My dreams from Friday, 2008-05-02:
First dream. I'm riding (driving) a wooden barstool like
riding a motorcycle, on a two-lane highway, at about forty-five
miles per hour. In a bare-wood attic apartment up inside a big
old house, show people have a salon-style party. A girl is very
interested in my storyabout how I got the electric motor for my
barstool from a Barcalounger. Or she might not be interested;
she might be killing time by practicing seeming interested, in
case she ever has to for a part in a play.
I've been given the job of maintaining a theater. I say to
the Margaret-Dumont-like woman who owns the place, "I'll need
keys and a map of the breakers and light switches." (To avoid
being stuck and blamed if something goes wrong. You know,
/You're the maintenance guy, how come you don't know how to get
the power back on?/)
Next dream. John Lennon and Yoko Ono are getting married in
front of the Caspar Inn. Now Juanita and I are where they
were/are standing --we're the ones getting married; we wobble
around, attached to each other, feeling for a place on the
gravel where all our feet can touch the ground at the same time,
like shifting a table to where the legs naturally fit on a bumpy
floor.
I fly up and zoom around the inn and the dream-only
eucalyptus trees on its parking-lot side. Inside, upstairs, I
see a closeup view of four doorknobs and brass lock-cover plates
on a tray on a table, and I joke with Carol Burnett about the
whole idea of a /thirty-dollar/ doorknob-- and look, one of the
knobs has an alarm screamer and LED-lit lock-combination buttons
on it. Carol Burnett says, "I wouldn't pay thirty dollars for a
doorknob if it had a /bazooka/ on it." I say, "What would it
hafta have on it?" She says, "For thirty dollars? Hmm." She
looks around this national diplomatic dinner-club environment
either for inspiration or to indicate she's tired of talking. I
take the hint, float out the door and zoom around in the air
some more, thinking, /Be careful./ Flying is nice, but if you
hit your head on something --a wire, a bannister, anything--
that's it, the fun's over.
My dream from Saturday, 2008-05-03:
In an empty rental-hall/theater space a multicolored
ragged-ribboned heron flies around the orchestra-seating area,
pursued by a small friendly cheetah. The bird falls down
exhausted. The cheetah lies down to wait for the game to start
again. I go to the bird, pet it, scratch its neck feathers.
People are setting up for a show. I fly by jumping up in
diminished gravity. The ceiling at the back of the theater is
all pulled open, showing layers of planks on scaffolding up
inside; when I'm up near the ceiling I can see through into the
attic of the next building.
Now the show is on; it's /A Prairie Home Companion/. The
sound effects man, here a tall, thin, white-haired old man, does
a skit where he has to climb up a ladder and writes math symbols
on a free-standing blackboard. Electric motors pull the stage
top forward and down, like pulling a tablecloth off a table.
Microphone stands fall off first. I run to the stage to catch a
reading lamp.
After the show, motherly tough cowgirl-like women clean up,
put things away and sell souvenirs at a table by the door out. A
woman comes in another door obviously looking for her partner
just getting off work (the sound effects guy?) and I stare at
her, attracted despite her acne-scarred or burn-damaged cheeks.
Outside in a daytime but dimly lit fleamarket I fly around
the way I had been flying inside, by jumping twenty, forty,
sixty feet up and drifting down. A little girl near a shop tent
wants to fly up with me. We hold hands, go up once and come back
down. I say, "Let's find your mother." We walk, still holding
hands, past busy crafts booths in rows of metal sheds, like they
were the Roseville (CA) Farmer's Market and Auction when I was
thirteen.
A meeting of 1950s-style gangsters goes bad, they (we) all
run down the embankment to the parking lot, to the getaway car,
the only car in the lot. In the car we go over the edge of an
even steeper embankment down to a freeway. I levitate the car a
little and twist it upward and to the right so we don't crash
when we hit the road and join traffic. After awhile I realize,
and say aloud, "I'm still flying the car." The gangster next to
me in the back seat says, "/Sure/ you are." (He doesn't believe
me.) I say, "Why do you think the ride is so smooth?" He looks
at how cracked and potholed the road is. It's obvious. He won't
admit it.
In a post-society-collapse tent/shack town, a policewoman
accepts a bribe of incense to let us pass and enter the stream
of people shuffling down the main muddy alley between tents.
No-one will follow us in here; we're safe from the other bunch
of gangsters. The policewoman shouts to the next bunch of people
who want to get in: "Incense!" She's like the man in a
commercial I from like forty years ago; I don't remember what
they were selling with it, but the man would push a fruit cart
through a European town, singing in an Arab yodel,
"Strawwww-beh-reeez... Blooooo-beh-reeez... Cheh-hehyeh-reeez."
I know it wasn't an ad for fruit.
My dreams from Sunday, 2008-05-04:
First dream. It's night. I'm with my friend Mitch in a
stormy sky in the skeleton of a balloon's basket that's made of
dry planks. I'm trying to tye two strands of fishing string to a
plastic clip at the base of a yard-wide weather balloon. I tie a
knot and it slips loose. I try again. This is hard to do; I say
to Mitch, "Hold this." Elly shows up; Mitch leans back as she
moves in front of him on his bench, the way people get to middle
seats in a theater row.
Mitch stands up and says to either me or Elly, "I need you
to do something for me." I say, "/Just hold this./" Elly
comically says, "Jeez, yeah, Mitch, hold that."
Next dream. In the dream there's a radio station where the
road goes around the ocean headlands park on the west end of
Mendocino(CA). A boy walks in off the street just out of
curiosity; I give him his own show and he's immediately giving
people good advice over the air and there's a constant stream of
phone calls for him.
Outside in bad weather I sit on the ground looking up at a
twisted-but-strong antenna tower. The twist happens about forty
feet up, where two of the three vertical pipes have sheared.
That's okay, there are guy wires; it's not going anywhere.
I and an L.A.-Mexican-accented engineer walk around talking
about and evaluating this whole facility, which retroactively is
another recently acquired radio station in our growing
broadcasting empire (another one than the one where the boy was
an instant star). I point at a strange array of metal plates
that seem stuck vertically in the tower, above the twist. My
engineer explains that it's part of an automatic device that
scans for the strongest radio signal from elsewhere, then tunes
/our/ transmission line and antenna for that wavelength. I say,
"I guess that's close enough."
We open a refrigerator-size metal box and look at the
antique S-100-bus circuit cards inside. This isn't the
transmitter, it's something else. Computerized rodent control; I
dunno. Every radio station has aspects that make you wonder why
they did it the way they did and what exactly is this or that
for. They must have had a reason. We say together: "Power this
down and see what happens."
Is that a cloud over there or a cluster of blimps?
It's getting dark. Let's go in.
Next dream. A rural airstrip in Italy has metal slots that
go down off the side of the runway to underground rooms. A
World-War-Two-style battle is taking place, where the Americans
are using the slots like trenches to duck down into and shoot
from.
Now I'm in a slot with others. One of our guys stands up and
bends over with his butt to the enemy while he reloads his gun.
That seems stupid, but these guys are professionals; I guess he
knows what he's doing.
The fighting moves in steps forward up the strip, from slot
to slot; we're killing the enemies, but also our guys are
getting killed. I wind up at the very last slot with two others,
left behind. We distribute available weapons and ammunition
evenly among ourselves; I get a tiny .22 automatic pistol with
magician's-trick sliding panels on the sides and back of the
grip. I open one side and find a dented Mallory C battery
inside. I open the back and find three corroded old shells. In
the other side is another shell. So, total, four shots, and
what's the battery for?
I pull the clip out of the bottom, push in the shells and
find I have five. I'll only shoot if I need to, but what if I
need to and nothing comes out? I can't find any kind of a safety
switch, so I'm not gonna worry about it. /What was the battery
for, and where did I put it?/
I tell one man to go over there behind that fence and watch
so no-one sneaks up on us. I and the other man walk in the open,
up the airstrip. We come to an airport/animal-shelter building.
Men come in from around the other side. We almost shoot them,
but they turn out to be civilians; they live here.
There's disease. Also, here is a man who was very recently
blown apart but hasn't fallen down yet; I see him in several
stages at once: standing, lying pressed into the straw floor,
dried up like a mummy, sitting with others around a metal desk,
eating raw potatoes.
I go to where other civilians are hiding in mine buildings
along the base of a ridge. They have a whole grocery store with
full bins of fresh food inside one of the buildings that goes
under the ground. In the dream this seems reasonable to me, as
though after years of war there would still be fresh corn and
oranges and lettuce and everything left in a grocery store.
Next dream. A little fiberglass motorboat has the shape of a
short aircraft carrier, where the top part is square-cornered
and rectangular and the part in the water is pointed in the
front. Juanita and I are riding in this boat on a wide swamp
river. We pass by a raft of empty boats tied in a circle around
floating (or stuck) refrigerators and washing machines. I
realize I'm driving too fast --sixty miles an hour-- and slow
down to walking speed just in time. A cop/ranger boat comes the
other way.
A woman ranger stands on a wooden raft, waving a flag to
slow all boats.
I'm driving a 1940s-era car, towing on a trailer the boat we
were just in, in a line of similar cars pulling boats. I steer
around a metal light pole and watch in the rearview mirror as
the right front corner of our square boat clips the pole and
flips backward off its trailer, but when I get out to inspect
the damage nothing's wrong; the boat is still on the trailer,
not even dented.
We cross a metal bridge like the bridge between Navarro and
Richmond (CA), but stop before the other bank. A German man
shows us salvage he has collected, lawnmower parts, parts of
smashed boats. Here's a plastic panel, and here's a flexible
sheet of rubbery metal that /might/ be from our boat. /Did I hit
the pole or didn't I?/
This place on the bridge becomes the MacArthur stop on the
BART train. Juanita becomes a combination person of herself,
actress Gina O'Feral and my Aunt Honey, and is younger every
time I look. I ask her if she's hungry. The German has an ice
chest full of kielbasa sausages and cans of beer and soda pop,
with Lego blocks for ice. Juanita/Gina/Honey makes a cute funny
disapproving face.
My dreams from Monday, 2008-05-05:
First dream. A news/sports broadcast network nerve center is
set up in a narrow school classroom or office that has windows
along one long wall. While we wait for power to the building to
be restored I talk with a desk man in a headset about how this
situation is like in the movie /Serenity/, quoting the exchange
between the Operative and Mal, where the Operative says, "I
think you're beginning to understand how dangerous River Tam
is," and Mal says, "She is a mite unpredictable. Mood swings, of
a sort." Another, higher-up worker looks over, angry. I say to
the one I was talking with, "You're at work. I'm leaving." I
have to go to the equipment room anyway and get things ready.
I'm intercepted by two more workers in headsets, a
twenty-something boy and girl, obviously a couple. They grab my
arms, the man from behind, with his legs somehow trapping my
legs, so I'm pinned in place, standing up. The boy says, "Are
you disturbing this girl?" (Meaning his girlfriend.) I'm an
engineer here; I say, "I was about to go get these guys back on
the air--" The boy and girl don't let go. I say to the boy,
"--But I'll tell you what; if you don't let me go I'll break
your nose for you." I count aloud as if counting to three, but
on /two/ I jerk free and spin around-- except I don't get free;
I'm still a prisoner. I try again to get free. No effect. I
visualize getting free, picking the boy up by his ankles and
smashing and smashing his head against the wall. Right, that's
what I'll do... but I can't move except to demonstrate that I
can't move. This is so embarrassing.
Next dream. I'm driving on the street where I lived when I
was in sixth grade. It occurs to me that, as long as I'm here, I
should make some money by asking people a list of questions I
have. House letter Q is on my list. I stop at house Q. (I'm not
driving anymore, but pushing an equipment cart down a hallway
inside the front of all the houses. House Q is marked by a Q on
the /inside/ of its front door.)
Through the house, in back, people are sitting in a big
1960s-modern dining room, talking and laughing. I assemble a
caster dolly and set the legs of a heavy camera tripod in it,
then lift from beneath the cart my notepad and pen just as a big
tough woman with a cigaret in her mouth appears and says,
"Marco, I read the questions. They count. And it was so
upsetting that I decided not to participate."
I say, "Of course," meaning, /Of course we won't shoot the
interview in the back yard./ "But I was wondering if--" (I'm
about to ask the questions from the government list anyway, here
in the house. She must answer them; I'm being flexible about
it.)
I woke up with the song /Stand Up Guy/ by Mark Knopfler
playing in my head.
Asleep again. Next dream. It's a combination of time travel
and passage between alternate worlds. Ways open up at
predictable times and places. As an agent for the government of
the world that has the secret of this kind of travel my job is
to go disguised as different people to these other worlds.
In one job I help a confused, unhappy girl. In another, in a
room that at the proper time will branch into any of four
different rooms in different worlds, a scientist waits till the
last instant to go to the other place-- which is all deserted
dry hills with trails worn into the dirt. I'm the scientist. I
face off with the dock-gang-leader-style rat-man who has
impressed a pack of refugees, men and women, into being his
thugs. The rat-man and I are about to fight, and I stamp on the
bare toes of his left foot, twisting them completely off. He's
humiliated and crippled.
Later, in one room of the empty shopping center in a town I
remember from the way on Highway 20 between Grass Valley (CA)
and Highway 5, the man who freed the refugees from the rat-man
gives a speech to our little unprepared colony of people
deserted here in this depopulated world: "I didn't want to be
leader. We'll have meetings to decide on providing food and
water and all that. It'll be hard at first, but there'll be more
and more of us..." I'm the speaker now. I'm confident that,
regardless of hardships, we'll multiply like crazy. I know this
all happened a hundred-thousand years ago when the human race
was down to a population of a few hundred.
A man comes forward with two computer hard drives he saved
that are full of scientific information-- survival information
as well as mining and chemistry and industrial processes... Man,
we're set. We'll have a whiz-bang technological civilization
going in no time --or these people will, anyway. I'm not
sticking around to do any of the work; that's covered. I slip
away to go back to my world.
Next dream. I'm in a strange school, in an apartment room
with big binoculars and a tall chair-- or the chair becomes
binoculars when you hold it up, or it should. I've established
that the other teachers are forcing me out, politicking me out,
just in time for the giant opening party for the new school
year.
The new principal is a total establishment dick. He climbs
up onto a car floating in air in the wide space between Medieval
buildings and he uses a bullhorn to read announcements and tell
kids to get off the roofs and stop doing dangerous things, which
of course brings more kids onto the roofs. He spots me --I'm
suupposed to be out of here by now-- and he'll direct the school
cops to catch me; I use telekinesis to shove him off the car,
then I fly up to save some especially foolhardy kids from
falling of the edge of a steep roof.
The school/national military cops are after me. I flee,
/rocket/ away, pursued by Japanese soldiers riding
cowboy-clown-painted missiles that quickly fall behind and give
up.
In the desert town two or three wide Nevada valleys over
from the school, radio-show hero crimefighters careen around in
a 1930s car; the older one drives and the younger one stands on
the roof with his feet in boots that are strapped down. They
have car trouble and put the car away in an old wooden garage.
Two 1950s women reporters follow my explanation and gestures as
I work on the car. I get the carburetor off and apart and blow
dust and feathers out of it. /There's your trouble./ I put
everything back together.
Mitch and another reporter come down from the house, get
into the car, start it, back it out, put it away again. Mitch is
dismissive about there ever having been anything wrong with it.
Now Mitch is the crimefighting driver and one of the women is
the young sidekick who rides on the roof of the car. We all have
to go out again to /record the other channel/, meaning to do the
entire radio show audio recording all over again because the
recording device (the car) failed, corrupting the file. The
others' attitude seems to be that this is somehow my fault, for,
I guess, having asserted the reality of the failure and so made
it retroactively true. I say, "We have to do it anyway, so let's
go."
The road has palm trees now; it didn't before.
Next dream. It's late at night. I'm walking south on Main in
Fort Bragg (CA) with my arms full of wrapped Christmas presents
for Juanita. I come to a jewelry store where the Fiddles And
Cameras store is in real life, and I'm attracted to a display
case inside. /The main door is unlocked./ I go in and examine a
tiny piano that makes music box sounds when it's lifted.
/Juanita would like this. I'll come back in the daytime and buy
it./
The presents I had vanish from my attention. I go back
outside. 1930s gangsters are walking north all packed together
in a bunch; they call back to their boss, following them, to
alert him that I'm here, that he should catch me. He doesn't
understand. I hurry past; I need to get the key (from where?) to
lock the door for the store owners.
Around the corner, on Laurel Street, six heavy war arbalests
with eight-foot-long iron arrow-bolts swivel slowly, rustily to
try to point at me. I fly up across the street, over the
Tregoning Building, which becomes a block-size rooftop for all
the buildings here. I land and suddenly again have all the
presents for Juanita. A high-school-age girl somehow looks at
the presents without unwrapping them, judges them favorably. I
say, "I'll tell her I have it on good authority they're a
beautiful idea," and I promptly get stuck in narrow stairway,
clumsily trying to fly up again and go down into the building at
the same time.
Here I see a movie made of outtakes from /WaterWorld/ --it's
like the /Burden Of Dreams/ version. Kevin Costner, to avoid
having to fly back over the iron-arrow artillery (on Laurel
Street), has gone the other way around the world and sail-rafts
up onto a busy beach with a guide who's helped him the whole way
but is disposable. Kevin Costner, completely human-looking but
also a water creature, waddles like a penguin --or rather like a
penguin-man with locomotor ataxia-- up the beach through a crowd
in bathing suits.
I'm upstairs in a two-floor thrift store where Tangents
should be. Cordelia, who in real life runs Fiddles And Cameras,
in the dream runs this thrift store; she's at the counter along
the black-painted north glass wall, talking with two
Renaissance-Faire-dressed women customers. I have to cover for
having just come in from the roof; I'm on a for-sale (not
connected) payphone pretending to be talking with someone who
wants something he or she saw here and sent me after: "Yeah...
yeah... I'm looking right at it." (A Royal typewriter.)
I go downstairs and down an aisle to the back. A song plays
from a guitar-shaped radio. Another customer and I puzzle over
what the name of the group is. I suggest /Amy Goodyear and the,
uh, Somethings-- the Radiators?/ but wish I had thought to say
/Amy Goodyear and the Tires/. (Later, awake, writing this down,
I recognize the song to be a sort of generic Aimee Mann tune but
sped up and sung by a 1980s bubblegum girl-group.)
I peek out the side-back door. The rusty arbalests are gone;
the coast is clear to leave. Everything's different. It's light
now, the middle of the afternoon. It's been days. Surely someone
has locked the door by now. I don't have to go back there.
-end-
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