cumulus

i had spent a couple days
thinking
was the sunset more beautiful
in arizona
where it has an orange brilliance
or in the high desert of texas
where it has a beautiful rosy glow
to match the pink mountains

but, in the dream
i was in between
and it wasn't sunset
the sky was blue
with clouds
that somehow swept and towered all at once
and i was in a room
walls foot thick plaster
(or stucco or adobe)-- i really couldn't say
and there were bullet holes
going clear through the wall
i could look through them
like they were peep holes

it reminded me of the alamo
not like it is now
it's a really nice attraction now
but, when i was a kid
it was like
well, here's the alamo
just an old building on the street
and it seemed so small
and there were bullet holes in the wall
and it was hard to remember that a great battle
davie crockett and jim bowie dead

remember the alamo

they had rallied at the battle of san jacinto
san jacinto monument so large and overpowering
for a small child
to stand at the top
hair whipping in the wind
santa anna captured there

jars and markers

i dreamed
my brother gave me songs
in mason jars
open the lid and listen
and i had a small bottle around my neck
with a beautiful song
no one could understand the words
and there was more
but i can't remember

and there was a girl
who colored her hair
with colored markers
it was wild
but then they ran together
and she didn't like that much
but her hair looked kinda blue
i don't know if i knew her

and there were conversations
and there was sex
regular and straight-forward

i wish i could remember more

pool, tub, blanket

the first part was kinda sketchy
or rather
my memory of it is, sketchy, that is
i was giving gifts of clothes and jewelry
to my top five performers
current, under-rated, and, mostly, film
some were grateful
some were leery
one girl was very leery
but then
i was a yenta
and i introduced her to
someone perfect for her
and she forgot all about the gift

next
i was in a pool
i was doing something
some sort of underwater
near out of body experience
like when i did flips over and over when i was a kid
only different than that, but with thrashing
and then i surfaced and climbed the ladder, blissed out
but as i walked around the pool
i saw my friend
floating
unconscious
or drowned
and i called her jenny
she looked like mia kirshner
but more like she looked in exotica
and she was kind of jack-knifed, her ass the only part above water
and i pulled her out
milky-eyed
i pressed the water from her lungs
and then i pressed my mouth to hers, and blew breath into her
she awoke, aroused
and low
there was writhing and kissing and altered visions

then
you had dozens of young girls
beautiful nubile adoring
following you
your every move
worshipping you, almost
and i thought:
well of course
and i thought:
i hope it makes him feel powerful, godlike
strokes his ego
because that's important
i want him to have that
and i turned and started to go
and then i saw you
wrapped in two blankets
sitting in a tub of water

well, i was in a pool

i was in a pool
and i came up under one of those
float raft lounge thingies
there was a woman on it
i don't know who she was
i don't even think she was anybody
she was more like a symbol
i was trying to lift the raft up enough to get a breath
and she didn't want me to
it made me viscerally remember something i had forgotten
when my step-mother held me under water at the pool
not long enough to actually hurt me
just long enough for me to need to get free to breathe
and i jumped out of the pool
and i think what i did was scream
but i'm not sure
because i sort of disappeared for a minute
but when i came out of it
there was hair
everywhere
like my insides had been filled up with wet hair
it stuck to the tiled walls
making cryptic patterns
maybe spelling out something important

then
i was a pregnant teenaged trucker
and i don't know all the details
but i know i hadn't been taking my health all that seriously
not like doing anything stupid
but just not taking it easy at all
pretty much doing everything normally
and i was practicing some game
which involved blowing into something
using lung power
when suddenly
no breath would come out
not anymore
and i sunk down beside my rig
and i called my people
i said:
i know i act like i don't need anybody
and i'm sorry if that comes across as rude
i don't mean it that way
it's just the way i have to wind myself up
to keep myself going
and i'm really bad at asking for help
but, i do, i really need you

i had a transformation dream

a little girl
read a magic book
and as she said the magic words
she was transformed
into
a bull
like ferdinand out in the field eating grass
a donkey
like pinocchio on the island of lost boys
she tried to become human again
and she fought and swirled
into
a twister
trying to become
a little girl
once again
sometimes she wasn't aware
sometimes it hurt
and it went on quite a while
but when she was still again
when the dust had settled
she was a woman
but she had a monkey tail

to follow a drop of rain

there was a kitchen
large, with very high ceiling
architecture circa 1900 maybe
there was a big country table
huge windows
everything one might hope for in a kitchen
and we were papering the walls
using strips of paper
maybe 5 inches wide
there was a pattern
but i can't tell you precicely what is was
the color was a dark dark ultramarine blue
verging on a midnight inky indigo
and a ruddy russet-y red
in some places the paper was going right up
each piece against the other
in other sections
it was spaced
in some sections
there wasn't going to be any paper at all
it was all very deconstructed
but i don't really know what to make of that
my inclination in real life
would be to just paint it
whatever pattern would be way easier to paint
than to try to figure out how to hang wallpaper straight
much less some deconstructed pattern thing
it was really beautiful so far though
there was something about it
it looked like
well it was hard to tell if it was being put on
or stripped off
and there was raw ship lap board showing
but the color wasn't faded
it was intense

then
i was in a room
that looked a lot like a studio of a family friend
and there was a radio program
that i was listening to
had listened to
and was being discussed
all sort of simultaniously
in the dream
it was about following a raindrop
from where it landed
in a jack in the box parking lot
through all the rivers and aquifers and etc
on it's journey
and i'm pretty sure it ended up in oklahoma
but i have no idea why
and when i came out of this
tri-phasic trance
i had:
3 cerulean blue paintings
just little ones
that were a series: a river runs through it
and i had given an award
some really important impressive award
that i hadn't actually known i had authority to grant
to the radio program about following the raindrop
i was slightly startled
and disoriented
like i hadn't actually been in the room
but someplace else
and i wasn't sure
if i had painted the paintings
or what they meant
but the color was beautiful

when i woke up i was dreaming about buying lingerie-- for me-- curiouser and curiouser

i dreamed several things
which seemed, in the dream, somehow
to be related to one another

there was a yellow car
a pale creamy yellow
it was old, but well maintained
not a sports car, nothing fancy
but more like a late 70s pontiac lemans
than an 80s oldsmobile cutlass
and there was some sort of dragnet
closing in on
well, i thought it was on my man
and i was waiting for some sort of sign
but then, suddenly
they tagged the car
and i had to abandon it and go
i kept running over in my head
whether i had used poor planning or poor judgement
or just plain procrastinated too long
but i decided that i really had done the best i could
with the information i had, when i had it
it just sucked about the car, whatever

then
i was standing in a building
a tall building
with someone who, in my dream, was my brother
we were trying to look out the window
this whole section of wall was window
but it was roped off
maybe the floor wasn't safe to walk on
that's what they wanted us to think, anyway
i think it was being remodeled
there was that plastic stuff covering the window wall
and my brother was trying to see something
something we had seen before
something that meant something important
but i'm not sure exactly why it was important
it was a building
maybe a hotel
maybe an apartment building
and i'm not sure if the name had changed
from all those years ago
but now the name seemed to be: marseilles
or possibly marseillaise

then
i was watching a fashion show
in a department store
in the lingerie department
and the model, who wasn't all that thin
had on these lace panties
that were like a wide band around the hips
without much other fabric
they were like the boyshorts version of a g-string
if you know much about women's undergarments
and i wanted them
but i thought i wasn't up to them
and i turned to look at a full coverage kimono
and a woman turned to me
maybe it was the designer, maybe just a senior sales staffer
anyway, someone with authority of opinion
she said to me: no you make a mistake there
that wouldn't do you justice at all
too much fabric will only make you seem larger
you really need to have a little fun with it

roof, windows, lampshade and apples the size of a bowling ball, well almost

i dreamed
about a house
my mother bought
when she was trying to get custody
or
more accurately, perhaps
i dreamed of my cousin
she was a child again, i was
not
i was visiting her in her room
which, in the dream, was different
was a room that didn't really exist
but, in the dream, we both knew
it had been my room

and she said:
what i love most
about this room
is that it smells of
you
this touched me

there were smallish windows wrapping
around the walls, set high
above the line of sight
and the room used
to be a bathroom
her friends
pouring in the windows
startled
i looked up
ceiling gone
like i always thought
it should be
the roof
seemed
to breathe
aspirating against the stars

i escaped to the living room
a lamp with a bright yellow shade
my gaze couldn't evade
thought i tried
and on the shelves
in front of books
in front of stuff
in front of ..................... whatever
apples
in rows
neatly
some the size of a large fiji
some approaching ................. surreal
some approaching .........................
........................... mythic .......
..........................................

and my aunt
who didn't look
like my aunt
any of them
thin
haggard
harpy
hating

to her i said:
you know
my mother put a forty year roof
not that long ago
not realizing that
in this case
not that long ago
would mean
the time it takes
from birth til high school graduation
but still
it should be under warranty

she answered me:
get the hell out of here

bits and pieces

i have had some really interesting dreams
but they haven't stuck
i am not really happy about that
because they seem like they might have
had something interesting to tell me
but
what're ya gonna do
but
i just now remembered part of last night's dream
so i'll tell you what i can remember

i was at a movie theater
i had a baby with me
in one of those basket-like baby carriers
the kind you can set down
they are kinda awkward to carry
but that's all i ever saw people using
anyway, i was carrying the baby in one of those

i'm talking to the baby
i buy a small coke
there are counters set up
all over the place
and i get distracted by someone
who i guess is trying to sell be something
a book of coupons or tickets or something
i can't quite remember
the booth he's in
reminds me of those gypsy fortune teller machines
that used to be all over when i was a kid
but now you never see them
like the one in "big" you know the ones i mean

and i'm trying to find my theater number
and the whole place looks like a sports arena
or something, large and round, with doors going in
and i've had dreams about this sports place, thing, whatever
i know i've dreamed about it before
but i can't remember those dreams
and i don't know why i'm taking the baby to the movies
this kid is way too young for the movies

and there's more
more i can't remember
there's another person trying to sell me something
and my artful deflect
because i'm trying to get to the movie
and maybe there's a phone call
i vaguely remember a phone call
maybe to the babydaddy
which might be important, but i just can't remember

next thing i remember
i have somehow passed my number
and am irritated that i have to back-track
how could i have missed it the first time
but
there was nothing wrong with the baby
there was nothing wrong with me
nothing bad happened
this is like a big improvement over past baby dreams
i mean
i would have preferred to be interacting with the kid more
instead of mostly schlepping it around
and
i mean
it still doesn't make much sense
sports-stadium-movie-theater-with-predatory-vendors, whatever
me and spawn were tight

that dream i mentioned from before: look out the window, see the big picture, smell the earth

that dream i had
the one before i got this little cold-type-thing
it was very vivid
and it had a smell
my dreams don't usually have smells
it's very rare
so, right or wrong, i tend to think
it's supposed to give the dream emphasis
it has some message, importance

in this dream
i was living in sort of a modified dome
it kinda reminded me of these really pretty-big shelters
that they had at the big woodsy park a little ways out of town
bear creek, it was called
the park where my brownie troupe went for potlatch (or whatever)
the park where my friend C had her wedding reception picnic
the park had shelters the whole wedding reception used one
the brownie potlatch used three, i think

the dome reminded me of
these big concrete shelters
not like a geodesic dome
and it was earth sheltered
and somehow multi-leveled

i had a painting
i was on the highest level
and i reached out the window
and hung the painting on the side of a building
then i went down to the lower level
the window stretched across the entire wall
like a movie screen
above my head now that i was lower down

and the smell
the smell was earth
good clean earth smell

and i looked up
up and out the window
the painting was on the side of the building
and the building seemed somehow to be a mountain
or part of the mountain
or maybe in front of the mountain
it seemed like a skyscraper maybe
i'm not too clear on that
because the painting
which had been pretty good sized
was now enormous
like a giant vertical billboard
the perspective had shifted
and from my new vantage point
i could see the big picture
or something like that

i don't know if that was metaphor
or if it meant something specific
i want to say that you were standing there with me
but i didn't write that down, so i'm not positive

the important things
were:
the window
the perspective
the smell of earth

what do you think the smell of earth means?

stuff i can remember from my dreams

i have had some weird images in my dreams
when i woke up this morning
i felt like my fever had broken
although i hadn't really thought i had one

my hair was thin
like it had fallen out in clumps
i covered it with a veil
i covered the veil with dried fruits
there was something somewhat religious about it
or maybe it was holy, i'm not sure

i've had several where i was playing, or developing
computer games
and some where that mixed with the dream
some avatar pre-view inspired mash-up
"devil's lily pods"

i was working in san antonio
at an outdoor event
putting makeup on people
i left the table to go get sunblock so i wouldn't burn
it kept alternating between blinding sun
and rain rain rain

in another i was being audited by a company
for which i no longer worked, but they didn't seem to realize
and the the auditor really liked me
it was affecting her work and making me uncomfortable
i was living at my mother's house
but it wasn't much like her house actually looks
i went into the bathroom
there were shells stuck to the walls
they were all white like plaster
there was some netting trailing off the walls as well


it's all been less than coherent
though some of it has been fun
devil's lily pods involves lots of swinging through the air
there's a dream that i had before i got sick
that i wrote in my journal, but haven't gotten here yet
and i'll try to do that soon

this morning i thought you snagged me
just for a minute there
like being pulled out of body
temporarily
it might have just been a wishful quaking
if i'm lucky
maybe i'll dream of you tonight

strange dreams, don't know what they mean

last night i had a very strange dream cycle
now this may just be because i have a cold
i think it's a cold, might be allergy, but
i definitely do not have swine flu
i'm just not that sick
but my brain works differently when it's in repair mode
so the dreams were weird

the first of two parts that i remember
i was living in this house with other people
in the dream my mom owned it
one of the girls i lived with is a girl
who used to work for me
she was from the country
and she would use this phrase: i'm grain fed
the way i would use: i'm butch
i.e. to mean: i'm tough, i can handle what you throw at me, i can lift heavy objects
and i wasn't much like me i was young and pretty
and i had a lover who looked like apollo from battlestar gallactica
who i don't find attractive in real life, but in the dream, yes
and he wanted to take me away somewhere
and the house kept flooding, every day
which might come from a conversation that i had with my mom about venice
and i felt bad to be leaving grain-fed-girl to deal with the house
but i thought, if i can get rent from the people who live there
i can afford a small place of my own
i went into town
it was a western town
and i rented rooms above a shop for $200. a month
the bathroom was down the hall

then i was driving to a small town
i want to say it was in the midwest, but i'm not positive
it was a farming community, i know that
and i was going for some kind of festival
and the mayor was confused about basic details
and some people were telling me about the festival
and they said: the electricity will go out at 1pm
why is that, i asked them
well, it's all to do with the 13s
13th day of 13th month at 13:13 (that's 1:13)
yeah, i get the military time, i've had digital watches
well, the electricity goes out, that's all
and it makes things difficult for the festival

and then i was driving down the street again
i stopped at a light
and the rigid metal parts of my car went soft
like warm caramel
and when i started through the light
i left pieces of my car behind
it still drove fine, but i was concerned
i stopped and parked
and as i stepped away from the car
i had in my hands what i guess was the engine
but it was a silver box about 11"x17" with two small belts
one was broken and one seemed loose
otherwise it seemed functional but didn't look like a car engine

i needed to look under the hood
i needed to get back into the car to release it
but i couldn't find the key
so i went into an open sided barn
maybe just a covered horse area
opened my case and dug through it
there were many many necklaces
there were many many keys
there were these huge carved mother of pearl koi earrings
they were amazingly beautiful
but i couldn't find the key

these dreams are getting multi media

footage from a reality show, a sort of competition
done, i believe, at some university
teams were building constructions of food
it wasn't exactly cooking, they were told what
foodstuffs to use, it was focused on one team
they were almost done with the construction
beautiful tomato slices precariously balanced on top
and then some sugary item was thrown at them
that would ruin their building, it's taste anyway
when this one guy on the team pulls out a paint brush
and starts painting windows or something that wouldn't
significantly change the taste, saving the day
they play an inset screen of him painting the mane
of a horse on a fountain sculped cake
he is the only person to ever get .999 in the artistic category

then the hero is knocking on a door
other: how did you find me here?
door opens enough to see it is a small room with a massage table and a toilet and the other is wearing only a towel
hero: i came by and they told me you were getting a message and to come back in two hours.
hero goes in and sits down on the toilet, the other sits on the table
other: it was presumptuous of you to come here.
hero: maybe, but we have a history and i need you to tell them i'm okay to go back into the field.
other: you don't seem okay to me at all.
hero: i've just come from some akward situations and i'm a little shaken, but i assure you, in the field that will never be a problem.
other: i'm sorry, there is a reason that they rotate people out of battle situations, they stay in too long, they get
hero: NO you don't understand. i need to go back.
other: ...just like you are right now. sorry.

documentary about conjoined twins
there is commentary but it's of the blah blah blah variety
it's very technical and the speaker is off camera
the visual is close up footage of the surgery
to separate the twins
they were joined fully somewhere-- waist, hip, lower chest
but the closeups kept focusing on the right hand of the larger twin
his hand was embedded in the side of his twin
as though, in utero, developmentally protectively holding

our hero walks through the lanscape
it reminds me of that canyon in california
the one they used for all those westerns
or at least i have the same sense of
"wait, i've been here before"
that i got the first time i drove through it
but our hero's landscape is dry, barren but populated
there's something sort of postman or mad max-ish about the world
that you just can't put your finger on
and why is he travelling on foot
he walks up to a building
there is a pattern on the ground in front of the building
which continues onto the porch
and up to the front of the building
it's a simple structure, like a lodge or a large log cabin
but it is visible from a great distance due to the patterning
which is simple and geometric and achieved with concrete
and clay, and wood-- things readily available
he walks up to the door
on the door is a phrase:

and tonight i shall cook on what i call a real stove
for i am a member

he opens the door
he disappears inside

news footage
somewhere in asia
a child was found
he had wandered off alone
had been at an amusement park
had been knocked unconscious somehow
his hand had fallen into a snowdrift
several of his fingers had been badly frostbitten

i was following our hero now
i was seeing all these things through my own eyes
the lodges were safehouses
the members could communicate with each other
there were always amenities, but they were different
whatever was available in a given area
the members would have it at the lodge house
the colors were different, but the pattern was the same
i didn't know if the color had any significance, or if
it was just based on materials available locally
i saw a man, spoke with him
the tips of his fingers were a lighter color than
the rest of his hand
sitting at a long table
inside one of the lodges
i spoke with an angry asian woman who wanted redress
her child's hand had been damaged
there was some kind of juice in a pitcher on the table
some kind of food was available to all who waited
apparently the lodges served as field courts
my attention was distracted
i was trying to listen to the hero
he had gone into a side room
with someone in a uniform
they had a heated discussion
of which
i couldn't hear
a word

still the dream escapes me but i thought of you when i bought the red orange cardigan-- first clothing purchase of the year

i can't remember my dreams from last night
i know there was something really interesting
that i really wanted to share
but
it all slipped just out of reach
i can feel it, just there
there's a good chance something may trigger it
so
maybe it's not gone completely
so
why am i writing this
i've no dream to recount tale
really
just because i miss you
and i wonder what your days are like
and i wonder
other things
and i just want to talk to you
and i guess
i could make up a dream
but i haven't done that yet
and i'm not going to start now
later today
i will either have remembered the dream
or
maybe i'll have some story to tell

and it's back to the bronx for game 6

man
that was a little bit of a nail biter

everything is more than one thing, apparently

my dreams the last two days have been
kind of a weird mash of stuff

in one someone had given me a truck
a really big red truck
not new
not like an old classic
just a whaddayacallit, late model
i was thinking about how great it was
that they'd given me this truck, even though it was
really too big for me to be comfortable driving
in the dark night, in a semi-deserted parking lot
so i was like kind of happy reverie and alert wary
all at the same time
getting out my keys

in another
i was working, but i guess i was working on my own thing
and there was really a need for deployment
so at some point the other person was like:
can you actually do something useful
so i start to restock
but first i need to clean
and then the boss comes by and tells me i'm not
doing it all fast enough
then i take a break, and i'm talking to this girl
and then her break is over
and one of the guys looks over and taps his watch
and i'm like holy-jebus-WTF i've got three more minutes
then i get off work and i go to try to iron out a problem
i have with this woman who has a shop
she thinks i'm trying to run some scam on her, but i'm not
she is just confused
and finally, to get her to understand how i'm NOT scamming her
i actually have to sort of misrepresent
because she just can't understand the situation
it was really weird

if these are the NEW stress dreams i'm going to get
i'm not liking em

the yankees are depressing me

F^CK F^CK F^CK

F^CK F^CK F^CK



ALRIGHT JAYSON WERTH (ok it's spelled right now)



god dammit NOW swisher's bat gets hot????!!!!



well, if it hits the camera, that's a homer

this is a dream not a movie pitch

there were parts
where it seemed like the main character was me
like an alternate universe version of me
i was in my twenties
i had different problems, issues
but the upshot was that i couldn't
find a place that felt like home

i lived with my father, well, sort of
a mad men version of my father
in a studio apartment that was almost completely
filled with his desk and easel
and i was continually doing things to service his needs

i lived with my step father, well, sort of
a less internally inconsistent version
one who didn't take classes at the esoteric philosophy center
one who wasn't also a rabid NRA member
who woke up at night with nightmares from the nam
who i was alway sure in the back of my head
would half wake be confused about where he was and kill us all
not that guy
the guy who watched television
the guy who was supposed to be from los angeles, but sounded
like he was from arkansas, ag major from chico state, part of him
and the apartment was small, but it had good bones
and i was so bored that i just kept moving the furniture around
moving the ficus from beside the tv to between the windows
watching the patterns of light and shadow in the room change

then i'm not sure where i was
there was a movie on the tv
and the early bits i'm not sure i knew were on the tv
but later i stopped paying attention
but then people kept asking me:
did you see that? did you see the scene with x,y,z?

the early part of the movie there was a girl
extremely similar to the one i was in the dream
except that she would live in other people's homes
she'd break in to their apartments while they were out of town
or go from one to another to match work schedules
but people started to realize she was doing it
they would leave her threatening notes, first
then they would get fancy locks and alarm systems
she didn't steal anything, well, maybe from the refrigerator
but she was violating their space, egregiously
i don't know if it was clear in the movie why
she was homeless
but was there more to that story?
in the film she seemed to be kind of a grifter
but not like a "the gifters" grifter, more like
a "housesitter" grifter

and there is a scene where she takes this woman
this woman who is older and more sophisticated
she takes her "back to her place"
and there's a chain on the door and people start screaming
how she better leave and they are calling the police
and she and the woman kiss

and i stopped watching it
i don't know
there was something very douglas sirk about it
i figured it would end badly for the anti-heroine
and i just had other things to do

but then the person who was my brother in the dream
who i guess i was living with now
said: wow, did you see the love scene did you see the ending
and i hadn't, so i found those scenes and i watched them

the love scene isn't that one outside the locked house
the older woman apparently misunderstood the significance
didn't realize girl was homeless and thought, i'm not sure what
she went away and didn't see the main character anymore
some amount of time passes in which they are both
a la sirk miserable but suffering nobly
and they see each other again at a party
and when i say older, i should maybe qualify, not old
but maybe thirteen years older than the girl, which is not anymore
than my father was than his third wife, so not biggie, right
and the scene was just mesmerizing
i'm not sure i could write dialog to do it justice
it was almost more about the color and the framing
but something about how
whatever it was that had been keeping them apart
she didn't care couldn't care because it was only with her
that she had any real chance for her soul to know peace
but like with frank langella eyes
high melodrama but done so well that you let it take you there

and in the end the older woman, it turns out, has been
living with the widower of her dead sister
because this is the 50s and what else was she supposed to do
he begs her not to go he loves her he needs her
he already lost her sister and she's all he has left
and he looks at her in a way that makes it clear that she sleeps with him
that it started with this need to comfort each other after her sister's
tragic death years ago and they've been using each other ever since
and she looks at him and says:
you had to know
that our arrangement couldn't last forever
and she turns and walks away
he reaches out a hand but it touches nothing

and then the camera pans away
and focuses on this old wooden bench
which is in the lower right of the shot, kind of a down shot
the bench has writing carved into it, it says:

REYNARD PARISH
SURFACED PLAYGROUND

which might be the name of the movie, surfaced playground

and i was thinking surfaced was like cement but
that's actually what they call that rubber stuff
that they use for kid's play areas now
so they can't hurt themselves when they fall

and then i'm walking into a mall or something
starting a new job
in the crowd i pass this guy
he is good looking and he has these beautiful dreds
and i notice all that, but i'm trying to read his t-shirt
which is gray on gray and i think it might say:
REYNARD PARISH
SURFACED PLAYGROUND
but it doesn't, it says something about a sports dept. at some school
but i looked at him too long
and one of the guys with him walks up and around me
looking at me and chuckling at me
and i'm like: dude, i was reading his shirt, that's all
and he's like: uh huh, sure
and he's in front of me now, but he's going the same way i need to go
so it seems like i'm following him
and i'm going to the bathroom before work
so i'm going into the movie theater
climbing three flights of stairs
and everything is this pattern in red and blue
florescent red and blue and then red and blue foils
in this explosive firework design

and as i'm climbing i think
this cannot possibly be the nearest bathroom

first let me say something, and then on to last night's dream

i didn't comment on game 2
but then i feel like i've set it up
to comment on each game, so i feel weird
so i will just say:
i appreciate the excellent pitching
much better when it's my team doing it
and A-Rod is still hitless
i never would have believed that

now, on to the dream

i was entered in some sort of competition
which i didn't really mean to be in
it was a competition to make pizza's
not like the most pizza's, but rather
like a quality thing
now, i have topped pizzas before
but i've never made crust
i wasn't too concerned about it because i didn't care
i hadn't even meant to enter, afterall, but then
people kept coming up to me and telling me
what big fans they were and how they had always
wanted to see me make pizza
and people i respected were looking at this to see
if they wanted me to work with them
so i started to freak a bit
but this really beautiful girl handed me a piece of paper
with a basic recipe for crust on it, like mimeographed
and i'm like: ok, i'm fine now, i just have to know the basic
chemistry of the gluten or whatever
and there were tables with jars of olive oil
that's how we chose our workstation, by the type of olive oil
and the beautiful girl, who i guess i knew, said:
come work with me there are two bottles here of _________
i can't remember the name, but it was the type i wanted
some very aromatic very green really beautiful olive oil
yes i'm an olive oil geek, there, it's out
but the station wasn't really big enough for two, and so
it was kinda disorganized
and there were two guys working at the station next to us
they were gay
and i was talking myself through what i was doing
which is not at all unusual for me
and they thought i was funny
so they were laughing
i was digging it
so i started
making
with
the
funny
and i was having so much fun that i completely forgot
that i was in this competition
started laughing so hard i was almost crying
and then i'm like:
oh fuck
where was that little piece of paper again
and i had to dig through a bunch of shit
and the beautiful girl said:
just ask me
it was so fun
i was so in the moment
i didn't care about the competition
or all the people watching me
and then i'm like:
oh shit, is this timed
and the beautiful girl said:
technically yes, but nobody knows how much time there is
so don't worry about it
and i didn't

i thought i would dream about baseball

i was pretty impressed with cliff lee
i didn't want to say much last night
because i didn't want to be disrespectful to the yankees
hence jinxing the lead
and, in the heat of the moment, i didn't trust myself
to say more than "A-Rod?"
because he is, is always, so dominant
pitchers pitch around him
pitchers walk him
A-Rod is a big deal
i mean, everybody's kinda scared of him
but cliff lee pitched to him
there was never any fear
and the yankees have proven that they can
get 6 runs in an inning

i was not the only one impressed
that's what the interviewer asked him after the game
'how did you pitch to A-Rod?'

they keep saying that if you win the first game
11 in 12 chance of taking the World Series
but i don't buy that
and if i had been disrespectful
well there would have been justification
to take me down
this kind of thinking seems consistent with baseball
but most people thing it's kinda nutty, otherwise

and these games don't tie into dreams
i'm just listening to them because i love baseball
and baseball is loving me back
and it's a beautiful thing

6-1 phillies

well
alright
lee and utley



A-Rod?

why this? why now? i'm totally freaked out!

i dreamed i was travelling with
it kept changing
sometimes it was my mother, sometimes my aunt
sometimes.maybe, it was someone else
and there was grocery shopping for food
i remember a big discussion about
some food that came in, they almost looked like
giant test tubes, sitting in racks on the shelf
maybe there's more to that, something
that makes it make sense
there was something about cleaning clothes
predominantly by shaking them out
and a cell phone charger played an important role

i mention all these things, not because
they are interesting or important, but because
they set up one the most terrifying dream i've ever had

there was a concert in the hotel
and this person i was with was suddenly a classical musician
but rather than play her own instrument, she was
borrowing this presumably one-of-a-kind creation
it was large, she had to stand up to play it
she was wearing a gown with applique spirals on the bodice
that made her look like she had three breasts
she fell in love with the look and feel of it
and we had a big discussion with the hotel about its acquisition
should she decide she really loved it after playing
i said that someone had probably left the damn thing there
why would a hotel own something like that
i thought they would try to get her in a unreasonable
contractual obligation, i was very worried

then it gets complicated again

i went to see the concert where she was playing
but my mother or aunt or somebody was with me
and we lay down on the floor to watch
and it seemed like it was upside down
but then everything was right-side up again
and the person with me was my son who was a toddler
he wanted to get closer to see the performance
and there was an open seat in front of us
so he climbed down a row
at first i tried to stop him, but he was too quick
and i could still see him, still reach him
so what was the big deal, let him see better
but when people got up
somehow he disappeared and i couldn't find him
i searched everywhere
i walked through the hotel and the adjacent mall
describing him:
he's this tall
he's wearing a t-shirt with a 3 on it
i couldn't believe someone had stolen him
someone must have grabbed him accidentally
or he just got swept up in the crowd
i was frantic
everyone i asked seemed totally apathetic
it was really frightening

then it went right into another dream
where i was a tween and i had a kid sister
and we'd been dumped at this "creative play" day
only it had like a registered trademark name i can't remember
i climbed up this ramp between two buildings
i was hiding because i didn't want to participate
but after a while i came out
i think to keep an eye on sis
and the woman running the program
had hidden something that made this horrible whining noise
inside one of these big collections of junk
and i kept going from one to another
trying to find what was making the noise
trying to shut it off
and my sister kept asking the woman why she was torturing me
and the woman said i deserved it because i'd been rude
hiding and not wanting to play the game
and now i had to suffer
and there was this guy that was her partner
he laughed at me and said something
he was attractive and somehow that made me angrier
and i pushed him and punched him in the chest/shoulder
and i started screaming at him:
my father abandoned me eight years ago and then he comes back
and what does he do, he gets me for a weekend and he dumps me
dumps me here at this bullshit
i don't need this crap
i don't need crap from you
fuck you
as i'm backing away, about to run

i don't know what that meant
the whole thing was upsetting
it was like a range of upsetting
and i have a huge headache

WTF

F^CK F^CK F^CK F^CK F^CK F^CK

i'm not sure what that does to my story
in my mind
they didn't let the yankees score
and they tied it up in the 9th, 3-3
then it went to extra innings
but
that didn't happen
yankees left 12
angels left 6
2 BIG errors for the angels
5-2 yankees
3 2/3 hours

yankees advance to WS
i'm routing for the phillies

GDMFSoB@#%**FM

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH

this is the first page, i don't think it'll change much, Asked by Angels

I have been searching around the web trying to find some connection that would “click” for me-- something that would make the phrase asked by angels make sense. It, the phrase asked by angels, had been given to me as a new name in a dream and I tend to think that dreams mean something. I am not a big believer in angels.

The thing about dreams, they don't tell you what you need to know in the most easily understood terms. So sometimes I never quite know what I'm telling myself. Sometimes I think that my dreams just come from my subconscious mind-- just telling me things I really already know-- but sometimes I think they are more like prophecy. Now, I mean, I know that sounds dramatic, and I'm not trying to alienate you right off the bat, but you know what I mean. Don't you? I'm talking about when you have a dream, and it doesn't really make sense to you at the time but it sticks with you, and then events start to unfold or you see things around you that seem like the things you dreamed. You start having a kind of deja vu and then, suddenly, you know something from the information from the dream. No, never happened to you? Well, it happens to me all the time. Maybe that makes me a prophet. I'm just not a very good prophet, or maybe I just don't have prophetic confidence-- maybe I'm just one Anthony Robbins firewalk away from blowing up.

Last year I predicted the winner of the World Series in one of my dreams; unfortunately, I thought it was telling me something about myself that I just couldn't understand. When I remembered that piece of information—- well really, just remembering everything surrounding the World Series last year-- I had a pang. I have not been following baseball this year, and baseball season is one of my great joys. I started out the season listening to games on the radio every day. My team lost every game. We're having a bad year. Some of my favorite players have been traded or retired, and I didn't get to listen to spring training, or maybe I just didn't. The result, either way, is that I don't feel as connected as I normally would, and when they lose on top of that-- well, I just didn't listen every day. So then they'd win. Then I'd listen. They'd lose. I can see patterns. I figured I owed it to them to stay away-- clearly I was a jinx. In fact the only live game I've been to this year was in Anaheim, Angels vs. White Sox. Not my home team, not my home city, not my home league. Strange stuff. Thinking about all that made me think about the World Series, which ought to be rolling around just about now, it seemed like.

What kind of baseball fan have I become?

Something I guess I ought to mention here: I love baseball. I really liked it as a kid, although, I think that was as much about the whole experience as it was about the game itself. I didn't really, truth be told, understand baseball. I think I still enjoy a lot of sports that way. It's more about the movement, the dynamics, the personalities-- sometimes it's almost like watching a dance--

do you ever have dreams like this?

i wrote you something, but i don't want to post it until
i check it to make sure it's ok, until it's finished
i think the angels game might be important
and the story, if it's a story, might get longer, depending
i'm set up to listen on mlb.com
and i'm not sure whether it's important that they get to the WS
or if the game gets rained out or what, game 6 i mean
maybe this all seems outta left field
i can't really explain it better
i don't know everything yet

i've been trying to decide whether to tell you my dream, from last night
i don't want to tell you and have you think it's bad
i don't think it's bad
but it was different
it seemed different
there were common
elements
as well

oh well

i was in college
i don't know why, again
i thought i was done with school dreams
but i was really doing some major stuff
i was doing these constructed pieces which i guess i'll call sculpture, but
they were houses scaled down like a children's play house
and what looked more like sets
there was this one that was a bedroom
and i was halving it
creating completely different environments on each side
with color and texture only
while shape and form remained mirror identical

there were a bunch of other things too, all in-the-works
but i didn't have a way to transport them back to campus

my stepfather was just in a wreck
and he's ok, but he totaled his truck

and i didn't see how i was going to finish them
also i had a gillion, ok, several papers in-the-works
which i thought i could finish, except that i also had
two other subjects which had final projects due
everything i was doing was good, potentially really really good
but i needed more time to finish everything i'd started

i didn't want to try to rush them and turn in crap
just so i wouldn't fail

i started trying to negotiate with professors
turn things in late
get an incomplete for the semester and finish later
things i never once did in real life college
not one of them would work with me at all
and i sat down on the stairs
and i was talking to another student

and i actually said:
i think i might drop out of college
i've already got a degree
what do i think this is really doing for me

because it seemed like the grade thing was
just getting in the way of my doing my work

and that might sound crazy
but that's kinda the place i always wanted to get to in college
where what i was doing was more important to me than the grade
but it never was, really
i still cringe to myself
that i didn't take that one class that i got the "C" (college algebra)
at community college because i still think that 0.05 grade point
that would have pushed me over into summa cum laude
that it matters
not to anyone in the world, just to me
and it pisses me off that that matters at all
it shouldn't matter at all
not then, especially not now
and i didn't even do the math, haha
maybe that one class wouldn't even have done it, probably not

so i think it's good that way
but i worry about the degree to which i seem over-extended
it feels very ten of staves, like i'm overwhelmed
like i need somebody to help me put it all together and make it work
i don't feel comfortable with that
not that aspect of the dream

it's like
wow
now i'm not ariving at the end of the semester to take
a bunch of finals i'm not prepared for
now i need the school to get out of my way

but i still don't seem to have it under control, quite

freaky annunciation dream

i know there was more to this dream
but i just remember the part
i was in some kind of clinic
but it was also some kind of halfway home
and i was pregnant
but for some reason
i had to take a new name
i was looking through this book
there were two names that seemed to be sticking to me
and ultimately i can't remember the runner-up
but there was this one
and it was just one word
but it was like i saw it change from a phrase to a word
it began with an "A" and it ended
with this non-letter flourish mark
and the phrase began as:
Asked by Angels~
but i don't remember what the name ended up being
whenever i looked at it
my mind interpreted it as asked by angels
and that was my new name
it was kinda weird
like it was some official thing
that i had to do
before i could continue with the pregnancy
and it didn't really seem all that earthly
almost like the dream was responding
to the space alien accusation:
look in the book

not buying a gun today

i'm sorry, but i'm going to be graphic
but for just a sec, to preface the dream

i don't know if you do this, but when something
changes in bodily functions
i run a check list
and last night, before bed, i was bleeding
it's not happy happy blood time, so
WTF
hysterical miscarriage seems unlikely in the absence of hysterical pregnancy

i couldn't figure it out
so i'm like: work it out girls
but just know, if happy happy blood time is coming every two weeks
gun purchase will be high on tomorrow's to do list

i dreamed i was crawling along a cement barrier on the side of the highway
it wasn't comfortable
it wasn't fast
until i saw a place where there was a grassy slope
then i just got off the freeway and started to walk
it was really beautiful
there were these flowering bushes
like an azalea trail
i followed them
at some point i found myself inside
i was having pain in my abdomen so i went to the restroom
it seemed distended, and upon inspection
i seemed to be pregnant, sort of
but it wasn't inside my body
it had formed in a balloon extending outward
which was hyper-sensitive to touch
and i was like: OMG i must have been abducted by aliens
because there's no other explanation for this shit

but then i can't remember what happens next

maybe i shouldn't say anything, since i can't say everything

i can't tell you about my dream
because i think
and i've been thinking about it
that the images are too telling
and i don't want to tell

but i've been thinking all day
about one in particular
trying to decide
if it meant
one thing
or the other
or both
but
there was
absolutely no
bad way to interpret

and how often does that happen

so, if you're sending
me happy images
in my sleep
then it's working
otherwise
the chatty deity
is kickin in

damn--
i really really really
want to tell you

i don't know what this means, but it's weird

i've been having a difficult time remembering my dreams, mostly
and the few times i could i just didn't share them, sorry
but it's not that i've given up writing to you or anything
but you know, things have been strange, and what-have-you
but this dream last night is just odd, so i thought i'd try

i was running some sort of meetings
for some sort of group
and we met
in a laundromat
it was nicer than your typical laundromat
it was carpeted for example

across the street
was this shop
where they invented
modifications to existing equipment, mostly
refrigerators and such

there was more to each of these sections
whole relationships with friends
things about business
i just can't remember them at all now

then i was in my attic room
where i lived for some of high school
and some of college
and now the meetings were there
but i was trying to sleep
and it was disturbing me

then i'm walking around the room
and i'm looking at the furniture
this is becoming a popular theme for me-- furniture
even when i can't remember what i dreamed
sometimes i know it was something to do with furniture

in the middle of the room there is a big round table
like they have in foyers of hotels, with flowers
lining the walls, are chests of drawers, china cabinets
all manner of large pieces, some of which match each other
but don't all go together, at least not as such
and i'm trying to decide what i can't live without
and what i can bear to part with

and then i'm looking at the table i like to use as a desk
it's danish modern, technically, nothing special
it used to be in my mom's kitchen when i was a little kid
it's light weight-- except for the glass top
i painted it like twenty years ago
and then my mom shows up
with the same table, again
with the original chairs that it came with
which i got rid of years ago
because, even after i re-padded and covered them
they were kinda ugly and still not comfortable
but these were worn, really really worn
and still the bright bright orange they came in
so then she started telling me where i needed to put
all this new furniture she was making me take
which had been exactly the opposite of what
i had been trying to do in the first place

and i was becoming frustrated and slightly frantic
and then i woke up

i mean i believe in over doing, but...

oh
by the way
the number was just
you know
to show
a variety
of possibilities
that was never
like a plan
or anything
i'm probably not crazy

this is just random

i can't remember my dreams
just tiny fragments here and there
some are a bit disturbing
and some are a bit encouraging
but they don't paint a picture
of anything i can see to tell you
and i always worry that i'll seem to be saying
something bad, so i hesitate to try
to piece together the bits

the thing that has been bugging me a bit
though it's probably nothing
i didn't choose that hat or that headband
those were randomly selected by the computer
and even though i made a bunch more pictures
they never came up again
i can't stop looking at them
i can't decide why i think they are such an intense experience
it was really just something i did for pure curiosity

maybe that isn't quite true, maybe not just for curiosity

this is part dream and part weird stuff going on with me

last night i dreamed about some sort of danger
and i try very hard to represent my dreams
as they actually occurred
even if i don't know what they mean
but this one was so all over the map
that i'm not sure how
i know i was trying to keep danger out
i had a baby
but there was some other family or faction or such
and they were cooking
and i was there briefly
i think it was french onion soup
with the cheese on top
but it seemed to have some magical power
and in the apartment with my baby
i tore down a wall and rebuilt it
i'm not sure why
but i needed help hanging the door
and i was hoping that the man i love would help me
just as soon as he got back
and all of this was confusing
but we were together
so i knew it would be ok
we could make a place that was safe

so break to my real life for a minute
also confusing, no doubt
so i'm slinging the tarot cards fast and furious
and i keep getting over and over with multiple decks
princess of swords
princess of swords can mean more than one thing
but it mostly means communications
so i am wondering what that means
now, to be honest, i would expect it to mean
due to the degree it is showing up
some big or important communique is coming my way
but, of course, what i'm actually doing is trying to read
a message into everything
where there is no reason to think there is one
and it's making me paranoid
i've also been drawing a strange combination of other cards
the super happy with the super unhappy
and i don't know how i'm supposed to read that
so okay back to the dream

there was another part where i am having my car repaired
and i get a claim ticket from the insurance company
but there is something weird about it
like i'm not going through channels somehow
but i get my check for two hundred and seventy seven dollars
and i start walking to the car repair place
and i walk under an underpass
and it is a river or bayou or something cemented
but it's all done up with fountains and pretty like a park
it reminds me of the riverwalk in san antonio, sort of
but it isn't really like that
it's it's own thing
like i'm trying to put templates together in my head
and coming up with something that doesn't really exist
which is maybe how i create the landscapes in my subconscious
so maybe what i'm doing with this
is what i've suspected myself of doing with other changes
to my dream landscape
i'm trying to internalize the city of the man i love
and i go to find the bathroom
and the area is like an amusement park
the trash area is littered with cotton candy
and popcorn boxes
and there are children playing everywhere
i'm not all that worried if i get my car that day or not
but there is more later about the car
and i might even have gotten a different car
i'm just not sure

there was another part where i'm selling bead necklaces
at a stall in a market that looks a little like pike's place
but it isn't enclosed like pike's place, it's more open
and my mother is there
and a guy walks up and hands me one hundred dollars
and it's a big stack because it includes a lot of small bills
he wants to buy this necklace for his woman
it costs ninety nine dollars
and i am so excited that he wants to buy it
and then she walks up
and wants to get another necklace
this one's more like sixty-five dollars
but she wants to put it on lay-away
so i take two fives and they are pretty old and torn up
like maybe they've been washed a few times

and lots of fives keep showing up in the cards too
like five of coins, poverty
like five of cups, sadness
like five of staves, strife
and i'm not saying they mean that in the readings
because i've just about decided that
the multitude of fives is all about the fives themselves
connected to the hierophant
there's something i need to be learning
which ties back to the communications of the princess of swords
or maybe it doesn't
maybe i need to learn how to do something
but also there is some important message for me

so i get the two fives and some of her information
but not everything i would normally get
and she takes the necklace
which she normally wouldn't with lay-away
and starts to dance away with it
and i'm just so happy that she is so happy with it
that i'm not even concerned
someone has loved something i made

and then i start to wake up
but i'm not quite awake
and i have this sense of being very close to
the man i love
and i try to do this visual meditation
with the letters of his first name
but i don't get any images at all
instead what i get is like mild electric current orgasm
with the first letter
and by the last letter
very specifically pressure on a certain spot
and i have had sexual response from thinking about him before
but not tied to his name in that way
i've been having a hard time getting visuals for a while, though
and i'm not sure what that means
i did a meditation yesterday
and i did get visuals, but they were like fire-y morphing pictograms
rather than being a scene of some sort
but i could really only identify two of them
one was a bouquet that morphed into a tree
the other was a spirit house building itself ground up

so my dreams are complicated and full of danger
and my awake mind is trying to figure out the message of
how my mission deals with the fear of the poverty and learning
new skills and figuring out how to get to where i need to be
to be safe with the man i love
that's what i dream about

not fantasies where i'm rescued
not fantasies where i'm a victim
maybe a little where i'm heroic and fighting
but mostly
i just dream about love
love is just kinda complicated for me

i dreamed about a room

there was more to the dream than just the room
i know i went down to the pool at least once
but i don't remember any of that very clearly
what i'm sure of:
i was in the room that was mostly mine
when i lived at my grandmother's
i remember the bracket shelves along the wall
with the books and my teddy bears
i remember the strange bed thing
i really think it was supposed to be a bed
but it seemed more like some sort of sectional
i remember how dark that room always seemed to me
and how the ladder for the attic pulled out of the ceiling
i remember how i always got this painful crusty scabbing
on the outside of my ears, i still don't know why
and the medicine that came in the white and red jar
where you pushed down the top and it dispensed a dose
i remember how musty the room always smelled
especially the closet
i used to hide in that closet
i'm not sure why i felt like i needed to hide
or why there

that room was also, in this dream
the room you grew up in
which i'm sure was much nicer in reality
but it was your childhood bedroom for part of the dream
and i was so excited that i was getting to see it
but i'm not sure what exactly the context was
only, in that part of the dream, it seemed like
maybe there were two closets instead of just one
and my bathing suit was in the hiding closet
as were a few other things
so i went to get my suit

and you said
and i heard this echo around in my head
like i've heard a few other things
that makes them seem a little supernatural
rather than just something that i dreamed
which even then i think means something
so i heard you in this magnified way
and what you said:

i'm not taking anything out of that closet

but it wasn't like a nightmare
i'm not crying hysterically
i didn't take it to be a rejection of me
at least not at the time
i wasn't in the closet
and the closet did stink

i wish i could remember the part where i was at the pool
i know it wasn't a pool i went to as a kid
there was something about the membership
it wasn't expensive
but you had to show them...something
i just can't remember what

i was sleeping in this camper and the dog kept licking my face

last night's dream

i know the dream took place in a mall of some sort
but the levels were confusing and maze-like
i was working at the coffee shop
and j. was there again
everything seemed fine, busy
there were televisions blaring a little too loudly
and the subject matter was somehow inappropriate
someone from the mall offices came and complained
but the man i love was there
i don't know if he was talking to me at all
but he was around and that made me happy
it was near closing time
and i was wrapping up these sandwiches
they were, i want to say, fish sandwiches of some sort
and i was wrapping them in pastry bags
and wax paper
but i know there had been a debate about it
whether saran wrap was better

and then, before he left
because, like i said it was closing time
and i had a bunch of work to do
he came over and gave me that kiss
and it was so beautiful in the dream
it was so natural
so like we had been together for a long time

i've dreamed other kisses
i've imagined still others
but this one was so not like something i'd imagine
because it was not a new kiss
not a fist kiss
it was like
nothing else i've dreamed
i could feel the skin of his lips
brushing across the skin of my lips
in direct contrast to the other night
when our skin never touched at all
that's why i'll never forget it
it was so real
but so, i don't know, so everyday, maybe

then he walked away
but then i saw him
wrapping these things around his legs, just below the knee
they had this sort of tribal warrior look to them
and they had eggs hanging off
i don't know what any of this means
i took it as all being good
but maybe that's just because the kiss was so beautiful

i just thought how much i love him and continued with my work
which, at that moment was wrapping up the sandwiches
but then
after it seemed like everyone had left
i realized that i didn't have the alarm codes
so i'm freaking out
j. opened so she's got the codes

and i'm not sure of the sequencing of these next parts
i was trying and trying to remember
because i thought it might be really important, somehow
but i was talking to people
and i think the man i love was one of them
and while i was talking to them
i was cleaning the walls
it seemed very important
they had something on them
something like honey or syrup or something
sticky
and the other thing
that i can't remember the order of
i was trying to use my laptop
and it kept crumpling in on itself
like it was made of elastic
the computer worked just fine
but i couldn't see the screen
and i couldn't touch the keys
and it was freaking me out

so i was trying to close up
and i couldn't reach j.
so i went out to look for somebody
and the doors were like a giant version
of safe doors
except they were shaped like a stop sign
and i couldn't find my way around
i kept walking through hallways that sloped up or down
then i came to a black guy who worked for or in the mall, somehow
he gave me directions
and he told me that the coffee shop was in a part of the mall
where people were not allowed to roam when the mall was closed
but i got turned around
and i ended up outside
and i didn't want to shut the door all the way
because i was afraid it would lock behind me
and i thought i was going right back in as soon as i figured out
what i was doing
and i started to walk
and everything was huge
and it all went straight up
but i seemed to cover the ground pretty quickly
i stopped and asked for directions
and the guy i asked
pointed me in exactly the opposite direction
and then i wasn't sure what to do
and then i woke up

i'm trying to remember & figure out what last night's dream meant, but the one thing i'll never forget

the man i love walked up to me
sort of nonchalant
and
as though he did it all the time
he just barely brushed his lips across mine
a whisper of a kiss
fluid

when i read the cards

when i got the postcard
from the edge
then i knew
time
time
time
but not what time
who what when where
time

i changed my timing belt
in the car
but it wasn't so much a matter of if
it needed to be replaced
but when
when it was fixed
the engine would run smoothly
things would be okay
but until it was fixed
i was worried i'd be stranded
someplace scary
alone

not a good dream, understand
not the kind you wake up good from
maybe not ever

i think they were interesting, but i forget what they were

i'm gonna try to describe last night's dream but it was strange and like uber-symbolic in a confusing way, there was a LOT of HAIR

i flew to, i think, england
and i stopped at some slightly swanky hotel
and i was going to some show which didn't turn out to be a show at all
i got there, and it wasn't a bar
it was like a house party, except
it was really just a party at someone's house that i sort of crashed
there were all these young guys who were in bands, german bands
and i don't even think it was one band, they just all knew each other
and the man i love
him i almost didn't recognize
he had long hair and long beard and long mustache
he looked like one of those guru-spiritual-leader-type guys from the 70s
and he came up to me and kissed me
but there was so much hair that our lips didn't even touch
it was weird
and it didn't draw any attention at all
it was like he kissed everybody and it was just a sign that, like
it was ok for me to be there
there was music, there was food, there was beer
and i wasn't sure it was okay for me to have anything
because it didn't seem right, since i was party crashing
and people just did what they did and moved around and played guitar
but he and i didn't say a word
we just looked at each other across the room, across these young guys, whatever
and i fell asleep in the chair, it was a comfortable chair
and the next morning i woke up and it wasn't weird at all
i went into the kitchen with this guy whose house it was
and we were talking and i started to do the dishes and we kept talking
it was all very intimate and there was a way in which it seemed like this man
was also the man i love like he was contained somehow in all these people
we were talking so comfortably and i was pulling out clothes from my bag to wash
and i looked over
he was standing naked in the kitchen
i was startled
because even though he was sort of the man i loved he was also sort of not
and anyway, there hadn't been anything to suggest nakedness
in the kitchen
in the morning
but it was not frightening, just unexpected
there was so much hair
like a bush from just above the hips to almost the knees
but it was beautiful somehow
the tightly curling hair
i couldn't take my eyes off of it
and then his wife came in and he introduced us
and she looked like an oklahoma sunflower
like this girl i used to know and wanted in the kind of way
that makes you never want to fuck them (purely and she was seventeen)
so maybe it was that
or maybe i was the name she had that name
and i gathered up my clothes and went to wash them
but i wasn't upset
it wasn't sexual or non-sexual it was naked and beautiful
and then i went outside
i hadn't realized before, but it was an earth sheltered building
it was dry and the dirt was loose and it had the feeling of a compound, somehow
and the man i loved was there, outside
bearded and long haired again like the night before
with the young men gathered around him
i went up to talk to him
but i can't remember what he said
and i thought: i could stay here, i don't need to go back to the hotel
and that's all i can remember

i had a nightmare last night which included george w. so i just wanna point out that a bush hat has nothing to do with him

what does it mean when you dream a klezmer band is playing and it starts to snow?

a lot happened in this dream
it all seemed to be connected
but once i woke up, and am trying to describe it
it's hard for me to describe as the seamless narrative i experienced
as it started
i was a nanny or an au pair
for a very small child, a toddler, who i was quite attached to
i had gone to some group or party or something
and i had written about it
all the women who were there
describing them and their traits and motivations
and what they thought of one another
others had written about it as well
maybe that was the idea: go and write about it
i don't know
but i looked at something like a newspaper or journal, but maybe it was online
and it was talking about what i had written
it was brilliant in it's multiculturalism
or something like that
and i just kept looking at it and reading it and yelling
i was so amazed and excited that i had been noticed for this piece of writing
and i think i was telling the kid about it
i was so happy, so happy, so happy

then some stuff happened that i can't remember

then it was maybe a few years later
and the reason i think it was a few years later
was that the little girl who had been the toddler was there
i was so happy to see her
i didn't know if she would remember me
but she did
i was so happy, really, i loved that kid
and i was at what i'm guessing was a party
it was outside, in a fenced in area, really a large area
the man i love was there
he was wearing this hat, i don't know what to call it
it had a wide brim and it was cloth, sort of a bush hat, but the brim
flopped down on the sides
which was, for some reason, so endearing to me
and he had a kid in one arm, like: whatever, we're working here
and i had to just stop and watch him for a few minutes
then i was talking to a woman
a really really tall man came up to me
and started asking me questions about muffins
our muffins were really good but they were quartered
i had no idea what he meant by that
he seemed really surprised
quartered was apparently an industry standard term of some sort
we have them made for us, i was saying, still trying to get his meaning
apparently he wanted to put in an order
apparently i had a cafe or something where they were popular
but he thought they were too small
he wanted those enormous sized muffins
i looked at the woman next to me
who, i guess worked at the cafe, and she nodded
and i said: i think we can make that happen
and then i looked around the place
and somehow
everything just seemed really right
it's strange how i don't know what was happening
usually in a dream i do know
but this was like i had the emotions, i was there, but i have no idea
where i was, or why i was there, or even if the man i love and i had
any connection to each other there and then
i just know that it all felt really natural
and good
and right
and it felt like a party
it felt like a party i belonged to
and i'm not sure if the klezmer band was actually there
or if it was video
or maybe it was both at different times
i'm not sure
but they were starting to play
up on the outdoor stage
and just as they started
it started
gently
to snow

last night's vaguely scary dream

i'm not sure if i should even be writing this down
it seems, not so much the first part, sad
and so very personal in a strange sort of way
it feels more vulnerably female
than i have been used to being, i guess
maybe it's some sort of hormonal surge
it's doing something
it's not telling me what
maybe i'm about to evolve into something new
it almost wouldn't surprise me
so i hope that my vulnerability
doesn't make you like me any less

i dreamed last night that i was working
at the coffee shop, but it wasn't entirely like it used to be
one thing that made me really happy about the dream
was that j. was there
hyper and grumpy like she used to be
come in to open after giging the night before
i really miss her
i hired her straight out of parochial school
with her swiss miss braids and her "spike" mechanic shirt
and i got to watch her grow up
we went through a lot together
and i always kinda thought of her as my kid
but i'm not really old enough to be her mother, quite
she was one of the first people i ever hired
and i'm not sure i ever did better
when i walked out and saw her working with me again i almost cried
except of course it was only a dream
then i went in the back
because apparently i was making the schedule
but i had coffee
and although i would never never have done this in real life
in the dream i took a big hit off a joint
then i ate an enormous brownie

then i was talking to someone
i didn't seem like me
and i don't know who i was living with
but i was looking through the book shelf
and this random bag fell out if it
and it had
among other things
this really fine paint brush
that i knew i had spent a hundred dollars for
and the person i was talking to
thought i had gotten it for them
but they didn't paint, really
i'm not sure what they were planning to do with it
maybe paint walls or crafts or something
but i mean it was totally wasted for that
but i couldn't see how i was going to deny them the brush
since they had a use for it, and i wasn't painting anymore
and they didn't understand the value
and then, for some reason, i thought to myself:
you're never going to have any children
and your whole life is going to be this pointless bullshit
and i started to cry

then there was this woman
and i'm sure it wasn't me
i was just watching this scene play out
this woman was maybe in her mid-fifties
she was thin and attractive with small stylish glasses
she had definite style and grace and seemed to be a professional
but not like a stuffy suit, i'm not sure how to describe her better
she was meeting her husband for lunch
and after being together forever she still couldn't wait to see him
he was funny and smart and her favorite person in the world
it was noon and she was supposed to be there soon
so she ran out
but she needed to take some kind of medication at 12:30
and she didn't take it with her
i knew she needed it just as she left but i'm not sure how i knew
and i wasn't really there so there was nothing i could do
then the scene shifted
her friends were standing in her kitchen
holding the bottle passing it around, shaking their heads
did you know she had a heart condition they kept asking each other
no one had known and they were shocked
because she had seemed so very alive
and she had died
then they took her makeup
and they each smeared some on their faces
and wailed

it was long and complicated, but i've no idea what it meant

i was driving
down a gravely waterfront road
under an elevated train
it didn't really look like it
but in the dream i knew it was the seattle waterfront
and i had a little brother who i wanted to take with me
i was driving what i'm guessing was an old datsun 280z
i could hear the gravel under my wheels
it was really free
like there wasn't a care in the world
like i could just drive this great car
like there wasn't anywhere i needed to be
or anything i needed to do
there might have been more
but i don't remember it

then i was at this apartment building
that had a courtyard surrounded by apartments
rather than being a big building
or having the apartments surround a pool
i was sitting on a bench
and this person, i think it was a woman, was walking
around and up and down the courtyard
slowly
and awkwardly
like maybe one leg was longer than the other
she was pop-eyed
and lumpy
malformed
i wasn't staring
but she was moving around in my field of vision
i couldn't help looking at her
there was something very peaceful and matter-of-fact about her
like she was out taking the air or something
i don't think we said anything to each other
i'm not even sure we acknowledged each other
but then, as she walked back to her apartment, someone
walked up to me and said something
but i just can't for the life of me remember what

and somehow all of this seemed to be taking place in the 60s
maybe that's why it was seattle in the first section
seattle has some really cool 60s futurama architecture
ok, that probably isn't what it's called
but like the jetson's, like that, space needle and such
and so i was like a woman from the 60s
with the difference in dress and hair that that would mean
but more like with the social mores that would mean
and i don't mean the hippie 60s
and i was talking to
reclining next to
this guy
who was
my doctor or therapist or something
and we were in love
we were talking about it
at length
very detached in conversation
yet feeling the nearness enervating
what we wanted, both of us, was not to hurt the other
and finally we kissed
but it wasn't like a passionate clinch
it was this tender tentative sort of kiss
the kind you might write a novel about

fashion police are after me

i know there was much more to this dream
i remember walking around with a group of friends
i remember worrying about juggling funds
i remember, i think, a bookstore
and driving down some country road
that, even though i'd never been there before, somehow
i recognized it, knew it
maybe it was from another dream, forgotten
maybe it was from some premonition, but
i had car trouble
i stopped
i used a phone booth to call, someone
somehow
in this town
the fact that my father had worked for S&W
meant that everyone in town was prepared to help me
it was very strange
and in my suitcase all my clothes were slick
like satin or silk
very strange
and
i'm not sure of the sequencing
but i got a hat
and that kinda worries me
because it was a very strange type of hat
like, slightly like a top hat but with a bill instead of a brim
with feathers and stuff
but then i remembered (after i woke up)
that i'd been looking through jeff goldblum video
and i saw one where he's in, i think, the music man
and don't get me wrong
i love the music man
and i love jeff goldblum
but it was that type of hat

scrambled brain, maybe

there were a group of us
at a training facility
and some police came
part of who we trained were police
and we took them into the auditorium
and we set up the video with porn for them to watch
and i asked the others: did you make sure to use the legal stuff
because we don't want this to turn into some kind of raid
the person i asked had not considered this, so i was afraid
but then i looked at it and it was anime, really strange
there were two people in a bed
and one was wrapped up like a mummy
so there was no way to tell what they looked like, or even
what sex they were
and the guy seemed to be having sex with the mummy, maybe
from behind
but it wasn't even certain that anything was going on
and i said: well, you couldn't have chosen anything any softer core than that

and then
i was meeting some guy for dinner
at a restaurant that was in a docked yacht or something
when i met him there he was already seated at table
i greeted him, but then immediately went to find the restroom
which i found right away, no problem, but there was a woman leaning
right by the door, she seemed to be paralyzed
but she wasn't in a chair, she was supported upright, somehow
i don't know if she asked me to move her, or if i just did it
but she was friendly about it so i think it was what she wanted
she was thin but really heavy to move
but kinda like a pole or something she had a contact point with the wall
for balance
and i asked her if she was comfortable
and she said she was fine

and then
or maybe this was earlier, i'm not sure
i was serving bar-b-que at a work function
i had come back to work there after an absence of years
and it was some sort of function
and i talked a little to a guy who had been my boss for a while
who really liked me, i think, and who i liked, i think
we had worked well together and i missed him when i got a new boss
and he missed me when he got promoted
he was from new orleans, and was generally pretty laid back
and, as was usual for him at party functions, he was drunk
and i was doing something
but i'm not sure what
that wasn't to do with this job
and trying not to get caught doing my work on the side
and wanting not to be there
and getting filled in on what had been happening
by the girl next to me
as we handed out bar-b-que

and then
i was working at an art fair
and i can't really remember what happened
i know there was some calligraphic work around me
but i was pointing out that that wasn't my work
but i'm not sure what my work was
i don't think it was regular paintings
i think it was more complicated or technological or something
but it was image driven in some way
and the people who were walking by were really diggin my work
and that made me really happy

and then
i got a new edition
of some tarot deck
that apparently i'd had before
but these pictures were different, or at least some of them were
the magician, i remember was some type of wildflower, which is strange
the cards were perforated and had to be torn from one another
and i did have a deck come that way once: the enchanted tarot
but that deck is on card stock that is very thick
this deck was slick and shiny and much thinner
as i tore them, some of the ones i had already torn tried to blow away
my aunt was there, and she said: you still have plenty of cards
just let those go
with this look like she was disgusted with me
but i scrambled around trying to get them all
a tarot deck is no good without all the cards
they seemed to have shrunken to the size of a sheet of four postage stamps
she kept trying to get me to stop chasing them
and i was getting really angry with her
she's dead and i hardly ever get to talk to her and she has to bring
the critical self
hell why doesn't she just start telling me how i need plastic surgery
and how no one will ever love me if i'm fat
and how my voice is too pure for rock, but i'd be good for back-up
and how i'm heartless and selfish because i wouldn't do...something

and then i woke up

what does it mean when you dream about peach cobbler?

i've been trying to remember
all the parts of my last-night's-dream
but i can't remember all of it
and i'm not sure that i'm getting the order right
hopefully it doesn't matter
there was one part where i
was looking in a mirror
but i don't think it looked like me
and i was removing make-up
like mascara and eyeliner
which i'm pretty sure that i'd slept in
i was in one of those "women's lounge" rooms in a public restroom
with the huge wall mirror
and someone was telling me that china was a developed country
because they used the same make-up removers that we do here
which probably isn't true
and seems a really strange method for measuring development
so, what does that mean
no clue

then there was some guy
and he called me on my cell
and he seemed to think that i had some sort of
web-publishing house or something
and he was trying to send me a file, but he didn't know how
and he gave me this number, but it wasn't enough digits
which turned out to be a skype phone number
and he seriously confused me, but i think he thought
that somehow i was going to make him famous or something
so, what does that mean
no clue

then there was this other part
and i think it might have been kinda long, but i'm not sure
it was kinda a strange format too
it was supposed to be
a new tori amos song
but it was more like a combination movie
where i was seeing the elements of the song
and kinda also like i was tori amos writing the song
and me hearing the song, except not, exactly, all happening at once
and it/she/i was talking about how
people think that life is all flash and party and whatever
but that really
what she was doing
rather than all the things people thought she was doing
was sitting in an all night diner
hiding in a corner booth
watching the people
talking to the waitresses
and eating peach cobbler
the peach cobbler
featured very heavily
in the lyrics
like the peach cobbler
somehow represented the experience
of what
i'm not totally sure
maybe the late night coffee shop experience
maybe the people she was watching
maybe the people who were imagining her life
maybe her life itself
maybe life in general
i'd really like to know
where i can get peach cobbler in the middle of the night
but then i got to thinking about peach cobbler
i've had peach cobbler experiences that were good and that were bad
if the peaches are canned or they add too much goo or the crust is yucky
then peach cobbler sucks
if they use real peaches and don't add much goo and the crust is yum
then peach cobbler is awesome
it has this full range of flavor
bitter, sweet, tart, slightly salty-buttery-crusty-whatever-you-call-it
and it is the best cobbler, i think
and i've been trying all day
to remember how that all came together to make a song
and i can't remember
maybe i was just hungry in my sleep
and filled in peach cobbler
maybe it has some deep symbolism
i really don't have a clue

this would classify as a nightmare

i was working
in a household
i don't think i was a maid
but, hell, maybe i was
i'm not really sure
the dream wasn't about the work
it was just set there
i had done something really well
and i was being rewarded
we went to two pesos
and i got one of those taco salads
the kind that's in the shell
the shell is the best part
then we went back to the house
and she was breaking out the tequila
and i got a little drunk
and the dad, her husband i guess
he wanted to fire me
maybe i was the au pair
but apparently i was being drafted
not into the army, but rather
into some sort of national service
i had a specific date i was supposed to show up
i don't want to say when
but, as far as i know, nothing significant
happens or has happened on that date
but, as i went to fill out paperwork
i started talking to people
and i became convinced that it was like the peace corps or the coast guard
and was in no was guaranteed to be free of war
i just wasn't going to have any weapons
and i looked over at the wall
and it said something about the navy
but the way it affected me
it might as well have said: arbeit macht frei
and i decided that i had to figure out a way
not to go
which might have been easier before i filled out all the paperwork
this dream scared the shit out of me