Prologue and Dream
My sister and I are in the middle of an unbelievable fiasco/nightmare
– our recently deceased mother’s car was towed – the car that we’ve
been using to go back & forth from the city to where my mother lived,
to empty out the apt. (and her cremated remains are in a box in the
trunk). We were trying to leave the city for her place last nite, so
my sister went to the parking space: no car, so she called the city
towing place, closed til this a.m., & why was the car towed? The space
was good til today. But, outstanding unpaid tickets from the
summertime, when my mother was going into and coming out of the
hospital, that my sister (J) was fighting (w/no response from the
city). So J goes down to the marshall's office this morning, they ask
to see her license -- it's missing from where it always is in her
wallet, so she calls me at her apt. and I search around a little, but
my sister is a hoarder. This is a small 1 bdrm apt. with clothing,
papers, bags of papers, legal papers, stacks of this 'n' that -- I
have no idea where my underwear or socks are 'cuz there's no place to
put my stuff, it gets moved or covered by the day's debris, etc. etc.
so I wash each out every nite to put it on the next day. But back to
the license.
I don't find it -- I dump out her bag, but I don't see it. Then I go
back to "bed" (the floor) & fall into an amazing major motion picture
of a dream, about the lost license, I can see the photo of my sister
with short hair and dark lipstick, about my feelings towards my mother
& her death, about items & objects & all sorts of people and then
there's even a spider that's off-white & kind of reptilian that digs
its claws(!) into my hand & I run out to an alley screaming with pain
so some guy picks it off my hand w/great effort and there are sort of
venomous stalagmites (tites?) -- 5 of them, rising painfully from the
palm of my hand and J's in the dream & I'm rifling through her bag,
emptying it, looking for her license so we can take the car already &
get out of this place  ... & that's the half of it. There are rows of
people sitting on benches or clustered in small groups talking or
watching whatever personal dramas are suddenly played out. Two friends
from London are sitting in a corner and they suddenly see me after
nearly a year since they moved and they're so surprised that I’m
there. Where is “there”? It’s a waiting room. There are big plate
glass windows that barely separate inside from outside. The images
slide away. There’s more, but as I write, I forget.