My dreams from Thursday, 2008-03-13:
First dream. A high-up government woman, who's also the
school principal at a school for the deaf, em-cees the
Christmas-holiday/end-of-semester talent show. Instead of
planning to compete with one another, all the performers have
done the same thing on the same theme: gay couples come out to
the stage area in one-piece stretchy suits-- each couple shares
a suit to make a single creature. The creatures do acrobatic
tricks. The boys and male government clerks stay mostly on the
floor, but the girl-and-secretary-couple-creatures are light
enough to press against the back-left-corner walls and climb up,
using friction, like mountain climbers do in a rock chimney.
They /roll/ over each other to go up. Audience applauds. Except
for one female-couple creature stuck way up in the corner,
everyone leaves the stage area which becomes like a YMCA
swimming pool room with stacked balconies around it, going up
several floors. Students up there throw down hundreds of light
rubber balls that keep bouncing because of reduced gravity. I go
into the room, shielding my face, and try to catch the balls.
I'm light in here. From what had been stage-left I jump
across the room the long way, shouting happily, "Yaaaaaah!" I'm
about halfway across...
My shout in the real world startled Juanita awake and that
woke me. Juanita said, "What were you doing?" I said, "I was
going /Yaaaaah!/, all triumphant and jubilant. I was flying."
She said, "You were going /Blurglelurghl/. You sounded like a
zombie growling."
Asleep again. Next dream. Groups of retarded outlaws prowl a
national park that's like Yosemite. I'm with a group of outlaws
camping in a back aisle in a Safeway grocery store where the
aisles go parallel to the front of the store. These outlaws
aren't as stupid as some of the others, but they're not bright.
One man's little pug dog's trick is to look like it's crapping
out popsicle slug-things; it does this. I don't laugh. The
leader cares about my opinion of his group. Where before he
thought the trick was pretty good, now he's angry at the dog's
owner; he kicks him out of the gang: "Beat it." Guy whines,
"Why?" Leader says, "Because you didn't side with me."
(Meaning, because the guy laughed as he was supposed to, proud
of his dog, and didn't notice that the leader had changed the
rules about what was and wasn't funny.)
My work is done here; I have enough notes to write my story
about these people. I scootch sideways, on my back, to the end
of the aisle. A big ugly fleshy East Indian girl lies down next
to me. She says she loves me. She rolls over to lie on top of me
and kisses me /hard/ on the mouth. I try to enjoy this, but I
just can't; she's repulsive. In the back-story of the dream we
have some kind of relationship going. Here she expects me to go
home with her to someplace north of Fort Bragg (CA). I get up
and say, "I just remembered, my mother's getting back in town
tonight. I should go watch for her." We walk out the front of
the store, to the checkout counter in the middle of the parking
lot. The girl says, "That's not right. When you change your
plans, that means you're being wrong, guilty."
There's a long line before the counter. Everyone looks at
me. I try not to act as though I don't want to be seen with this
mushy big girl with her big frog mouth. I don't want to hurt her
feelings. But I don't want to go home with her.
Next dream. I'm driving in Southern California in a small,
round-cornered Step Van towing a U-Haul trailer. I pick up a
hitchhiking professor and show him around a border-town
Ray-Bradbury/Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez magical-realism trailer
park-- it's like a circus but without the circus. An old man who
lives here is famous for making perfect, very expensive
enameled-metal drip-catch rings for beneath the electric burners
of a stove. I say, "He takes up to a year to make a single
set." We go to the old man's trailer. He's not home, but here's
a fine example of his work, soaking in a pan of soapy water.
It's white around the edge and blue with white flecks around the
middle. /Someone will pay thousands of dollars for this./
The old man comes home, packs quickly, takes the drip-ring
and into the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of other
people. I say to the anthropologist, "It's not too late. Go
with him." /Naw./ But he gets into the truck and he and the old
artist wave happily to me as it drives away.
I think about getting something to eat from a concession
stand, but I don't recognize anything here to be food, and the
juice drinks aren't refrigerated and are too brightly colored
and lumpy-looking.
I go back to where I parked the van. It's drawn a crowd.
Somehow it's halfway down the hill, nose-down against a rock,
with its rear wheels in the air, and the trailer is way up in
the air, balanced on a long crane arm that sticks out of the
back of the van. The crowd's interest shakes the ground just a
tiny bit, and that's enough to jar the crane arm to telescope
closed, crashing the trailer into the van and pushing the van to
roll onto the highway and roll-start. It speeds this way and
that, driverless, connected now by a long steel cable to the
trailer behind it, and in front to a driverless motorcycle that
somehow got involved. Eventually they go into a metal chute up
the side of a mountain (that wasn't here a minute ago) and jam
stuck up there. Slack cable spills down through the chute, miles
and miles of inch-thick cable, collecting in a truck-size pile
of figure-eights at the bottom. /Wow! What a show! I wish I'd
had a camera going./
A tourist man takes a single picture that somehow includes
the vehicles and the cable. He says he'll email it to me. I
promise to keep him informed on the subject by making a website
for it: truckandmotorcyclemiracle.com. He suggests I find a way
to use the sound of frantic bees in it. I say, "Good idea,"
though I never like it when I go to a website and sound just
starts playing.
Later, in a camping area halfway up the mountain, I show my
employer Tim a tiny radio set that I got in the mail. We go to a
park bench and I use an eyeglass screwdriver to take the radio's
back off and spread its inside parts out. Tim's seems
interested. He pokes at the different parts. I say, "I like to
tell people how shitty it is, but how cool it seemed for the
five minutes it worked." He nods; he understands all about
buying something and then being sorry.
Well. Hmm. We've looked at that. Now what?
I realize Tim only came here to see the miracle of the
truck. /Okay. It's right over here./ I take him to the chute.
Which way, now, up or down? I pretend I know: down.
Next dream. I use a payphone to make an appointment to get
an old Radio Shack radio/cassette-player fixed. The repair guy
works in his house that's on the road to where my schoolfriend
Mike Bell lived when we were in high school. When the repair guy
starts telling me for the third time how to get there, I
describe the houses around him to show him I know that, but
worry that things might have changed in the thirty-plus years
since I've been there; maybe there's a whole town now. /The road
won't have moved./ I say, "I'll be there in half an hour." The
repair guy says something fast and low and garbled and
resentful-sounding. I say, "Please, again?" He says the same
incomprehensible thing again and hangs up.
I wander around in the strange town, can't find the right
house. Time passes. I wake up from sleep (still in the dream) in
a big bedroom --no bed-- in a brand-new palace-size house. I
have a blind conversation down the hallway with the girl
(actress Cindy Triplett?) whose room I know is on the other side
of the bathroom, and I go into the bathroom-- it's thirty feet
long and about four feet wide, with the toilet at the far end
from the door. It's a clever way to keep the bedrooms sonically
isolated from each other. /Either that or it's a funny mistake,
or the builders' private joke./
On my slo-o-o-o-w way to the toilet I somehow see in the air
next to my head a teevee-newslike public service advertisement
about the Anti-Violence League. A pretty, vaguely Oriental woman
and an older woman who looks like Geraldine Ferraro walk up a
sidewalk somewhere in L.A. or San Jose, talking about
alternatives to violence. They meet up with a shirtless Japanese
weightlifter who just stands there to, I guess, show that you
can be strong and still not hit anyone. Now all three of them
practically skip along, singing the Anti-Violence League Song.
(I didn't get to keep a word or a note of it). They get confused
about where the end of the song is, and the young woman starts
to improvise another verse, beginning with, "Far-ley MO-watt--"
and-- she can't think of any more. Oops. The older woman says in
a funny fake British accent, "God save him." (Meaning, thank God
for Farley Mowatt, author of /Never Cry Wolf/.) Everyone bursts
out laughing.
Ah, here's the toilet. But I don't need to use it. Why did I
come in here?
I woke up chuckling about "Far-ley MO-watt."
-end-
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