I was in Tivoli for some reason. I went into Tony R’s house. The downstairs was completely empty. I kept saying “hello? hello” but no answer. I went upstairs & four or five guys were there, including his youngest son. I asked him “how come there is no furniture downstairs?” he told me that the only ones who ever stay there anymore were he & his brother & that that was infrequent, since they spent most of their time traveling. He told me Tony kept coming down with liver infections but refused to quit drinking. He was seriously ill. He was in a hospital in Cherry Hill where his sister L was living. She was taking care of him.

I rode a gunmetal-blue grown-up sized tricycle from Boulder to Denver and back again. Somehow, the road was Flatbush Avenue the whole way. I made great time, better than all the traffic around me. When I got back to Boulder, A's mother was at my house and I was afraid to see her. I spied on her from the porch outside. She was welcoming an old friend of mine, but kept mistakenly/deliberately calling her Agatha. After a while I went inside and told everyone how great it felt to ride the tricycle. I tried to explain how much faster it was than a regular bike, but nobody believed it. I kept thinking: if only they knew...

I have the suitcase that doubles as a small machine for washing clothes, also the latest handheld device but already it has become dented and scratched. The device draws unwanted attention whenever I try to use it (unable to locate mute button.) The main dealer of this device and his family want to befriend me. I’m embarrassed, why do I have something so valuable which I don’t even know how to use? After leaving the airport, I walk on sidewalks between houses looking for the street where he is supposed to pick me up. This is also known as walking down an alley. When I reach the alley’s end, a long decision-making process, how to move past the debris between houses without encountering a spider. I can’t reach the street without dislodging something dirty or dangerous. I go around and around in very small circles. The street is only a few feet away but I can’t reach it. I look up finally and see the sign–not even the right street! Will we ever find each other. My suitcase keeps washing the clothes I’ve already washed. All my clothes are always wet, or half-wet.

It was one of those omnipotent dreams where you see/experience everything at once.

Death sent me $780 via PayPal.

So there was Seventh-Seal-looking-Death sitting at the computer, clicking the PayPal button.

And there I was, sitting at the computer, pleased that Death PayPal'd me $780.

Last night I dreamed we were in my son's car facing the ocean and a slender tall building sprang up far out a few feet above the water bright red electric red burnt retina red revenant red against a blue sky brick by brick the building built itself and then flicked away and a voice spoke in our heads YOU WILL FORGET EVERYTHING YOU SEE TONIGHT and a man dressed like a camp councilor a friend a leader came by with a clipboard (enemy!) to talk to us very friendly told us to stay where we were no thank you we were going to walk we got out of the car as he was locking everybody inside their cars and we ran ran up the hill toward our house and the voice in our heads spoke YOU WILL FORGET EVERYTHING YOU SEE TONIGHT and I had a pen and was writing on my knee writing it all down on my knee then my thigh then my upper and inner thigh I was writing it and the voice inside our head said YOU WILL FORGET EVERYTHING and YOU WILL HEAR ME AGAIN IN TWO WEEKS we finally made it home the empty street and I wrote it down again in my notebook so I wouldn't forget. I woke up hot my legs twitching like I'd run a marathon.

Another theatrical performance of some kind, organized & directed by HRS. It will take place on his property, which I’ve dreamed of before, though it looks nothing like his real house. A very large room with lots of grey metal folding chairs. People are starting to show up & sit down, milling around. I suddenly realize I am supposed to be in the performance, but I haven’t memorized any lines, will need to read from a script which I guess is okay because several people will be doing the same thing, but I can’t find the right script. I panic completely, and feel I have to get out of there, but my son Jake wants to stay for the show. So I try to figure out the logistics; it’s all confusing and unclear. I try to teach him how to use speed dial on my cell phone but feel very uneasy about leaving him in this place alone.

#1

I am with my deceased father in some kind of lofty like space - we're are doing that fun, gymnastic astral stuff - leaping up to the ceiling and flying around. Then, we settle down in this kind of hotel lobby, like the Algonquin? and he is showing me a velvet-covered phtograph album, very Victorian. Inside the album in a Harry Potteresque mode are sepia toned old photographs of my great- grandmother and other women. The photographs are moving like miniature movies-they are also in a hotel lobby environment having tea. My father seems to be suggesting that the answer to a secret - or something very important-is located within the motions of these people. I am striving to have them hold still, to understand what is going on.



the next day arrives in the mail a phtograph taken at a family reunion three months earlier-- which I had completely forgotten about.



#2

I'm in Coney Island under the train tracks picnicking with "mental patients" as the clients referred to themselves. We are only eating roasted red peppers. I break away from them and walk under the tracks in the shadows. There are stores and stalls here, it feels like a foreign city's bazaar sector. A man steps suddenly out of the doorway of "A xerox store" and gestures me inside. A radio is playing tango music and we start to dance, as bendable as rubber bands completely attunded. I hand him a palm-sized book on butterflies which contain poems and say: "all of these are for you."

I am trying to find my way through a rundown section of a strange, small city. I am meeting someone, and finally find the right building (early morning Hopper-like light, dusty and bright), a ramshackle storefront. As I peer through the window, I come face to face with a coyote crouched in the space slightly underneath the sidewalk. She is sleek and black and both of us finally relax as we stare at each other; her cool nose against my palm. Very busy agenda in this new place, quick car rides through the streets, up steep, rickety, wooden staircase to some apartment, split-level. It's one of those dream houses, part hotel, part old farmhouse, mish-mash of estate-sale furniture and lots of other guests. I get assigned a room, and encounter another coyote, long-legged, almost white with blotches of caramel and chesnut coloring. She is deeply joyful to meet me, and, like the other encounter, we stare and stare, her size fluctuating with the intensity of our mutual study. At one point, her nose seems to grow long and flexible, like an elephant's trunk, as she leans in to sniff my face and neck. Again, I am late for some appointment, and as I rush through the streets of this odd city (broken concrete, lots of short, steep blocks and hills), I scoop the coyote into my arms and then I am going so fast that it's as if I am wearing her mottled pelt like a wrap. We arrive at some hall, full of women who I know from all different eras of my life. We're making preparations for some party or dinner, hauling boxes of linens and table decorations. Many women are nervous about my large coyote companion, but she is so sweet and eager to please, that it's easy to treat her like a pet dog. Then, as in a film, there's a jump cut, and I am back in that hall after having been away for 10 weeks (in Asia?). Everyone expresses regrets that I have just missed Wendy M.'s graduation party (another all-female event). I've also missed a wedding and a lecture-dinner and I feel terrible about having missed these events. Wendy hands me a paper plate with a last slice of cake, and I ask about her plans next. She starts explaining her ambitions, but I can't pay attention because my coyote has leapt across the room and is pressing against my legs so avidly that it feels like our bodies are merging.

showery weather - I'm in car parked in street, London, needing to go back in the house just when a heavy shower of rain comes down - I'm in public library with book, leather-bound folio, some gilding, spine damaged, faded reed-pen drawings on end-papers by a Swedish artist who had visited here, Auckland, late 19th century - text: sentimental love-story & another text with same words in reverse order - at adjacent desk there's a woman who glances at the book as I read it - I move it because it has overlapped a corner of the book she is reading - as I turn the pages of the book I tell her it is by an artist who taught at the art-school here - I find 32 pages of drawings, chalk, pencil wash with some water-colour, bound into the front of the book - illustrations to the texts - I flip the pages, counting - several people have gathered round to look at these long- hidden drawings - I leave the library & I'm in the city as it was 30 years ago - it's raining -I have to shelter until it stops, to keep the book dry

Then to bed where I had strange dreams, most likely the result of the 'flu jab. This time I'd taken to rod and line fishing from the back door in the river that flowed right outside. I caught several large fish and then, unaccountably, a monstrous carp which grew legs and scuttled into the dark space behind the range. Dolly the Mega-cat came to my rescue and dragged the pesky thing out even though it was considerably larger than she. I woke before learning if we'd eaten the beast. It would have made good eating.

I'm on the top deck of a bus with a male friend. We're first year students (though I'm over 70) going to university. He tells me A is sitting behind us, a woman I've loved for forty years. I'm pleased: I can give her the book, White on Pictorial Space, I've brought with me as a present for her. I direct a ballet for her and my male friend. They are in their street clothes. I join them on stage making many decisive vertical and horizontal arm-movements. I explain to them my character is a wicked magician. They are unimpressed. [* John White. The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space. 1st ed. Faber & Faber. London, 1958.]

Later and somewhere else, a woman sings a new song she's written. Everyone loves the melody, but the words are not memorable. A man sings it in a cafe. 'They' threaten to shoot him in the fore-arm. The next day they do, with a bolt from a cross-bow that pins his arm to his chest. He bleeds out and dies.

I receive intermittent video text messages on the subject of validation, desire and separation. These take the form of short skits.

*

Conference participants are installed like Hollywood Squares in the wall. I can’t see or hear from my position at the base of the wall, looking up. If I had a seat in the stands I could.

*

We walk through a yard of smokestacks until we reach the cave where all the art materials are stored. We’re prying art materials up from the ground and he panics, “we’ve been in here too long.” The art materials are radioactive.

He likes me.

*

I’m in a pink tiled bathroom with a low ceiling and someone calls out an earthquake is coming, and oh also by the way, the last two women who were in this specific bathroom during an earthquake had to be removed with some kind of machinery, I’d better hurry up in there –

*

I enter and re-enter the classroom crawling on my stomach.


*

Everything is reported in the report of an unreportable dream. (a la, “when your arms are too weary”, I mean, this blog post sung to the tune of “Impossible Dream” from the Man of La Mancha.)


*

“Everyone should try to make a chart of his weariness: at what moment, under what circumstances, am I ‘a tire that deflates,’ with on top of it the feeling that, if this is the case, I will deflate indefinitely?” (Barthes, The Neutral)