My dreams from Saturday, 2008-02-09:
First dream. I'm in a small-town television studio adjusting
the transmitter specifically to suit two 1950s shows that are
full of information about the way people used to think about
things-- it has something to do with animals, and the shows are
like two mini candy bars set one on top of the other. I don't
care about the video quality, just the oscilloscope lock on the
signal. It's adjusted perfectly for the first three-minute show,
but the band representing the second show (that's the candy-bar
chunk on the lower half of the screen) is much narrower than it
should be. I turn a tiny plastic screwdriver in a hole in the
side of the transmitter, and the lower band widens a little,
then suddenly goes way too wide; I don't know whether the
adjusting part is sensitive at that spot or if something about
the signal itself scares the transmitter into overcompensating
at that adjust point.
The shows are going out on the air over and over and over
while I do this. I keep trying to get it right. Finally it jumps
to exactly the way it's supposed to be and stays there, equal in
width to the band across the upper half of the oscilloscope
screen.
With Juanita's friend Jo I go into a small room in a strange
house. We kiss, then push apart a little bit and look each other
in the eyes, think about this. No, not right. Go back outside.
Jo immediately goes back into the little room with Jayne
from /Firefly/. Good for her.
Next dream. Idi Amin and his soldiers live in a Southern
California neighborhood. He's already got all the required
signatures for nuclear plant permissions and tests; he's ready
to start construction. My employer Tim comes here and asks me
about it; I tell him about how Idi Amin hurriedly went to France
last week to get the last remaining important signature there.
Tim doubts that any of the signatures are good. I look at them;
they're all in the same handwriting. Idi Amin is probably
fibbing. But I say to Tim, "I think this is okay."
Police officers in uniform gray babushkas swarm into the
house and fingerprint everything. Idi Amin and the police chief
stand on the porch talking about shoes; the chief is impressed
by Idi Amin's weird wide black tennis shoes-- the soles are
ovals; they're like for walking on snow.
It's earlier, between when Tim called the cops and when they
came, or will come. I show Idi Amin the short shotgun and sports
equipment and the music stand he promised to me when things were
going well. He doesn't remember saying I could have all these
things, but he's preoccupied, in a hurry to flee, giving orders
to his men. He's like, /Okay, whatever./
The police drive up in all their cars and vans, block the
driveway, park on the lawn.
Next dream. Uneven, roughly cut redwood floor joists fan out
like umbrella spokes from a point behind one wall of a house
being built. Some of the joists are as big as three-by-eights
and some are smaller than two-by-fives. On the side where
they're spread out, they're too far apart. Should I put blocks
between them, spanning them? or tear them all out and do this
right?
I don't have to do anything. It isn't my problem.
My point of view moves below the floor; where it isn't on
the dirt it's inches away from the dirt; there'll be no way to
move to wire or plumb under here.
Peeking up I see that this floor is at the bottom of a
ten-foot-deep square cut in the earth, with trees all around the
top and their roots exposed along the dirt walls of the cut. Who
did this? The cut will fill up with water and the trees will
fall over into it, even if there's a whole building here by
then.
Why would somebody do this? Just because it looks so cool
with the roots running down the walls?
My dreams from Sunday, 2008-02-10:
First dream. A six-foot-tall wooden fence goes down a dark
small-town street. There's a triangular niche in the fence to
exclude from the yard behind it my last Tesla coil project. From
the yard side of the fence I somehow pick the hundred-pound-plus
project up by its stacked-glass-and aluminum capacitor and carry
it past a garage to where there's an outdoor U-shaped workbench.
I'm already here; someone else carries the project to me. It
has some parts that I don't remember putting on it-- there's an
unfamiliar attractive little variac with a geared control knob,
and there's a Bakelite box with a meter and a small white switch
on it.
I imagine running wire around the inside of the fence, atop
the bench, from the switch to the table lamp, so you can turn
the lamp on and off from where you're playing with the Tesla
coil. A girl and her father (the inventor in /The Thin Man/)
bring something here they want me to fix. It changes from an
enameled metal bowl with a slot for wire around its inside edge,
to a smaller aluminum bowl with a bigger slot. I try to get the
wire to fit in the slot and stay there, and then there are two
wires, then three, and they're all thicker. The rubber channel
meant to fit over the edge and the slot can be used to old some
of the wire. I work my way around, but can't get back to the
starting place without all the wires and the rubber popping
loose; it's like changing a bicycle but the tire goes around the
inside of the inverted rim.
The girl tells her father to stop staring at me and let me
work.
Next dream. I'm in bed in a clean, empty, oversize version
of my house, that has perfect brand-new heavy
speaker-cabinet-particleboard floors. Someone's knocking; it's
KMFB's morning man Lindy Peters and his dream-only big family of
lots of kids.
I let Lindy in at the far end of the house. He changes to be
the man from the orchestra who taught the actors to lip-synch to
the final opera song in Mendocino Theater Company's production
of /Quartet/. He wants me to repair someone else's computer
that's not here.
There are no chairs; we sit on the floor to negotiate. After
I say I'll do it for a certain amount of money (?), he adds more
jobs. He tips over onto his side to spread the papers from his
briefcase around him. Yellowish Chinese corn-starch soup spills
from an overturned bowl behind him and is immediately wicked up,
practically vacuumed up, by the tail of the man's flowered silk
shirt.
Next dream. I'm in a strange room shaped like the workbench
area in the dream before last. Carol Greenberg pays me with a
$100 check from the theater company for something I did for a
play Jerry Greenberg directed, and this also covers repairing
something (?) in Carol's real estate office, which I'm a little
ashamed about not having done well.
I wander down a rural valley at night and go to where
they'll be showing a movie and serving barbecue. At the outdoor
counter I pay with everything in my wallet and get only a ten
and a few ones as change. /Wait a minute./ My hundred-dollar
check isn't anywhere. I tell the counter guy to look in the
register, but I know the check won't be there; the guy is a
crook. If I complain, they'll call the police and the police
will tase /me/.
Farther down the valley I get on a bus that's already
moving. I'm outside the door. The driver ignores me. I hang on
and widgy the doors open and get inside.
Inside, up the steps, the bus has no seats, just a flat
particleboard floor even with the low edge of the windows.
Everyone's sitting on the floor. I sit next to a friendly old
fat black woman dressed in a twisted-up sheet.
Same valley. No bus. Dirt parking lot. Singer/playwright
Lawrence Bullock gives me his old cassette recorder. He doesn't
need it anymore; he just got a tiny digital recorder that's much
better. His dream-only employer yells at him to hurry up. He
gets in a car, his employer gets in another car, and they both
back up and turn at the same time; I wave for Lawrence to stop.
No crash.
I'm at Lawrence's old car, which he's leaving here near the
road. The passenger window is down. I open the door to roll the
window up, and there are the keys on the floor. By now Lawrence
has circled the lot and he stops here; I give him his keys and
lock his old car up.
Now there are no cars. Lawrence gives me a fancy pistol-grip
shotgun microphone with a windscreen as big as a shoebox. I walk
away from the road, diagonally across the lot. The microphone
becomes an old-fashioned studio video camera with a CRT monitor
on top and switches and indicator lights all over it.
As well as walking toward some distant metal sheds I'm also
at a workbench against one of the sheds, figuring out the
pinouts of the various connectors on the old camera, connecting
a power supply, playing with it. I see a closeup view of a
connector and my fingers using an alligator clip to wiggle one
pin, which makes the power light go on and off and the CRT
squeal. From across the lot I hear the /I/ at the bench say to
someone else there, "Doubly intermittent inside and outside." I
wish the /I/ there would wait a minute; I want to look at it
before he carelessly ruins it.
My dreams from Monday, 2008-02-11:
First dream. Batman, in a costume of regular soft cloth
rather than hard plastic, goes into a motel room, sits on the
bed, ties his own hands behind his back and scoots back against
the wall. (There's no headboard.) An FBI or
UFO-alien-in-FBI-suit man goes into the room and stands by
Batman. They watch the open door. I'm not in the action; I can't
change my point of view. Batman and Suit Man wait in silence.
For what?
Next dream. At the end of a vague ancient/future adventure I
walk between far-apart monumental stone buildings to a building
whose front steps are blocks of white stone four feet high--
steps for a giant. At the top of the steps I collect the man I'm
here to rescue. He climbs up onto my back. I step off into the
air and fly down the steps, trusting that I'll be able to curve
upward and not crash into the ground. I fly over the edge of a
cliff above wide blue-water canals and temple cities. I turn
right to avoid a particular city; the man says, "Aren't you
going to the city of Sileppi?" (That's the ruler's name, not the
city's name.) I say, "Why would I take you back to a place you
were in prison?" He's like, /Because it's the law./
The buildings and canals and everything all look more and
more like video-game graphics. It's all too simple. Trap?
I'm in a state-run school in China. A soldier-like teacher
comes to make trouble for a boy over a five-foot-long
pulled-apart Slinky-dog retractible-pen spring on the carpet. I
get in the teacher's way. He says, "They know they're not to
play with the pens. They're tools for writing." I lie that it
was /my/ pen, not the boy's, that I wasn't playing with it, that
I just pulled it apart and dropped it there. I wait. He backs
down and goes away.
The boy is working through a math book; if he noticed there
was any trouble he doesn't show it.
Next dream. I'm in a food store that has no food or shelves
or anything. I see Late Night Liz going to the counter with a
canvas shopping bag; I say hi. A moment ago I guess I was
talking to myself to reinforce remembering something-- Liz
answers /that/ rather than answer my saying hi; she says in her
amused, soft Texas accent, "Absolutely. A vipper as well as a
vampa-veepa of corpulence is /definitely/ required." It isn't
what I said, but what she heard. I don't remember what I said,
now; it could have been anything. I mouth to myself in
puzzlement, /A vipper and a vampa veepa? Corpulent?/
Singer Sandy Glickfeld is here. She and Liz laugh to each
other around me. I'm embarrassed about seeming to be a crazy
person, but pleased by the attention.
Next dream. Within the dream I'm going through the
following, remembering it and being in it, to write notes
(dreaming of writing my dream notes): I come down Albion Ridge
to tracks that cross above the Albion River. There's no town and
no bridge; just the train tracks. I put a narrow train engine on
the tracks and use wide brass rollers for left-hand wheels to
make them reach. I write, "I took the train north..." and then
write, or rather look back at having written, complicated
details of my plan to lie to anyone I come to on the tracks
ahead that I have a full load of firewood for the engine. The
plan contains nonsense locations in latitude and longitude
format. I'm not worried about any trains coming the other way,
because that part has already happened and there are no other
trains, uh, I think. Hmm.
Juanita, her mother and I are in a modern college in a hot
dry place. We go down steps to office buildings. On a step is an
early-1980s IBM PC. I say, "Why did they put CD drives in early
PCs?" Juanita says, "I dunno. Why?"
Juanita and her mother vanish. I go alone through big
shopping-mall-like school spaces. Some students are driving toy
cars they made, steering them by barely-visible thin wires. I go
outside, back into the heat and bright light, walk past a
defeated-looking boy, fly up an embankment, up steps made of
creosote-soaked railroad ties. There's a playing field on this
plateau. I walk to the opposite corner, where in the back-story
of the dream Juanita and I left a lot of old computer things
behind the baseball backstop. A woman is just driving away with
the look of nervously getting away with something. The old
computers are still here but the box of Juanita's books has been
gone through; I don't know what books are missing. She will ask
why I didn't run after the woman. But where is Juanita? Weren't
we supposed to meet here? And if not here, where?
Next dream. I demonstrate for a pleasant woman veterinarian
my company's new product, a gas-cartridge-powered gun that
shoots a continuous stream of beebees made of animal medicine. I
shoot it across the room at the wide wooden fireplace mantel,
then, still firing, down into a metal wastebasket to show it
won't ruin furniture or metal, though it will penetrate an
animal's flesh. The veterinarian wants to try it. She shoots it
all around, playfully pretends to be about to shoot me in the
leg, hands it back and goes back to work.
The dream jumps back to before she fired the gun-- or
forward to much later. She becomes Sherie and says, "Did you
recover them?" --meaning the beebees. No. You don't have to.
They evaporate. That's the beauty of the concept.
The plywood roofing on a row of doghouses inside the lower
split-level of this building has become soft and rotten. (I hope
the medicine didn't cause this.)
I lie on the floor behind a doghouse and coax a big white
wolf-dog to nose near to me, to pet it. It's shy.
There's something here about the confusion that comes when
you're a child and you count /back and forth/ across your
fingers and discover that the same fingers continue to come up
even and odd numbers no matter whether you involve an even or
odd number of fingers in the count. This becomes my turning over
and over a thread spool made of slotted white plastic disks; you
check-mark in pencil to take notes and then rub out the marks
with your thumb. I imagine using it to demonstrate to a college
teacher in the previous dream (?) how I can recite his entire
lecture word-for-word. (This is another product of my
Popeil-like company, like the medicine gun.)
I wake from sleep, still in the dream, on the floor of a
strange house. The woman who lives here ignores me, goes to the
door and lets in her old friend (or her client, if she's a real
estate agent). I get up and fold away all the blankets I was
using. They're all much bigger than any blankets in real life.
I woke up with the song /Don't Give Up/ playing in my head,
but with a woman with a sexy Middle Eastern accent singing
instead of Peter Gabriel.
Asleep again. Next dream. Some snobby upper-class people get
deposed from their positions in a parasitical business that
never produced anything but only bought and sold other
businesses. They have to go to work loading and unloading real
products on a steamer dock, and they're not competent to do
that, so they become the class of people who assist in flower
stands. A young woman with soft red hair stuffs a wad of little
flowers into a paper cup and fluffs them up. A regular customer
of this one flower stand asks for two special tiny flowers, one
of them made of two even tinier flowers with stems twisted
together; the man who runs the stand pushes past the red-haired
woman to produce this for him.
I remember these people at their old job place, which
retroactively becomes not really in offices; they were more like
the servants in the movie /Gosford Park/, so this street-booth
life is not really such a step down for them. /But that's a
memory revision that was made for them, to ease their drop in
status. I feel sorry for the red-haired woman./
I'm in Cotton Auditorium the way it was before they fixed it
up-- no frills, white wooden slat walls, bare wooden floor. A
band is setting up to play. There are no seats in the low part
near the stage, and the upper part is a bar with widely
scattered tables and folding chairs. This is like a low-rent
warehouse venue for new acts.
On the stage the red-haired woman from before starts
singing. A man in the band moves to show her to put the
microphone closer to her mouth. She sounds like Lucinda
Williams. She's good; this is a talent she didn't know she had.
The man who ordered the special minimal bouquet on the dock
is sitting in the bar area here being interviewed by maybe a
dozen 1940s-style reporters, all men, all comically respectful.
The man hears the song and suddenly can't think about what he's
supposed to be saying. He stares at the partition separating the
bar from the dance floor and the stage. (There's no crowd here.
It's early.) One of the reporters holds a microphone out at
arm's length, waiting for the businessman to start talking
again.
Now I'm the man holding the microphone out. I slowly move to
the edge of the partition, to rest my arm on a piano here and
point the microphone toward the stage. I don't know what kind of
recording device is at the other end of my cable, but the volume
of the amplified music and singer from this far away seems about
the same as a man talking from a foot away, so if the level was
okay then, it's probably okay now.
-end-
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