrape the polvo of glass off. There's another, longer blade, but it's strangely curved and toothed, and I don't think it would help much. I find another attachment that folds out into a sort of eyebrow brush. Bingo. I manage to brush away the glass. My palm is somewhat shredded, yeah, but not as bad as it could be and I feel I can operate.

But can we get down inside the building itself? I find a hatch in the roof, pry it open. The interior of the building is a giant mess of pipes and rust and tattered insulation. Like an old heater writ large to the size of a 10 story building. I start to climb down, assuring everyone that they can make it, too. I begin to clamber and swing and hop down though the maze of pipes and crud.

I make it out. I'm in some foothills, sort of in the canyon area, it seems. But I'm lost, and I'm alone now. I think the city is off one way, but I'm uncertain. I start along a paved path, but at some point there is a fence and I can't keep going the way I feel is right. I have to turn, off to the right. I make it to a giant box store. I need some cheese, so I take a number at the counter. The counter is huge, I realize-- I wonder if the entire store is located behind the counter. The girl from the restaurant that gets the Bianca was pesto and olives is working back there. I obviously have been waiting, but she starts serving other people first. I'm waiting and waiting.

marta gets the sack (not a prophecy)

leftover pasta salad, strawberry angelfood icecream delight, water

the latter part of a longer dream.

I'm over at Marta & Izzy's, a strangely small and dark little apartment. We're lazing around the bedroom, which is in disarray. Earlier in the dream Marta had told me she got fired and I was floored. Something about an incident when some friends of hers came into the restaurant. I get a visual flahsback of the incident, Marta's friends all ugly bitches in satin almost-prom-dresses; another worker (JD?) said something that they thought was wierd and they responded by shouting that they "aren't JEWS, so you don't need to treat us like that," or something to that effect. I have no idea what the exchange means, it comes across really unpleasant and racist, but I have no context for the outburst, so I'm dumbfounded. But in any case, Meg overheard and fired Marta, and I know that she will be completely intransigent on the matter, even though I think about trying to intercede. I flop down on the bed. there's a long strip of paper, barely more than a centimeter wide, marked into blocks with notations in heavy pencil. It's their wedding day, mapped out. I act nonchalant, I think maybe they wouldn't want me to see it. I start to roll it up, around my pinky finger. Marta comes by, takes it.

my segway is a piece of junk

leek pasta salad, shortcake with strawberries & fresh whipped cream, beer

I'm trying to get up Central Ave. in a rainstorm, headed for a small sandwich & boba shop that is probably located around Buster's. It seems best if I pretend to be handicapped, though, and ride this wierd sit-down segway. I'm headed east on the south side of the street, but there's construction and lots of people grouped under awnings, and I can't easily get through. And I'm having real trouble controling my segway. It's all joystick in the right hand action, but sometimes pushing forward makes me move forward, sometimes it makes me lurch to one side, or what have you. And somehow I keep listing to the left, to the point that I fall out of my segway chair. Which is not only embarrassing, but also it kind of blows my cover as being handicapped, as I climb back on.

I get to the shopping center and decide to head up and around through a breezeway. I come to a side door for Mariposa Gallery and I squeeze in. I realize then that I'll have to go down some stairs, which I know I can manage but I've never actually done it before. The stairs are mercifully shallow, and they're painted in different colored stripes, candy-like. I jostle down them in my clumsy craft, barely managing a corner, but coming out much too fast at the bottom end. Bull in a china shop sort of action. I squeeze my way past the many people and displays. I head for the front door, I think Jen is not amused, but she's busy. I think they're having an opening. I get out the front door, and there I am out in the rain agian on the corner. I try to navigate back to my easterly course, but I tumble over into the water collecting on the street. And there's a big hole in the street that I fall into, as well. [I've dreamed of big holes on the streetcorner before, I think.] Big around as a manhole cover, and waist deep, full of filthy water. I'm furious.

I manage to drag myself out, get back onto my segway again. I do make it up the street, but I'm not even certain what I'm supposed to be doing there. The place is green-lit inside, kind of art deco. Reminds me of the old Zurich.

grimy kitchen

leftover enchiladas, asparagus, later a cookie and a slice of strawberry cheesecake

I'm working in a kitchen, but not a very professional one, it's more like a converted old house kitchen, now desperately trying to support a restaurant. Everything is very dated, old, grimy, oily-sticky. I'm new to the kitchen, a definite amateur. Pablo is there, but he's very sullen and I get the feeling I'm in his (and everyone's) way. But we're out of the rice that we need to serve with...something. It's white rice that's cooked with green bells, so it has bright green areas/fluid in it. And I need to get some more going, cuz it's way past time to be keeping up with that. I find a pan, I find the sticky old plastic bag of rice up in the cabinet over the oven. I pull it down, and the corner has been chewed open, and there's a mouse shit sitting right there on the rice. I gag a little, and I panic a little. What will I do? Jen M.(Rohr.) comes up behind me. She's the boss here, she's carrying a cutting board, she wants to put it away right where I'm standing. She starts in on a whole big, "I need to get right there, this thing is heavy, I know because I've done this MANY times," the inference being that I'm green and stupid. But fuck that. Fine, I let her past. I try to quiz her about how she'd like to address our rice question, but she's no help & has no ideas. I bite the bullet, I pour out 3/4 of the rice bag. It leaves us with only 2 cups-- I measure it out in a sticky, grimy measuring cup-- of rice to make, and now I have to make it in the pan. Shit, do I know how to make rice in a pan & not in a rice maker? What's the ratio?

squirming in the sand

dion's pizza earlier, some beers & gin later

I'm with a group of middle-aged and some older people. I've made sure that they have all brought their boxes. I start getting them situated in their boxes, most of which are about 3-foot cubes. One old man's box is painted red with yellow details, maybe with windows painted on, or stripes as if it were ribbon around a present. He crawls through the small swinging doggy-door-style opening. A woman, probably in her 50's, with country club helmet hair, has a more elaborate box, it is actually a small sand igloo, which she can somewhat recline in. She is in there, little wooden windows giving her a view of the outside world. I inspect her domicile, and then lay down in a slight depression in the sand just behind it. The sand is suprisingly loose, loamy, poseable. I start worming back into the warm sand, I kick with my legs and drive my shoulders back through it, I work my way down into a little trough. It is very comfortable, very pleasureable.



[Strangely enough, today when I was planting zinnia and marigold seeds out back, the soil in the bed was very much the same in texture, almost fluffy. But I have not touched that bed in a month, and that was just to turn it with a shovel, I didn't dig in it with my hands.]

lost on bruzzard bridge

Frontier grilled cheese, fries, salad.

Once again lost abroad, this time in a mish-mash Vancouver esque city, lost along "Bruzzard" avenue, which leads from the main of the city across some water to a near-island.

one off mish mash

spaghetti with tomato sauce & mushrooms, some ice cream later

I'm working in a hospital, I think. Seem to be constantly spreading a peanut butter spread on toast. There's also a 3-D representation of Homeworld 2-style game/battle, which I seem engrossed enough in to make me think that it's real.

selling aunt betty's house

brickyard pizza with olives and bell peppers

I'm crashing at Aunt Betty's house, along with a group of young guys, skater types. I think they're along for the ride, but I'm there to get down to business. We're selling the house, but not as Betty left it, rather as Dan has rennovated it. [Which I've never seen in real life.] I answer the door and it's a middle aged woman with long blonde hair dressed in black trousers and sweater. I kick into gear and offer to tour her around the house. I show her the first bedroom, point out the white slump block fireplace, which I insist "goes all tge way through," and indeed the back of the fireplace is a strange angular concoction that receeds back out of sight somehow, probablt turning an improbable angle into the next room's fireplace, which is very much the fireplace from the living room when I show it to her, blonde brick face and tiled bench.

I point out the windows in the former back wall of the house, that they are floor to ceiling, and stretch the entire length of the house. The bars are still on, but the new back room is there, too, all glass. We go out onto the former porch and I show her how the new back sun room is this wierd prismatic space of joined glass planes, which you can hardly even make out, except where they come together as a point that juts out into the back yard. The woman asks how my aunt and uncle came to live in such a modern house back when, I point out that this and that are recent rennovations, but the house overall was the house for a 60's party couple, I intimate a life of cocktail partys and wild living.

We go out into the back yard. The skaters are splashing around with their girls in the pool. The yard has been seriously altered since I seen it, now terraced down away from the house, expanded to several acres. There is a ridge that runs along and away from the house, from which we look down onto a veritable pine forest, and on to vistas of a quaint distant village. I emphasize that the yard is huge, but XERIC, and requires almost no upkeep.

She has to talk about it with her husband, and shortly she turns into her balding, slightly portly husband. He and I are back inside the wierd sunroom, talking. An apparition of Aunt Betty walks behind him, smiling, carrying a try of sweets or some sort, she makes eye contact and vanishes at the plane of the sliding door. I get all teary eyed, it's very WB.

lost abroad (again)

il vicino pasta w/ shrooms & chile, a sprite, water, a piece of candy later.

I'm at my place, a ramshackle, dark place, more like 406 1/2. I'm bored as shit, so I wander into the alley, for some reason l=sit or lay down in the dirt. Flipside Todd, maybe Clayton, and a couple of their friends appear, turns out Todd lives right there behind me, they'd been hanging out, but they'd be up for doing some drinking if I feel like coming over. I do, and I have a case of PBR at my place, but I know I have to run out on some inescapable errand, so I go and hang out on the couch for a while, intending to come back and catch up later. Todd's place is old, wierdly familiar. (I think it reminds me some of the crazy old houses of Bisbee.)

I guess I leave on my errand, and I find myself in probably another city, either in Canada, or it could be part of London, more probably. I have an agenda to do my errand and get back and get shitfaced with the boys, but I quickly find myself turned around and lost. I start out around a movie theater, but quickly find myself moving into more of an industrial area, and that doesn't feel right. Then there's some guy, some big kind of husky guy in a grey t-shirt, he's following me, right close. He starts taunting me, giving me little "oi oi oi"s and asking me if I'm gonna get rowdy, all mocking and BS. I'm not interested in this, but he won't fuck off. I quicken my pace just a fraction to move ahead another step, then in one motion turn on my heel and haymaker right into his nose. There's a little crunch, I catch him in the front teeth and his nose. He's stunned and looks really sad, it's pathetic, and I pause and tell him, "I don't feel great about this." But he knows he was asking for it.

I keep moving, now hopelessly lost. I'll never make it back to hook up for drinks with the guys. For some reason I become aware of the old Soviet Embassy in the area, and I can't help but stop by. I'm aware that I'm out of money, and I don't want to really exchange any more, since I'll be back home momentarily, and I inventory in my head, if I even have any money in my account that I could withdraw on my card. Damn it. I go to the embassy. It's the Russian Embassy now, but there are parts that have been preserved and made into a tourist trap. I get to an elevator (start visual refs to the warehouse dream of last week or so), it's already kind of full, and with each additional person getting in, the crowd gives a little cheer. I fill in the last spot right up front, they cheer, I'm concerned that I might be really sweaty, oh well. I realize that I'm taller than everyone else by a foot. The upstairs is mainly a chotchky shop, all shot glasses and Lennin's face on plastic roundels. Blah, and I've no money anyhow. I try to go through the hall into the preserved historical area, but I'm stopped, told it's under construction. I'm powerfully annoyed after the day I've had.

longest alien attack dream ever

edamame at home and then wierd "curry" stew over rice and egg rolls from the new japanese place on harvard. early to bed.

This was a nightmare that lasted all night long; I awoke from it at least twice and ended up returning to it, until I woke up in the morning. I can't possibly remember all of it.

Aliens have attacked. We are leaving. The snow is very deep, which make everything much more difficult. We have a car that works, most people don't, and the roads are pretty jammed up. I'm with a guy who is a cross between Lane and Matt Clemans, Meg (I think), and two kids, one of whom is a little Chinese girl, the other a little blonde kid who reminds me of that kid I used to take care of that hid once and the cops got called. We drive for a while, but the roads are getting impossible to navigate. And people are becoming very violent when they see a working car (cf W of the W). We get out and walk, trudge through the snow. We all stay linked together so we don't lose the kids, the snow is almost as deep as they are tall.

We make it to the airport, our destination for some reason. I guess we think we can fly out of the area, away from the big cities, hide in the country. The approach is a very long ramp up a hillside. We make it up and into the airport, which is a dark, low, heavy cast concrete building. The door is locked and we have to convince them to let us in at all. Seems a certain amount of staff there is holed up. There are several airline check-in women, all middle aged or older, there are a couple of security people. We feel safe there, get everyone situated. There are a couple of other refugees, we all talk about what's happened, where we can all go. There is an alarm, someone shouts, "They've flown. They're attacking again." I look out a long, low window and indeed see on of the craft. It looks very much like a B/W TV era spaceship-- diamond shaped with two wing with fins off the back end, dancing in the air like it's on a string. But it's real and it starts firing at the airport, smashing the building. Someone starts making an odd, short, barking scream noise, we all dive under desks, I hustle the kids into an interior space, under a stairway. The outer walls are being blown in. It is horrifying.

Talking with another refugee about the attack, she's talking about Asia, maybe Hong Kong. Something about the aliens offering peace and then turning and killing everyone. She says something about them only offering the "green," which is some sort of food, to "Turks." But it was only trickery. We are starting to think that there is no escape to the interior, that if we even got there it would make no difference.

We leave the airport. This time we're (or is it just me from the old crew now?) travelling with a young Martha Plimpton, although at one point I look at her ID and it says her name is Falak Fis. We're going away, travelling in a sort of monorail, or maybe it's a bus. I'm thinking about us living together, I want to tell her what a crush I've always had on her, I'm thinking about whether I could have sex with her.

another travel shopping mall

#15 with no ham, no feta, sub portabellos & goat cheese, a couple nutty carmels

Beginning & probably the end lost.

On a trip, something to do with Eric. Staying at a hotel, or maybe more a hostel, tiny little room. "Rustic." (Whole dream is coated in slightly grimy, distressed old pine surfaces.) I need to find a Fun Fountain, I think as a gift, and I'm certain that I'm going to find one here. There is a sort of mall or antique/country junk place seemingly attached to my lodgings. I do locate a Fun Fountain, though it's in chrome and maroon finish.

I give it to Eric, there's some discussion, .... ?

mountain vistas, deep dark warehouses, and demon kids

left-over pizza with green chile and tomato, a little salad, a little ice cream, a fancy caramel.


Up on the crest with J-Rod, I think we’re maybe with or even directing a tour group. We’re moving about in a sprawling complex that hugs the edge of the cliffs, It is cut stone, a glowing yellow limestone, and it has the aspect of a mediterranean villa, many arches and corridors leading courtyard to courtyard. A group of people, men and women and a small boy, ask us if it’s worth while to go on, if there are any better views further down, as the wind is getting quite nasty and unpleasant. Maybe even the safety of the little boy is questioned, as some of the overlooks are open to the drop. I encourage them to continue on, assuing them that the next patio gives the truly best view of the city and it really worth it. I move on into the next patio, ready to take some of the panoramic pastiche shots I enjoy. But the view of the city still seems somewhat occluded, maybe by the setting sun in my face. I can see pretty much straight down, though, to a world of very complex apartment buildings that come straight up to the very foot of the mountain these days. (Very Vancouver inspired image.)

We go back down, by way of an apparently very express elevator, which lets us off into the lobby of a hotel. We mean to leave, to go home, but the place is so very posh that we just have to explore a little bit. The lobby is huge, seems part shopping mall, there are pools and lush planted arboreous alcoves, broa carpeted spaces, and seemingly a concierge on every corner. We act like we belong, even tell a concierge that we’re too early to check in but are just having a look around.

Later (same dream? later dream?) I’m with Maresa, maybe Jason, and Josh. We’re travelling together, probably in Canada. We go to this Museum or Science Center of some sort, it’s all very exciting, though I don’t know what to expect. We’re being herded through corridors, past seemingly incongruous exhibits, things that don’t make sense and we aren’t given time to try to make them. One contraption seems to be a late-ninteenth-century pill making machine, as big as a (special) school bus, and ornately worked in gilded cast iron. We keep moving, the crowd seems to be losing momentum now, breaking up a bit. Not certain where we’re going or what we’re expecting at this point. Another elevator, I expect a throng to press in, but it closes before they get to it. Just us and a coung couple. There’s something sinister about them, especially the girl.

We’re let out into a GIANT, cavernous space, certainly a warehouse space, but vast, and the ceiling is out of sight. It’s surplus, seemingly, from the movie business, and everything is oversized. But there’s also a cheese counter-- oversized: but you can get a block of asadero the size of a loaf of bread for $1.50, and I’m ecstatic-- and there’s an impressive liquor section. Josh mentions ouzo, and I think that there might be raki, too, then. I start searching. Ouzo, lemoncello, all manner of liqueurs and concoctions, but no raki.

I go find the gang, we look through a huge rack of surplus lengths of rope, ribbon, twine-- but in gigantic quantities, rolled loosely in celophane into units that are 20 feet high and the dimension of a CD. We’ve all had such a great time with the wierd oversize movie surplus, but it’s time to go. I do have a bottle of something that I’m going to buy and take back to the states with me.

Back in the elevator, is the couple still there?

I end up in my parents’ garage, there with a little boy, a soldier who maybe reminds me of Spooky at work, except he’s African American, and a teenage kid. We’re discussing demonology, posessions. The teenager’s girlfriend arrives, and we realize that she’s one of “them.” I won’t let her hurt anybody, she has no power over me, though I am somewhat freaked o ut at the whole situation. Once we call her out and the teenager denounces her-- “I can’t believe I ever cared about you! You’re just a thing!”-- she devolves into a creepy, cartoony rag-doll, still screaming, but helpless. She is a toy, and we can handle her like one. We drop her to the ground, and I use an imaginary shotgun to blast her. Because she’s a toy, an imaginary gun is perfectly effective. But the demon jumps from her into the soldier, he goes out on the driveway and begins to dance and jerk around, posessed. The garage door has come down, so I can see only his boots there, jigging as he calls out and mocks us. I reach under the door with my imaginary shotgun and blow him away. The demons are everywhere. I have to destroy all the toys in the area, to keep the demon from jumping again. I order the little boy to lay down his “toy,” which is really just a large plastic cup. He does so, but doesn’t want or know to get out of the way. Someone comes and moves him away. I blast the cup. But I think my terror os growing rather than abating, I don’t think we’re winning here.

ice storm love stories

"turkey" enchiladas, fruit salad, some chewy ginger cookies

Thoughout the dream, the weather is cold, slushy, snowy, icy.

Up at my parents' house, but it's a Scooby Do style mansion, rather than their actual house. We're there for a party maybe, but then it turns out that we're REALLY there for an intervention with this young lady. She's probably 19, skinny, very short blonde hair. She's having none of it, so we all retire, but it's my job to sleep with her (just in the same bed, not hanky panky). I put her in my patented sleeper hold from when I did crazy kids care. She struggles mightily for a while but then finally gives up. We go to sleep (or I do, at least). When I wake up, I think she has turned into G___________, the skinhead lad I met at Todd's store back when. MIldly erotic, but I convince myself that I'm here to help, not to get it on.

Time to go. Get on my bike, not really looking forward to riding in the slush. I make it down to the west gate, the slush is very deep. I get off my bike and wait there for Austen. SHe comes flying by and I think misses me entirely. I run out after her, get her attention when she's already over at Hoffmantown. But I forgot my bike back at the gate house. I slog back. There, I meet some other guys on bikes, and one of them swaps me my mountain bike for a wierd, tiny bike that I realize I have to recline on. I pull out onto Ventura, but then realize that the other cars can't see me. I'm trying to stay in control in the 8 inch slush. I swerve around and get over to the north side of Hoffmantown.

But I'm down on the street and Austen is up in the parking lot. The intervening driveway is much longer and higher than I remembered, and it is an ice flow. It cascades down the driveway in foot-thick rivulets. The rivulets are individually colored, a rainbow striped sea of ice. (cf. the cast pyrex sculpture at the UNMAM) I try to climb up, maybe I even have some sort of hammer I try to employ to grip the ice. But I get nowhere and Austen is mocking me.

driving John and playing puzzles

shells & cheeze, broccoli, crescents, a couple of pieces of candy

Something about being out in the country, driving around. And then I'm in town and there's right-wing John from the restaurant, he's apparently stranded/broken down. I pull slowly over, he recognizes me, comes to get in. Suddenly there's his wife too, and they both want to ride in front, so we cram in on my bench seat. WTF? I'm gonna give them a ride home, but then I realize that they live all the way downtown. A pain, but no real problem.

Then there are these folding paper shapes that form into 3D geometric hinged forms, a ring of pyramids that hinge together, others. After messing about with them, I realize that they actually all fit together into a greater form. I start to put it all together, it's kind of tight and you have to push hard on them, but they're paper, so not too hard. I need to find more of the parts, so I can figure out what the final product will be.

dreaming in red and black

tamale pie, fruit salad, & choco chip cookies at marsha's

Don't remember the plots or themes, but as I knew I would, I dreamed about the OBU last night. And I think it was couched in a video-game-world.

island hopping post-apocalypse style

nachos, water, a couple jelly life savers

First portion lost. But we’re living in a post-apocalyptic world of sorts. A water world dotted with islands, all within a stone’s throw. My little gang and I see an island out there we think will be useful. But there is a longer stretch of water between, and also many many birds. I comment that this place is “bird heaven.” My female comrade responds, “No, not heaven.” We dive in and start swimming. At some point I realize that while I can get my head up high enough to still breathe, I can’t seem to upright myself in the water. I don’t panic, but I do feel some anxiety. I figure out that instead, I can summersault under the water and come up face-up. I do so, take a pause. The others pause and wait for me-- they know I’m not the best swimmer in the group.

Ac ross this bay, there is a giant, wierd structure. Huge white upright timbers soar into the sky in two rows, supporting giant white panels. A vertical channel is created, leading from one island to another. The local prince has erected this thing so that he can cruise his giant boat back and forth without his guests being bothered by seeing what the world is really like. I wonder why they wouldn’t want the view of this beautiful place. (Really, the place is gorgeous; the islands are all lush paradises.) We pass the prince’s channel and are nearing the island in our sights.

There are gardens and orchards here. An old couple keeps this place. We don’t mean any harm, we’re just after some food and there’s plenty here. I with a group of probably 4 or 5, including the girl, and Delfino. At an apple tree, the old woman (jeans and a denim shirt) catches us and confronts us with a sort of shotgun. But it’s obviiously a home jobby, the barrel is a thin piece of pipe, the tip curled back in. I wonder if this thing shoots anything more than a ping-pong ball or rock salt. I take a run, heading around a low hill that supports a house. She won’t be able to keep up, and certainly won’t have the chance to stop and aim that shabby weapon. I translate down to all fours to gain speed, my hands grabbing into the sod and throwing myself forward. I hear her yelling, and maybe even feel something hit my neck, but only a tiny sting. We’re away from her, and up into the house area. Her old husband is there. He’s far less confrontational, but my crew will have none of it. They want to lock him into a small room. I feel bad about the plan, though I know it will be okay. We shut him in, and can’t decide if we should nail the door shut. I’m opposed. Maybe we can just simulate it? Or should we shove pennies in the door?

refugee family on the train

chicken, peppers, feta sammies, spicy carrot sambal, too many pepperidge farm cookies

My family is trying to escape on the train. We're on with Carlos Castenada and F. Garcia Lorca, but the guards find them and kill them. We get off the train andn into a car to do some sort of sabotage out amongst lush green rolling hills, then we have to flee fast back to the train and sneak back on, all kind of A-Team.

Back on, we are in a sitting room, all 70's colors and shag, grandpa Hoyt is there, but he's an elderly black man, and not the same person at all. But still very imposing and somewhat intimidating. Rachel is there with her fiancee, who is also black. I'm certain that it pleases Grandpa that she's marrying a black guy. They're talking about what his life in Albuquerque would be like, and Grandpa points out that life in the north valley would be difficult for him. When we have a moment alone, the fiancee and I are talking a bit, but he doesn't seem to trust me very much, I think he might think that I'm a turncoat. I try to assuage his fear, relate some of my experiences, especially our earlier ride. "Castenada was in a car up front, and Garcia Lorca was back here. They were trying to remain anonymous, but the soldiers on the train recognized them. They went up front, and after a while there were shots."

I killed kate's brother and I'm a whore?

posole, water.

two dreams weaved together?

Part of a group that has broken into the art museum. Or rather, we're going to. I'm touring the museum, through the new, huge spaces downstairs. I compliment Lee on his HUGE new gallery. He seems uninterested. Then my group and I skip off and into an elevator, staff tries to follow us, but we pull down a huge ladder into the car and escape. The ladder goes up several floors, past several open elevator doors. We split up. I'm hiding in a large room, apparently an education center with rows of desks (and cabinets and counters and such for crafts, too). I lay down on the floor, in my flight, completely still. The staff is searching for me, they pass the doorway. I hope that the visual noise of the desks will be enough to shield me, but BV sees me. They have me.

I don't remember it, but I know that I killed KG's brother. I'm pretty sure that I strangled him, but I honestly don't remember. They are grilling me. I begin to weep as I admit that I killed him, and they mock me. I cry and cry, and try to explain that I'm not sorrowful for myself, because I'm afraid of prison, that I got caught; I'm broken and sorrowful because it was KG's brother that I killed, and she doesn't deserve to go through that. I hold her to me. Her hair is a tight perm, I kiss the top of her head.

Through all of the above, I have been flashing to another narrative. I'm a teenager, in conflict with my parents. We live in a big, fancy house, all carved wood & painted white inside. This is definitely back east somewhere. And the house has a TV satellite dish. I leave the house, against the wishes of my parents. I'm out to be with my friends. (But who are these friends?) I get to the dark, rainy square where we're meeting up. In short order, me and a couple of guys are leaning against a low stone wall. I'm naked. My "friend" seems annoyed, because I'm edging in on his turf. We're boy-whores. Do I really want to be doing this? I try to check out my "friends" as they also one by one get naked. Kind of sexy, kind of wrong.

average frustrating work dream

Napolitana with portabellos, silk cake, PBR

At the restaurant. The register has been replaced with this new computer system that uses little 1x1 icons for the foods, and has no descriptors. They look like little album covers, or maybe video game characters. They don't make sense to me. I'm trying to do register, but I can't seem to enter anything correctly. And people won't slow down their ordering to let me figure things out. Two #27's, 2 teas, and 2 different pizzas becomes two green squares with darker diagonal stripes, two orange squares, a picture of a 40's ganster in a fedora leaning against a wall smoking, and some other icon. I don't even know what I'm ordering them. I'm trying to read back, but have to keep erasing the whole thing and re-entering. I confirm the order of a "new yourk guy in a suit." Do we even have a pizza called that?

two years of my dream log

A little over two years recording nearly all of my remembered dreams here. I'm suprised at how many MORE there were in 2006 than in 2005. I'd say about 3/4 of entries were from the second year. And I feel like I have a lot to work with now, to look back at. There's a huge amount of raw data, frankly, that I can sift through and pull apart. Certainly I think I can draw some strong lines between my diet (particularly high acid foods, dairy, and booze) and general ferocity of dreams. And I would like to chart out some calendric details, too. What days of the week do I tend to have dreams (that I remember, anyhow)? Of course, that will fold back into my diet, too, since we, for instance, almost ALWAYS have pizza on Wed, and I almost ALWAYS drink alcohol on Thursday evenings, and so forth. Can my dreams that I record on Monday mornings be textured against whether we ate at our house or at MarJar's?

And I'd like to chart out themes in general, too. A recent comment on the log here (cheers, Austin) hit the nail on several: transportation, movement away from danger toward safety, and violence. "Lots of death," I believe the actual comment was, but I would suggest "Lots of violence" would be more precise, although there are instances of death, too: my murder of the girl in the market and the guy taking a face full of steel rail on the rooftop spring to mind as rather strong images right off the bat.

But I think that over time my dreams have shifted and probably nowadays it is me committing more violence than being the victim of it, as was the case in years past. But I think that this is a good thing, in all reality; my facile memory suggests that most of the violence I commit in my dreams is reactive, and even righteous in many cases, rather than sadistic. Whereas when I dreamt constantly of being hunted, it was usually malign beings pursuing me with "reckless hate" and I was helpless to stop them. With a few exceptions, I'm thrilled to death to be the one messing the other guy up-- they're MY dreams, after all.

And I'm glad to look back and see a lot of dreams with far more noble themes, too. I dream about my friends a lot; I dream about trying to do my job well (even if all of those dreams seem to be hugely frustrating! but I'm always really trying, and that's a very real-life dream for me); I dream about nobility and loyalty in my dogs.

And I dream about combating fascism. Praise Allah.

Of course, I also dreamed about a deific avatar raping a catatonic old woman.

two years of my dream log

A little over two years recording nearly all of my remembered dreams here. I'm suprised at how many MORE there were in 2006 than in 2005. I'd say about 3/4 of entries were from the second year. And I feel like I have a lot to work with now, to look back at. There's a huge amount of raw data, frankly, that I can sift through and pull apart. Certainly I think I can draw some strong lines between my diet (particularly high acid foods, dairy, and booze) and general ferocity of dreams. And I would like to chart out some calendric details, too. What days of the week do I tend to have dreams (that I remember, anyhow)? Of course, that will fold back into my diet, too, since we, for instance, almost ALWAYS have pizza on Wed, and I almost ALWAYS drink alcohol on Thursday evenings, and so forth. Can my dreams that I record on Monday mornings be textured against whether we ate at our house or at MarJar's?

And I'd like to chart out themes in general, too. A recent comment on the log here (cheers, Austin) hit the nail on several: transportation, movement away from danger toward safety, and violence. "Lots of death," I believe the actual comment was, but I would suggest "Lots of violence" would be more precise, although there are instances of death, too: my murder of the girl in the market and the guy taking a face full of steel rail on the rooftop spring to mind as rather strong images right off the bat.

But I think that over time my dreams have shifted and probably nowadays it is me committing more violence than being the victim of it, as was the case in years past. But I think that this is a good thing, in all reality; my facile memory suggests that most of the violence I commit in my dreams is reactive, and even righteous in many cases, rather than sadistic. Whereas when I dreamt constantly of being hunted, it was usually malign beings pursuing me with "reckless hate" and I was helpless to stop them. With a few exceptions, I'm thrilled to death to be the one messing the other guy up-- they're MY dreams, after all.

And I'm glad to look back and see a lot of dreams with far more noble themes, too. I dream about my friends a lot; I dream about trying to do my job well (even if all of those dreams seem to be hugely frustrating! but I'm always really trying, and that's a very real-life dream for me); I dream about nobility and loyalty in my dogs.

And I dream about combating fascism. Praise Allah.

Of course, I also dreamed about a deific avatar raping a catatonic old woman.

three dreams in one night. (#1 sexually explicit)

pot pie, PB cookies, water


I remembered three dreams from this night, probably because I woke up several times in the night and either couldn't get back to sleep right off, or because I purposely went through them in my head to store them for later.

first dream. (sexually explicit.)
Talking with 1, 2 and 3 about how they get along without having anybody to screw. They're all rather aggravated about it. 1 tells me that he catches 3 jerking off every morning, and he says that 2 gives him (1) head a lot, (he does the fist at the mouth/tounge in the cheek motion as a visual aide) which I find pretty shocking, frankly. As he says each of these things, I get just a visual flash of the experiences. Highly voyeuristic.

second dream.
At an airport in London. We're getting ready to take off, but I realize that we never searched lost & found at the airport for our stuff and I charge back off the plane to go have a look. I sprint through the airport to the lost and found room, which really resembes the jumble of a junk & collectables shop more than anything. Red carpet. In a pile in the center of the room I find our missing stuff, sure enough. A bag for each of us (is it mom, dad and me?), and coats for all but myself. The coats are all these giant fur numbers like the kids nick from the wardrobe in (the 2006 version) _Lion, Witch & the Wardrobe._ I also find my fez box, which is a real releif. The fezzes are still intact and fine. Another fez box is stacked there and I peek inside. There are a couple of white fezzes with heavy jewelling that I've seen before, maybe on the internet. They have pricetags on them; one says $85, which is really way too much for this fez, even so ornate. I consider stealing them-- it's unlikely they they'd ever be claimed, and I'd kind of like to stick it to someone who tries to pull down $85 for this thing. But I decide against it.

In the meantime, I'd better be getting back to the plane-- yikes, time is short. But I'm all sweaty from the sprint across the airport. Well, I have fresh clothes again, now that I've found the bags. I strip down to my undies, to pull on a fresh pair of levis and a plaid button-down. Of course, two young women come tripping in as I'm in my undies. Fuck. I try to cover up, but what's the need, my body looks a lot more pumped up than I remembered. I start heading back with all this stuff, but I realize that I left my tickets/boarding pass on the plane. I'm screwed. I know they won't let me through security without. I go to a guy in a uniform and start pleading my case, explaining what's happened. He's reticent, and I understand, but can't he help me? He puts me in a line to have my situation addressed. I'm too late. I know it.


third dream
I'm working at a Blockbuster video, but it's a huge warehouse space, like a Best Buy. And Lane is still my manager here. I'm trying to organize some stock, but I'm sort of lost and useless. I realize there's a woman at the register and I hop over, apologize for not being there. She wants to buy some lawn furniture, but she wants to use a competitor's coupon. I'm pretty sure we can do that, but I'm not certain how to enter it properly. Where's Lane when I need him, anyhow? I try to use the scanner on the coupon bar code, but it won't take, and I try to type it in, which takes a long time. The woman is not very understanding; I try to explain that I've only been back on this job for a couple of days after several years away.

[by my reckoning, they probably at the hospital having their baby when I had this dream]

work exchange

green chile "chicken" cassarole, water, some candy lady fudge

fragmentary

There is a managers exchange between the Il Vicinos. I think that ours are only going there, but when I get to work, I'm confronted with strangers-- a big bellied guy in a t-shirt that looks like a truck driver and another guy. And I don't recognize the restaurant, either. It actually looks like elements of our the Spoleto spaces, but in colors from our house, especially the blue room. Then I realize that they have just moved all the tables over to one wall and they're taking the legs off or something, and that's why it looks strange. The incoming managers all seem terse and humorless and I have no confidence. This was definitely a waste of time and a mistake.

I'm in a hotel room, typing a form or a letter. We're expecting the guys from the wedding party. The mother of the groom is with me, I think. There's a knock. I don't know what to expect. Some wierd, dumpy guy comes in. He's followed shortly by the groom, an also wierd, also dumpy guy with hair long on top and shaved on the sides. Khakis and a white button down. I humor his excitement. We do a little dance, a little dip. This guy is a flamer. Is he marrying a girl? Am I supposed to perform this ceremony?

I guess I'm George Orwell or something

taco tote papota, quesadilla, y tostadas, todos con salsas, agua

I've gone to this (Spanish?) city. I'm supposed to meet up with Stephanie there. I don't know if we've gone knowing that the war is back on, or if the fresh violence has caught us off guard, but here we are and I'm glad to be in the thick of it. I feel I'm keeping just one step ahead of one faction or other, and I know that we are in danger here, not only from the caprices of war, but from the politics of the situation, too.

There's some trudging about in this dream, but I don't remember, some geographical references to the area around the Ventura gate by my parents' house. But then I am making my way through the city to the hotel where we will meet up. It is cold, there is some old sludgy snow on the ground though most is gone. There are bodies here and there. I'm walking past a fence covered in mesh cloth, like around a construction site, I can catch glimpses through and there is the body of a man face down in the winter-white grass just beyond. Maybe a uniform. You don't stop to look. You keep moving with the rest of the people around you.

I spend the night at my hotel. The flattened remains of "St. Bartholomew's" is across the street, recently largely torn down, not bombed. I can see the ruin of it from a window. There are people moving around in it, in the surrounding yard.

The next morning, I know that they are coming for me. It will be tricky; I have to meet Stephanie here, but I have to time it so that they don't arrest me while I'm waiting. I slip out of my room and around a corner moments before they come and kick the door in. I make my way downstairs. Stephanie should be here any moment. Through cracks between the planks that cover the windows, I can see that what was left of St. Bartholomew's is gone, eliminated. The very earth has been set in drifts like snow around the old churchyard. There is a buxom blonde woman in a black dress with tiny polka dots reclining on a sort of stool set againt a pillar, smoking a cigarette through a long holder. She doesn't acknowledge me, but I speak to her anyway, not even certain if I can trust her, she may turn me over to the men.

"It was bombed last night?"

"Uh huh."

"I don't know why, it was already just a ruin."

"Yep."

Stephanie is there, we have to go. We get out of the building. As we trudge along in a crowded street. She tells me about the man who helped her find me there, about about his flamboyant boyfriend who wore heels. There are more bodies today, lots more. Walking across a park, I look to one side, a low space between two hills, there are several bodies on the ground, people there apparently to claim them. I want badly to take a picture but I'm afraid that people will see and I'll be beaten for being callous, or worse. We walk past the cloth covered fence, I spy the body there again, the grass has seemed to crawl up over it. It's as dead as the corpse, so I know it hasn't grown, I wonder if wind-- or the bombs?-- has somehow moved the grass up over the side of the body.

Another body, but this one is different. It is face up, its arms out and flexed, almost in a state of surrender. The wrists are secured to the ground with heavy cords or tubing. It's been left as a warning, as a desecration. No one dares to try to move it. It's a young man with short, sandy blonde hair. Not more than 18 or 19, in an olive drab wool uniform coat with red and yellow patches or decorations at the shoulder.

We keep moving, getting toward our goal of a market and train station.

everybody's drunk here

peppers stuffed with cheesy rice, broccoli, breadsticks, water, one piece of fudge

I'm out and about at night with Ross from work. We stop by a Circle K sort of place, probably up around Morningside Park, but it's not the one that's there. It's all white, inside and out, there aren't really shelves of products, though there are some stacks of stuff on the floor, like bags of charcoal maybe, with red and black packaging;, and there's candy & such at the counter, magazines. [I've dreamed of this place before...] There's a line, maybe two lines to two registers. All guys my own age. As I finally get up to the register, I find that impatient guys behind me are actually reaching around me to set down & pay for their stuff. I'm completely flabbergasted. I finally get there and Vangie from Smith's is the cashier. I ask for a pack of cigarettes (she gives me Marlboro-- white and red), and a drink. I pay, but then a tabloid-format magazine down and to my right catches my eye, and before I know it, I've read a good portion of the front page. I come back to my senses, people behind me are very frustrated that I'm just standing at the register. Embarrassed, I buy the magazine and leave.

I get out into the parking lot and I hear Vangie come out the door behind me, calling after us. I forgot my smokes & drink, and she insists that I'm obviously too drunk to drive. I don't disagree with her, though I'm not certain how I got so drunk, or why I chose to drive to this place in my apparent condition. She suggests that we could go get something to eat, leave the car here, and come back for it when we're sober. Good idea. In fact, she recommends a Mexican restaurant over on Central, she'll take us there, and she starts hoofing it down the street, heading off NW toward Central. I trot to keep up.

We work our way through the residential neighborhoods and it turns to day. We three round a corner and there stands a huge apartment or corporate office complex, easily 20 stories high. I remark how weird it is when you think you know the streets in an area but then it turns out you find such places you didn't even know existed. Somehow it is decided that we should get inside this building, probably Ross' idea. Vangie knows a way in, and we follow her. We get up on a section of roof only a couple of stories up and get through a window that is high up in an atrium-like space, lined on the inside with windows, all set back into the wall to give maybe a 6 inch ledge I can barely stand on. And yet Vangie walks down the wall like it's a staircase, simply striding down by stepping on these tiny ledges. I feel stuck, though, uncertain how I can follow her. To complicate things, I have a cigarette in my mough, the smoke in my eye. I start to haltingly step down, I drop the cigarette onto the tile floor below. I make it down, but not without attracting the attention of a man in shirt and tie sitting in an office, the window of which I have just climbed past. He's coming, we book it.

Down down down, through the flourescent-lit halls. Lost and no idea how to get out or away. We all realize we're coming to a dead end tangle of halls, but then we round a corner and there's a "pizza party" set up on folding tables, and we get an idea. Vangie and Ross disguise themselves as business boy yuppie types in their 30's, I do the same. We're all blonde, we're all cookie cutter. We start stuffing our faces with the pizza and fuschia-frosted cupcakes. The guy chasing us comes around the corner, but doesn't recognize us. This is a welcome party for the new associates. This building is the corporate offices, and the tower is the dormitory for all the guys that work here. The guys start showing up, they're all blonde 30-something cookie cutters, too. And they're all drunk. Vangie and Ross are really uncomfortable, but I throw myself into my role, chatting up these assholes. Fuck.

i steal a weapon of great power

saggios: broccoli & mushroom and pineapple & onion, water

I'm part of a caravan that is escorting two very powerful weapons to a safe hiding place. Anachronism reigns. The vehicles are motorized, but most look like idealized museum specimen old west coaches, all dark wood and carved and red velvet. Myself, I'm dressed (and look) like Mr. Dark from _Something Wicked This Way Comes._ The pace is hurried across the region, there is some urgency to get these two things to their destination, lest other powers descend upon us and take them. Little does everyone know that there is a cabal of us within the caravan set to take the weapons for ourselves.

The first step is to take a mantle-like piece of clothing, and with the power it will afford us we can steal the shining globe. The first task is up to me. There are 5 of us in our coach, three of us are in the know, the other are wary and watchful, as well as dangerous. I feign sickness as we speed across the desert, I claim that I need to go above for some fresh air. A woman, in full Victorian age frontier lady dress, inquires if some crackers might help. I tell her no, that I had too much wheat with breakfast and that it is upsetting my stomach. I climb out the window and clamber carefully up onto the roof. From here, I will have to jump to the larger vehicle behind us, where the first weapon is carried. The vehicles aren't lined up well, I have to wait for the two drivers, both of whom are acting in the conspiracy, to pull closer, and then I throw myself off the roof of the stagecoach and catch onto the roof of the other.

Flash to our evening stop. It is known throughout the camp that I have taken the mantle. But no one can challenge me about it. We have stopped at a campsite with simple, small, clean buildings, drywall and concrete floors, some plumbing. I am in a small room under a shower. I am naked except for the mantle, which is like a very thick kuffiyeh scarf which I wear around my neck in a large loop. Other young men are coming in to glare at me, I am unconcerned. I will show them , and those who cannot be convinced of the rightness of our actions are unimportant, they an be discarded. The sun is setting, I walk outside into a yard full of people, all in period dress. (Not certain if I've dressed or not.) As I emerge into the last rays of the sun, suddenly the gleaming edge of the sun jumps back up into the sky, the sun itself greets me. The people are amazed. I move back out of the sun and it drops again. And then I run forward again, and again the sun leaps back up most of the way over the horizon. I try for a third time, but I let the sun go too far down and it doesn't catch on me again. Still, people applaud. The fear I have aroused in many is put to rest. We still have some way to go, though.

a hole in the floor and some nutty christians

spicy chik'n sandwiches & (garlic) fries, water

First part is lost.

We're around the neighborhood, around the house. I think I'm on the roof. A regular joe with a bag full of tools comes up and says that he knew "Brian," the guy who sold us the house. Mind you, the house isn't actually 411, it's more like the white house at Sil and P'ton, but that's where we live. I can't recall the name of the man who sold it to us; "Brian" sounds maybe right, but I have misgivings. But this guy says he helped Brian re-do the floors, and just needs to check up on them. I let him come on the roof-- or do we go inide? It's not clear. But he takes out his tools and deftly removes a section of floor (roof? we ARE inside, though...) about 3x2 feet. It sawtooths together with the rest of the wood floor, and I see that they laid it so that instead of planks butting against each other, they're cut back at a long angle, so that about a foot of the one plant overlays a foot of the other, which makes for a much thicker and sturdier floor. Beneath the wood is a mass of newspaper, some crunched and bunched up, other left in piles. Insulation. I think of what a fire trap it is. I step down into the paper and the surface beneath it rolls like the deck of a ship. The guy leaves, and I still have misgivings-- did I just give away part of our floor to a con man?

I go out on the porch, looking down the street. When I turn back around, a group of mother/daughter missionary pairs has gaggled up at the door. The moms seem to be in simple blouses and mom jeans, the daughters-- all a little husky-- are all in these long flowered dresses, Warren Jeffs style. Josh has written "PREACH OFF" in block letters with a sharpie on a yellow sticky note, posted it on the storm door, and is pulling it shut in their faces. They are undaunted. I squirm my way past them, letting it be known that we want no part in their process. They refuse to give up. One or two of the daughters keep trying to worm past me into the house, getting on hands and knees and crawling under my legs, trying to force the door and step past. I am not amused. I start screaming obscenities at them and forcing them physically away from my door. One of the daughters looks absolutely devastated. I start screaming at them, "Now YOU know what it's like being persecuted in this country! How do you think it is being a fucking MUSLIM in this country?" I drag up my right sleeve, intending to flash my ghazi star, but it's different, and I can't get my sleeve easily past it. But it looks like a cog graphic with an Olde English "A" in the middle.

working at a new restaurant

spicy chik’n sandwiches, fries, water, candy lady fudge


Various elements of _Scanner Darkly_ creep into this dream at the front end, including me being Bobby Hill and I eat one of the bugs from the beginning of the movie.

I am working a night at the “other restaurant” in the business. I have refused to work here before, but I am doing so as a favor to Meg. The evening is just getting started. The restaurant is a rather large space, all one big room, with a bar (or something) in the middle and a bar over at one wall. It’s a white walls, dark wood concoction, wait staff in white shirts & long aprons & ties. The action is starting and everyone is hustling. But I’m not certain what to do, and I don’t know where I’m supposed to be working. I approach some ladies stuck in line and offer to get them a drink while they wait. They select cocktails with some sort of pink liquor in a low brandy-shaped bottle.

I go to make the drinks for them. I can’t find any of the liquor, though; I open a reach-in and dive in there up to the waist, and find one last bottle, but it only has enough for one drink, if that, not three. Fuck. I’m flailing around trying to get more of this stuff, but I don’t even know my co-workers’ names to ask anyone for help. What do I do? I feel like I should have been back by now with the drinks. I finally go back, and show them the bottle, but now it really does have enough for three drinks. Fuck it. Fine, I’ll get the drinks together.

I go over to the bar by the wall and hop up on the bar top & lay over to reach some glasses. Someone grabs my legs and thrusts me over the bar and I crash over on the floor. I am incredibly pissed off. I go to a girl that was facing whoever it was, across the bar, and ask who did it. She won’t talk to me or make eye contact. I finally get her to say, “If he sees me tell you, he’ll be pissed. But he’s eyeing you right now.” I swing around and some fratboy dick in a trendy blue striped shirt yanks his eyes off of me. I charge around the bar. Here goes.

I push him off his stool and try to fight him, but true dream-style, I can’t get any power in my swings, we’re both moving too slow to really be fighting. AAAAAAAAARRRRRGH! I let it go, but I’m out of here. I storm through the restaurant, taking off this stupid gear. Meg stops me, asks me what’s wrong. I tell her I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know the system, I can’t function, I don’t even know where my section is, and since the restaurant is FULL, that means that people have been sitting without even a glance of service for a long time. (My alarm really rises at this realization.) She protests, that maybe I don’t even HAVE a section. I don’t understand how this can be.

I’m walking home, through a neighborhood that looks like Pill Hill/MLK Jr. Something alerts me. The fratboy is here. And this time I’m not dream-weak or slow. I drop him and smash his face into the pavement. In a very scramble-suit-style, his body is morphing, various cartoon elements and characters. At some point he is a cartoon skeleton.

lost student or secret agent?

green chile turkey enchiladas, beans & rice, water, choco cake

I'm moving through the old high school. (The dream version, not my real one.) I think I'm wearing a tweed jacket. I'm lurking around, the halls are largely empty. It's off season, probably a week or something before classes start. Am I looking for evidence? I have a digital camera with me, and I'm snapping pics. I find something on the floor-- is it hard candy? Or is it the ruined carcass of a small bird? I take a picture. People begin staring, what am I doing, anyhow? Do I have blood around my mouth? And I suddenly realize that I have a German test in only a short time, and I'm unprepared.

I attempt to put that aside and continue. I go up into the office area. Dianne Anderson from the news is one of the secretaries. I step up to her and in my best socialite divorcee falsetto voice: "DiiiiiAAAAAANNNNEE! How AAAARRREEE you?" But I don't give her a chance to respond, she knows I have no real interest. She glares up at me. She's nothing to me and I dont' care.

driving with the mistress

Olympia cafe, PBR

I'm in the back seat of M's squareback, I think C is driving, and M is in the passenger seat. We're winding up mountain roads. I'm stretched out in the seat, looking up and across at M and out the passenger side windows. I can see the blasted rock faces of the road cut in to the mountain passing by. Very much the light sandstone and limestone of the Sandias. She's going on and on. She had to spend an afternoon with D for some reason and apparently D was, of course, a real bitch to her. But M is still keeping up the game, going on and on about she doesn't know why D would be a bitch to her, and on and on. I keep my trap shut and an eyebrow raised. I feel real fatigue at the charade and feel like knocking their heads together and shouting "Everyone knows! Why keep pretending?!?!?" M keeps going on about it.

josh has left me and guido

frontier, water, late night frosted flakes

Pee Wee woke me up at 3:54 from a dream that involved adding photographic bits into a patchwork quilt.

After I went back to sleep:

On a plane with Guido. We need to get up toward the front and hook up with Josh. A fight attendant tries to be of help, but I point out that Guido bites and we can manage on our own. Guido is on his leash, but I pick him up to carry him, and as if to illustrate he takes a big bite at me, but luckily only catches my shirt cuff, but he keeps it a mouthfull and doesn't let go. "See?" I say.

We make our way forward through the giant plane. Up at the front, we see Josh, but he won't talk to us. A gruff man's voice says, "Viets! I need you out there to help show the house!" Josh exits and we follow him out onto the farm. His mother is trying to show the family house. Wheat fields ready for harvest, trees in the distance, deteriorating but beautiful clapboard house and other buildings. Josh won't stop walking, he won't talk to us. I plead with him, that I don't understand why he won't talk to us, what we've done, that it's killing me.

cook that tumbleweed

nachos. beer.

second part of a longer dream, the first part was more violent maybe. And there is something about trying to fill a cardboard box with epoxy, but I would need gallons, and I only have a katsup-squirter-sized bottle of each of the two parts, and it's raining.

I'm going to cook a tumbleweed. It's a local custom, though rarely done any more and I've never tried before. It requires a good sized tumbleweed, and I grab one about the size of a loveseat as it brushes down the hilly streets. (This ain't ABQ. Streets are very hilly, buildings are painted wood frame, largely blue. Feels like...Greece? or something.) I find that the tumbleweed is actually a rolled mat of bramble, and I can unroll a flap along the side, almost like unrolling insulation. I need butter and olive oil, and I need to get a container to cook it in. I choose the cardboard epoxy box. But will it stand up in the fire? I wrap the tumbleweed in some sort of paper, did I forget to oil it first? When do I drizzle the butter on? Is cooking a tumbleweed really such a good idea? And why did I choose such a gigantic one?

little girl, your kitten has died

no dinner, some PBR & Bombay, a ginger cookie or three

At a family gathering at my parents' house. Some little girl second cousin is there, probabl 3 or 4. She has 2 kittens, one boy who is a bit older and very rambunctious, the other a girl and very small and shaky. It's time for bed, I sit with my little cousin until she goes to sleep. The boy kitten is off somewhere, the girl is there but won't stay in bed with her. I leave and go into the kitchen and then on into the adjoining fast food place. Another cousin, teenage, fat, comes in in a few minutes and says, "Well, one of the kittens is dead, and you'll never guess which one." We all scamper back into the house. The little boy kitten got his claws caught in a bedspread and his claws ripped out and then he fell and broke bones and died. We wake up the little cousin to tell her [why would you do that?]; she begins a prolonged session of piercing screams.

I go out into the lego land style lego workshops set up. Long, low tables coated in blue lego sheeting, lots of lego bits to play with and construct. Then it turns from legos into a machine shop of some sort, but still with long, low tables, now piled with tools. The environment is greasy and dirty, walls of ramshackle bleached old wood planks cobbled together. A guy about my age comes up and challenges me. I can't turn him down, honor and all.

He goes off to pick his weapon, I simply choose a hammer. (The black handled hammer from dad's garage.) I can catch bird's eye camera glimpses of him, he's chosen a knife, but has attached "steels" to it, as someone around me says, which means that he has attached a long wood and metal handle to his knife. Oh crap. He comes back, we begin to fight. His range is obviously a problem, but then I realize that his knife has a polyhedral knob on the tip, and the edges aren't really sharp. I concentrate on grasping the blade when he lunges, so that I can yank him to me and bring my hammer to bear. It's frightening, but it's working.

dream 2: re-terracing the yard

see dream below

I come out of our front door and Danny from across the street is directing a crew of people, digging up the stone and vertical log retaining walls in our yard. I know he's trying to help, but I'm startled that he brought all these people over and dug up my yard without even telling me. I shout a mighty, "OI-- STOP IT." And everyone stops and looks.

I find out what they're doing, and sure enough, there's some scheduled demo in our yard and they're there to help. I guess we do have to dig up all this stuff. Shane shows up on his bike and asks what's up, I tell him that "they have to take out this tree here in front and the big one in back, too," I think to replace sewer lines or something. I indicate the two [actually non-existent] trees, big, stumped-off Japanese Elms that are about 12 feet high, but all the branches have been taken off.

I go around the north side of the house (which opens up to a big space, Missy's house is gone) and start to help the two people there tearing our the wooden terracing where the front steps down into the back. I think it's Tasha from the video store, but the person doesn't seem to know me, and her hair stays over her face and I can't see. Once we've torn out most of the retaining wall it occurs to me that we really don't have to do this, the construction won't effect this part of the property.

dream 1: i'm a ragged scamp of a kid

brickyard pizza with onions and banana peppers, water

I'm a little vagabond street kid, tough as nails, smart as a tack. The dream runs like a movie, with a voice over narrator, who is "me" as an old man, looking back and telling his (my) story. My little companion and I escape some sort of bondage, maybe press-ganging onto a ship crew? Pirates of the Caribbean-style acrobatics. My friend hitches a ride in a semi and thinks I'm coming, too. But, as the narrator says, "I had other ideas." I swing off the side of a dock or ship and drop down (a serious distance) onto a floating pallet. I hit almost square on, though the blue three ring binder I'm carrying dips one corner in the harbor water. I try to get my friend's attention as he pulls away, but either he doesn't hear me or is too disappointed to respond. I'm crestfallen that he thinks I have deserted him, when in fact I mean to meet up with him soon in the woods. I'm shouting "I'll find you! I'll see you soon! I'm coming!"

Well, I guess i have to start out through the woods. I'm certain that I'll find my real father there.

killing a retarded girl (disturbing content)

Yasmeen’s falafel sandwich, salad, baklava, water. Mid-evening bowl of frosted flakes.

I work at a place that is kind of a Wild Oats but looks more like an old hunting lodge (Old Faithful Inn style) with check out stands. There is a retarded girl around , maybe 16 years old. Meg from work and I decide to kill her. (For what reason I’m not sure. It’s not meant with malice, but probably as some sort of condescending eugenicist mercy killing? Or do we simply not want to have to deal with her?) In the produce section (looks like Ta Lin, actually) I try to chloroform her, but she’s struggling too much and won’t go down. I call in help from Meg and some others, mostly older men in suit pants and short sleeve button downs. We drag her, wrapped in plastic, over to the bagging station at the check out, lay her down on the low shelf of the baggers station, and Meg proceeds to throttle her. We all crowd around so that no one can see what’s going on and to help hold the girl down. There is a nun around that we know is with the girl, and we are rather desperate to keep this activity from her.

Flash to later, the girl is dead, her body gotten rid of. There is a news story, they are looking for her. They show her on the TV, her face drawn up with a series of lines obviously meant to guide surgery. Apparently she wasn’t retarded, she merely had a condition of some sort from which she would have recovered and returned to a full functioning state. She was apparently also a nun, and perhaps a nurse, too? The ghost of the girl is standing around with me, mocking me, as I realize what has gone on. She mouths verbatim the news story as it is pronounced. She sneers at our folly, only I can see her, panic begins to rise inside me.

i'm great at rugby and i've gone back in time

bean burritos, some PBR, late night frosted flakes

Shane convinces me to come with him to his rugby scrimmage and play.I go, our team is in white, the other team is in red and yellow stripes, but these are soccer uniforms, really, and the game is really soccer with us being able to pick up and throw the ball, too. The opposing team is made up of Delfino look-alikes and we definitely out size and out power them, but as it's really soccer, they are still able to hold their own. I have no idea of positions or the rules, so I just go crazy and I'm all over the field, every time they turn around I'm tackling. I even score once. At the end, the coach come up in amazement and asks, "Where did you COME from?" and asks where I "want to stand." (Meaning, what position would I like to play, I get the feeling I could have my pick.) I tell him I don't know anything about rugby, so I don't know, but I'm glad to come back and play with the team. I'm proud and energized.

Shane and I walk home through the city. We pass a ripped out flat. Red brick, narrow plan, tall windows, at least 5 stories high. Dr. Mead is there with blueprints. I tell Shane that my friend Michele and her husband are remodelling this flat using a Bart Prince (or maybe Predock?) design. Michele come down and we chat, slag off the museum. For some reason I think that she's quit, but then I realize that she's still working there. We hug and part ways.

I go to work at IV. The layout is more like my usual dream IV, though this time even more like a Dions in some ways. I jump on the register, telling people that I've been playing rugby and I'm too worn out to do floor. The first customer up is a girl, she's happily babbling away and I cant hear her order. She repeats something about eggplant, and I tell her we don't have eggplant. This blows up her ideas for dinner, so she has to look at the menu. She asks a million questions, seems to order several things and then always reneges. She starts saying things like, "I'll have a Dr. Pepper, no Dr. Pepper sub Coke." I'm increasingly frustrated. When she says she wants no iced tea-- NO iced tea on the table, I lose it. I tell her that she can't possibly go through the menu and say what all she DOESN'T want, that I don't have time for that. I tell her that when she decides what she wants, I would be glad to take her order, but until then I have things I need to do, and could she please stand aside.

I start to realize that other people working there are people that worked there years and years ago. Including the wierd blonde woman i did ceramics with in school that I see at art shows. She's wearing mom jeans. I turn to a cook who looks like Ezra and ask what year it is. He starts off about "It's the year that IV really gets established as a restaurant..." I interrupt and ask him to just straight out say what year it is, even though it's a wierd question. He tells me it's 1986. I'm shocked, but I can do 1986. I'm still and adult, and Josh seems to be around. I can do 1986.

i'm a lonely skin who just wants to hang out

brickyard pizza with green chile and tomato, water, cup of cocoa & (literally) one ginger cookie

I'm going to the Pixies concert. But I need to get tickets, and I'm going to the punk rock store to buy them. They'll be on sale soon and I want to avoid the lines. I go early and just as they open I'm in. It's in a sort of downtown area, but the building is much like a Nob Hill shopfront, probably like the old InCrowd place, but in later days, run down, decaying. I go in, the lady is very nice, I think she feels some pity for me, like I'm some sort of oddity or freak or defective. The tickets are a lot more than I thought, though, and I have to scratch the money out of my wallet. And then she writes my name on a whiteboard calendar, apparently the tickets they're selling are for any events for the next week, not just this one. But what else is playing? Nothing, that I know of. It seems a rip off to me, but I won't complain, this store is important to the scene.

I go back home. Stephine is on the way over and some of the guys are around. The inside of my house seems unfinished, some walls just frames with loose plastic stapled up. Steph arrives, we hang for a moment, but then she goes back outside. We wonder where she's gone. She's out by her new car, feeding Cairan on the tit. The guys seem mesmerized. I tell them that she's pregnant again. They want to go see her boob. Jeez. But I go out to see the new car. It is a green and gold mom-van of a sort, but bubble-shaped, like a giant cough drop. The swelling sides make the interior HUGE, there are benches along the back and the sides and you could almost walk around in there. I congratulate her. Niiiiiiiiiice.

I want to go do something, I want to go back to the punk rock store and see who's around. But I know there will be a giant line now; will I have to wait in it, since I already bought a ticket to the show? I call and ask, but I'm not certain they understand what I'm asking, and obviously they have better things to do. I'm really frustrated. Everybody's gone and I just want to hang out with humans. Fuck.

man busts his face (disturbing)

thanksgiving dinner redux ("turkey," cranberries, stuffing), water

I don't remember all of this, but it was one of my giant trek dreams. Are we a people driven from their homes, maybe? (I have been reading about Mormon history.)

missing potion.

We are herded through a ruined, wet, skeletal building of concrete slabs and exposed wires, little light. We are taken up several flights of stairs and up onto a deteriorating metal roof, rusty color. The view is of a wide valley ringed with mountains. I'm with my mother. We have to get down and across the roof to some sort of transportation. I being picking my way down the slope, keeping in mind mom & not letting her fall. But a big guy near us-- a cop, but he's not in uniform, just jeans & a t-shirt and heavy hiking boots-- he starts bounding down the side of the roof. He doesn't see the heavy metal railing he's headed right into, one bar at waist height, one at face height. He ploughs full speed into it. Blood and bone fly, his body is suspended by his destroyed face wrapped around the railing, his jaw falls, his body schlocks off and crumples to the roof. Hysteria.

missing portion.

It's now Josh and I (maybe? is Jonesy there, in his big green coat?) and a few guys our age, we're out in a forest, still on the move. We come to a ravine with a very steep rock face. There is a tire at the bottom where we were expecting to jump down to, but now it has been shifted and can't help break our fall. Can we get down without getting hurt? There are more guys across the ravine, they say they got down and across okay. The only other option is to go way around, several miles out of the way, and we're sure to be caught trying that.

josh won't stop undressing me

brickyard pizza with bells & mushrooms, water, some PBR, some Skyy

First part is forgotten.

Austen and I get off a bus "downtown," but it is an ailing post-industrial wasteland of decaying buildings and empty lots full of trash. But there is new activity starting, new building. Right where we step off the bus is a construction site, there is a funky, hand-painted sign in stripes of jarring colors, so that it reverbs and is hard to make out. I finally realize it says "PRADO." I tell Austen that our friend Miguel will be so excited to know that there's going to be a Prado right downtown. She laughs and we start off, I guess we're walking home. She and I split at some point and Josh and I meet up. We're walking out of the downtown area and across some sports fields and onto a high school campus. Josh is being mischevious and keeps tackling me and taking my pants off. But there are people around, some distance off, but still...

We go into the high school building, we walk through one set of doors, there's a small intermediate room, then the doors into the building. (cf the doors into the CFA that lead to the Dept of Dance offices area) Josh is still being a card, but in the building there are security guards, and we don't want to get nicked. There's a guard coming down the hall off to our left. The light is low, grey-green. The environment is grimy, grey, lockers and industrial tiles. The guard is coming, we can't see him yet, and we're nervous. But then he takes off running. He and another guard are playing games with each other, they consider it "training" together. They race around & play hide and go seek. I'm glad they're off our back, but I'm chagrined that they are "training" rather than doing their job. (Is there some sort of zombie or mob threat? I'm not sure.) I think that if they want to "train," they should do it separate from their guard time at the school.

goat cheese & spanish novels

stuffed peppers, broccoli, donuts

Lane and I decide that I will prep more goat cheese for the red pepper tomato bisque. I'll chop up hunks of whole goat cheese, we'll keep it in a small insert like the fresh mozzarella. I go and look but find it, Lane shows me the egg-shaped lumps in dark foil. He give me a switchblade to cut it with. Working at the big wooden table in the kitchen. I cut one lengthwise, then try to slice it down. The knife is sharp but is the wrong tool, the wrong shape. It has a knob just above the tang that keeps me from drawing all the way down. I try different knives in the kitchen, but the paring knife (looks like my Global paring knife) isn't very sharp; I try a wierd axe that looks like a Tibetan ritual item in stainless, but it's too unwieldy. The foil on the cheese has become a hard, thick plastic or wax shell.

The cheese pieces turn into Spanish novels and religious books, all with cheap, small-press-looking covers. I throw them one at a time into a big box or trunk lined with a black plastic bag. (Looks like a big version of the roasted chile box i peeled this fall.) I weep for each that I drop into the box. There are other people around, participating, and there is a reference in this action to something historical, but we're enacting it in reverse, putting books in rather than lifting them out.

back to highschool in a red suit

day of death, 24 hours of stomach bug, had some applesauce and a little mac & cheese for dinner, water.

a fragment.

Need to get dressed and get to (high) school. I'm at my parents' house, and I take time to put together all the pieces of this suit, fabric almost like upholstery, metallic maroon over black in a florid (not floral) pattern. Takes me some time to find all the pieces. Finally dressed, I ask my mom if she will drive me cuz I'm already late. She takes me, a friend of hers rides shotgun & I'm in back. On the way, it occurs to me that I've been on fall break & I've forgotten what my first class is, and no idea how to get around the place. Mom is sure I'll figure it out once I get there. I'm upbeat but dubious. They drop me off and La Cueva is, literally, a giant shopping mall with some airport aspects, too. I have no idea at all. At least I've missed first period entirely and I think that 2nd is German, if I can only find it...

adventure with the clown head superweapon

"Chicken" pot pie, cream puffs, water.

(Could this dream be any more Freudian-ly obvious?)
We're teeneagers. Our little clan is on a quest through the suburban landscape, skirting neighborhoods across playing fields and up and over dams & such. One of our group has a new, powerful weapon that glows blue when the light goes down, looks a lot like a trident but rounded at the corners. Another gang, to whom the weapon belongs, begins to hunt us down. We have a lead on them, but they'll be upon us soon enough.

And then the showdown. Their best heaves a javelin at me, but I duck and roll and evade. We have them and they submit. We proceed to intimidate them. There's a faint sexual element to it, some inference that I'll make this kid my bitch if he doesn't watch his step.

I examine the great trident weapon. It morphs in my hands to the size of a dolphin. The interior opens to reveal the Fun Fountain clown head as the power source. Reality/realism declines at this point in the dream and I begin to think that I might be able to get a new head/had for our fountain by ordering another of these weapons off of the internet.

i'm a sorcerer

see dream below, dreamed this after the crash dream

I'm at work. But instead of a dining room, the restaurant is an auditorium-shaped room that reminds me of the old UNM SUB Ballroom. Gray carpet, gray walls, shoulder-high stage in the point of the pie-shaped room with black drapes behind. People are showing up, all dressed for halloween. Ms. Sullivan is among them, dressed as a witch with a green face and pointy hat. She doesn't see me, I feel bad for not getting a hold of her for years. It's getting crowded up on stage, where they're setting up in circles, working on some papers. Including a big black dragqueen. I ask her if she's LaFawnduh [I think that's the giant woman on _Napoleon Dynamite_?], she says, "Huh?" Guess she's not who I think she is. I need to take some more chairs up there. I fight my way through and around with a chair, the same green metal chairs we have at the restaurant, and I try to get Sully's attention but fail. And I'm cornered and stuck up on the stage. I guess I'll just do my teleportation thing. Haven't practiced in a while, might be rusty. Of course, all it requires is squeezing my left thumb and middle fingertip together. My finger buckles and twists a bit, but I feel the old familiar electric buzz in my finger bones and I warp back over across the room. Some people notice and are duly impressed. What can I say, I'm a very powerful individual. Some of the college age people from the group, including not-LaFawnduh, have moved into a circle back in the back to work. They are very studious.

pee wee makes the plane wreck less horrible

Election night. Jaegermeister shots. Pasta & bread sticks. Late night quesadilla.

Travelling with my parents, Eric, Gentry, and my wife, played by a sort of Gentry/Flo hybrid. Flying in a giant airplane, bigger inside than a 747. The environment is gritty, golden, murky, hung with asian carpets. An overhead rack that spans much of the center of the plane is suspended by ropes & is made of wood planks & netted rope. [similar environment to the apartment in a recent dream]

Take off is a little janky. But when landing, the plane tilts back almost to a total vertical. Obviously we're in giant trouble. My wife is hunkered way way down in her seat, her feet up on the seat in front of me. I lean over her, kiss her gently, we say we love each other. At least we're together. A giant, squared, industrial arch reaches over the runway and we smash into it, the front 2/3 of the plane is ripped off and obliterated. We're at the back and it about 15 rows ahead of us that rips off. People go flying out, we cen see the sepia sky. But our section lays down and skids to a stop and we are alive. We get out, suprisingly untraumatized. Our bags are in the overhead rack, and we start to sort them out. I can't find my plain brown leather duffel. I think it will turn up.

My parents still intend to catch a connecting flight and are getting antsy. We're in and out of a small terminial building. And up trots Pee Wee. I don't register at first, I'm very very confused. But then I realize that she's come to find me, and my heart melts, a pick her up. I have no leash so I'll just have to hold her to keep her safe. My parents are still itching to get on another plane. But I can't leave Pee Wee, I insist on taking her home. The only way to get her there is to walk, and we start off. I have to get there and back in an hour. I set out, and we're in the center of the Albuquerque Academy campus-- easy, it's only a few minutes to our place. It's night suddenly. I carry Pee Wee some, she just follows me the rest. We go up the side of a big hill. At the top there is a river and waterfall we have to cross. I carry her across the hexagonal sculptural cement elements that step-stone across the horizon of the waterfall. From there we're home free. We get home, to a place much like our old house at 406 1/2. I get some stuff together-- my bag is gone, with my clothes, my books, and my travellers' checks. I thank Pee Wee for coming for me. I have to go.

Josh is there-- oh! can I get a ride back? I'm running late and my plane leaves in 10 minutes. He agrees, I drive. But we're in New York but kind of still in Albuquerque. I'm lost, though. The shock is setting in. I'm disoriented, I find myself on 2nd street, have to double back to Yale. But how do you do that? I'l never make it. The plane leaves in 5 minutes. Too bad.

(I woke up, let Pee Wee out, convinced her to come back to bed with me instead, kissed on her and told her what a good dog she is until I could get back to sleep.)

dream 2: pablo calls me

see other dream from last night

I'm hanging out in my back yard. I call Pablo, leave a message on his phone, my Spanish is okay. Pablo calls back, I can't hear him very well, his phone must be a piece of shit. I finally make out what he's saying. "What do you want to do?"

dream 1: maresa's crazy life & landlord

curried butternut squash soup, cranberries, toast, water, a brownie; late night bowl of frosted mini wheats

Going to see Maresa at her new place. (Jason doesn't seem to exist in this world.) She and Sheryl, I think, just got this new place in some apartments up in the hills. Apartments hardly, more like a hillside warren of post-apocalyptic hovels that grow like a spreading fungus. Once I find the place, which isn't easy, it's a ramshackle mountain of clapboard, peeling paint, third rate structural supports, grime. I climb all over, I can't remember how to get to her door, I end up going all the way over the top and down the other side. Literally the whole hill is overgrown with this accreted architecture. I circle back, try again, never leaving the maze that is this place. Sheryl, I think comes and finds me, leads me through, shows me the hairpin turn I missed, up into their apartment. It is yellowed, moth-eaten, the floors are exposed, creaky boards. But they have it lit up like a party and there's colorful junk everywhere. I'm naked and smoking, there's a commotion at the door, they produce hushed shouts that it's the landlord. If he catches anyone smoking in there, they may lose their place. I palm my cigarette and gingerly step around the man, a huge, greasy, hairy thing. I take off, he's after me. Seems like it would be easy to hide here, but he knows the place, and I obviouslty don't.

We all meet back up at a big dance lesson. We are all supposed to be out on the floor-- stlll in this rats nets architectural growth-- dancing. I'm reticent, but for Maresa & Sheryl I give in. The dance instructor, a short, wiry guy hippie with chest hair that is 8 inches long and straight, has everyone sit but me. I'm to be made example of. It's like a gym class nightmare from midschool. He's naked now, and I scan his very uncofmortable body. He wants me to simply "dance," so he can see and point things out. He's inching closer to me, 'till he's right up against me, taunting, and he says "You know what--" his tounge flicks out and disgustingly licks the tip of my nose "--to do." And one across the forehead. Hot, wet, pasty. My arm jams forward and I have a steel grip around his throat. He looks alarmed, his arms waving, scrabbling to get a hold on me, which he ineffectually does. I shove him away. I'm not going to kill a guy at Sheryl's dance lesson, fucking hippie or not.

I dance, he watches, I stop. He gives me a mixed review. But points out that if I was in a room full of dancing people, my performance wouldn't be as noticeable and therefore more acceptable, but he urges me to practice. I remain silent, glad not to be totally trashed by him, but genuinly uninterested in the whole thing.

for the sake of constancy (really, dude, you don't work there anymore)

bean burritos from frontier, some beer later

I don't remember it all, and it was far too irritating and obvious to record anyhow. Suffice it to say, I had a dream I was trying to advise my old boss on hiring a replacement for me and he was being absolutely obtuse and refusing to listen to a thing I said, as was always the situation. I was genuinely trying to give some important points which they might consider and I was scoffed at and ignored. When will my brain let this shit go? Of course, earlier in the day I had had a conversation with _____ about this very situation, only with different details, and I'm sure that's where this is coming from.

anna's alive and i choke on gum

brickyard mushroom & peppers pizza (flat crust this time, wierd), water, some halloween candy, a bowl of honey o's (yes, i was binging)

We're back at Aunt Anna's house on Osage in Bartlesville. A family reunion, and she's still alive. The interior is much more like the western half of my parents' house, though. In attendance are some Poppuirts, including little Andrew. Anna is far more elderly than I remember her ever being, but still trucking. She has two nurses that take care of her, always one around. But with all of us there, they have some days off. They get paid $100 a day, and my father thinks this is a rip off. But I think about it and figure that after taxes they take home money equal to a successful waitress. And they spend all day every day keeping our family member alive-- I think it's an acceptable price.

I'm walking past Anna's bedroom (now it's completely our old bedrooms at mom & dad's), she's asleep by the window (in what would be Eric's room), in a bed, propped up at a strange 45 degree angle. I start chewing a huge plug of gum. I look back and the two nurses are standing, looking at mom's computer. I take in a breath to talk to them, but instead inhale my gum, and in a panic try to swallow it, but only part goes down, then I try to gag it back up but can't. I resort to trying to grab the gum with my fingers and drag it back out of my throat. I tear off hunks, but am unsuccessful. The nurses think I am a doofy guy who swallowed his gum because I'm not any good at talking to women. This aggravates me. I still can't get it back out of my throat, and they (and I) are getting concerned. WIth hand gestures I assure them that I'm okay, continue to try to drag the goo out of my throat. Unsuccessful. Now I'm panicking. I can see in a mirror the gum just behind my tonsils. It's blue with red and white contentric circle center. I indicate that one of them should bang me on the back. She complies, the wad of gum jiggles, nothing more. I try to just swallow it. Swallow swallow swallow. It's working.

face it, you don't work here anymore

pot pie & grandma anderson's fried squash, water, some (but not much) halloween candy

I ride my bike from 2nd St, some ways south, into town and onto campus. But it's out in the middle of nowhere, very hilly, indutrial, fringe. I'm headed for the Art Museum, I get there, it's the Museum I've dreamed of, not the real one, and even bigger this time.

I head downstairs. I think Michele meets me and we walk around some exhibits, all in rather vast galleries with very very high ceilings. Much of the art incorporates electronics, many with flat screens. Somewhere along the way, Michele disappears and/or becomes my mother, somewhat alternately. And there are these two young women, one in a wheelchair. They are obnoxious and inarticulate, I largely ignore them, though I wish I could tour the museum without being on the same track as them. I try to change directions or pace, get some privacy & let them go their own way. No luck.

Eventually I go into a gallery that would correspond to the Print Room, but is yet again a giant warehouse of a room, this time with exposed concrete floors and coarse, exposed masonry walls. At this point in my dream I remember an integrated back-story: [in dream world] the staff had told me about a guy working on "giant signs" in an area under construction there in CFA adjacent to the museum, and these are his works. They had befriended him and offered him a show and now here it is. The works are billboard size, heavily neon, offset rectangular elements, many with text [my impression is that the content of the text is probably of a political bent that would cause a sycophantic, sanctimonious Democrat like LS to jump at the chance to hang them, but even so, the works are very impressive].

The dorky girls are in there, too. The one in the chair occasionally stands & wobbl for a moment, as if to prove that she can. They being touching things, and I flip out. I stalk over and tell them that they need to stop touching the artworks. They laugh in my face, who am I and what am I going to do about it? I step up on them a bit, stupid of me, and the wheel chair girl pulls out a can of mace. Aims it at me. Looks at me with loathing rather than alarm. She's just itching to see what I'm gonna do. Well, I'll tell ya-- and I walk over to the desk [print room!] and pick up the phone, dial the private line at the front desk, 7-7313 [don't recall if this is right or just close]. I tell the front desk guy what is going, on, and he should have us on his monitors, too. I don't try to pull the old "I'm a friend of so and so" or anything. The bugger has the temerity to tell me that he's not sure what I want him to do. I tell him to call the police and have these bitches ejected. He refuses and hangs up. I am shocked and a little humiliated.

I'm riding back to my car. This time it's all downhill. I am totally flying. I don't know what the speed limit is, but I bet I'm close to it, just cruising. Pretty scary but also exhililrating. I see a 65mph sign, and I know that I'm going 50. I decide I'd better use the bike lane, though, and it's cobblestone rather than pavement. I get going pretty fast again, but then suddenly the bike path curves off to the right, up over the top of a circular driveway, and empties back going the opposite direction. End of bike path. I stop and consider my options.

military drama in the meat department

Brickyard pizza with green chile & tomato, water, an emergen-C

In the meat department of a grocery store. Admiral Adama is there, as well as several officers who are all wearing white tyvek coveralls, including booties. The officers have been discovered scheming and plotting against order and are being stripped of their rank. They are embittered and furious. Part of their punishment is that they have to...go through the frozen meat section...? But in the process one of the officers discovers an operational manual that reveals that he and his cabal should have been issued certain weapons and were not. It makes Adama look tyrannical and exclusionary, that he's been ducking procedure and that the plotters were right. Now he's the one who is furious. He holds his story that he was unaware that they had been denied their weapons, but I'm not certain if people believe him or not. He orders an investigation. If the weapons weren't issued, then where are they? They aren't in proper storage.

Attention turns to a skinny teenage girl who is in charge of below-counter cold storage units in the meat department. She and her 7 year old sister start dithering, trying to cover something up. But my mother and I are there to find the truth out. We start opening up the freezer drawers. The teenage girl is fretful and insists that she did nothing wrong. The little sister starts running interference. She puts on an obscene lip-synch (or is she actually singing in a man's voice?) of a vulgar rap song. Mom and I watch in dismay, and when she is done we express to her that what she's doing is no good for a kid her age, that she doesn't understand what her little number is aboout, that she should just take time to be a kid instead of a whore. I'm afraid that we will shame her and push her further, though, rather than bring her back down to earth.

empty town

pumpkin soup, grilled cheese sammies with fake chicken, beer, 2 shots of vodka

Josh and I are on a trip to this little town. Josh is there to work, apparently, but I'm along for the ride & hope to just hang around. I'm meandering down this little main-drag street, old brick buildings, a place you'd expect a "general store" to be the main grocery. But not suprisingly, it's another little old town with an ailing Main Street. It's nearly deserted, and many shops are boarded up. But those not boarded up are closed, pretty early it seems, and there's...nobody...around. What the...?

I make my way down one side of the street, and at the end see the storefront where I know Josh is working. The windows are decorated with modern, slick vinyls, the word STUDIO in green block letters and a red 80 in a red circle beneath it. I go a little further down & cross, come back to Studio 80, go in. But Josh is at work somewhere in the back and can't be summoned, I'm politely ushered out with a Thank You and Do Come Again attitude.

I walk down this other side of the main drag now. At the far end there is a tall, modern building, looks like a hospital. When I'm near the door, two guys in business suits come out, briefcases & all. One has oxygen tubes hooked over his ears & into his nose, but no tank on the end. The tube hangs down to his waist & is just open. His friend is telling him that he really doesn't need this thing to breathe, and he shouldn't wear it, slips in some slight jab of guilt about people who REALLY need such things, seeming to be referencing something personal.

I become the man with the oxygen tube. I pick up the end, put it in my mouth, and blow into it. I feel my lungs expand. I'm somewhat amazed, probably intuitively aware that such a thing should be impossible. I get into my businessman car, I drive away.

beating up a husky kid & losing my glasses

Fresca salad with mushrooms as a piadine, little bit of cheesecake with cherries, some Candy Lady fudge, lots of water.

I've gone on a trip, to a city I've dreamed about before. (Yellowish, plastic, futuristic, almost Jetson's-like from a distance.) I am returning home, perhaps by way of some great airiship, which looks like a mall inside and even docks at the mall in Albuquerque. I am hanging out in a "museum," on the ship, which is a largish room that reminds me of an airport waiting room, but there is a grid of cot-like sleeping platforms, and people's stuff is scattered around in little piles. The walls are beige.

There is this big kid, who looks kind of native Alaskan [I know, that's a worthless description]-- probably 18 years old or so, but a husky guy, both tall and quite powerfully built. He maybe isn't quite retarded, but he's probably "slow" and has some behavioral problems. He's with his family, his mother and father. (Father played here by a PNM guy I served at the restaurant yesterday.) The kid is aggressive to me for some reason, and comes up and clubs me on the back from behind. I grudgingly let it go. But then he does something else I don't remember (hurts some kid's pet, just to be cruel?) and I flip. I charge across the room and sock him in the face, knock him down, grab him by the hair and slam his head repeatedly against the wall, knock him out.

Skip to people taking the kid away in a gurney. I'm talking to the dad. I express wonder that he isn't pressing charges. He responds that, "I assume he hit you first." To which I say (not certain if it's a fabrication or not in the dream, but I think it's bes to dress it up), "He hit me a FEW times." I feel a feeling like acid reflux in my ear canal, and I say, "I think he reputured my eardrum." The dad wonders what that feels like, I tell him it's like having lava swelling in your ear.

The airship has arrived at the mall in Albuquerque. I disembark and go to my car, start loading up, still pretty amped up. Just then Shane drives up in a blue car (Jason Foutz's car), I flag him down, ask if he will drive me home. I climb in, leave most of my stuff in my car. Shane tells me that he's been undergoing some sort of radiological treatment on his legs. I look and he's wearing this wierd, plastic, dog-boy-style underwear and his exposed legs are thin, pale, and bistered. Sickly. We driving around and he crosses one leg up so I can see him peel the whole of the skin of a big toe back to reveal meat beneath. He of course thinks it's kind of cool, but I'm really horrified.

He takes me home. People are around, I don't want to talk. I go into my room, which is small, wooden plank floors, has a very shack-ish feel to it. I'm milling around, and I realize that if I want to go out for drinks tonight I have to get my stuff, and for fuck's sake, I left my glasses in my car, I'm wearing my sunglasses. Can I get a ride back, please? But then, where exactly did I leave my car? Wait, where did I put my stuff? Shit, are my glasses & flight lost?

Dream degenerates into a basic anxiety loop from here, though I do eventually remember where my car was and I'm pretty sure my stuff will be in it.

fighting nazis, fighting bugs

This dream is from last thursday night, don't remember what I ate. Scrawled on paper.

I'm fighting in an anti-Nazi militia, taking back our town from them. Moving up and through a tower that adjoins a suburban house. The tower is three or for levels tall, sort of a skeleton of a building, poured concrete walls on left and right, open front and back. Stairways join the various levels. We have a small mortar with us that we use to drop a blast on each level before going through and cleaning out. The people starring as nazis in the dream are faces I saw on myspace as I cruised around before bed.

We jump a train and ride it out of town, hop back off as we pass a high-walled garden. The walls are ivy-covered and the garden is overgrown and in ruins. There is a bonfire burning. There is a restaurant there (do I work there, maybe?). There is a phonebook laying on the ground with a lightbulb drilled down into the center of the pages. Aunt Betty (Wilson) is around, she's making some charitable donation that I don't agree with. I pick up the phonebook and peer into the lightbulb. It is FULL of skittering roaches, all with egg sacks, all scrambling around a mile a minute. I gotta destroy this thing. Moving gingerly through the building (now a house?) with the phonebook, it occurs to me that the whole phonebook is probably full of these roaches. It's some wierd self-contained nest, and they've been eating their dead to continue and multiply. I flip out and I drop it. A mass of dead roaches spill out, and live ones scatter everywhere. They have really long legs-- like daddy longlegs. I think they're on me, I get the creepy crawlies in a major way.

[At this moment, Pee Wee touches her nose to mine to wake me up & I go bat outta hell style.]

why i love museum work

mac & cheese, broccoli, biscuits, some chama fudge

The first part of this dream was some puerile and academic group masturbation thing, which I unfortunately don't remember.

The second part, I am in a warehouse type area, maybe a big museum collections storage area. Maria Sanchez (kind of-- larger, longer hair, wierd clothes) is interviewing me, asking me to tell her the top 5 things I love about museum work. It seems like a gimme, maybe she's been sent just as a formality, but it could be important, too. I'm startled and I start off about something about helping Kate make pies; but then I realize I should back up and talk about actual work that I do. To my dismay, Maria seems nonplussed that I would go the pies route and then backtrack. This makes me uncomfortable. I try to structure a discussion around my interest in art handling as a task & skill, on to list making, and so on. I feel like I'm moving in circles, though.

penalty kick

dinner at howard & ann's, a mid-evening bowl of frosted flakes

On a soccer team, a very mixed bag of guys. Some my age, several much younger and smaller. The field we're scrimmaging at is very dry & dusty, a white clay mess with little grass to speak of. At one point, my team is taking multiple shots, the defenders scrabbling to keep us out. The ball goes out the back and we get a corner kick, except we take it from the point where the box intersects the back boundary. I chip it beautifully into the center, and someone says something about my ability to drop it just right. Our score is imminent, but one of the opposing players punches the ball away with his fist. It's one of two of the really small guys that have stripped (naked? not sure. not the point.) and caked themselves with clay like tribal warriors. I protest his obvious and egregious foul, and whoever is ref agrees to give me a penalty kick. All the guys crowd around the box, but then leave and go into a house, the field comes right up to it. I can look through a sliding glass door and see them all sitting on wooden bleachers. I'm still trying to get my free kick up and going, but I can't figure out where to put the ball. The field has changed from hard, dusty clay to a tiled surface, kind of like an old dropped ceiling. I know where I feel like the ball should be placed, but people seem to be pressuring me to set it much, much further back. I dither.

I ask the coach (who seems to switch between the PE coach from midschool & Lane McIntyre) where he wants me to set up, he asks how someone like ME could get a penalty kick so far BACK. I explain the situation with the hands call on the other team. He asks which player used hands, I point to the two guys sitting inside, but I don't know which one it was. He says okay. I still think the ball is terribly far back (in reality, it would be between the circle and the box, twice as far as it should be). But i'm still confident. The keeper loses focus, moves to one side, I punch it right down the middle. Score.

I go inside, there are several young women in prom dresses, sitting in folding chairs, laughing about "he's not the father." I do a quick stand up, say that those are the words that always make me feel happy. I'm not certain if they realize that that makes no good sense, or not.

carnival justice & vomiting shit [extremely unpleasant. don't read this]

corn flakes, fried okra from a bag, water.

[Carnivale is starting to seep into my dreams, as I knew it would.]

At a family gathering up at my parents' house. Jonesy & Gabriel from Carnivale are there, too, my partners in crime. We're trying to disengage ourselves from the scene, though with tact. We have things that need takin' care of. And ain't none of it good. I find ourselves in an open mountain meadow, a tiny brook flowing past us. I gag and begin to vomit, but it's huge, thick gouts of shit that come up, filling my mouth. I almost have to dig out palm-fulls to clear my mouth of it, and I can't get any air in to try to expell what is crammed in there. I can only push out a bit at a time, and then force that bit away with my hand.

[there was another part to this dream, something violent but pleasing, but I can't recall.]

wierdest search hit yet

from someone in Trinidad and Tobago:

"how do you say pizza, fries, burger, spagetti and meat balls in spanish with some pictures"


whaaaaaaa?

drag shows & meat trays

two relatively late slices from saggios, with mushrooms, broccoli, red pepper, water.

another disjointed mess. having trouble pinning down my dreams this month.

I go to Jen & Liz's gallery, expecting to hang out, but I find instead that they are throwing some giant high-fashion dinner, the gallery is cleared out & it's all banquet tables & blue light. They hustle me inside, glad I'm there, find me a space. I stay for a while but then get up to go. On my way out, I pass Christie Lantz (from midschool, who I'm certain I see around my real world neighborhood, she still walks the same), sitting at a table with people who are probably her family, including a daughter or niece on one side. Instead of sliding effortlessly past, I tap her on the shoulder (one sound thump) and say "Christie." She knows who I am and is very cordial. Apparently she is aware of me in the neighborhood, too, and is glad we have finally broken through and addressed each other. Then I realize that she has taken a large, flat slice of watermellon and cut it into a rudimentary paper-doll shape, dressed it up with bits from the table, and is relating to it like a baby doll. Holy moley, she's defective. I make a quicky get away & tell Jen to keep an eye on the girl with the watermelon doll.

Somehow I end up at a performance hall and there's this extraordinary show on by this very talented drag queen.

I think the dream gets looped at this point, sometime later I'm trying to convince people to go see the show, and it's at a new venue in my area. Not sure.

Somewhere in all of this, maybe back at the gallery, I keep seeing this meat tray, made of acrylic, carved with concentric rings & pits. Josh had seen such a thing on ebay but made of teak, and we couldn't figure what it really was, but I woke up knowinig it is a meat tray. (And it is.)

google hits on this blog

people do hit this blog, both from "next blog" random jumps within blogger, and also from google searches. and from all over the world, too, which is both interesting and also i guess unremarkable in this day and age. the more distant hits have come from turkey, the philipines, australia, brazil, guatemala. today, someone in basque country found the blog by googeling "hairy nun;" the most interesting thing about that being that it is NOT the first time i've gotten a hit off of a "hairy nun" search. and someone in new delhi also hit me today by searching for "models posing witout any dress on above the waist," which is pretty clumsy & prude for a porn search. i also have had hits from people searching for people that merely exist in my world, whether friend (like Virginia Yen) or foe (like Adrienne Salinger), and turn up in my dreams, but it wouldn't occur to me that people google other people, too. wierd.

the antipodes and the magical flower

chicken & rice, broccoli, a cup of pinon cocoa

Probably a series of dreams with similar subjects, but all mish mashed in my brain. First part a fragment of something larger.

Througout, there is the feeling that there is a civil war or some sort of insurrection ongoing...

Driving through NW NM with a guy who looks like Mr.. Honeymooner from the restaurant. We get off the highway and take a "shortcut," which is debateable. It's a dirt road, but as he points out, it is incredibly smooth and you can still drive very fast on it without rattling to death. At some point he needs to go to the bathroom and we pull over next to a giant ditch or muddy, empty resevoir. He is in his undies, backs himself up to the edge, drops his drawers and means to crap out over the edge. But he loses his balance and tumbles down the side and lands in the sludgey pool of mud at the bottom, submerging himself up to the neck. He drags himself back up the side, cursing a streak. We get back in the El Camino we're driving (there are 3 of us: me, him, and maybe a little brother?) and head on down the road. Of course, just around the turn is a giant rest stop/community center place. He was unaware. At this point, he has turned into my father, I think. We go into the building, down into a wet basement where there are lockerroom type facilities. [I've been here before, I think in a dream about a wedding] There is some danger, some intrigue I can't recall.

---

We can't find the prophetic plants like we used to. The one most dear to us, a small, silver Hens & Chicks, is dead. It lays in its planter, a long root like raffia trails from its base. Perhaps is has been pulled up? But when I say prophetic plants, I mean they they themselves are prophets; they speak with mouths, answer questions, give warnings. I find a planter (these planters are like the giant bowls Josh has in back) that has a very promising crop. Flat, paddle-like succulents with thin fingers all along the ridges tipped with bead-like ends. (A type of Euphorbia (probably) that I've seen, though these were short, rather than tall like the actual plant is, and the real plant may be more 3 dimensional than these flat guys.) It's planted in a circle, like Stonehenge. Maybe not ready to speak yet, but very close.

My group is studying the Antipodes, which in my dream is a particular place, loosely Central Asia. We're hanging about in the lockerroom areas again, ostensibly the building I was in before. Milling about in a dressing room, I go through a woman's purse and find a box of tampons. Bored shitless, I take one and try to cajole my fellows into a game of tampon tag. They are amused or bemused but little interested. I recieve regular flashes of a plywood jigsaw cut-out of a yellow plant, probably a Hens & Chicks, maybe a foot tall, sitting in one of the planters. Then back to the dressing room. I submerge the tampon in water, feel it inflate in my fingers. I squeeze it out a bit, hold it by the string, and smack somebody with it. Still little interest in my game. People are studying the Antipodes. There may be a test.

We are arranged in a circle of folding chairs on a porch. Customer Mark from the restaurant, in his blue and white Hawaiian shirt, is leading the class. He's asking what some defining features of the Antipodes are. I smack a butch woman in a green shirt next to me with the largely-dry tampon. She is unamused. Everyone raises their hand, including me. I review in my head that "Antipodes" means "anti-foot," and that the inhabitants live on horseback instead of on the ground. Sonya Erb from highschool is next to Mark and whispers an answer in his ear, which he then repeats to the class, something about skinning and eating reptiles. I think it's a good point, but mine would've been better. I tag Mark with the tampon, he tells me to shut up. I act like I'm having a good time, but secretly my feelings are really hurt.

more fascists, art, and bum assault

mac & cheese with salsa, broccoli, rolls, late night apple dapples

All through this dream, I keep on trying to figure out what shows Alan Tudyk was in.

Hanging out in a space somewhat like the old Mongomery Plaza theater entrance, downstairs. Inside a storefront type space are these hanging sculpted figures, like characters from Guernica, made of wire and metal. The figures are hung in three concentric circles, light from the center, they cast layered shadows on the walls. Fascists have defaced the sculptures, mainly with spraypaint, but since they are mostly bits and wire, it has only a subtle effect. But there are many of us here to rally to the artist's side. The artist, Pablo Neruda it seems, returns to repair his work, we all file inside to help and support.

Maresa and some other women, draped in shawls and such, begin a sensual dance in the center of the circles. I begin to chant, "You can't get none if you ain't got bun [singluar] hon." They think they really "have it." The central sculptural figures, all around us, are like sea creatures, like jellfish or portugese men o war. They're made of large cans that have been spirally shredded.

The space is now a bookstore, apparently, too. I'm sitting up on a counter, laying back against a wall, reading Voices Against Tyranny. Josh pops up from below the counter, mischevious. He's going to "tickle" me, aka goose my ass with his thumb. I'm absolutely furious, humiliated, and he won't leave me alone. I kick at him, meaning to knock him on his ass.

I woke up when my foot in real life hit Ixopo and sent her flying off the bed.

il vicino crazies & getting drafted into Man United

spent all day & early evening at the fair eating God knows what, came home & drank some PBR

Time to get the restaurant open, but it seems that whenever I look around, the girls are nowhere to be seen. No giant matter, there are virtually no people and I can handle it. Except that all that ARE coming in seem to be older women with fucking crazy orders that make no sense. [This is IV, but not, and it's not the pseudo Il Vicino I've consistently had my work dreams in, either. More of a coffee shop setting.] The next crazy lady comes in and orders a grilled cheese with some special directions, and then on her drink she wants iced tea, but with "cinnamon and gertrjiopf" in the center, but spaced out so she only tastes it "every 20 or 30 sips."

"I'm sorry, what did you want? Cinnamon and...?"

[Laughs]

"No, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you the first time. What was it again you wanted?"

"Woooooooooooo!"

I lean in and hold an ear forward. "I'm sorry, what?"

She turns around and taps the top of a bottle of tobasco sauce on a thin snack counter mounted on the wall next to her.

I make a note of it on the pad, but explain that I'm not guaranteeing how her drink is going to come out. She seems dismissive and crazy still. And once again where the fuck is everybody? Claire suddenly appears and I grab onto her, tell her that the only people coming in today are crazy old women.

I'm running my butt off here and there trying to prepare this meal; there's nothing prepped and I'm having to go to the house across the street to get the cheese for the sandwich. Damn! The sandnwich I was toasting, upright in a slot toaster, for the last customer is burned. And more than that, I managed somehow to get a banana down in the slot and now it's all cooked through and sloppy. I drag the sandwich out, make another, put it in, come back, not only is it burned, too, but I forgot to take the banana out and now it's even worse. I try to get grip on the slimy thing-- a banana shaped like an ear of corn, but with banana peel, no husk-- and drag it out. I am semi-successful. But this is all taking WAY too long, not that I care when these crazy bitches get their food, frankly. While I'm still at the house across the street [has some resonance with the old house on Morningside, incidentally], in the kitchen, "the team" shows up. Apparently either Man United or the English national team. They're all grumpy and such, getting in my way, wrestling me and each other. I give in and throw up my hands. While some brute is playfully sitting on me, the team camptain (looking like Alan Tudyk) comes around-- there is a room full of them and several guys not on the team, too-- and he's pointing and individuals and saying "draft...draft...draft," and there's no way out. It's a literal press-ganging into this football team. From under my brute, I shout that,

"I'm a foreign national, mate."

Everyone just laughs. I know I'm stuck. How does he know I can play, anyhow? And can I even remotely play in this level of team? What the hell? How is this happening? I give up and start eating one of the ruined sandwiches I was making, all burned grilled cheese & mayo, the cheese in s thick, unmelted slab in the middle. I realize that in the future we should really use grated, even if it's messy. And around comes the captain again, pointing and announcing positions. The guy before me and myself both get Sweeper. I think about protesting that I'll make a MUCH better left defender, but I know that no one cares, I'm just the new American and I'll do what I'm told.

clean the house, store the weapons, find the keys

a very hearty stroganoff, water, some mid-evening apple dapples

I live in the back house of a 2 house property, largely a dirt lot but with some big, bright flowers here and there. I think my house might be a trailer, but maybe it's a little adobe cottage. I'm having a group of people over, but all the stuff in the house doesn't seem like mine, and it's like throwing a party in someone else's house, trying to figure out where things are, how to best do this or that. The place is kind of stuffed with chachki crap, and it's all sort of "fantasy super dragon dagger" style carved-- like the place is furnished from a flop house but decorated from the magic shop on Buffy.

People come, all RPG types and mostly young people, too, maybe 20 at the oldest. I think the party is kind of uncomfortable and boring, myself. We're planning something, though, some sort of operation. At some point, we decide we need to get this place cleaned spotless and get on the road. Everyone pitches in. I still feel like it's someone else's place, and I'm not quite sure what to pile or toss or keep or whatever. I'm cleaning an area on and around this big wooden table [like Chris & Dana's kitchen table]. I fiddle around & finally opt to just toss most stuff. Get a sponge, wipe everything down, get up under the edges, the works.

"Joyce Summers" was at the party and now comes back, claiming she's misplaced her keys. We start the hunt. Apparently she threw them at someone in self defense, but can't remember or explain who or why at the moment. Eliza Dushku [as Faith] is there [but also looking kind of like Summer Glau in the face]. I find a strange little knife [all fantasy dragon style] in a nylon clipping sheath, with a little pocket knife or maybe a folding nail file in the back, and ask Joyce if this is what she's looking for. No, it's not hers. But it's Eliza's. Now I remember seeing her with it. And now I find a little buckskin sheath, too, and I know it's hers.

brother minister takes things into his own hands

beer bust at joe's, late night hanuted house & tomato eating with duane & flo, 3am quesadilla

I'm doing a wedding in this gigantic, extremely wealthy home. Much like the Dinges' house when we were kids, cream colored everything and lots of light in the split level. The whole process is a hassle, though, and things are sort of poorly planned or something, people aren't paying attention, things are going, wrong, etc.

Afterwards, people are getting very drunk, especially it seems, one of the bridesmaids [who is a mix of Rachel that I met last night who works for D&F and DiDi from Josh's store]. She has taken or torn off the skirt from her dress and merely wrapped a sash of a wide ribbon around her waist, which obscures her bajango but leaves her butthole exposed (and strangely pert and visible). She's bustling around the place, hootin' & hollerin'. There's some whispering about who got to be maid of honor and who didn't.

I go for some time by myself, and where else would I spend a quiet moment but at the top of a sky-scraping wooden utility pole that seems to overlook my neighborhood. I find myself up there, but I feel I am not as at ease as I would normally be, as of course this is my usual unwinding spot [a considerable contrast to any and every other dream I've had about being somewhere high up]. I realize that the utility workers have studded my relaxation pole with spikes so they can climb it more quickly, but for me it just makes it harder to properly hold on. I think back on how I would usually throw my legs over one cross beam at the top and basket myself quite comfortably, but no more, I guess. I suddenly have a friend who is hanging out in the swaying top branches of adjacent tree. This makes me feel dizzy and I want down. (I think there is also a blimp coasting by.) I climb down, scraping myself up the whole way.

Back at the reception, things have deteriorated and now the party has been crashed by thugs. They're really redneck teenagers, but I think we're calling them "punks," kind of Dirty Harry style. The drunken bridesmaid, myself, and a few of the guys decide that we have to take care of this problem. I will lead the way, they'll back me up. I go upstairs and find one of the crashers. Pretty hot guy, trim but muscled & wearing a tight gray t-shirt, baseball cap, jeans, a little bit of beard. Lickety split I get him in some sort of hold and I hyperextend his arm at the elbow. I expect it to break, but instead it bends, sickeningly. His forearm becomes gaunt and it's like slowly bending a very thick and stiff piece of rubber. His wrist where I'm gripping him squeezes down to a mere shred of skin, the hand balloons, and is left dangling like a popped-out eyeball. I know that I am causing this guy unbelievable pain and I like it, even if his ruined arm is making me feel sick. Another of his friends, a big guy in a hawaiian shirt, comes charging up. I drop mister flexo and punch the guy straight in the face. I somehow put my hand behind his head and sock him several more times in the mouth. In typical dream fashion, my punches are not terribly effective, but I'm applying myself and definitely doing some damage.

mick jagger's cherry tree

dream 2 of 2

sandwich mentioned below

I'm up at my parents' house, apparently living there. I am awoken early one MOnday morning when Aunt Anne and Uncle Howard and others come over, they've brought this young cherry tree for me that they intend to plant in the back yard. We sit in a circle of folding chairs in the grass of my parents' yard, talk. Hang out.

A few days later, I'm in my parents' bedroom, it's 10pm. My mom mentions that Mick Jagger has called and would really like to talk to me about that cherry tree. I know that Mick Jagger is at home in London, dying, but I don't know why he's calling me. I suddenly realize that he gifted the tree to me, but that no one had ever come out and said that. I fell funny. But if he wants to talk to be about the tree, I should call him. It seems important to him. My mom hands me two zine-format booklets [but more like what I make for doing weddings], and I look through them, both for Mick Jagger's number and for some space to jot notes as we talk. Mom and I (and some strange man in the doorway?) discuss the time difference. I'm sure I'm right and that I should go ahead and call.

god rapes an old woman

dream 1 of 2

(a suprisingly tasty) grilled veggie sandwich and fries from Mimi's Cafe, early to bed

I'm visiting a small town up in foothills, probably an old mining town. Wandering around the main drag, consisting of literally fives of old storefronts. The world here has a nu-horror-film blue/silver cast to it. I go into one of the storefronts, it is an open space with wood plank floors that step up some half way back. I run into some older women there, maybe they think I'm someone else, but they want me to help go through their friend's things. I'm not certain if she has died, or if she has been put in a home. I tag along. Maybe we check through her desk (was she a teacher?), and then we go to her house.

We're going through boxes and closets. Pulling our clothes, exchanging memories or something. Then suddenly the woman is there with us, aged, bent, in a white night gown. She seems afraid, out of it. She needs help. The door bursts open and God (or a god? i'm not certain) is standing there in the person of actor James Cromwell (played George on _6 Feet Under_). He is naked, triumphant. A small sun obscures his genitals and gives off a blinding light. He siezes the old woman and begins to savagely fuck her. She goes limp immediately, either catatonic or dead. He continues to assault her, this way and that, she is a rag doll. He keeps on repeating, almost robotically, "I love you. We've never been together like this before." But no matter which way she is turned, bent, twisted, her head always falls back and her empty eyes are fixed on me.

[Strangely, this dream was alarming, but not as horrifying as it sounds. I was sorry for the woman, but rather emotionally removed, as a character in the dream.]

the "in-field incident"

beer bust with chris, late night cereal

I'm working as staff at a women's soccer tourney. I'm going around with a clipboard, trying to get something straightened out; or maybe I'm handing out snacks. Or both. The ball comes bouncing out of a game and past me, I stop it. Then it's actually a men's game, and I decide that I'm going to participate, even though it's not my team. I pick up the ball and intend to throw it back in. A skinny guy comess running up and admonishes me that nobody wants to see a repeat of the "In-field incident," a reference to some epic screw-up that I'm famous for. I feel slighted and needled. I throw the ball in, but my strength is zero and it's a lousy throw, goes nowhere, and gets knocked right back out again. I run to throw again, to the groans of my teammates, and this time the sun blasts me in the eyes and I make some maniac throw into the crush and jumble of players, again useless and I am humiliated.

coffee

beer & frontier, late night bowl of frosted flakes

Standing at the buffet in the kitchen. I'm going to be nice and grind some of Josh's coffee from the Sunflower Market for him. I depress the top of the grinder, hold it, shake it around a few times to get it all right & ground up. But then from the living room or the blue room, I hear Josh activating a grinder, too, and I realize that he's grinding some cheaper coffee, and that I'm wasting his nice stuff. I feel bad, I don't know if the ground coffee will keep or if I will have to toss it. I keep grinding, though, and consider the fact that I'm approaching an espresso grind. Maybe I should stop.

hanging a show at a warehouse dentist's office

pasta with cream sauce and mushrooms, broccoli, onions, garlic, and sausage; water

I'm supposed to hang a pretty big show at my Uncle Thad's new office, which is warehouse scale and just finishing up on construction. There's a big grand opening tonight and there are loads of people puttering around, caterers, contractors, well wishers. It's arranged into operatory cubicles, but on a huge scale-- each "cubicle" is easily 30 feet wide and 60 feet long. Each has a concrete floor with a long ramp down into the room from the main hall at one end. The artworks are supposed to go up on the long walls, which means there is the straight wall (they don't reach the very high warehouse ceilings) vs. sloping floor problem. I need to ask how they want this done, so I go in search of my dad to ask [how ridiculously Freudian], as he is apparently Jefe on this project.

Looking huge room to huge room, I get to the front room and there are a bunch of rich bastards up there sucking up to my uncle. They hand him an envelope and he opens it. It's a prize (the "Park Prize" maybe?), and he reads it aloud, that he gets $200,000. Of course he is hugely happy, but he acts like it's a lifesaver for his starving family, rather than just a nepotistic toss off from some rich society friends. Everyone is highly self-congratulatory and the crowd breaks back up into milling rich people.

I finally find my dad and explain the issue. I tell him that you can either measure from the floor or the ceiling, and he looks at me like I'm crazy and just being particular. I insist that if you want a long row of artworks to be hung straight that you do indeed have to measure. He's dubious, but I drag him back to the last giant operatory to show him. In the meantime, however, someone has gone ahead and hung the objects, and rather HIGH, right up against the top edge of the wall, so that they start off natural at the entry, but are way over your head by the end of the room. Dad doesn't like it much, and neither do I. I feel really undermined and wonder who is fucking off like this. Am _I_ supposed to hang this shit or not?

[sidenote on the artwork. All abstract horitz oils on canvas. Some are very flag-like with heavy, knifed application, rather like Jasper Johns. Others are more wild and all over. At least one, in the middle of the wall, is very long, maybe 7 feet, and only a foot high. The overalll effect of the hanging is kind of a rainbow shape. Double hung at one end, up to one, the long in the middle, and then double hung at the other end. It doesn't look right.]

rollercoaster

beer bust with chris, bagels & cream cheese

I'm on a roller coaster. The cars are long, and you strap in laying down, so that I can only see the sky, except when I'm flying down a slope, then I can see the actual coaster and out across the world. Occasionally, my view becomes 3rd person from the ground and I can see the entire thing. The actual sensations of powering around truns, clunking up slopes, and plunging downward and enormous speeds were amazingly realistic. Frightening but also very thrilling.

where's the team?

humus pita pit, water

My soccer team and I are staying in the downtown area of a city. It is suspiciously like the Gold St. area of ABQ downtown. We're all broken up and all over the place, but the coach announces to me that he has landed us a slot in a tournament in London. But where is everybody? He sends me to find people. Whoever I can lay hands on, enough to field a team and the rest will just have to stay behind. I strike out, crossing large skyways and bridges between buildings. I need to get down to street level.

There's a trio of bars where I suspect I'll find my team mates. I go into one, look around, no luck. Cross caddy corner and into another one. This one is painted and decorated like a kindergarten class turned into a coffee house. An Asian woman comes up to greet me and says she bets I need a place to study, indicates several low school desks where people are spread out reading. I tell her no, but I am looking for some people. She seems sorry I'm not really there to spend any money. I look around and leave.

I cross back to the third bar, enter. A voice suggests that a person can become sexually attracted to someone _after_ having sex with them, because the body will produce hormones in connection with the event. It is a pair from my team, apparently secretly a couple, and they're courting me. But I explain the situation, we need to get going.

renee's crazy family

beer, pizza, beer

[first part forgotten]

Out with renee's (from work) family, we're sort of picnicking on the grassy knoll just behind the Popejoy Hall loading dock. Some guy (her son?) and I are playing a sort of football type game with two spongy, nerf-like balls. It's getting to be twilight and harder to see to play. I think maybe weather is rolling in. There's anoher family packing up, too. They have two little girls, a toddler and a 5 year old, both very pale with pale pale blue eyes and white hair. The girls are dressed in white sun dresses. I go to help them, not certain if they really want my help though, a perfect stranger as I am. The toddler is being a pest and a bother, I pick her up but she struggles and flips around in my hands. There's something wierd and creepy about the girls.

Back at Renee's house, which is rather like my parents' house but sort of split level. They've been getting strange mail from someone, and they think it might be a long lost son harrassing them. No one is sure, though. They've gotten this strange pamphlet of collaged magazine images of women. There's a strange tear that progresses page to page. We hear the door, someone has come in uninvited and is walking through the house. We all think maybe it's him come back and it's alarming. But then it's just a friend of his, a tall, pale young man with crazy red hair and a goatee. He triumphantly announces that he can prove that it is indeed the son sending the strange mail. He has a handwriting sample on something, and the handwriting is very distinct, very stylized and pointed with lots of extra hooks and crooks. We're all absorbed in comparing the handwriting on the friend's sample to the writing that pops up in the pamphlet. I think that my experience with handwriting analysis should put me in charge of the comparison, but everyone is pulling and pushing and I have no real chance to put my skills to work.

a flippant bit

pesto pasta with broccoli & mushrooms, water, some otter pops

some bit that i can't remember, it hooked into the warriors come out to play dream

another failed sex dream [extremely explicit!]

saggios pizza with mushrooms & broccoli, water

The big contractor guy [that comes to the restaurant with the obnoxious skinny contractor guy] and I are in some sort of mercado like place, we duck back into a stall, a twisted little space that keeps us somewhat hidden from other people around. It's grimy, a concrete floor, plaster walls painted yellowish and greenish, a wrecked place. He lays down on a low platform or maybe a matress up against a wall, stretches out naked. I'm not thrilled that he expects me to suck him off, but he's such a hottie I'm willing to give it a try.

His dick is enormous in every way and I can barely think what to do with it. I manage to finally sort of stuff it down my throat in a way that it can just kind of be there and he can push it around and such, but I can still breathe. That goes on for a little while, not very fun for me and I'm still at a loss. Then his hard-on is gone, and all that's left is this tiny thing the size of the last joint of a pinky and two balls the size of lima beans. It's freakish. I start fumbling around, trying to get him hard again, he's rather demanding (especially for a guy that can't keep it up), but there's simply so little to work with. I get him up at least to palming size, but then there's this creepy, chitinous appendage at the end, which is ugly and unpleasant. His cock kind of comes and goes, always with the creepy claw on the end. I finally say something and he blythely declares it a toenail that grows there sometimes; he unceremoniously peels it away.

All the while I've been aware, and ever more so, that this guy is just some straight jerk that wants to experiment and have a go, and I'm not very into it. I give up on his dick entirely and decide to just try to enjoy his body while it's there. I start to nuzzle around on him, lick him and such. But then he's a gangly, dusky sack of a man, completely unattractive, his body hair reduced to little clutches of bristly whiskers like doll hair. Never mind.

the naked waiter

Cheese & tater burritos, beer.

Working as a waiter at a restaurant that is in many ways my parents' house, but along the east side and the back, there is bar seating outside, facing into the space. Wrought iron bars. The balding half of the two guys who always get iced tea with easy ice is there. He eats a big meal, but wants something else. I bring him another dish, he finishes it, and then wonders about a peanut butter sandwich, just to finish it all off. I go looking for peanut butter, searching the kitchen, a tight, unpleasant, grimy place with white walls and a red tile floor. Lisa from IV is in there cooking away, I ask about PB, but she's not sure. I find something to take to the guy and go out the side garage door, but I realize I'm naked and that's not great. No one seems particularly to mind, though my dad is out along the side of the house watering and gives me hell.

pooping deer

don't remember when I had this dream. sometime this past weekend, roughly

At a campground in a mountain forest. A guy in a yellow rain slicker or "hiking gear coat" of some sort, is laying on the ground. He's giggling and smiling, we're all laughing at him. Maybe we're filming this. A doe is standing nearby. She turns around and squats her back end like a female dog peeing and drops several golf ball sized poop pellets pretty much right on his forehead. They roll off. He's gritting his teeth, laughing, nearing hysterics. She squats further and has diarrhea on the ground next to his head.

greenteeth

pasta salad, melon, cookies at marjar's

I'm going to go visit Ben at Rival [Tattoo Studio]. I decide that I will take some veggie sushi with me. I'm in the CFA building, and find a sort of kitchen somewhere, make some sushi, arrange it densely on the curly-design glass serving tray. Some I don't wrap in nori, rather they are just rice and cucumber. These I term "Greenteeth." It is a reference to them, and somehow to myself, as well.

I take my bike up to Rival. The sushi conventiently dissappears for the bike trip, but reappears once I get there. I consider that Josh is probably expecting me, and I probably should get a hold of him, but I also think that I should be able to take a small trip out on my bike and tell him later and that's okay. I find a bike rack [there are actually several to choose from in and around the parking lot, one even just inside another store door. Pure fantasy.] and decide to dissassemble my bike a bit, take one tire off and lock it all together. There are a couple of shady types hovering around. I see one of the Pazt brothers, who knows which one, there on the sidewalk. One of the tattoo artists comes out and gets him, tells him its time. "You getting your tattoo today?" I ask. "Yeah. What do you have on your tattoos?" he replies. I don't really want to go into all of it. "Really abstract stuff," I say, "Like God, for instance." He walks in, stripping off his shirt. I try to cop a stare, but don't get much candy.

I go in with my rematerialized sushi platter. The place is packed. The wating room is trashy, undecorated, under construction. Industrial gray carpet. Grimy old couches, crappy TV. I sit down next to a girl I know [somewhere between Missy Goldenburg from high school and the girl from a move last night] and put down the sushi, offer it to everyone. People seem unenthused, and I'm a little disappointed, but I know that if I leave it, it will get eaten. There's a red marker on the table, I pick it up and start coloring the edges of some of the rolls. There seems to be ketchup or sweet'n'sour or blood or something on some of them, staining them. Missy has a piece. But then she exclaims, "Greenteeth?!? Who's Greenteeth?" I tell her that it's a joke about me. She says, "That's why I hate this so much." She seems genuinely angry, disgusted. I think she's being an incredibly prim bitch. I made sushi for everyone, didn't I?

are you old enough to drink or not?

Vespa sandwich from IV, water, otterpops

I'm at work, but more at the dreamland IV that I've been to before. A relatively new server is talking to me and his girlfriend, apparently it's her birthday. He wants to sample her on the beers, and he pulls out these little 4oz clear plastic ramekins and starts pulling beers into them. I stop him and tell him that there's a better way to do this, and show him the proper glasses to build a sampler. I start to pull some Irish, but then I pause. "Hey, are you old enough to drink?"

But the guy won't give me any straight answer, says that he has two ID's, so it's okay. "But, do they [the restaurant] know that you're not 21? 'Cuz if they do..." His face keeps switching between his [I don't know this guy] and Jonas' face. I look up to where he put his plastic ramekinis of beer and they're turned to floam and grown out the top of the containers, into big fluffy domes. One is pinkish, another is green like ground pistachios, another is a tan color. I laugh and show everyone what happens to our beer when it touches plastic, apparently. I turn and the girlfriend has changed into an IV shirt and is putting her hair up, standing by the register. "It's your birthday and you have to work? That sucks!" I give her a kiss on the cheek. And if she's working, then it doesn't matter how old the two of them are, and I let it go. I think about maybe we could use a melon baller and make some strange dessert out of the floam beer.

I'm a gawky native teen

Grilled cheese sammies, salad with our tomatoes, otterpops

At the home center with my dad; he's a middle aged Navajo man, bellyish in a strange t-shirt. He keeps lecturing me, his Navajo son, to get back into the lawn care program classes. "Have you even been going in after church?" Now I'm a bashfull, mushmouthed Navajo teen aged girl in a brown tent dress and white t-shirt & keds.

"No, I've been staying in the car to sleep." I laugh uncomfortably and cover my mouth, turn away.

My dad has strange sparklers and cigarette lighters attached to his shirt, a shirt I gave him. My mother has encouraged me to get it all lit, to try to appease him. I try, but the lighter hanging around his neck won't light. We're squishing around in an indoor, soupy demo lawn in this strange greenhouse space. I'm a teenaged boy again. A tree, like a lever, a sort of thick bamboo shoot, is an activator for a computer program that I need to reactivate my class program. It's down in the bog and I try to swing it up and get it activated. I'm only a class or two away from my certification."I want something like this vocationally," I tell him.

My father is still angry. "Have you talked to Adrienne [Salinger, the evil photograpaher bitch] about that?" Apparently Adrienne has been my mentor, either in the arts, or in some sort of artistic yardwork direction.

"I can't TALK to Adrienne." She is impossible.

We go through some automatic doors, to an indoor pool full of people, lots of colorful floaties and suits. It's surrounded by chest-high adobe wall, curved into alcoves with computer terminals in the nooks. I re-register for the program.

Guido woke me up at this point to go out, and then there was a lightning storm.

anti-nazi spy and art historian

Stroganoff with broccoli and boca, straberry shortcake, a couple of ice pops later.

Fragmented. I’m part of a team or organization that is working to undermine the growing neo-nazi movement in the area. I’ve been sent to watch and listen, I’ll be stationed at the IV there on Central, but posing as a customer, not an employee. Some sort of epic struggle to get across town, activity centered around the Washington/Menaul area, moving through alleyways & dodging around, etc. etc. It’s dangerous and violent, but I don’t really remember how.

Actually in Nob Hill, I know that I need to better disguise myself-- I’m wearing my IV workshirt, for fuck’s sake. Where can I get something different that’s also CHEAP? There’s another pizza joint up the road, NY style, mainly stand-up, pick-up, and delivery. They’re having a grand opening or anniversary or something, and the palce is littered with boxes of very low-quality, cheaply silkscreened t-shirts. I find a box marked L that I like the design of and pull one out. All of the designs are red/black/white, most involve text and a constructivist poster-esque graphic, many with faces. Mine has a tight view of a woman’s eyes, looking sideways. [Very spy-like, in a cartoonish way.] I try to strike up a conversation with the kid behind the counter [in reality an IV-Heights worker], but he isn’t very interested. I talk about how expensive the shirts are for workers at IV, whereas these are going for only $3.00, he’s giving me a “yeah, yeah, shit’s tough all over-- NEXT!” sort of response. Very little solidarity from my fellow pizza kid.

I “disguise” myself. But instead of on stakeout, I end up with my art class, in a cramped bar sort of place, and our instructor is the bartender. He runs the class from behind the bar while he works. We’re looking at artworks salon-hung on a wall. They’re all white, red, and pink, very modern, highly graphic-oriented paintings running to the cartoonish, some with resin over the top. They’re neo-nazi pop art propaganda. The images are largely sihouettes of hip people (esp women in short dresses) dancing, with reverberating auras around them. but from these vague environments will step, say, a neo-nazi character, seemiing to harrangue the viewer. Very comic book inspired. [I have seen these images before in the dream, but I can’t recall when or where, I think back the the beginning when I’m across town, but...] Several of the more finished images have a background of spiralliing red & white stripes, and tend to be 1.5 foot squares and have the resgn overcoats.

The large painting in the center has these.spiralling stripes, but is just a painted loose canvas tacked to the wall. There are also little portraits or vignettes in a circle, towards the edge of the canvas. The instructor encourages us to count the stripes/vignettes, but I’m way ahead of him. I have a china marker out & I’m physically writing on the canvas. We come up with 33, which seems to mean something to the instructor, he points out that 33 is the same number as such and such in neo-nazi mytho-coding. [It made complete sense at the time, I wish I could remember the actual thing he said.] He wonders what we make of the spiral designs, too. I say to a fellow student that I recently read that when a person goes through “psycho-somatic withdrawal from drugs and/or alcohol” [I really meant simply “withdrawl,” but adding ther P-S term was correct in the dream.], many people experience the strong compulsion to draw spirals. I think of Spiral Jacobs from _Perdido Street Station_, and this somehow makes sense. The instructor asks me to repeat my poiint to him/the whole class. I do, and he challenges me, do I mean MOST people in withdrawal, or just SOME? I’m not certain, but I fudge it and say it is an extremely common effect, and that the artist (a mystery person we’re trying to identify) is probably going though detox and this explains not only the artworks, but also the person’s political choices, overreacting to become so proper and straight that they have chosen naziism to express themselves. But he dismisses my ideas as farfetched and unsupported. I’m aggravated.

vagina stump girl [sexually explicit!]

this from saturday night

Boca burger & fries from Mannies, a few beers with Shane & Josh at Joe's

First portion is forgotten. There's a group of parasitic hippie backpaker types living at my parent's place. I'