An African man with skin the colour of jet busked on a street corner in the village square.  I stopped to watch with several other people.  His act looked uninteresting until he managed in one breath to draw in as much water as necessary to blow out a waterfall of colours that came out in a burst not only of colour but of pattern.  The performance went on for at least a minute and was so extraordinary that people applauded for equally long.  Then the busker sent his hat around to collect signs of our appreciation.

‘Don’t give him anything,’ my companion said.  ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘I’ll only give him my small change.’

I fished around in my wallet and pulled out some coins, which I threw into the hat.  It was not much money but the sound of the coins crashing onto other coins made it sound like more. 

The busker’s eyes lit up and he went to hug me.  I pulled away and started for my return journey back to the room in which I was staying. 

I had been on holidays in this Indonesian island with a female friend who had already huffed off ahead of me.  The busker followed. 

‘I’ll take you out to dinner,’ he said.  I did not want his advances and managed to escape through the bushes.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ the man said, ‘after you change your dress.’

I had no intention of returning but somehow I managed to get lost in my attempts to avoid him. 

I walked past a raised section that enclosed a deep pit.  A dog leapt up onto the wooded ledge and jumped into the water, which was visible not so far below but too far for any dog or person for that matter to scale the walls for escape.  The dog tried but could not get traction.  He swam around frantically and I raced off in a panic about getting help for fear the dog would exhaust itself and drown. 

I went looking for help but my friend whom I found at last said there was no entranceway to this pit from the kitchen area. 

I went back alone with a net on the end of a rod intending to drag the dog out.  I swirled the end of the net around in the water but the dog was not there.  I woke up. 

A poet who goes, who grows, who glows, by the numb in the number, by Who knows?, 25, published a translation, a pulp, a carnation, in The New Yorker of all places, in the heart of my dream. He was young, he was mean, he was the drop of a hat and more genius than me. He was (in parentheses) Alan something G- something, one of those sanities, those post-grad manatees or careerist wannabes, a poet-chef or con-man camping in the Andes, dazzling and brilliant and dapper when appropriate, like accepting an award or daydreaming Oprah. One of those who glows, who grows, and goes by three names, who references Han Shan, the etymology of shambles, the shimmy, its catharsis, and the history of the shaman, all by inserting the phrase catch as catch can into the first line of his jigsaw meditation on Tristan Tzara's short poem “Route.” At first I think it's nothing that hasn't been done before, or I am jealous of his connections that make me feel like a jalopy puttering in the middle of a five-lane highway, then I realize it's how he would feel too if he were me, and I see him standing in a tree over the forsythia at the edge of the woods behind the Swing-and-Slide Playset, a little boy with my hair, middle finger in the air.

I dreamt I was on vacation with my wife Louisa in Philadelphia.  I followed her into a large drugstore, where she needed to buy some things.  I noticed my cousin Rick Kaplin and Ronnie Gerstle, both of whom I knew from Camp Kennebec in Maine, standing at a cash register behind the counter.  By the time we reached the counter, Rick had disappeared and Ronnie was alone there.  I forgot all the things I planned to say to Ronnie.  It was as though I suddenly forgot everything I knew about him.  So I asked him where Rick had gone.  He said Rick had returned to his store across the street.  After she paid, Louisa stopped at a high round table, where someone might sit with a coffee or a drink.  She started balancing her checkbook, endlessly.  Impatient, I headed outside without her, even though we were on vacation together.

The butcher shop across the street had a long, narrow entrance hall and a large room in back, ballooning out to the right.  Five men were working there.  “Is Rick Kaplin here?” I asked.  The apparent owner pointed to a guy in the middle.  It wasn’t really Rick, it was someone else.  This Rick looked incredibly young.  I said, “Hi, Rick, it’s your cousin, Michael Ruby,” speaking more soulfully than I planned.  There was something wrong with Rick, he couldn’t look at me, he seemed to be hiding his face.  He was schizophrenic, I decided.  Also incredibly muscular, so overpumped he was almost toppling over, and covered with small pink pimples.  “You remember me?” I asked.  “I’ve gotten your emails,” he said, probably referring to emails I’ve sent out in the past announcing various books.  “I don’t think I’ve ever sent you any.”  “I’ve gotten your emails,” he said, his tone faintly negative.  He walked slowly toward me, reaching out to shake my hand, but then he gripped my hand very hard, and I realized he wasn’t going to let go, he was going to try to kill me.  Of course, it made perfect sense.  Rick hated my guts, Rick hated me the most of any person in my entire life, Rick hated me with a supernatural hatred.  How could I have forgotten?  I struggled fiercely against the muscleman’s grip, trying to reach the door down the dingy hall.  Why did the hall have to be so long?  Suddenly, the tarnished bronze knob was in reach.  If I could open the door, I could yell for the police.  There were police on the street.  At this point, I awakened from the nightmare.  My first thought was: Thank God this is a dream.  My next thought was: Rick can’t hurt me, he’s been dead for 25 years, struck by a taxi in Central Park at the age of 28.  This was a dream about seeing my dead cousin, the person who hated me the most of anyone in my life, and he tried to kill me.

A scary celebration with dark hallways and running had just taken place.  Best friends were in the field with tall metal statues.  Time to fly, so  walk up the hill a little and run for momentum, kick off.  Only got a little air between feet and ground.  Heavy body; why does a light body become weighted so quickly? It was the right time to fly.  Does anybody have enough energy?  Now all of us on the hill, all dense perfect circle rocks thrown into a reflection pool of water, no, metal instead.  Thudded slowly.  Finally with exercise and practice our perfect circle bodies became aerodynamically smooth stones, and we shimmered off the hill into the air.  Weaving through the metal statues some of our wings were more apt for tight turns.  I had doggy-trained tricks, having watched a red Australian Cattle Dog as he maneuvers body between posts, every muscle utilized simultaneously, a block of twists and strength.  As a mass we flew through a brick neighborhood, a Philadelphian metropolis, passing a sprinkler and young tumbling boys, moms in garden jeans stretching hamstrings before dealing with the peas. 

Excited with hopes of future kisses, going to the house of the boy I loved who didn't love me yet but his family would.  The wood floors would squeak as I walked to the guest bedroom at the entrance of the house for a blanket; pulled off the bottom quilt, the pillows atop moving with the tug but ending up still on the bed, a clean swipe.  Mom of the house was being a host with older brother's friends, and watched as I ruined her organization.  "I will fix it."  Outside with blanket I was the hero watching out for the continuation of clean dry butts.  Sun would've been the hero if I wasn't here. 

My own mom came to pick me up as if from a sleepover birthday party, too much pizza and staying up all night scared of being alone in a room full of girls all better friends than me despite my having known all of them for longer.  So glad to see mom.

The crowd -- friendly, well-behaved -- hampered my progress though Logan Airport.  For compelling reasons hard to articulate now, I was lugging documents under both arms.  These burdens challenged my command of time and space when fishing for wallet, blackberry, whatever.  Yet I brushed aside offers of help.

I was en route to the college from which I had graduated 36 years ago.  The taxi made good time till Memorial Drive in Cambridge, where the engine gave out.  Rather than apologize, the driver thought I should compensate him extra “for the music.” 

He had underestimated me if he thought I was going to pay for what the taxi’s radio had supplied, don’t worry.  Besides, hadn’t I put up for miles with a gyros sweating on the spit in the passenger section?  Assured of the justice of my position, and braced by the opportunity to show my skills as an oral advocate, I told him "Fuck YOU!"

 

Relatives of the cabbie converged on the scene as if for a wedding rehearsal -- children and elders, male and female.  They surrounded the vehicle in an unthreatening manner.  

The meter read $4.90.  I gave my driver a five and moved on to new challenges. 

From where I stood beside the highway, a rustic path led uphill to where the "river houses" might well be.  The layout, the landscape:  Things had changed since my college days.  There was no telling for sure what lay beyond the forested ridge where the path, longer and steeper than it had looked at first, took a turn into some trees.

A physical sensation of unfairness welled in me, coupled with doubts about the necessity of my mission.  Its precise scope was growing elusive, too.  Had it ever been evident beyond this point?  The important files I was carrying felt heavier than ever.   

I'm in an industrial type space w/ a huge baywindow
overlooking a desolate landscape that's pitted & has no vegetation
- it seems to be mostly or all clay.  I'm there w/ someone else,
maybe another guy.  We're there to procure a giant vehicle,
I think for time-travel.  Outside the window, there're at least 2 types
of vehicles visible.  The one we're to use is huge, like a heavily armored
tank or some type of land-mover.  They have a solid wall on their fronts
w/ a cluster of giant hole-saws.  All around us the clay of the surface is
cracking open & rhinoceroses are emerging from underneath.
They're not struggling out of the earth - it's more as if they're coming up
standing on elevator platforms - but no such things are visible.
I don't see any of them actually completely on the surface & moving around.
The landscape w/ these rhinoceroses is menacing & the hole-saws on the
fronts of the vehicles are interpreted as being for defense.  Despite the menacing
nature of the environment, wch may not be Earth, wch is more likely another planet,
the 'salesperson' that we're dealing w/ seems unconcerned about our safety
& the presumed vulnerability of the glass wall/baywindow.  It occurs to me
that I have no idea how to drive the vehicle I'm about to get so I ask if it
comes w/ a driver.  In a quasi-lucid meta-realization w/in the dream, I realize
that by asking this question I'm making it so that, yes, the vehicle DO come
w/ a driver & that if I hadn't asked this question the vehicle WD NOT HAVE COME
W/ A DRIVER.  It's then explained to me, not necessarily by the 'salesperson'
- who may not even exist as an incarnated figure - that one of us (myself
& my invisible? companion) must agree to learn to copilot the vehicle.
I realize that doing this is probably fantastically difficult & that it's asking
entirely too much of me.  Both the 'salesperson' & my companion may
just be 'figments of my imagination' or projected parts of myself.

I was in a huge business complex type sprawling skyscraper type bldg in the large lobby.  Perhaps there was a school group or some other type of community group there that was about to leave in a bus or some-such.  A friend of mine's son was still not w/ the group & I was worried that he'd get lost so I asked him what was happening w/ him & he told me his father was coming to pick him up.  His dad did so - so I was reassured & I went somewhere else. 

I was doing something in another part of the bldg.  I don't remember what, I have vague memories of walking thru a generic big rm - maybe w/ tables & chairs.  Eventually, I decided to leave & someone might've asked me to get something for them.  It was suggested that the best way to leave was on the outside of the bldg.  In the dream that seemed reasonable - I thought I wasn't high up in the bldg: maybe on the 1st or 2nd floors.  I went out thru a hole in the wall.  The outer walls of the bldg, wch had been solid, as if finished, up 'til now, were now just metal framing that I had to climb down on & I realized that I was higher up than I thought at 1st.  Already climbing down the side of the bldg was a youngish woman w/ a baby in her arms.  I may've complimented the baby.  As I started to realize how high up we were I might've suggested that we climb back into the bldg.  In the meantime, the woman told me that she was from Virginia(?), specifically Newark(?) (even though the Newark I know of is in New Jersey).  She had seemed 'sane' at 1st, despite her climbing on the outside of a skyscraper w/ a baby, but then she started asking me about my reading her notices in some publication in the area where she was from.  Since I was just 1st meeting her, I didn't know anything about what she was talking about & I realized that her thinking that I did indicated that she was a paranoid schizophrenic w/ delusions that I was omniscient or some-such.  I deduced from what she sd that she was looking for a person she knew but hadn't seen for a long time &, at some point, I further deduced that this was either Franz Kamin or that she thought I was Franz.

We tried to re-enter the bldg.  We had footholds in that thick plastic mesh that's sometimes used as fencing on construction sites & there was some sort of close-together wiring or mesh that blocked our way into the bldg.  There was another young woman, maybe more, on the inside who was irritated by us or maybe just by the woman w/ the baby & who was reluctantly helping us move the obstacle out of the way.  The tension between the personalities was contributing to our not being able to get inside.  I stayed calm & reasonable & practical.  The baby was helped thru the gap but then the mother was unable to get herself thru - the climbing was too difficult.  I noticed that she was wearing flip-flops so I suggested that she remove them so she cd get a better toe-hold in the mesh we were standing on.  This worked & then I got inside too. 

I had, perhaps, started out on the 7th floor & was now, perhaps on the 5th floor.  The bldg was still like a large commercial bldg - maybe a huge hotel.  The woman & I parted & I went into a large rm where I saw that Franz Kamin was sitting.  My past in this bldg was now as if I had decided to leave while performing in one of Franz's pieces.  I walked to where Franz was & bent over his shoulder to say something to him.  He was very neatly & cleanly dressed.  I noticed in the large rm that he was sitting near the perimeter of that there were round tables w/ papers on them that people were sitting around & I concluded that they might be assembling one of his publications - perhaps as presents for them to receive b/c they'd stayed to the end of Franz's performance. 

Franz & I talked to each other & I mentioned that the woman I had met was looking for him & that I thought her name was Susan or Suzanne & that she was from Virginia & that she had a child.  Franz seemed to know who I was talking about & gave slightly cynical laugh, acting somewhat relieved that she hadn't found him, & asked if the child were about 10.  I remembered the child as a girl around that age & sd yes.  I then went to an elevator to take a safer way down thru the bldg. 

The elevator started going sideways & I realized that it was more of a train that started in the bldg - perhaps some sort of courtesy vehicle for patrons of the hotel.  I noticed that I was barefoot & realized that if it was cold outside I'd have a hard time of it.  Then I checked to see if I had money in my pockets so I cd take some sort of transport when I got off the train - perhaps a taxi.  I realized that I'd lost my money along w/ my shoes & that no taxi-driver wd pick me up w/o shoes anyway - assuming that I'd be indigent.  Thinking that the train wd just take us outside the bldg, I was surprised when it kept going.  It stopped somewhere not too far away & I asked one of the passengers whether it went further.  he told me that it went to a place the name of wch I didn't recognize but wch I thought wasn't too far from my destination so I decided that I'd be able to walk barefoot from there. 

I exited from the elevator/train at this next exit - wch was at the outside of a European-style large park / plaza w/ some sort of wall surrounding it w/ large archways opening regularly into it.  The outside of it was dotted w/ small café type tables & there were vines growing on the walls.  Perhaps there was some topiary.  the same woman who'd previously had the baby/10-yr-old-girl exited the train ahead of me, although I hadn't previously seen her there, & bent over at the waist so that her short dress hiked up over her ass to reveal that she wasn't wearing underwear & was, therefore, naked w/ her ass exposed to me.  She looked over her shoulder to smile at me & to say something, presumably sexual, that I didn't quite hear.  She didn't have a child w/ her anymore & didn't really look like the earlier woman but I thought she was the same person.  Apparently, she liked me. 

We walked together, perhaps we were going to my destination together, & she asked if there were someplace where she cd get a drink.  We were inside the plaza/park now & I sd, yes, being somewhat familiar w/ this park, & told her that there were food places about & then we saw one directly ahead of us.

I was walking into a toilet at a mall, possibly Broadway, an Asian man half my age was going through the door at the same time. He said "We have the same coats". I was wearing a long black lightweight jacket which I'd bought at In Denial in Glebe years ago. It was a similar shape to his but noticably different. "It has the same logo" he said indicating the square black sew-on patch on his jacket that was unlike the silver printed one in the same place on mine.

By then we were alongside the urinals. I moved to the furthest corner one. He followed me and stood uncomfortably close. He was looking at me as the urinal I was using changed into a circular chrome grate in the floor. It had had a Duchampesque appearance when we walked in. He was looking at me in a friendly way as he stood next to me directing his stream of urine at the same part of the grate as mine. Then without moving he was slightly further away and urinating on me, firstly on my shoes and then gradually aiming higher up my legs. "Hey" I said or thought I said. He looked as if he was pleased and expected me to be. I knew I couldn't stop him and although he was slightly shorter than me and not an obvious physical threat he had complete control of the situation. He leant back and I could feel and taste his warm slightly sweet slightly vinegary urine flow into my mouth over and between my lower teeth.

I woke with a subtler version of the same taste in my mouth.

I was outside a large bldg, probably someone's home, maybe a big party was starting.  The area I was in was like a patio surrounded by plants.  I had just gotten some records.  My neighbor in waking life, Mark O'Connor, had picked one out for me & was playing it on a device that was outside near where I was.  He wanted me to listen to it.  It was by a Spanish musician named "Raf".  At 1st it semed vaguely like electronica.  I walked over to where the turntables were to take a close look at the record & saw what might've been a circular shallow pool - like a fountain but w/o water spouting in it.  The bottom lip of the bowl-like bottom of the fountain was about 2&1/2 or 3 feet off the ground.  On it there was an approximately 3 foot long piece of what looked similar to model railroad track - w/ a slight curve for a few inches at either end.  At 1st I thought that this was some sort of new playback device for a new recording medium - perhaps invented by Raf.  I looked at the end to my right & thought I saw some sort of little object like an optical reader.  I looked closer at the whole thing trying to figure out how it worked, looking to see if there was some sort of flat object moving on the 'track' being read by the little object at the end but concluded that there wasn't. 

On a pole rising above & behind this 'track' there were a few, maybe 3, turntable like objects stacked above each other separated by enuf distance so that they cd be clearly seen w/o blocking each other.  They were each protruding from one edge of the pole, the 'front' from my perspective, at about a 30° angle downward.  Each of them had on it what looked like a record but larger than 12" - maybe 15 or 18".  I looked at each one, moving my gaze up from the bottom, until I reached the top one - wch was the only one that was spinning.  As such, I concluded that that was the Raf record that I was hearing.  As I looked at the record I cd see a sortof hologram above or in front of it that showed the guys who were making the music.  As w/ most dream descriptions, what this 'was' is likely to be pinned down by any description here.  In the dream, I simply saw an image of these 3 guys w/ a somewhat lo-fi image quality & truncated as if by a screen edge that wasn't there.  There was a musician playing an instrument on the left & a guy singing, who I deduced to be "Raf" in the middle - w/ a 3rd guy somewhat hunched over to the right, possibly singing - the furthest away from my viewpoint.  Their visual presence didn't obscure my view of the large disc.  

I was a bit disappointed by these guys b/c the more I pd attn to them & their music, the less imaginative they & it seemed.  The guy I presumed to be "Raf" had what I'll call here a 'horseshoe' mustache - a mustache over the lip w/ 2 perpendicular lines of hair on either side of the mouth growing down to the chin.  He had medium length head hair & looked fairly 'normal' - just a bit scruffy as if he partied alot & didn't have to look 'presentable' for a job.  Having lost interest in the music by now I wanted to take the 'record' off but cdn't see any easy way of accessing the 'turntable' - wch was maybe about 6 feet above the pool of water & set back 18" or so from the lip. 

I looked at my hand & realized that I had about 5 shards stuck in it that I hadn't previously noticed.  There was at least one sliver of glass & the rest were possibly metal objects - one like a finely machined part.  I Pulled each of these out of my hand & saw that the part had left behind a hole maybe a quarter inch in diameter that wasn't bleeding profusely but that was bleeding enuf, & open enuf, to need attending to. 

I went into the house wch was, I slowly realized, more of a palace - w/o the typical magnificence of one.  I was searching for a bathroom & a medicine cabinet (or some dream-world vague thing perhaps like it) so I cd clean & wrap my hand but all the bathrooms had lines of people waiting to enter them - although b/c the giant foyer I was walking thru was so large (no end in sight - at least 40 or 50 feet wide) it wasn't glaringly obvious that these lines existed.  Apparently the 'party' (some sort of social event) was starting in earnest & there were now alotof people there so every bathroom, & there were probably alotof them, had people waiting.  The large foyer or hall that I was walking thru was plush but not glacially untouchably so as a museum wd be.  It was well-furnished - perhaps w/ such things as oriental rugs & vases & chairs & such-like - & seemed comfortable - w/ everything well-crafted - as might be expected in the home of people who can afford objects made by artisans - but there was no feeling of class snobbery. 

I awoke while I was still looking for a bathroom where I cd clean my small wounds. 

The thing about many of these descriptive details is that they were more like amorphous things that seemed appropriate to fill the atmospheric gaps rather than fixed concrete objects.  Imagine walking thru a space & having a part of yr mind instruct a storehouse of images to furnish the room & having these furnishings only sortof become 'real' - solid enuf to appearances but potentially shape-shifting w/o this shape-shifting even being important enuf to notice.  Most of my description above of the more banal details are more like 'filler' - what I'd somehow 'expect' or 'want' such a space to be like - rather than anything actually solid.

*

There was a car, a Jaguar (but not really), on a hill, perhaps, & I had some casual connection to it - perhaps I had taken on the responsibility of closing its door or some such.  As I was doing whatever I was doing I noticed that there was a panel of sorts protruding from the side of the car & that easily visible inside this panel there was an array of keys.  Since it was my intention to secure this car from theft by closing the door I realized that this array of keys was easily accessible from the outside & that, therefore, the car cd be easily opened w/ them & then driven away.  I decided to try to close this panel - but it didn't seem physically possible. 

People were behind me talking about this car & discussing the difficulty of selling it for the asking price of $500,000.  Sometime around this time, a woman in her 50s or 60s w/ whitish hair saw me asked me I'd like the job of coming & sitting w/ the car from time-to-time - sortof like the way people house-sit in Switzerland to make houses seem occupied while the people who live there are away to prevent squatting (this comparison being a waking one & NOT one made in the dream).  I explained that I don't really like cars & that I wdn't really be an appropriate person to do this.  In the meantime, the car had probably grown - perhaps no longer exactly a car anymore.  The woman explained that all I had to do was hang out at the object (perhaps no longer a car at this point) & that I cd watch outdoor movies from the hill (or some-such).  This started to seem like it might be fun so I sortof agreed to do it.  By now I may've been standing on the deck of this object - wch was now a boat.  The woman was off the boat, near its back, & she realized that she wanted me to sign some paperwork. 

This may be out of sequence.  The car was somehow outside of a sortof bay/parking-space/driveway cut into the ground for it that had a slight depth to prevent the car from rolling forward out of it.  The woman pushed the car up to its capture point in the bay to secure it. 

Back on the deck of the car-turned-boat, the woman joined me & the boat started to roll forward - the bay hadn't successfully contained it.  It was going downhill, picking up speed & going in more & more dangerous areas - such as along a tree-lined sidewalk where people were.  The boat was also getting bigger - although its growth wasn't something visible - it was just that it wd be one size & then a bigger size.  I advised the woman to jump off the back while she cd & she did so.  By the time she did the boat's back was probably at least 10 ft above the ground & was also moving fairly fast so it was remarkable that the older woman cd jump off w/o hurting herself.  I wasn't sure whether to jump off but after the woman jumped off it seemed too dangerous for me to do so. 

The boat was obviously increasingly headed toward conditions under wch it wd be more & more difficult to control.  I shouted off its back to people to throw me a rope so I cd tie the rope to the boat & try to stop it.  Some people tried to do this but they had no skill w/ the rope & I got impatient & somewhat angry w/ them b/c of their inability to even throw the rope at all.  I searched in one of the rms of the boat & found an abundance of thin yellow rope, perhaps plastic-coated, that was on top of a table - w/ one end of it partially threaded around the walls near the ceiling as a decoration.  I started gathering up the rope, even though it seemed too thin to be strong enuf, & taking it toward the boat back - w/ the way the one end of the rope was laced around the rm making it difficult to move w/ it. 

When I got to the back of the boat again it was going down a ramp into a body of water.  I was again considering jumping off but as it went down the ramp the back was now very high & jumping off wd've been very dangerous.  There were people in the water below & I shouted down to them asking how deep the water was - hoping I cd jump into it & not break my legs on the bottom or drown in the process.  The people were so far away that they looked very small.  I looked toward the front of the boat to see whether I was about to head out to sea & was surprised to find that not far away was another ramp at the end of the space I was in & that that part was indoors.  As such, I was in little danger of going any further.  The people in the water were trying to turn the boat sideways so that its momentum wd be stopped by its becoming wedged in the now-smaller space.  Somehow I managed to luckily pivot the boat up on top of a railing surrounding this docking area w/ an effortless shifting of my weight & that was that: the boat was stopped & turned sideways - out of the water & up on the railing.  Stopping what had previously been a juggernaut-like motion had taken nothing but an unconscious shift of my position.  On the ground a man commented that he'd come all the way to Jamaica for this - & I was surprised to learn that that's how far the boat had careened (w/ its presumed point-of-origin having been somewhere on the NE coast of the US). 

WAKING NOTE: This seems to be a typical dream for me insofar as I think I've had many dreams where something small grows into something big & out-of-control.  What may be unusual is that it stopped so effortlessly & had a 'happy ending'.

 

In my dream I am devastated by the news that I only received a score of 155 out of a possible 250 for my English literature creative writing assignment. I had hoped for a score closer to two hundred.

How could it be?

Once the shock had worn off, I went to tackle my teacher about it. My teacher was new to me. He took fifth form students for literature and had seemed friendly enough. He was gay and seemed familiar to me, a cross between my hairdresser and other gay men I have met over the years.

I gathered that he had heard I was upset and was prepared for my tirade, but not as much as I was when ranted at him about the mark. Even I was surprised.

I have never gone to battle over the results of any of my assignments, but this one seemed particularly unfair.

A mark on an essay somehow becomes the mark of a person and for me especially my literature essay. I had worked hard on it. I had done my best.

‘What’s wrong with my essay?’ I asked.
‘Too many ideas,’ my teacher said. ‘Too many ideas threaded together. It’s hard to follow.’

This infuriated me more. To me, my teacher now seemed such a creature of his times, a simpleton who wanted ease of reading and limited complexity.

I could not concede that he might have been correct in any way, though his words nagged at me because I had been criticised before for too much complexity, too many ideas in my writing.

‘I might try to find another teacher,’ I said, and even as the words slipped out I knew it would be impossible for me to slot into another class so late in the piece. My literature exam in my dream was part of my final year at school. I could not find another school nearby whose literature class would take place at the same time of day.

I was stuck.

May 5, 2011

I had fallen asleep with the intention of having Robert Kelly's collaboration with Brigitte Mahlknecht (The Garden of Distances) lead me into a dream that would, in the morning, allow me to formulate an essay about Robert Kelly's poetics for the Logic of the World: Poetics of Robert Kelly symposium. 

The dream was an expansive geography -- as if I was in a video game simultaneously aware of the map and where I was on it. I was following my old boss, Derek Owens, out of a small doorway at St. John's University (where I recently quit my job) and into woods. Not wilderness, but woods cleared by smooth paths. I was aware that Derek did not want me following him, but the dream had no other purpose and I had a strong desire to do so, so he didn't have a choice. He led me to a circle of houses, and I entered one of them. I was very happy to see that there were lots of people there including Lee Ann Brown and her daughter Miranda. My daughter was there with some of her friends who are boys, and they all wanted to play football. So I said ok, let's play football in the house. (There wasn't any furniture.) I found a huge blue ball and started throwing it around, but realized that it had holes in it and so was letting out lots of air. I then realized that beetles were eating the ball from the inside, which really grossed me out. I tried to throw the ball far away from the house, but it landed only a couple feet from the door. Derek (who was outside) took the ball and tried stuffing it into a hole around the side of the house but this was very upsetting to me because I didn't want the beetles anywhere near the house. So I went outside (not where I wanted to be) and tried to pull the ball out of the hole where he had stuffed it, but it kept getting longer and longer. Obviously there was a part of it that was stuck for good.

we were somewhere
 
we were somewhere. a
piano bar. NYC. The
Plaza. parking garage.
suburban Super 8.
inside a hospital.
the event was over.
making our way back.
not us. but me guiding.
others. friends.
through the maze of elevators
attempting to follow
the right color carpeting.
not to home,
but to the next thing.
part of the journey entailed
driving over
a broken wooden bridge.
in the piano bar or maybe
audition. a tall weird-looking blondish man
stops singing and recites a poem.
he wants a bride.
the sincerity and naked belief
of his confidence. but
mostly the rhyming.
in the moment that rhymes
with pray I shout something.
a different ending to his
poem, that yes, rhymes.
exiting before folks have
a chance to recognize
what’s just happened.
i find the room. the
party. the shower. the
card game i am supposed
to be at.
not expecting to see you
at the end of all dreams
a dot on the map

I dreamed of a man on a tram who had been involved in a vicious attack that had left him cut and bruised.  Somehow I took him from the tram and into my car in a bid to get him to the police station where he might get help.

I can see him now cowed and bleeding, his dark suit torn.  He was slumped in the back seat of my car, which I managed to parked in the front of the police station in Bridge Road in Richmond.

Then later I dreamed of helping a friend, T, get to the airport.  On the way to the airport she needed to borrow my car, which morphed into a three-seater bike with room on the back for passengers.  T sat in the back with her young daughter, but their weight was excessive and caused the tyres to flatten.  In only a few minutes they needed to get off the bike and walk.

I offered to take them to the airport thinking we had hours to spare. As it turned out they told me had left their run very late.  For an international flight it is best to arrive at the airport at least two hours before the plane’s departure, but they now had only two hours left and still needed to get to their own home from my house to pack.  I did not tell them they would not make it before they pulled away from the curb.

I noticed then on the main road in front of my house two of our cats squabbling over a lump of meat they had found on the edge of the road.  I worried that a car might hit one of them and sure enough it did.

Our cat Mollie’s leg seemed to have been broken presumably after being hit  and I went onto the road to lift her ever so gently and take her inside.  She whimpered in my arms as I held her as carefully as I could so as not to dislodge the bone further.

It was almost impossible to get across the veranda of my house and into the living area where I had planned to telephone for the vet.  Some one had removed several boards from the veranda and it was elevated higher than it is in real life.  I could not get over this obstacle course with a wounded cat in my arms.  Still I tried.

Dream of  Franz

The dream catcher caught me. 

I have the hook in my arm to prove it.

I went to sleep and woke up in Franz’s apt.

Boy was it a mess. He looked the same. Greasy hair,

Clothes all in disrepair.

But I walked over to him and explained that there was no time to lose

I have waited so long anyway and now it is clear.

I laid out my case. 

That the other stuff doesn’t matter

That I certainly was not going to be a poet

And  I would care for him. 

Robert Kelly was there riding a brown horse which

He made kneel so we could all pet it. 

Many others were there some I know Quasha, Kim, Mitch more than I can name.

He seemed to approve the declaration and all that it implied

Franz said to me was that he didn’t want to wait any longer

Transaction accomplished, I admired his view overlooking the ocean,

What a little skin prick can trigger.

March 14, 2011

Also, dreamed a few days ago that Anne Waldman was all in pale pink and with a pink unicorn horn and she had everyone stand back to back and touch their unicorn horns together. I wrote to her the morning after the dream.  She wrote back: "Bhanu, it sounds like some kind of...initiation."

Dream 11 April 2011

My dreams this morning seemed fractured after a fitful night’s sleep.  I remember sitting in a church and the priest in the pulpit decked out in magisterial robes, gold braid and white satin spoke only in Italian.  When the organ blared out the first notes of music it became clear that not only would he speak to us in Italian he would also sing, and sing he did.

Solo in a vibrant tenor’s voice that in places bordered on soprano.  His voice was high and distinctive.  He could sing and he knew it.  Only when he sang did he manage to smile.

After the service was over the tall and thin Italian priest morphed into a woman, an older woman with dyed black hair and pale skin.  Her cheeks were hollowed out with wrinkles and in her ears she wore a stunning pair of earrings, hooped gold with a single pearl fixed in the centre of each hoop.

She stood in the churchyard with one of her grown children and spoke to me about how difficult it had been for her since her husband had died when she was only 72.  Life had not been the same since.  She looked as though she had led a good life with plenty of money and beautiful things around to amuse her and yet she seemed unhappy.

She was like a character from the movies.


Dream 14 April 2011

I am drawn to pick up a shoe I have found under an outside chair in the garden.  It belongs to a woman I know only through blogging.  I have never seen her before but I recognise her by her blog name.  She is tall, thin and glamorous, with an American accent.
‘I like your shoe,’ I say to her, hopeful that she will let me try it on.
‘You can buy it if you like,’ the woman says.  ‘It doesn’t fit me.  It's too tight around my ankles’.

I pick up the shoe and notice a tag with a $5.00 sign attached to the buckle.  The shoe is made of some strange plastic looking leather and is red, bright red, my favourite colour and I am delighted when it fits.  I call it a shoe but it more like a sandal, though the straps are thick and the toes are covered.
‘I’ll buy it’, I sty, ‘but where’s its partner.’

We search the garden for the other shoe.  My blogging friend is nonchalant.  What’s five dollars or a lost shoe to her, a shoe that does not fit anyway, but I am determined to find it.  The  first shoe fits so well.  It is exactly what I have been looking for.

On the veranda atop a wide edged pot plant I see a glimmer of red between the roots of the pot plant.  I pull at it to discover the shoe, which has somehow become overgrown with the roots of this plant such that is entirely covered.  I will have to hack it out of the pot and its bracken prison.

I grab hold of a long knife from the kitchen and a large serving fork, not that either will be any good for the job but I can see no other tools.  Besides I decide I will ask my husband to help me and he will know what to do.

I swing the knife and fork over my head in a dramatic gesture, as if I am preparing to slice someone or something up, aware that I must be careful.  I am like a child with a big stick.  Children swing sticks around their heads with little concern for the consequences, until someone gets hurt.

I wake up before any harm happens, still longing for my shoe.

The first dream (which becomes the dream within a dream):

I'm shooting a movie.  It's completely surprising because I'm the star, picked from nowhere, and my costar, is THE totally hot famous older Scottish actor.  We have to do a scene where we dance close.  We do the scene over and over.  He obsessively fingers the dimples in my lower back and whispers things like "this is where the gold collects."  This is somehow secret from the camera.  This is the best dream ever.

I wake up (still dreaming) to find myself in a resort hotel with tons of guests, very busy.  I'm in a bathing suit, with a big canvas beachbag over my shoulder, in which I carry a painting I did to capture the feeling of the movie dream.  It's my most dear posession.  I guard it carefully.  I see the actor and his wife, they part ways.  He notices that I'm carrying this painting in my bag.  He says it's his, he painted it, that I stole it.  He does not recognize me but we contest the strange mutual artifact (the painting) that links us.

Running, with the painting in my bag, I realize that I am very late for an appointment with my mother, who has set up a resorty thing for us to do: a simultaneous bungee jump out of a helicopter over the ocean.  I'm five minutes late.  It's too late to jump.  And I'm secretly glad that I missed it. 

Dream 4 April 2011

In my dream I woke up and staggered into the hallway.  There in the dim light of early morning I could see that unbeknown to us, someone had come during the night and taken out whole sheets of leadlight from the front door.  All the stained glass that lined the inside and outside panels of the front door and overhead had been taken out and smashed.
I could see out onto the street through the exposed panels.

       ‘The insurance will cover it,’ my husband said, nonplussed.  But I knew we would never be able to replace this leadlight.  An artist had crafted it for us.

As calm as my husband seemed, I was desperate.  I rang the police in a panic.  It was seven am and I began work in an hour.

The police officer on the other end of the telephone line was sympathetic as I tried to report the damage.

Small children whizzed around my knees, two of my own children and their cousin, all around eight to ten years of age.  They played rough games.  Each had a spatula, which they used to dig into the garden and bushes.
           ‘Be careful, ‘I said, between sentences, to the policeman.

My youngest daughter, about three years old,  toddled up to me.  She was naked and draped in a towel following her bath.  The police officer overheard her voice and began to ask questions about my children.  I explained that we had been living in the neighbourhood for years and although we had young children, my husband and I were old.  I offered to go to the police station myself to make the report but then realised I did not want to leave the house unattended, not with an open front door.

I looked again at the shards of glass on the veranda and the strips of wood that had once held the leadlight in place, and were now shattered across the garden.  I feared the culprit might have been someone I knew, an eighteen-year-old woman with whom I had worked some time ago.  I knew she had been angry with me.  Whoever it was, this person had caused thousands of dollars in damage.


*


Dream 6 4 11

The surgeon was to operate on my hand.  I had stayed in hospital and there I met a friend G whom the surgeon was also treating.  He was a gynaecological surgeon and at one time during my stay I overheard him in conversation with a colleague.
           ‘I cannot bear to penetrate the women,’ he said and proceeded to tell his colleague of the trouble he went to in his attempts to reassure his female patients that he conducts his practice purely out of necessity.

I challenged him on this and he raised his eyebrows in dispute.  He seemed uncomfortable that I had overheard him and later when he came to see me to check on the wound he had made on my hand he was alarmed.  It would not stop bleeding.

Then I realised the surgeon himself was ill.

He lay down on the couch fading by the minute and my friend G who had also been ill began to administer to him.

Earlier I had overheard G’s husband express grave concerns for her health and now here she was nursing the surgeon.  I felt jealous.  I wanted to do this job, but the best I could do was assist as her second in command. 

I woke up and I was chasing three of my friends threw a suburban water park.  They had "borrowed" (stolen) my laptop.  One of them was holding my laptop above his head.  They jumped into the water.  I jumped in too.  I had asked them what they were doing with my laptop and they didn't answer me.  I was afraid to demand that they return it to me.  I was chain smoking as I waded after them through the pool.  There was an artificial cascading slope with the water flowing upwards and this made sense.  I followed them up it and the water carried me up the slope.  Water was splashing on the laptop.  The bottom of the laptop was coming apart from the rest of the laptop.  They entered the deep end of the pool.  My friend couldn't hold onto the computer anymore because he had to use his arms to tread water.  It dropped into the water and began to float away.  I swam to it and picked it up.  I reached the side of the pool and put it on the light gray concrete.  I woke up and my laptop was laying on the ground next to my bed.  There was tape on the sides of it because it was getting old and rotting.  I lit a cigarette and looked out the window at people walking past on the sidewalk.

There's    nothing     baby     safe

earth    cakes    all     ...................

Dream 14 March 2011

I went to see a couple who worked together as joint therapists.  They had an odd technique.  Each worked separately or as a pair to somehow unseat their patient’s defences.  They had a way of making you feel as if you really mattered for the duration of your session time.  They prodded and probed.  They encouraged you to take up all sorts of unusual positions, for me one that involved climbing to the top of a tower, something I would never normally dare to do, but by the end of the session as the next clients were lining up to enter the space, your time was over and you would be sent off unceremoniously as if what had just gone on for the hour before was all a charade.

After this session I needed to get home.  I travelled alone but I knew that my sister and a friend who then morphed into one of my daughters travelled in parallel , but across different routes as they too made their ways home.

At one stage halfway up the side of a mountain I heard the screams of my friend/daughter and rushed to the other side to find that she had fallen into a river.  There was a chance she might drown and I had to work fast to free her from underneath the branch in the river that now pinned her down.  The dream went on but my memories of it stop here.



*


Dream, 27 March 2011.

I slept late and in the morning I dreamed I was staying at a friend’s house in the country, a large sprawling country estate that had been built several years earlier and was now in a state of polite decay.  Things that were broken had been left that way.

There was a party in progress for the oldest daughter of the farmer who owned this property, but she was not there.  She had already been shipped off overseas to enjoy a post school sabbatical, though I wondered why.  She did not deserve it.  She had scarcely done any work in her final school years and had only just managed to scrape through her year twelve.  But her parents were indulgent and they could not see what else to do with this wayward daughter.  The other daughters were more amiable and hard working.  One of them was a friend with one of my daughters, which is how I found myself at this party.

At one stage one of my daughters came up to me.  She was cross because I had forgotten to do as he had asked earlier that day.  She had been away at work all day and had asked me to telephone another of her friends and invite her to the party.
 ‘I forgot,’ I said and my daughter huffed off.

It was too late to invite the girl but I rang her anyhow in the faint hope she might still come as a companion to my daughter.  No such luck.  The girl could not come but at least I had tried.

I wandered around the property, mock Roman statues everywhere, in some places missing a nose or an arm or the fingers on one hand.  They were rendered in white painted concrete and had an eerie feel rather like a plaster of Paris figure I had seen in a photo the day before of a person sitting astride a bed, all white bandages to shape the man’s body.

I sat at a table then with two women and a young priest in black clothes.  The women were having a loud conversation about the priest wondering together whether or not he was gay. I could see he was embarrassed.  They talked about him as though he was gay.
‘What does it matter?’ I said and tried to draw the priest into the conversation where at least he would not be so objectified.
‘I think everyone is gay to some extent,’ I said.

The priest smiled but did not divulge his orientation.  Secretly, I hoped he was not out rightly gay because I found myself attracted to him.  I would have no hope with him.  He was a priest and if he were gay as well, I would have no hope at all.

I apologize to those who have sent dreams in the last few days for the delay in posting them. They will be posted tomorrow.


                     --Lynn Behrendt

I am travelling with my family through the English countryside at night.  We travel by car, crowded inside, each one squashed against the other.  My younger sister joins us.  She looks more weather beaten than I remember.  She is an adult now in my dream and has entered into a new relationship, she tells us.

We stop to buy supplies but most of the shops are closed.  The only places we can visit are small scungy cafes.  They smell of cigarette smoke and the fat from deep fried fish and chips.

At one stage my sister and I leave the others to make a trip by train.  I had intended to read a book on this trip but the countryside is too interesting, as are the people who occupy the stations we pass through.  Everywhere it seems there are large groups of uniformed police men and women, not so much on patrol as on training courses.  There is a holiday atmosphere everywhere and my sister and I relax into our journey.

I am asleep and awake at the same time in my dream, the sort of drowsy awakeness that leaves my body flaccid but my mind alert.  Somehow the music from the radio station Triple JJJ rattles through my head like an earworm and the DJ drones on about the hottest one hundred.  The names of the bands intrigue me.  One is called ‘Nebbermine’, the others contain plays on words that I find delightful and clever.

Not only do the musicians play thumping and excellent music to my mind, they are clever and witty as well.  I feel my stomach sag onto the cushion and I think to hold it in.  As I do so my insides ache.  I wonder whether the reason our stomachs hang out after we have eaten big meals is so that the extra size does not interfere with our digestive system, does not impact on other organs.

I slip off into another round of fitful sleep and notice the signs of the station that is our destination.

‘We’ve missed our stop, ‘ I tell my sister, who jerks up in her seat.
‘We’ll have to get off at the next station and go back.’
‘No,’ I say to her.  ‘Let’s do the round again.  Let’s stay asleep now.’

My sister is hesitant but she agrees.  We have a ticket that allows unlimited travel for the week.  We will be covered whether inspectors come on board or not.  But now I cannot settle down. My sleep has been too interrupted with the talking and I wake up.

I was vacationing with someone in my life whom I don't know very well; it was late at night, and we were asleep on different beds, on different sides of the room.  In my dream, I awoke and attempted to look out the foggy, 30-something-th floor window of our vacation condo.   We had been traveling together for days, though I do not remember where we were. Because it was humid outside, condensation had gathered, and I couldn't see out of the room.  Against the opposite wall there was a television on mute.  I heard this incredibly loud sound, earthquake-like.  Suddenly the television caught up with what I was hearing, and I saw on the live newscast that a tall skyscraper was crumbling in slow motion -- and it was the building next to ours.  I wiped the window with my forearm, but the fog wouldn't disappear.  I turned back to the television, and suddenly I began to fall backwards in the room, almost foot-over-head, except that I caught the edge of a table and held on.  My friend's bed began to slide, and the widows burst.  I closed my eyes and felt the floor fall from underneath me.  I fell for a very long time, until I fell no  more.

I had no desire to open my eyes.  Somewhere in the falling I realized that I was still asleep, that the memory of having woken up in the middle of the night was a continuation of the dream-state.  I consciously thought how visually-interesting it would be to see the walls crumbling, my friend's face in the room with me, whatever was outside the window (having tried twice -- in vain -- to see out of it already), but I could not force any desire to actually see it.  It was perhaps the most tranquil moment in a dream I've had lately (rivaling one I had about my niece four years ago), and when I awoke the second time, the time in which I'm existing now, I couldn't shake it, couldn't get back to sleep.  My bedroom window is now fogged; the bedroom door is shut.   And there's this simultaneous feeling of both seclusion and inclusion still in the room right now.

We have arranged for Dad to stay at our favorite beachside resort in Mexico. He and I arrive by taxi; the driver says behind to get the luggage together and bring it along behind us. There is an expanse of sand dunes and scattered palm trees. I lead the way, telling Dad encouraging things—but the sand is heaped and humped, the palms frayed by wind. There has been a storm, but now it's just gusty wind. The hotel looks like a hulk, battered; staff hurry here and there making repairs. A woman meets us at the bottom of the front stairs. "Hay mucho viento," I say. "Sí," she says, leading the way. "Todo el día?" I ask. "Sí." I second-guess myself: "Yo quería decir todavía." She smiles at me kindly. Dad has not said a word; he follows along looking serene and incurious.I suddenly realize this isn't his kind of place, and with all the work going on he won't be able to get the rest he needs. The woman leave suss at the lobby desk, but ho one is there. We wander around the vast room, its walls flaking, the furniture covered in drop cloths, scaffolding for the painters everywhere but no painters. I nod toward a soaring, dirty window. "Look at that stained glass." Dad smiles and nodes. The desk clerk appears and we follow him. Dad stops by a wall that has wires curling out high up where apparel has been removed. "Maybe they could use an electrician, he says. He's serious: he would rather work on the place than just stay in it. Not his kind of thing—a vacation—even in the afterlife. He heads for the front desk to check in. I'm about to follow, but a guy about my age grabs my arm. "We're over here," he says. He is sly and jovial. I think he's a salesman. I know I've met him but can't think where. He leads me to some banquet tables set up in an L shape and covered with white table cloths. I've missed the meal, but there are still bottles with wine in them. I take a chair inside the elbow of the L. I feel trapped. Dad won't know how to find me. The guy who brought me here pours me a glass of wine. There are three or four conversations going on, none that I want to join. I drink some wine. It is a deep red, very dark and very sour.

In this dream a young man of Asian descent takes careful notes as I detail symptoms of a health concern, a medical mystery of some kind, a puzzle. I’ve come to him for help in solving it. He is solemn, but deeply kind, attentive. He reminds me of many of the young men I worked with as a student advisor at the college.  There seems to be some kind of understanding between us that I once helped him. Now he will help me.

As we conclude our discussion he turns to leave, but then turns back to me with one last question:

“Tell me, do you daydream often?”

Do I daydream often? A smile spreads across my face. He may as well have asked if I breathe often.

“Yes,” I say quietly, “I daydream all the time.”

“Ah!” He brightens. He likes this answer, writes it down on his clipboard of notes. He disappears down the hallway, leaving me to wonder—

Have I given him the most important symptom of my malady, the key that will unlock the mystery?

Or have I simply spoken the cure?

Last night I dreamed the home invasion finally happened. Five men wearing dress suits and animal masks. Carrying rifles. They beat me with the butt ends of their rifles while I lay between the flat and fitted sheet. They took everything I owned, leaving me with an empty house. I could have called out to my husband in the next room, but I remained silent. Finally, I thought. Finally they’ve done what I’ve waited years for them to do. With this false sense of security, these possessions, I will never learn who I am.

I climbed on board a bus that could have been a tram given its location along Kooyong Road.  A beautiful young woman stepped up behind me and as she passed the driver remarked on her eyes.  She winced as she sat down and I imagined she did not enjoy the way complete strangers threw compliments at her.
           ‘It could be envy,’ I said to her as she fumbled with her handbag.  She looked at me bemused.

‘The way he spoke of your blue eyes.  It comes across as a compliment but if it makes you miserable it might be rooted in some sort of envy, the sort your enemies direct towards you in disguise.’

‘Do you have enemies?’  I asked her.
 'One out of five of my teachers perhaps,’ she said.  ‘But not really.’

The tram/bus arrived at my stop unexpectedly and I had no time to finish our conversation, let alone to say goodbye.  I leapt up to pull the cord and stood in the front at the door waiting for the driver to stop.  But he drove on.  He seemed cheerful enough and I figured that as I was now standing directly beside him he would soon see to stop, but again he drove past the next stop.
‘I have to get off,’ I said and eventually at the third stop beyond mine the driver pulled up.

I was in West Richmond now well beyond my destination, my school, and I walked back in the direction from which I had come.

I needed to cross a wide road that stretched below train tracks.  It was dark and gloomy, an ideal nesting place for pigeons in its roof.  A place I would not want to visit by night but in my dream it was still early morning though I worried I might be late for school.  I looked down at my feet and noticed that on my black stockinged feet I wore an old pair of back patent shoes, shoes I had owned when I was in my early twenties, shoes though still serviceable that were now old fashioned.  I felt embarrassed at the thought that others might consider me conservative.  I would not wear these shoes the next day I resolved.

There was not much traffic as I stepped out into the middle of this road.  I could not be bothered walking all the way to the traffic lights, which I saw some way in the distance and out of my way.  I wove through this traffic easily but when I reached halfway, the cars that had sprinkled through slowly like Brown’s cows were now replaced by a convoy of fast paced motorbikes.  The roar of the engines echoed from the underside of the metal roof tracks on the rooftop.  I managed to dodge them and laughed to myself when I saw one old bike driver spit out his phlegm into the gutter.  The wind blew it back up at him and it landed on his coat lapel.  He almost veered off the road in an effort to wipe it off.

Serves him right, I thought.  Disgusting habit.  no sooner had I had this thought than a collection of bicycles streaked through followed by a number of mounted horses.  The road seemed an obstacle course and I wondered would I ever get through, or would I inevitably be knocked over.


*


My youngest daughter was organising a friend’s birthday party in my dream.  They had been in discussions all morning.  They could not decide on a venue.

I took my bicycle out for a short ride but as I looked into the distance and could see the rolling countryside with lakes and streams ahead I fancied I might take a longer trip.  The ground was wet and the roads slippery so after a time I decided to head back but not before I stopped off at a bicycle shop to check on the sturdiness of my bike.

           ‘You need new wheels’ the bike shop owner said to my amazement.  The bicycle was new.

           ‘Not today,’ I said.  ‘Maybe another.’

I rode off home and noticed that the parents of the girl whose party my daughter had been helping to organise had managed to lock themselves into a small building, which we called the Lodge at my old school in Richmond.  The lodge consists of two tiny rooms, one on either side of a tessellated corridor that run between two ornate cast iron gates.  The first leads onto the street, the other into the garden of the school.  In one of these small rooms, each the size of a large bathroom, I learned Latin in my final years of school.

The parents of the girl who was about to celebrate her birthday were wealthy.  They would spare no expense for their daughter’s party.  I worried about the venue and was alarmed to hear when they finally escaped from the lodge that their daughter wanted to have the party in the country.  We would need to drive for hours to get there and back.

My husband was unhappy about it too, but he could not object.  He had no say in the matter.

Then my husband and I were driving in our car in the country, in the town of Scarborough, on holidays.  We had a carload of children, our own and others, including another set of parents.  We had been driving for hours when my husband pulled into the carport of a house in Scarborough, which looked unoccupied.  At least it was clear at that moment that the owners were away.

           ‘You can’t park here,’ I said to my husband.  ‘It’s not our place.’  He shook off my concerns and went inside.  We proceeded to unpack.  I put on a full load of washing into the washing machine and another load of socks and smalls in a drawer in the bedroom that could also be used as a washing machine.  The group of us then walked through the back yard down some steps and onto the beach.  The house overlooked the sea.

I looked back towards the house before we reached the beach and realised that the owners of this house had returned.  They could not pull into their own carport.  Our car was in the way.  They would be incensed.  They were.

Not one of our group wanted to step forward but I told my husband we must and he and I went up to greet the owners and to apologise.

My husband was jovial and somewhat off hand.  ‘We thought the place was vacant.  We meant no harm’.

I was apologetic.  The male owner was a builder of sorts.  He carried on his shoulder a large bag of tools.  My husband tried to make small talk by admiring these tools, and the owner was half taken in, but only briefly.  He wanted us gone.  The owners, too, were preparing for a party, a large gathering of mainly older women for some sort of bingo night.

We went back inside and gathered our things together, including the load from the washing machine.  The man’s wife looked on unimpressed and their two children, both toddlers, played around us nonplussed.  We loaded up the car and told our lot to get inside when I remembered I had forgotten to take out the drawer full of the extra washing.

I had to go back inside.  I collected my clothes as the owners looked on disgusted.  I told them one of the cupboard drawers could serve as a washing machine.  Clearly it was not something they would do.

By now their guests had arrived and they were milling around and spilling outside beside a large outdoor table.  I used this table in order to gather together my still wet washing.  I was looking for a bag or some form of material in which I might collect together these small items, socks, bras and knickers.  I felt mortified as I bundled together my family’s wash at the table.

One of the guests, an older woman spoke to me kindly enough.  She did not realise I was an interloper.  I could see the owners scowling at me from the kitchen window.  And so my dream ended to the ringing of the alarm.

On a pedestal in the shade of the ash tree at my childhood home, a large wooden bowl has just been filled with pipe tobacco. An old uncle happens by. Delighted, he fills his pipe, lights it, and draws on it with great contentment. Then he departs, disappearing into the atmosphere, which seems to be made more of memory than it is of air. I find a pipe in my hands, the one I keep on my desk that belonged to my father’s brother before he was killed in the second world war. But when I go to fill it, the wooden bowl on the pedestal contains damp, mostly decayed ash leaves. And so I clear the bowl with my hands. Soon thereafter, it’s filled with tobacco again, how or by whom, I don’t know. I’m joined then by a friend I haven’t seen since my father’s funeral in 1995. He sees my pipe and says my uncle’s name. I fill it, light it in his presence, and inhale. “Ghost notes,” is my reply.

it's 5 pm & I'm sitting at a cocktail table at a train station. I walk to the counter.  the clerk has bleachd-blond hair but the stubble on his chin is dark.  I ask him if the 5:45 westbound is on time.  he says it's ahead of schedule. so ahead of schedule that there no longer is time for my complimentary mini-massage. as I walk back to my table I see my cousin Regina in front of a mirror.  she's removing makeup & crying.  when I return to the table I spread out newspaper clippings my mother sent me.  hidden in the clippings is a twenty dollar bill.

the sound of a real train wakes me.

Last night I dreamed it was snowing again thick blankets of it and a woman was floating around my house in a orange caftan an intruder and I dreamed I jumped out of bed to wash my hands and the soap turned into chocolate chip cookie dough and I felt dirty.

Last night oh god I dreamed I was Henry watching from the outside a very very exclusive and expensive boys' school. All the boys were dressed in white satin in the manner of the 18th century courts and they sat in a row of white chairs holding white violins with the strings outward (Henry never play violin as far as I know but there is a bass violin in one of his paintings) and the boys' left hands were draped casually over the top of the violins' scrolls and they slouched in their finery and laughed among themselves and teased one another in the manner of the wealthy and spoilt. When their teacher sounded a tuning fork several of the boys' heads came right off and went zooming around the room and the rest of the students got quiet. I was writing everything down as Henry. Alone and watching trying not to get caught.

I had a scary dream last night that I was walking across a kind of ice field while talking to my mom on the phone. Then I could feel and hear the ice begin to crack and shift, and I got sucked down into the swirling, freezing water underneath. I was still holding the phone, but I was stunned, or the wind knocked out of me, and I couldn't speak to tell her what was happening. I lost my grip on the phone, and the current pulled me farther and farther away from it. I was less upset about the possibility of drowning than about losing my phone--that is, having no way to reach her.

Last night I dreamed of blankets of snow falling thick and white and silent and other little weirdnesses trying to get in trying to make their way into my brain. Our room is high up and I refuse to shut the curtains because I love the sound of the city and so and so I freeze. Yesterday three of the four terminals at O'Hare lost power completely and no one knows why.

I dreamed of a series of industrial freezers, the size of shipping containers, in which there were racks of seafood, scallops, prawns, crayfish and salmon.  I was free to select from an assortment of these treats for the barbeque.

I had started to cook the scallops, fast over a high hot flame when I realised that others might prefer a whole fish – a whole fish, which I might bake on top of the hot plate one side at a time.

My mother had died not long before I had started cooking and someone came to me and offered a piece of her for the BBQ.  I was revolted by the thought, but no, this person insisted, it is not unconventional to prepare a part of the dead person for consumption.  She arrived soon after with what looked like a trussed fish but was actually my mother’s arm.

I wince even now as I remember the sensation and the thought of not only cooking but eating my mother.  I could not do it.

acrobat/green bra/lacerated tongue


Dream I am a little girl and I’m a gymnast/ acrobat. My father is my trainer or we have a father/daughter act. The father in the dream is not like my actual father, nor is the mother like my actual mother. I am being prepared for some kind of competition. Also I think my mother is a dentist. She is referring people to an oral surgeon. I think the oral surgeon is also my dream father. She brings him a beer, and he has a fit, because it’s the kind from a can and not from a bottle. So she refers a patient to another oral surgeon. For some reason I am talking to that surgeon. The patient has had a hard time eating food and enjoying it. I said, is it because he bit his tongue and he has lacerations? And the surgeon says, yes, exactly, how do you know? And I say, oh, because I have experienced that, and I show him my lacerated tongue. Showtime is approaching and I need a costume. I guess I am old enough to need a bra because I am trying on bras. One was emerald green satin with ribbons… but I need a whole ensemble… and there is a bit of an issue because I invert, so I need something that will not be too revealing when I do so… I suggest black lace shorts…. I must have figured out something because showtime comes… it’s in a playground…. I was so worried about the routine, we’d gone over it so many times… and I think I accomplish it but to be honest I had a very troubled sleep last night and I am not really sure, my jaw so clenched, and up between 3:30 and 4:30, drugs notwithstanding.

Flood

 

I visit some place deep in rural Japan and decide to live there… Alli Warren too is there… I move from my apartment here in Brookyn to  there because one day  I take a walk in that village and there is snow but there are also jonquils… and in a tree.. something I think is first a snake and then a tiger but ir turns out to be som kind of giant SKINK

but with markings like a tiger or spotted horse… it is all so unbelievably magical, the beauty of the nature around me, that I feel I have to live there

anyway… it seems that I and Alli have married farmers… we have married these simple and crude farmer guys of the countryside  I have sold my apartment and moved into this other apartment.  I have gone through my clothes and moved from Tokyo or New York or wherever I was.   many of the clothes I have to sell and get rid of because they no longer fit me, I’ve become so thin and anyway I don’t need them in the coutryside

and… I go back to my classrooms in Tokyo or New York or wherever I teach… I have these huge classes there… and I tell them I am moving to the countryside… I talk to Nancy about it she says yeah I almost moved there at one point….

I say it is so beautiful there… and I have come to the place in my life where I need a change

and I hitch a ride back to the country side with some people I don’t know… and it’s weird… I ask if we’re going north… but I can feel we are driving south… and they say yes… but it must have been another road, one I don’t recognize, because we go through a kind of neon Chinatown las vegas kind of place  and I say, oh this isn’t right… and somehow I get back to the village… where there is a little pub… something about a little pub… anyway I am in this new apartment… I guess with my farmer husband?  at parts of the ream I am single other times not… anyway… I notice that when I look out the window… which is oddly shaped… that I see these sort of snowy muddy dots… not the sky… and I hear a rushing sound… and it seems that there is a giant flood… pulling me along… rushing… and I notice… that I am not in my apartment any longer but in a boat…. and I am there with my husband… and I we have never had sex before but we have sex for the first time, I guess because I am so grateful to him for saving my life.... he must have carried me up from the apartment to the boat...

and also it seems we have two kids

and Alli in a parallel situation has two kids, or maybe three… and it turns out we are in this flood, this flood, see, and  when we are saved we are in someplace urban.  It is a combination of NY and SF… but the thing is that now we have these bumpkin husbands and all these children to support… there are these giant documents on brown cardboard paper bound with huge magenta staples… listing all of our duties as rural wives… and there are scenes of me with I guess my mother or grandmother in laws going over the rules… there are piles of vegetables in plastic colanders… traditional ways to prepare things… and they are teaching me

and there are manuals about how to behave… rules… like, even though in extreme poverty do not steal the soap from public restrooms (I remember thinking about the varieties of scented soaps available here in the urban US)… OK so but then I realize that I had fallen asleep in the apartment and not the boat, and my bumpkin husband had saved me… I weep and weep

For some reason I am also supposed to start graduate school  and I am preparing to do that…Maybe Alli too.  We are town.. now we are out of the countryside and about to go to school, what do we do with the husbands?  the children?  The feelings are riotously mixed.   I am so grateful at having been saved.  But I want to be free. There is a huge public hearing in a kind of basement space.  All the local citizens are brought in…I guess this is back in the countryside.. and the huge books with magenta staples are brought in…

and it was about at this time I became fully aware that this dilemma was not a real one but only one I was so overwhelmingly dreaming.

I was offered a choice between two bright-red plastic harmonicas. I said I’d start with the small one, which was about eight inches long. The other measured about two feet. I started to play, and soon my coat grew tails as I smacked my right foot on the sidewalk, noticing the flecks of star-like grit as I did so and almost slipping into the gutter. A crowd gathered. I had no idea what I was playing or where it would lead, but suddenly finding myself in need of a spectacular high note, I had to use the ringing in my right ear — the ringing in my left being an octave lower — and when the people heard it — I could feel its forceful exit as of a great wind rushing through my head — they broke into applause.

dream: "escape"

dream: "escape"

 

I was in "Paris" although it didn't look like Paris
I had to take a train
to get to the cineplex
which was one of the only things
to do there
so it really wasn't Paris
and it was actually a kind of
exploratorium
or museum of the moving image
and there was one "exhibit"
that would put you in the movie
in some marvelous computer-generated way
and I couldn't at first see what the results were
but I did it again and then I could
there were war films, and science fiction,
and fantasy
and art movies and porn, and walking
in golden gate park
or some park that looked like it
but the amazing thing about this
technology was that the resulting film moved
in several "strips" from right to left
and also vertically
SIMULTANEOUSLY
and sometimes it would replace all of
a person or object with me
and sometimes just a part
so sometimes I'd be
flying through the air
and sometimes it would be another woman's
breast in place of my breast

and at one point I was back here in NY and
Bradley showed the film
and now suddenly I remember Gary was there too
I guess we were still together? but in the film
I had had an "affair" that was not just computer-
generated but real? I don't know it was one of those
dreams that kept repeating elements
I think.

I think also there was another exhibit of a similarly
non linear and disorienting film
although I can't remember how it worked exactly
it was a little like those "choose your narrative" stories,
I guess video games are like that but I don't know
since I've never played a video game.

the exhibit/movie was in a circular room and there were white wires with buttons
and I would push buttons to make another scene happen in the movie
or was it in experience? I don't remember if I was in this movie or not
maybe I was? maybe this was the one with the "affair"? there maybe was talk
of this movie having been "directed by one of two famous directors: one
was Cassavettes but I can't remember the other one.

but it is interesting especially because I had just been talking
in real life yesterday to my Thai student Nham, who is a filmmaker,
and super-cool, about how movies maybe started out trying to represent
our perceptions and have ended up reorganizing them. I realize
this is not a very sophisticated observation

but a dream is kind of a movie, right? and that there was a movie inside
the dream, and then that the movie was later "shown" to an audience,
to me extremely intricate.