I had a pleasant dream about Bill Luoma last night. Bill was going through my pile of books to get rid of, asking about the poems I planned to read last night. He had really good recall of poems of mine that were similar to but (in my mind) not as good as the poems I had intended to read. In my dream, I gave him the logic book that I have not yet given him in real life (Naive Causal Modeling, volume 1), and I talked to him about the advantages of backwards causation (part of the book argues the possibility of backwards causation, i.e. the idea that things I do today might have caused past events). I argued that backwards causation might enable Bill to change elements of his past life if he wanted to, by triggering backwards causation with his actions today, but Bill thought any past events he might be causing today had already happened and thus were unchangeable. But I said that meant that the effects would be determining the cause which is impossible. . .

In my dream Bill was using a baseball bat like a walking stick and spent a lot of time pausing to think. When he did speak I often felt surprised by what he said, and I had to think about how to respond to it. I guess this is my impression of Bill: soft-spoken, casual (not causal!) in affect, but deep, as if when you say something to Bill it takes a long time to float down through his attention, but when it's fully registered he comes back with an incisive but very light response. I'm always interested in conversation dreams which show me my internal models of other people, which are mostly about a mixture of gesture, timing, and tone. It's interesting to think of having these simple models of other people's way of presenting in one's own head--I wonder to what extent these models get triggered when doing, for example, email?

Very complex dream last night, in which many past events of my life had happened differently/been substituted for. In general, the main difference was that I hadn’t moved to LA in Summer of 2003 (when I married Tova). Instead, as I realized while chatting with my old friend Phil Poulter, I taught at MCC in Texas (which had been vastly expanded, to the size of a university) where I was exploited during the Spring 2003 semester by being given only one class [this is a reference to how I was treated in NYC that semester at John Jay College of Criminal Justice—I was cut down to one class which damaged my economic prospects in the city] and further exploited (in the dreamlife, at dreamMCC) by being forced to edit the student newspaper for free, in return for a chance to teach more classes in the future. I kept running into my students from the 03 dream-semester, smart, affluent, mostly Asian (dreamMCC had demographics more like UCI than central Texas, and I think the students from the “dreamclass” referred to the students in my Art of Poetry class at UCI in Spring 2001—probably the single class I have most enjoyed teaching, to naturally thrilling results (I won an award!)—the sort of class that I feel like my friends with PhDs and “real” teaching jobs have the chance to teach all the time.

In the dream I had had to more or less write the student newspaper myself, with help from a handful of kids in my “dreamclass” (which was just a comp. class) and it had been short, naturally. I had been dragooned into doing it because the person whose job it was had been on leave, maybe pregnancy leave (a reference to how I filled in for a teacher on pregnancy leave in Fall 2003 at Cypress College, where I was also poorly treated [classes cancelled in summer 2004]—interesting how the referential dates revolve around Summer 2003). In the “dreampresent” the student paper was huge and done by students. It occurs to me that dream MCC represented all the community colleges (since MCC was the first one), and Phil represented all the colleague-friends from the community colleges (since he was the first and best one).

Then found myself at the Martin house conversing with Phil P and James Sherry. Alcoholic subtext, but not directly mentioned—just that kind of conversation. Someone was puking in the garden. Then found myself in New York City (Williamsburg) for John Ashbery’s wedding [?]. Everyone involved very shy of publicity. Many old southern gentlemen talking about John, comically mock-pompous orations. Teenagers recording everything with camcorders, the tapes from which were meant to be confiscated at the end of the ceremony, but some of the parents of the teenagers [poor relations!] plot to sneak out with tapes to tell to the tabloids. So, a confidential wedding and it’s unclear who the other groom and/or bride was, so also a one-man wedding. There is a lovely circle-dance of teenagers pointing camcorders as they spin. It ends with confusion, as there’s a general effort to confiscate tapes, poor relations screaming and crying as the tapes [negotiable memories] are pulled away from them. I am the poor relations of course, as much as [no, more than!] I am Ashbery. I would like to be Ashbery, which is different.

After the wedding, I start driving home but have drunk too much and lose control of my car in a small tree-lined neighborhood just north of Williamsburg [very funny—suburb with lawns where Bed-Stuy should be]. I crash the car in a yard. I get out, and find my head is bleeding. I know if the police catch me I’ll get a DUI so I decide to walk home. I have to walk with no shirt on because I’m using my shirt to collect blood from my head. I go into the backyard of a suburban house and find an outdoor pantry from which I take a bottle of water. I worry that I’ll get punished no matter what I do next, because the crashed car is evidence against me, but on the other hand if I’m sober when they see me who’s to say I was drunk when I crashed. (The answer is, the wedding guests will narc on me.) So I walk and find a small southern-style convenience station, the sort you’d find where one one-lane highway intersects another, with a Bubba type dude inside. He doesn’t care I’ve got no shirt on and a bleeding head. I ask for directions to the train but he doesn’t know shit. Then I walk out and some tourists point me to the train. It’s the train to Manhattan (where apparently I live). I find a backpack on my back, put on a shirt for the train, find my head has stopped bleeding and my vision has cleared, and off I go. It’s actually the 1/9 train (misplaced, and of course the 9 train is discontinued now).

Dream seems to reference my comments on “backward causation” on my blog yesterday, the idea of changing one’s life through a natural, unnoticed process of backwards causation where actions today cause events in the past to unfold differently until there you are in a different present—my dream runs with this [nerdy] idea of an unstable continuum.

I had a dream that Obama had sex with Elaine Benes from Seinfeld, and afterward they were lounging post-coitally in the front seats of, was it a Subaru? And the sun was shining on their faces, intense sun, and Obama said, "I haven't got this much sun since I went fishing."

And I was standing outside the car, in front of it, and I thought, "Only a few weeks and he's cheating on us already?"

I had this funny dream that Joshua Clover had produced and released the 5th Big Star album. It was a beautifully designed consumer product, in a shiny paper case that folded out several times, with lots of beautiful bright stars, suns and moons inside it. I was very excited to listen to the album, but woke before I could do so.

AWP Dreams

Last night I dreamed I saw Laura Elrick and Rodrigo Toscano, except it was Reverse Day, so Laura introduced herself as Rodrigo and told me that I should have called Rodrigo "Laura." Rodrigo however had introduced himself as "Paulo" or possibly "Paula," so he was clearly playing Reverse Day in a different way.

When I met them, I was rushing, I was late! It was the campus of a great university, full of affluent young people and tall solemn trees, at which I was a peon! (Sort of like my life, except USF has more parking lots, less heritage, less trees.) In the halls, I saw Rodrigo; in the dream he had my job and I was amazed at how clearly he was intructing the students about the process with which to develop their work (what an insipidly Freudian detail! Of course, in reality Rodrigo doesn't teach school, and certainly not Freshman Composition, although his poetry, in its political aspect, no doubt has a pedagogical dimension.) I was very impressed; he seemed to me to be a Great Communicator. He rushed off, and then rushed back, and told me to speak to Laura. I said his name, and that was when he corrected me to say he was "Paulo" or "Paula."

Laura ("Rodrigo") told me I had not gone to the large group reading at which I had been scheduled, and that I should rush there quickly. It was at the Administration Building. I tried going. I rushed around through various areas at the college. I could not find it. Finally I was at an outdoor market, where various poor people, mostly of Caribbean origin seemingly, were selling what they had in the middle of one of the college's solemn and green guadrangles. I picked up a large green cookie; it was crumbly in my hand, and I ate half of it in a few bingeing bites. It was chocolate broccoli. I didn't know how to go back and teach my class, nor did I know how to go forward and read my poems. I also picked up a bruised nectarine and enjoyed the way the skin of it slumped inwards at the light touch of my fingers, making my hand slightly wet. I waited in line to pay.

***

Earlier in the night, and this one is a little sketchier, I dreamed about Jessica Smith. First, I was in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and there was a machine installed, with a computer monitor and keyboard and flowers all around the monitor and Jessica's face on the screen. Then, later, I was in a similar garden in Manhattan and again, a second machine, monitor and keyboard crowned with flowers and Jessica's face, and I typed, and the machine responded. These were Jessica's garden poetry outlets. I was lost in the second garden, so what I typed were attempts to get directions. I received puzzling poetry in response, so I tried to use that as directions and became more lost. Finally, I followed a dog out of the garden--it was a black, skinny dog.

There was more, but I can't remember.