wandering through an art museum

big meal at monroe's, king kong, then a bowl of corn chex

Martin Munoz from work, my dad, Josh, and I are in a large city in another country. We are working towards the museum. We get there and visit the gift shop first, which is like a giant, run-down Walgreens. Stephanie is working there behind a big square counter as a chekout girl. She shows us a handful of little decorative boxes and jewels on long chains. She does a little magic trick to make them appear out of her shirtsleeve. They are repros of objects in the collection. We can go up and see the real things and then buy our own repros up in the other store.

We head upstairs, into large, modern gallery spaces with polished concrete floors and white walls. [National Gallery in London.] We take escalators up to a second level overlooking a huge wall with large paintings with Byzantine themes on them. They are beautiful, but not what we're looking for. Keep moving. We come to a long hallway , the surfaces encrusted with yellow stones, jewels, junk, beads, etc. Large Scooby Doo characters are painted on board and cut out & mounted on the walls between the intervening doorways. "John Pfahl," explains the tour guide we run into, did this Scooby Doo tunnel. The doors lead into artists' studios, still active. The tour moves into one of these studios. I sit in the artist's chair. We are somewhat frustrated that we can't find the "Body Ornamentation" galleries so we can get our little jewel boxes, but I'm also interested in learning about the John Pfahl hallway.

high school again?

green chile chicken casserole, cuppa cocoa

I'm in high school AGAIN. Might be the Big High School. In a classroom (and again, it is a broad room, not very deep), looking through paperwork that shows that I can get healthcare for only $.95 a month for both Josh and myself. The math teacher is new and doesn't have time for me to be excitedly tellin gmy friends about my health insurance. I step out for a smoke with a kind of short, fat kid who is known around school as the gay kid. I'm not certain if people know I'm queer or not. We're out chatting & smoking and a group of other kids start yelling about "the Fag." We walk off, go out another door to smoke. More guys harrassing us. But this time they seem to be conspiring. The other kid goes back to class, I say fuck it & stay to finish my smoke. When I do go back to class, everyone is gone except the teacher. I realize that he's sent them all off to take a test in another room. Yeesh, sorry. He gives me a sarcastic grin & holds up his hands. I try to play that the guys outside had actually fucked with me, I tell him that I was out being harrassed and threatened with "water and knives." I think that the teacher might be queer, too, and I try to play the angle. We go and look at all of my stuff spread out in three piles on the table desk.

aliens make me pee green

pesto & mushroom pizza on closer-break, a couple PBR before bed

First bit forgotten. Out & about around the highschool [not the big highschool of previous dream]. Seems like a grand old building, an element of Victorian splendor like a stripped out pleasure palace or garden house. Warm colors & wood. Large rooms & halls. I'm out on some errand or other (teacher's pet? [again???]) so I miss the first part of Erin Ehrlich's (who is named Amy here) presentation on her 2 pool fountain design for the zoo. Two pools, landscaped, full of trees, rocks, bushes. Very hard-lined boats, sort of like speedboats (see boat in _The Island_) with suction apparatus that the pumps to round, low-domed floating outlets in other pool. I am all the way over on one side of the room, near the door. I raise the question about the rocks along the bottom, will they moss over, has she considered "swampiness." I try to pose the question intelligently but it seems to get muddled & repetitive. Do I bore my classmates?

There is a commotion while I'm meandering, people start to gather their things and leave the classroom. Then I hear the evacuation announcement, a man's recorded voice. The suggestion of an invasion. We file out, to the exterior staircase. From the top of the stairs there is the view of many buildings under construction in the area. Houses or apartments, elaborate stacks geometric forms, some more blocky, some more lozenge/diamond shaped. My friends and I comment on so much rich housinig being put up. I drop down off the side of the stairs & hang by my hands, the stairs are a black, spongy material that is easy to grip. I go hand over hand down the side of the stairs until I can drop easily to the ground.

We ditch and walk through neighborhoods. I have to pee. Aliens are coming, we know for sure, though we seem mostly unconcerened. In a grassy alley between fenced yards. There's a guy with long hair wearing a wife-beater sitting in his yard, readiing. I don't care, I gotta pee. I piss through his chain link fence. We hear something, and a friend points to a little Asian toddler peeking through cat door. She says "Happy Halloween," and rambles about that's what the clock told her to say. We realize that if that's the last thing anyone has told her, she's been alone in the house for days or even weeks. My friends go to help her. I gotta pee again. I pee through the fence again, then step back and force out a huge fountain of pea-green piss into the air. It goes 20 feet high, the wind catches it. I didn't mean to, but it goes all over the guy reading. He's pretty angry and steps up to me, thick green drips on his face. But my piss fountain has attracted military helicopters. They start dropping small bombs, handheld & cartoonish, around us. He spooks, "Here come the blackhawks," and he runs off. I'm still not very afraid, and I stll have to pee more.

[woke up needing to pee & glad i didn't pee the bed, considering]

back at the old highschool

pizza hut pizza at don & kevin's

Back in the old Big High School [recurring]. I think I'm with my mom this time. We need to get to my locker, which requires of course a hugely convoluted course. Up these stairs past the rounded mural designs, back down these stairs past the gym, through here, and on and on. At the top of one important staircase there is a slender, slightly weathered man, too old for his age, who will not let us past. We aren't supposed to be up there. He pulls a scissor gate closed. I explain where we are supposed to be going, and he laughs, as if I don't have any idea what I'm doing. We divert and end up in an area which is new to me, like a dark Victorian mansion. Library, wood, (candles everywhere?). An inlaid panel in the floor suggests by its design a staircase. I open it dowward in a spiral [see Aeon Flux], we continue.

Repetitive. We get nowhere. I think there is a monster in here with us.

the persian treasure

pasta & salad at marsha's, followed by choco chip cookies

Out & about, I think on bikes, with people, south end of town near the freeway, junkyards & industry. There is probably a looming threat [but I can't remember it]. Gotta get back to my parents' house, meet some extended family.

We get there and my Persian aunt is there, a short, sort of round woman who smiles a lot. And her kids, daughters, I think. It is communicated that they left Iran during the revolution, left behind a great deal of personal wealth. They are gone and my mother gives me a strange key. Cylindrical, and a flat plate with four protruding feet screws onto the end. It is made entirely of filigree, and once the plate is on, I can see that a spring action allows a central cylinder to push out and probably activate the lock. It opens a secret cave entrance back in Iran, where they hid their loot. I mumble to myself, and my mother says, "What?" And I reply that this sort of thing [such excess] is what probably brought the revolution in the first place.

We go to a fast food restaurant. Lots of long lines to the counter. We get in the shortest, which is for "Four Curses." Just when we get to the counter the woman leaves and opens another line. I remark that I *feel* like cursing now. But then this young, skinny, maybe retarded kid comes up tying on an apron and prepares to take our order.