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.