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.