In my dream we had decided to purchase a house in a rough neighborhood, although it made no sense. We took a down payment and went to find the owner. She gladly took the money and had all her family move out immediately. My daughter and I started walking from the front entrance to the back rooms of the house. There seemed to be a long hall with rooms off of it, and was mostly a place to sleep with lots of beds. When we got to the last two rooms on the first floor, we found two families still in bed. Evidently the woman who sold us the house had been renting out these two rooms and had not warned the tenants that the house was going to be sold. We told them that we would work with them until they found someplace else to rent. They seemed relieved but still upset that they would have to find other quarters. Then we climbed to the second floor and found a very large gymnasium that was being used by a school that was situated across the street. All the boys had on white uniforms. The gym was much longer than a basketball court. The coaches were surprised to hear about the sale. We walked towards the front and found that the wooden floor would move as if the whole structure was a large boat in dry-dock, without any supports. My daughter and I moved the ship from side to side, made it rock. Then we finally found a room at the front of the house that had a fireplace that was roaring. The room had leather chairs for lounging. There was one more family renting a room upstairs who had to be advised that they would have to find another home. Like the others, the whole family had cell phones and started using them to communicate their dilemma to friends and family.

I dreamed I sat on the front doorstep of my house and listened to her talk.  She spoke from some distance on the other side of the garden near the fishpond.  She spoke clearly but the roar of the passing traffic drowned out many of her words.  I could hear enough to know that she spoke of serious matters from the past.  She filled in the missing pieces.

I moved to be closer and soon we sat together in the front seat of my stationary car.  I was in the driver’s seat but she controlled the conversation.

‘I lost my baby,’ she said.  Tears welled in the corners of her eyes and I knew then that she had not been entirely childless, as I had once thought.  She now worked in the children’s hospital, and began to tell me about a mother she had met there. 

‘She was psychotic.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘The way she held a photograph in front of me, then tore it into little pieces.’

‘I suppose it is the manner in which she did this that would let you know for sure,’ I said.

 My car began to move into a slow roll.  I pressed my foot hard against the brake but to no avail.  We moved in slow motion and I worried that my car might run into my husband’s car now parked directly behind me.  I turned the key, and my car and accelerated forward, but I knew I could not hold it still once I turned off the engine.

‘Can you use a rock against the back wheel?’ I asked and watched as she selected one of the biggest rocks from the garden bed and shoved it in place.  At last we held firm.

There was one man.

There was a house surrounded by water, bayou, swamp.  The house was on the smallest dry land.

There were many other women.

We had all come to the house.

There was a sense of frantic competition.

The man came home driving down the road and into the drive in a small, shiny, red and white, roundish, toy-like dump truck.

I got in it and drove it.  I could drive it but I drove it a little cuckoo.

This made him laugh.  This made  him like me.  I didn’t mean to do that but I wanted him to like me.

We laughed in the garage.

He laid down on the floor and I held him.  When I thought it was enough, that I had been bold enough and started to get up, he pulled me back and asked me to hold him tighter.  We spooned, we turned and faced each other, we smiled.

I wanted his love.  I wanted him to love me like he was food and water and I loved it that he chose me to love.

When we went inside, all the other women wanted his attention.

We went upstairs; we went downstairs.

There was one other woman fiercer than all the rest and she began to draw him away from me.

Longingly, I decided to sail the tiny red and white sail boat to the tiny island just across the way.

I hoped that he would see me from the window upstairs and come with me on the little boat so that we could be on the island together alone in love.

on my last night at Coral Sands in Hollywood I dreamt I was a guest at a tribute to Jean-Claude van Itallie. my entrance was announced by a spotlight. my smile was that of a star. after arriving I began an intense conversation with Linda Hunt. I awoke in mid-sentence. it was 6:30 & hummingbirds were busy in the courtyard.

I fell back to sleep after a delay early in the morning and dreamed that I was travelling with my baby girl to spend some time in a cottage shack owned by friends while my husband went elsewhere to prepare for a separate holiday that he planned to take with other friends.

For some of the journey we followed one another in our cars, though I was driving his car and fearful lest I damage it. We curved through narrow lane ways and at one point he indicated I should stop and wait for him. I misunderstood and drove further ahead.

When I realised that he had gone I drove back and forth trying to find him. I stopped in a park reserve and sat in the back seat of the car to help the baby with some food. My baby was smart. She could talk. I told her where we were going then saw my husband in the distance his arms loaded with groceries. I went to get into the front car seat and found a stage man in uniform sitting there with the door wide open. He was taking down details from the car's dashboard.

'What are you doing here?' I asked. He said nothing and went on as if to ignore me.

'Get out' I said and he obeyed. I watched him cross the reserve and worried that he might be a potential thief. I drove to the other side of the reserve and crossed a tiny bridge. I was looking for a way out and stopped to ask for directions. A woman in a uniform, the same as that of the man in my car, told me where I might go.

'What was that man doing in my car?' I asked

Elisabeth," she said. I was shocked that she knew my name.

'Now we know all your business. We collect the data for identification purposes, for our market research.'

For the first time in my life the meaning of the word 'market' in this context leapt into my brain. Market research, research into how the market is going. I knew but did not know.

My baby daughter and I eventually found our way to the cottage/shack of our friends. It was rustic in the extreme. Bare dirt floors, cupboards hewn out of tree trunks, every thing rudimentary. I put the baby into a high chair and scavenged around to find food. There was plenty of it, but most of it stale.

Visitors began to arrive, locals from the township nearby and I felt embarrassed.

'Sorry. I'm still in my dressing gown.'

No one minded. These folks seemed like simpletons, though one of them collected scripts from small children and asked my daughter despite her baby status to write a letter to him.

When he came back later in the dream, I was impressed that my daughter had written him a letter, one that I had not seen. I felt proud of her. Then another of these visitors, the friend of the friends with whom my husband was travelling came over and openly wept at his fear of the election results. 

What if his preferred candidate did not get up? The other team would destroy his farm and his neighborhood.

My brother sppeared from nowhere.

'You cry too easily," he said. 'And you show your feelings too much.'

Last night I dreamed that my daughter had three sons and I was babysitting them in anticipation of her trip overseas. My daughter prepared for her trip while I took the boys out for a walk.

It was hot in my dream---summer time. The boys were naked or dressed only in t-shirts. At one point we walked past a group of men gathered together outside a toilet block and my grandson, the middle one, held onto his penis with a flannel and called out to the men that he wanted to give his penis away.

'You can have it,' he said, as thought it were a detachable thing he could simply peel off. The men looked bemused but I ushered my grandson away before they had a chance to respond.

Somehow in the dream I spent time trying to tell my grandson that his penis was a good and necessary part of him and that he should not and could not give it away.

I was living with a man who was a serial killer but he had the most amazing dishwasher a silver robotic appliance that not only cleaned greasy pots and pans but cleared plates off the table and so I stayed. At some point I was rescued by another man who gave me a goat child named Baby.

An author friend sent me the bound printer's proof of her forthcoming book for me to read in advance. On the back cover, she'd pasted cutouts of several blurbs that had already been written about the book and published in various journals and blogs. It was a palimpsest of blurbs-- I could read only parts of the ones from before that were now covered by fresh blurbs. I started reading the manuscript: it was fantastic. The typesetting was dark and clear at first, then got more blurry and faded towards the end. Although the bound copy felt slender and light in my hand, I noticed that the book was a total of 647 pages long. I was impressed by the new paper technology that made this physical slightness possible, and intimidated by my friend's capacity for profilic output, a quality I completely lack in myself.

 

Then I was walking down the hallway of a place that looked just like the building of my old public high school. I was walking with Julia, another writer friend, and it was understood that we were headed towards the principal's office, where we would be interviewed in turn by the publisher of the forthcoming book about our critical impressions so far. I was nervous about this meeting, but Julia looked calm and collected, just like she always does; she had her copy of the printer's proof along with a stack of intelligent, insightful notes from her reading. I wondered if I should have gone to grad school, so that I could be professional and confident like her.

 

The publisher sat behind a heavy oak desk. She had a reputation for writing wild, ludic, ribald novels, but here she looked stern and severe, just like a high school principal. After interviewing Julia, she called me into her office and asked for my oral book report. I started to offer my impressions, then realized that I'd only gotten halfway through reading the manuscript before running out of time. I stumbled badly over my words. "And just how far did you get exactly?" the publisher demanded to know, peering at me over her disapproving spectacles.