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.