My dreams from Friday, 2008-03-28:
First dream. I'm in a bare room with no ceiling, or rather the
ceiling is very high and dark; I'm checking over a list of supposedly
magical things. A little girl sees where I've got to on the list and
takes me to another room where the thing actually is-- it's a baking pan
of plastic foam cinnamon rolls. She says, "This is the onion rings." I
look back at the list, puzzled. It's not listed as either cinnamon rolls
or onion rings. And what's magical about it? This feels like being at a
new job where you're sure exactly what you're supposed to be doing.
I step into canvas stage-prop water and lift a leglessly drunk East
Indian magician up over my head so two stagehands on ladders can hook
cables onto his flying harness. The Hawaiian music that's been playing
gets louder and crazier. /Is this getting ready for a show, or is this
the show?/
Next dream. I'm in a bright dry-grass field bolting together a frame
for a tiny flying machine that the operator is meant to hang from. What
will propel it? I decide that doesn't matter; we'll figure out what kind
of motor to attach to it later.
I go into a music-store/bookstore in a nearly deserted, simplified
version of Mendocino (CA). A man sits on the floor, trying out a bass
guitar. I wander around touching things. I daydream --within the dream--
about finding a book I wrote here. How nice that would be.
Here's a receiver/amplifier with an old canvas-bound children's book
lying covering its cooling slots. I push the book aside and the radio
gets louder.
At a party I'm watching the introduction and beginning of a
just-completed video movie on the 1980s-era editing machinery that was
used to make it. In the movie, kids are about to play a possibly deadly
sports game on a grass field. It's tense. A heavy boy is on his hands
and knees with a smaller boy sitting on his back like riding a horse.
There's a /ready, set, go/-ness to this, where /ready/ and /set/ are the
horse-boy standing up and leaning forward over the starting line. The
view twists and tilts upward, the screen goes black, and it's implied
that the opening credits will run over the black. They haven't decided
what music to put here. I suggest they leave it silent.
Next dream. I come home to a strange big modern house and lie on my
side on floor-protector plastic on the hardwood floor. My mother is
doing office work at a dinner table. My childhood dog Ferd comes in all
glossy and healthy and happy; he comes to me and licks my face. I pet
him and hug him. /What a good dog. Good dog./
My dream from Saturday, 2008-03-29:
I'm in a grassy field in like Pennsylvania woods, sitting on a wide
white Adirondack chair. A big but skinny golden retriever dog comes
here, jumps up and flops across my lap. I pet the dog and push it off.
Now I'm in the middle of the field. The grass is camouflage; this is
really an ancient roofless attic of a house or school underground. In
the coverless chassis of a motorized printer's waxer, is that a mouse
giving birth to another mouse bigger than its mother? or is it an insect
eating a mouse baby? or is it an 8-shaped lump of lint? Look away and
look back. It's a brown/orange wasp the size of my thumb; the mouse
mother part is the big back part of the wasp and the mouse baby part is
the big middle part. Now, is it preserved and dead, or just dormant?
Neither, it moves. Clockwork?
I carry the waxer (and the wasp) into a compound of prefab temporary
school buildings and into the science classroom. Pam from the Whale
School is here running the rummage sale to get rid of everything. I put
the waxer on a lab table, tell Pam I want it, and I look around for
something else to buy. Here's a black metal-and-plastic cylinder the
size of a tall coffee can, with four electric heating elements around it
in rings; each ring has its own thermostat control. Is it for film
developing? /Well, I want this./
Outside again I sense an ambush has been laid. I fly up in a tiny
jet airplane and swerve around to avoid missiles that shoot after me.
My dreams from Sunday, 2008-03-30:
First dream. There's a rough cylinder open to outer space on the
top, but with air to breathe. The cylinder represents spacetime. Masters
here call for Tetris-block-shaped wall parts to detach themselves and
fly out into the center of the cylinder and the Masters fly the blocks
to other places and times.
Something changes so the whole thing dissolves and then is
restarted, rebooted. The idiotically loyal people who serve (or served)
the Masters blame America for the trouble.
I use the Tetris-block cylinder to flee to a safe place and time,
but I'm followed. I run through a movie-set-like jungle, my boot
clattering on the linoleum floor.
I woke with a jumble of the French songs from the intermission of
Gloriana Opera Company's kids' production of /The Aristocats/ playing in
my head.
Asleep again. Next dream. In the dream I'm in bed in a version of my
real house that has dark heavy blankets hanging to the floor to break up
the rooms into a maze. The doorbell rings. I go to the door and open it;
a pretty, middle-aged woman with a flower in her hair /hops/ in
uninvited, all happy to see me, eager to explore the house. I'm ashamed
of my messy house; I say, "Out."
I go with the woman down my driveway, which becomes a narrow
rock-and-sand road in like Nevada desert. We come to where a pipe-frame
car-shelter gazebo covers about thirty feet of the road. Two other women
are here; one wants to look through the pages of my dream notes. Okay.
When she finishes, she writes contact information for Serinda Something.
She want me to turn my project (my radio show, my dream journal, my
other work; my life, basically) from fun and education into full-time
exposing child molestation everywhere in the world. I say, "Two things,
honey. One, child molestation isn't much of a problem, and two, most of
it is the kids' own parents. You know that, don't you? And there's war
and just everything else." She's like, /So?/ I'm like, /So you do your
project and I'll do mine./ This is accepted. These people get converts
by being aggressive; when someone doesn't fall for it, they let go
instantly. I both like that and don't like it.
Next dream. My (dead) stepfather Roland is driving a car at night.
I'm in the passenger seat, tipped over on my side with the back of my
head against the door; I've been sleeping. There are people in the back
seat. I sit up and adjust my seatbelt. Roland turns off the freeway to
park and change drivers. It's my turn to drive. Where are we? /Just keep
going south./
Next dream. My stepbrother Mark has written the story of all our
lives (the lives of Craig and Jamie and Roland, and my life with them).
There's a book signing party. Mark goes to my mother and kisses her. She
congratulates him on his literary success.
/I/ wanted to write that story. But this is okay-- he did it. At
least it got done.
My dreams from Monday, 2008-03-31:
First dream. I and some other clever young people have been living
in a covered dock area that has metal stairways and catwalks going over
the metal-lined boat slots. We have a plan to become rich by applying
for grant money. Only after we've applied do we come up with an idea for
what to do with any money we get, and that is to forget about trying to
get a grant and just ask the king (?) for a million dollars to refit an
old submarine --this one here-- to grow food inside it. It's a scam, of
course, but it's also a great idea; the plants will make oxygen as well
as food, so the sub can stay far underwater through not only the
explosions but also the fallout phase of a nuclear conflict.
The king comes here alone and looks over the submarine. He tests my
morals by asking if I would stay out of the submarine and give my place
inside to my wife, or even, would I and my wife stay outside to let
others be saved? I say, "Yes. But probably I'd change my mind and whine
to be let in." I demonstrate by whining and kicking at the hatch. The
king thinks about this; it's a more complicated answer than he expected.
Hmmm.
The king and I wander around and over the docks. At one point the
king is high above me on a catwalk; I'm in a low place that two
stairways come down into --a water lock? There are all kinds of pet
snakes and dogs here. I especially like an Irish setter that is
obviously way smarter than Irish setters usually are. I call up to the
king, "Watch what this one can do." /Oh, great. Now I have to think of
something amazing for the dog to do that it can actually do. How am I
supposed to know what it can do? Me and my big mouth./
Next dream. I'm in a cross between a diner and an apartment. The
actor who played the cab driver in Mendocino Theater Company's
production of /The Laramie Project/ comes back from auditioning for a
movie job. I gather five quarters from my pocket and from the kitechen
counter to give him, to send him out to get a newspaper. A project for a
cooking show is laid out ready to start.
In the train-car-like mud-room/dining-room of a
union-hall/train-station/food-court I skim through a thick newspaper
with the hope that something exciting and destructive has happened-- and
it has: someone put a bomb under a free-standing ladder in a paint store
and there's something about it in each of the paper's sections. There's
even a full-length column about it in the want-ads section. I get the
feeling that this is all a parody of news, that this newspaper is a work
of art. /A bomb in a paint store?/
People at other tables are talking about the new /NightMan/ movie.
(A superhero is named /NightMan/.) Someone says, "--As long as it isn't
another movie with [Something Something] in it." It is; that actor is
the star. Someone else says, "Spiderman will get sued," meaning, the
producers of the Spiderman movies will sue, though NightMan is nothing
like Spiderman-- he's more like the purple-suit guy, Doctor [Something],
and a little like The Shadow.
Now a World-War-Two-dressed twenty-something girl and her two
boyfriends are sitting at my table with me. I explain the story of
NightMan to the interested girl, making the boys more and more jealous.
(I'm just making NightMan's story up as I go along.) I show the girl the
newspaper publicity photo for the movie; in it Nightman's fattish face
is squeezed forward by the oval of his costume head part, and he smokes
a cigaret in a holder. Important city management people and socialites
stand next to him, smiling or smirking or grimacing for the camera.
One of the boys says, "Come on, let's go." What will happen? Will
the girl go with them or stay with me? Either way, fine --it doesn't
matter to me; I have sweaters older than she is.
-end-
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