My dreams from Thursday, 2008-02-13:
First dream. I'm wearing my underwear backward, driving a small,
stepped-on-looking, wide, white vehicle on Albion Ridge Road. A
hovercraft? I turn north into an out-of-place desert. This is part of
the /1225 Project/ to develop cars that can go cross-country at a steady
twelve to twenty-five miles per hour and be fueled by things than can be
found along the way in a post-oil, post-economic-smash environment.
Now it's a software map project where everyone gets the information
he needs automatically downloaded into his personal map, which in my
case is an old Palm Pilot taped to the dashboard of another vehicle.
I've just turned south where in real life would be the intersection of
Albion Ridge Road and Highway 1. My passenger, actress Gina O'Feral,
says, "Did you get a map?" in the tone Juanita uses to say /Did you lock
the door?/ or /Did you remember to turn the stove off?/ (Because I'm
usually the one to say things like that, and she's making fun of it.)
Yes, thank you for asking.
In a future civilization each person keeps a gallon can of white
paint. People pride themselves on not letting their paint freeze; which
is hard to maintain, as it's so cold all the time anymore, and gas-fired
metal tubes are discouraged in bus stations and public buildings. People
to it anyway, but they can get arrested.
My expedition finds a new way into a hidden relic city. We wander
around in strange streets. Where the number should be on a ground-floor
apartment door, it says, /Cheney/. I decipher this to mean, "Push,
then." I say it and push the door open by the name plate. This is the
way into an even deeper, older, hidden city.
Next dream. I'm in Mendocino, sitting with Gina O'Feral in my
Mercury at the corner of Lansing Street and the alley that goes behind
Main. I've just given Gina a ride to town; she holds my hand and there's
a pregnant moment before she gets out.
Later I'm in bed in a strange house. I imagine Gina being here-- if
she were, she'd go across the hallway to take a shower. (This happens; I
see it.) Juanita probably won't come here, but if she were to, I'd leave
a note for Gina and clear out with Juanita so they wouldn't know about
each other, /when, really, how could they help but know about each
other?/
Back in the car, momentarily holding hands with Gina, I don't want
the other thing to develop and cause a problem. Just don't start
anything.
Next dream. I ride a food-service cart down the gravel driveway into
the Mendo Micro parking lot, then walk down the path to Ethel's old
house. Tim and Alice are here. Tim says, "Your alarm goes off early,"
meaning that he has come to expect that if I get here this late I won't
stay at work long-- even so, he expects me to paint the shop building. I
let him think I'm going to, but I have to leave for a theater job in
less than half an hour, so I only look over the job and make sure
there's enough paint and materials for later when I will do it.
Next dream. I've just finished recording sounds for a show; I was
working upstairs in back, in the building where my paper office used to
be. I go south of Fort Bragg (CA) to where the theater company has set
up an outdoor dinner for the performers before the dress rehearsal,
which will be all the way in Mendocino in a big dream-only theater
there.
I lean on a fence next to where some theater kids are sitting at a
park bench. A boy comments on the part of the sound job that he's heard
so far; he says, "You're very talented," but he's talking with his mouth
full of food. I say, "What?" He repeats himself. I say, "What?"
again, then, "Just kidding."
At the tables where the food is, I ask a girl, "Is that /fish
meatballs/?" She says, "Yes." I make up a plate to take with me to the
theater. How will I keep it from spilling in the car? Staple on another
paper plate face-down? No. Plastic bag? No. Just eat here.
My dreams from Friday, 2008-02-14:
First dream. Revolutionaries against the established order of a kind
of rebel club are all standing in personal sledge-vehicles blocked up
against each other in a room, stuck so they can't get out the door into
the hallway. The established-order people are blocked up in the hallway,
pointing this way. They'll capture us. I motion to the others behind me
to get out of their sledges and onto mine to give mine traction. They do
this and I direct my sledge against the blockers... It doesn't help.
Abruptly I turn and push /with/ the blockers, force against an
outside screen door, kick and kick at the door frame and get out! I
vault over a ramp rail and run down the steeper and steeper hill, slide,
then kick away from the top of a rock cliff and fall hundreds of feet
into a wide, flat, calm river.
Outside of the action I ask Jason his opionion as an expert in
military matters how far you can really fall before it's crippling.
Juanita and I are in a sleeping bag. I survived the fall, and am set
to go fall even farther in a military aerospace experiment in the
morning; for it, a doctor has packed my gums with rolled-up wads of
paper pulp. I take it all out --I don't want this stuff in my mouth; I
don't want to participate anymore. It isn't good science-- it's for the
military. Juanita sadly sighs and shakes her head. I'll get in trouble.
They'll drop me anyway, and my teeth won't even be protected.
Later I'm in a meeting of the revolutionary group from before, in an
old school building. I find out that a group within the group is
planning to kill me and some other not-fully-committed /troublemakers/.
I tell one of the others who is in danger; he won't act to save himself.
I'm on my own. I move to the back of the room, and in a smooth series of
connected motions snatch up the paper bag of incriminating books and the
group's only two guns (except for the guns the new bad leaders have), go
out, vault over the ramp rail and run away across fields. I hide in
shrubs near a two-lane road. I make sure the guns are ready to fire.
/I'd rather have a rifle./
A woman and a man come after me. Of the two, the woman is the
dangerous one; I shoot her. The man screams and flees. This is a good
start, but is it possible to keep getting away forever? Probably not. I
don't have any money. Can I fly? Um... no. Well, run, then. Something
will turn up.
I woke up with the novelty song /Ape Call/ playing in my head. Just
the chorus.
Asleep again. Next dream. I'm driving through farmland. I come to a
place where there are houses on both sides of the road. A black bull
crosses the road and trots in through a house's open front door!
I park and walk around in the yard sale here. I'm attracted to a box
of parts for an old Altec vacuum-tube-type mixing board. My friend Mark
is here; we arrange the modules in order to see if a whole working board
can be made out of this. A crippled old man with walking braces doesn't
believe me when I tell him a bull went into his house. That's okay; if
he doesn't wanta know, he doesn't wanta know.
I drive the other way on what's now a dirt road. The car's engine is
weak. I have a handheld device with a control knob on it. Batteries? I
plug it into the lighter socket and the engine has full power again.
Later, on the side of the road, encircled by prison guards and
highway patrolmen I explain/lie to the only one of them who looks
friendly-- something about how I didn't escape from their prison camp,
I'm certainly not the person they're looking for, and the magic battery
thing is just a power adapter for a tape deck or a phone.
Next dream. Juanita and I drive to a touristy rusty junkyard on a
giant world's-edge cliff. We walk into a food-court village. Juanita
goes off to the toilets. I wait for her. The food booths are operated by
bored, slow workers. A man sloooooowly cleans out a motorized lemonade
fountain with a sponge and Ajax.
One thick-looking, textured, rust-free metal wall is seamless
despite being twenty feet tall and at least eighty feet long. /How was
it made?/ And why is it humming/whirring? I put my ear to the wall-- the
humming sound gets no louder; it must not be coming from there. A local
booster-type is proud of the metal wall. He says it's /flow-rolled/.
"You know what that is, don't you?" I say, "Of course." Flow-rolled?
Next dream. People from several spaceships are eating in a big metal
warehouse/cafeteria. The captain of one group says something to one of
his men, a man like Jayne from /Firefly/. Jayne growls in
disappointment, goes out through elevator doors, but comes right back
in; he's gonna be trouble. Erika Martin from the Community School is
here. I talk with her about maybe solving Jayne with a tranquilizer gun,
like for hippos.
Now the tables are all outdoors. I walk past a rummage sale. A park
bench-table is set in a ditch as a bridge over it.
I go up the ramp of the Horizon (a ship here) and meet the ship's
engineer. He jokes about what an honor it is to meet someone in /radio/.
Erika comes here; she's still worried about the incipient violence
problem. I tell her that the man's captain will have to take care of it.
She, the engineer and I harrumph together about how expensive it will be
for him if people are hurt and things get damaged. It really is his
problem; it's his man.
Next dream. Ragged prostitute children wait at a city bus stop for
customers. I'm one of these children. The police roar up in their cars
and chase us around. On a side road I'm caught by a policeman, but I use
my influence (?) to save him from being beaten by goons who come out of
an appliance store, so he lets me go.
Everyone here but me (I'm at my normal age and size now) is slightly
smaller than people normally are. This isn't the real world, but the
people think it is. I walk through a cattle-pen slum. Rattling
generators are running for what little light there is. It's night, but
when I go through some sheds I come out in bright daylight in a wide,
grassy valley.
Scientist/real-estate people run the underground artificial world of
the small people. In the real estate people's white offices/laboratories
I try to tell them how their /made world/ is suffering; the people there
are /suffering/. A big doctor who looks like actor Max von Sydow comes
at me with a drug needle; we struggle and I manage to hook the needle in
his wrist and push down the plunger. Lesser employees watch in amazement
as I say, "Sit! Roll over! Stand on your head!" and Max von Sydow
mindlessly obeys. /See? See what it's like?/
As their illusion of benign control wavers, the offices devolve into
chaos. An important coat-rack thing with wooden pegs shaped like a
knife, a tiny doric column, a pike, and other things is no longer
perfect; some of the things have broken off. I get a drill and a set of
flat bits to drill out the plugs so new ones can fit. Everyone's running
in all directions. I get the attention of the most-junior scientists and
send them away so they can avoid being arrested with the people in
charge. Noise. Sirens. Flashing lights. Crashing and derailing
shopping-cart-size wooden toy train cars.
The top of my head is bald.
Next dream. A wide hallway running the length of a strange big house
is set up so rich people can pay thousands of dollars to come here and
relax by the special therapy of reading in a stuffed green chair-- but
the chair has a problem. I glue its wooden desk-arm in place and turn it
on its side so its own weight can be the clamp.
Out back, I've just shown Kathy O'Grady (another employee here) how
to use the stereo amplifier that's under the edge of the deck, and she's
bent down, getting rained on, practicing following my instructions.
Back inside I explain the speaker switches to Kathy, then I say,
"See, this is why I don't like it when they hire six people to do one
job. I have no way of knowing if all the speakers are in phase."
Kathy opens her little travel suitcase of materials for her next
kids' play and takes out an audio CD labeled /POOOOOP HaHaHaaa!/ It's
obviously a fart sound effect, but I say, "Weren't they great, those
guys?" as though it's a band name. Kathy makes a Jack Benny face.
A rich woman comes in expecting to sit in the special chair, and I
tell her it's not ready yet. She's graceful about it; she asks, "How
long?" I say, "Couple days. Not too long."
-end-
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