In a pub with a group of friends. A romantic proximity with Kevin (Thurston). Standing against a wall in the pub, faces close, laughing. Someone reveals they need to blind me--someone other than Kevin, I think. At first the man tries to explain why in the pub. I imagine accessing all my other senses, what it would be like to be blind, the possible claustrophobia or panic. Then there is strangely some appeal. I am not as afraid as you would think. Outside, a van full of women, one of whom is Lisa Gross, a college friend I haven't seen for 30 years. I am obviously preoccupied and am in a hurry to leave. This reoffends the college friend, and she disappears into the pub, as I apologetically look at the remaining group of women. I begin to fly, albeit awkwardly at first, to get away from the man that wishes to blind me. Then I am flying full force, 20 feet above the ground. I stop in front of a building, perhaps where Lee (Gough) lives as I am trying to get to her. He has caught up with me, explains why I must be blinded. It makes sense, and I wake.

Frankie, I had another tornado dream. It's been so long. I was with a large group of people in the ocean. We were swimming out at sea, it seemed. The sky threatened storms. At a distance I watched oblong diamonds, black fleckx, among the darkening grey. The black pieces of sky began to fall from the grey like precious stones tumbling to a lower place on the horizon. Melissa Capozzi and I spotted a tornado forming in another direction. We watched it grow bigger and bigger, until then it began to move toward us. Melissa and I looked at each other. There was no land close enough to reach, so we dove under water and separated to find our own safety. I looked up from several feet below and watched the tornado pass (blissfully), as I held my breath. When I surfaced, Melissa and I said something to each other. Then I swam to some edge, where my dead grandfather, the electrician, treaded water or held on to a side or float. He was part of the group and had gone under too. I looked at his wet face, and he spoke to me. I don't remember what he said.

(dreamt my last night in China 2011)

First, I go to an event, and I am on time. The Washington poet Lana Hechtman Ayers is there. Then somehow I am late. I have to crawl up through a very high window to get in the class. I have trouble, and people help me. I throw right leg over a ledge. Someone pushes me on left side, from below. Another I tell to pull my arm up from the window above, to a rung like a ladder. I finally get in the window, but the class has started already. That's where Lana is. She and several others are dancing and singing. It looks interesting. But the teacher is unkind about me being late. This bothers me, so I leave. But the class interests me too much, so I come back. But by the time I come back there are so many people. There are people from high school (Chris Limbo). There are people that worked with me in college at La Taqueria (Danny Glover). This is like the new exercise, dance-theatrical sensation. There are things each person acts out. Each person seems to be acting out their own imagined play. But somehow this happens fluidly among all others. It seems to me like a Greek chorus. People are packed tightly lin a large room, a room like a studio in which dancers practice. People practice in lines. I wake up and write down the phrase "dream of the dancing, living game."

christopher rizzo's name was gary fox, and he was wearing a suit where we wondered off to talk in his car then returned. later at a cafe' in kingston ny. i looked through beads on a table. lee ann brown was on the phone in the chair next to me, planning a boat trip with ( i realized) anne gorrick. lee ann didn't know who i was. she laughed about the fact that they were going to do a gas called B___ene (Benedrene?) on the boat. lee ann left after hanging up. k came back in, and we laughed about it. on the way out, i pocketed a bead.

Last night I dreamed I met a Vietnamese man. He was holding a child. I had met him before, so we were trying to figure out how and where we met. We began looking at books together. On the shelf, there was P. Lawler's newest book, or books. I wish I could remember the titles. One was a brightly colored book with two halves to it—one half was "essays," the other poetry. Each of those books was divided into sections. The titles for essays and poetry faced each other on the cover, so the poetry title was upside down. I think it had the word dragons in it. The "essays" weren't traditional essays. They were elaborate drawings, some the color of illuminated manuscripts. They were maps with titles of bodies of water and land that created threads of narrative in simultaneity. Some of the lakes had Tolkein-ish names, but overall the multiplicity of the project was breathtaking. And the maps contained a lot of blue. Some of the poetry was diagrammatic but most was spatially seeded across the page, simply in text.