2011

pst

mon
nov
28

David Daniels was adamant that any "big things" that happen inside you aren't all that important, which is part of why I've been keeping my mouth shut for about a week. Since I'm kind of proactive about certain things, such as getting a beautiful girlfriend, even though, strictly speaking, according to Far Eastern esoteric teachings, you're not supposed to try to "get anything," ... except I'm a Westerner, and what's more, a Californian, and furthermore, a San Franciscan, so I'm kind of voting for "getting a beautiful girlfriend."

I do happen to know two quite beautiful women, one a little better than the other. Haley, whom I don't know all that well, sat beside me at Bette's Ocean View Diner a few weeks ago, and we kind of hit it off. Though in the weeks that followed, she became a little skittish, I'm not sure why. Let me put it this way ... on that first day, if I acted a little brazen, she'd move away from me, and if I acted a little sad, she'd move closer. That's the simplest way to put it. I'm not going to say I was "acting," either, because I really felt and embodied "brazenness" and "sadness," though at the same time, could stand apart from these things on the inside of myself and simply observe them. Of course, once I overcome whatever stands between two people, I forget everything I'm writing about here, and simply enjoy their company. It helps if they're beautiful, and that's what Haley is. It also helps if they're over the age of nine, which is what my next door neighbor's daughter is, who knocks on my door and forces me to come outside and help her with her math and English and every other kind of homework, sitting on upside-down milk crates and cushions we set up on the cement patio that separates our two homes, or more recently, on the upper steps just outside her front door.

The second beautiful woman is Naomi, who's the cashier, the order taker, the hostess, and the server at an Italian restaurant not far from where I live. We're actually quite good friends now, because I eat there most evenings and nights. For the longest time, I thought she was Luca's girlfriend, and never asked, because I've always cultivated "not knowing." What better way to live than to not know things? With all this in mind, I'd like to frame all that follows as the "Haley / Naomi" question, which may or may not have something to do with me.

(Dream) I'm reaching out to give Haley a penny, being extremely careful not to disturb the gigantic bundle of pennies wrapped in a green net propped up beside me, on my right side. (Fin)

"// .../ .// .../ ././. .// / ... /.. /.. .../ ./ ... /. ./ The whole thing coming up! / .... /./ .. ./. .// ./. .../ ./ .... /./ //. // ../ /../ ."

pm
4:27

November 22nd (Dream) When I get to the College Green at Dartmouth, all I have to do is take some sort of Advanced Placement exam. I haven't studied for it at all, which is always an advantage. Other kids are seriously drilling down on the exam questions, and I wander around a little aimlessly. I'm not even sure I'll finished the required questions. Some professors are off to the side keeping an eye on me, and I forge ahead nonchalantly. There are things I don't quite understand, and that's alright. All I have to do is stay focussed. The second part of the exam, being administered on the other side of the Green, seems to pertain to language, and I give it my best shot. Creativity is my middle name! I turn around and discover a silver door handle. I've made it! All I have to do is open the white door. Probably pull it. (Fin)

(Dream) I've let myself down into some sort of marina, before classes begin, with the memory of the airport and flight to this place still fresh in my consciousness. You have to work yourself along the piers which skirt the marina itself, just below the quay. I pass a line of girls and tell one of them, "I'm a thief!" "What's that good for?" she asks me. "Stealing people's hearts!" and I keep right on going. The group she's with seems to have found an illegal encampment up in the dining hall of an official building of some kind, which is still unoccupied by its official residents. When none of the marina guards are watching, I turn and climb the white ladder and peak in. Some kids and a few counselors have begun laying sleeping gear out. I go back and find I'm in a convention hall of some kind. I've landed in an area being set up by students I knew at Dartmouth ... Oh, my God, so long ago! ... One of them recognizes me and mentions my name, though I can't remember his. Lionel, or something. He goes off. The remaining student setting things up ignores me, giving me implicit rein to do anything I please. I head back to the marina, where an official seems to have taken charge, cutting me off from the route to my secret sleeping quarters. He doesn't seem to have discovered where they're all hiding, and I keep my mouth shut, focussing on the German Shepherd that's nuzzling against my leg. The official's looking at a clipboard. "Who do you work for in Southern California?" he asks me. Something in my mind clicks and shifts slightly ... "Nobody!" I tell the guy, recognizing his stab in the dark. Wrong coast, even. "You can go fuck yourself, bitch!" I snarl. Well, that may have crossed some sort of line. He bends down as if intent on a cell phone or other device, and I take his momentary lapse of attention to bolt for my secret door, up the ladder on the other side of the white building, and out of there! (Fin)

4:37

November 21st — In the (Dream) there's some character who's flattened himself up against a wall to the right. It's a slim guy ... tall and extremely slim ... and I gather his name is Lionel, or something like that. (Fin)

There are other (Dreams) as well, in this one a whole family is drinking poison, and can't figure out how to blame me. (Fin)

4:39

November 20th (Dream) I'm crossing behind something, going down a diagonal track connecting two sides of a rectangle, or square. The track is sand, and I stop roughly midway and start making deeper and deeper marks in the sand there, in the middle of the trail, before I go to the other side. Now I'm on my way back, and this time the marks are a small structure David Daniels has built for me, upstairs at our home in Wrightsville Beach. You can go into the structure briefly, see what needs being done, then do it, quickly, before crossing to the other side of the trail. The bus line in St. Louis is taking me along a familiar route, and when the bus comes, with a Black lady driver, I hop on the bus and continue to the other end of the route. The convention out on the sand has so many people! I set up my typewriter on a small portable desk I've brought along, unfold the picnic chair I've also carried with me, and set up shop, there, in the middle of the marketplace. With all this hustle and bustle of trade and commerce going on around me, I have little trouble extending a sheet of plywood I've found which can extend behind my chair into the sand. (Fin)

4:40

November 19th (Dream) When I get to the top floor -- actually, some sort of roof area -- of the Blockade Runner Hotel, here at Wrightsville Beach, I see the whole building is beginning to topple over ... This is my death, I see, sliding towards an opening that will take me below the building that will fall on top of me ... Nothing like being at the top of a twenty story building coming down! I'm standing beside it and see the whole building crash into the ocean and go racing out in search of my college friend, Ray Clark. He's out there, all right, simply relaxing on a lounge chair or something, as other survivors of the crash race about. I urge him to come back with me, and all he does is say, "Look!" He pokes a rifle barrel down through an opening and shoots someone trying to come up into his spot. I have no time for this wholesale murder and make my way to a Meeting of Seekers of Truth, except now there's some sort of parallel Little Meeting, or Preparatory Meeting or something, where I bump into Rita Daniels and Geoffrey. David Tickton is running the meeting, and I tell him I'm not sticking around because the main meeting at 69 Walker Street is scheduled to begin half an hour after his meeting has begun. He tells me he'll be coming to that meeting as well, for me to stick around a little ... When I get into the car I thought he'd be driving, I'm astonished to find some older woman and her friend climbing into the car. Before I can say a word, the crazy driver starts backing the car back the way she came, along the hedges of the curved driveway at literally some thirty miles an hour without actually looking where her backing up car is going. "Excuse me," I tell her, waking up (Fin) "but I'm getting out now! ..." (Dream) "... I'm carsick," I tell her, poking my mind back into the dream. (Fin) I have no hesitation lying in situations such as this.

4:44

November 18th — "/../ ./ .// ./ .../ ./. ./ /.. ../ ./ /.. /. .. /. /. / . You're going to put me in some sort of danger, /.. ./ // ../ .. / /. /.. //.. ./ // ../ ./ ./ . /. / .../ ," a whisper voice says.

"/.. ./ /./. /. // /.. .. /./ ./ ../ ... /./ ./ .. /./ .. Well, I told you about it! /./ . /./ ./ /. ../ .. // ... //. ../ .. /. /. ./ ./ ./ ./ .," says another.

4:47

November 15th (Dream) I'm crossing Grandmom's lawn at Wrightsville Beach, heading for downstairs at our home in St. Louis. There's a gardener or two doing something in front of our house, and I do everything necessary to avoid them. Downstairs, I find Vera, whom I've decided not to talk to for the rest of her life, who's drinking the last of a cup of tea. "I'll split a cup of coffee with you," I tell her on my way to the kitchen. "Oh, sure!" she says, coming into the kitchen with me. I fill a coffee pot with water, turn on a burner on the stove top, and set it down there as she goes back into the other room. The bottom of the coffee pot is too close to the stovetop knobs, I see, so I ignite another burner and move the pot of water there. (Fin)

4:48

November 14th (Dream) A parabolic curve is rising to a smooth peak and beginning its descent to the right. I explain to the girl I'm tutoring that this line is a timeline, which always comes back down to intersect the X-axis. My package of marijuana has arrived, a box full, which the kids have ripped open. I gaze back and forth from the open box of weed and the kids. Hmm. They don't know quite what to expect next. (Fin)

(Dream) The children next door have come to visit us in our mansion in St. Louis, and the youngest of them, a six-year-old boy, intends to take a bath with me. I'm not so sure this is a good idea. For one thing, my genitals would be eye-level for him, and I turn away from the whole scene. The football game is going into overtime, and State rules no longer apply. Overtime rules are always according to Federal rules. The football players are accordingly riding their bicycles now, heading for the end zone, and furiously colliding with each other in heaps of laughter and mayhem. My mom has arranged everything in the darkened yard impeccably, with a string of Christmas lights leading to a corner doorway. I make a subtle change to the string of lights, so as to lead to a slightly different door. Meanwhile, my deaf sister is pulling up into the driveway, getting out of her car, and heading for the front door of the house. (Fin)

4:51

November 13th — Last night I lay in bed allowing my mind to travel all the way back to when I was one or two years old in Colorado Springs, my mother and father fighting while I played with a Lionel train he'd laid out for me on the carpet. I was a lefty then, and kept running it off the tracks because my left hand didn't have the finest control of the lever on the power transformer. It was only 1948.

Anyhow, a part of me kept singing softly to myself, "Come on through the door! ... Come on through the door!" and I didn't know what to make of it. The night before last I (Dreamt) Mark Zielinski and I have peed some sort of pee all over the walls, coating them in white! (Fin) and I wasn't anxious for THAT to happen anytime soon, either now or in 1948. No, the past is what I'm interested in, and can't imagine anything THAT bad. Waking up, I feel a flood of sensation lighting up my left nostril and cheek.

(Dream) I'm lying in my bed in St. Louis gazing to my right, where my sister's room is. My ex-wife Danny is sleeping over there, for some reason, and I'm waking up now ... I open my eyes, hoping she'll be coming through the bathroom door that connects the two bedrooms. Sooner or later, no? My eyes really are open now, and I see the clock beside my bed, glowing in the dark, with the distinct and powerful impression Danny really is on the other side of (Fin) the clock.

(Dream) I'm gazing out through the mouth hole of a bird costume which covers the rest of me. (Fin) Partially waking up, I still see the dream inside me, and realize it's a good literary device as well ... to be gazing out on the world through the mouth of a chicken ... or something.

4:52

November 9th (Dream) I'm in Houston and the cast of the the show has just heard me say, "You can drop me off here ... I'm the one crew member you won't be needing now," and their collective silence affirms what I said. The car slows down, and I get out. Then I go around to the rear of the car and tell someone they have to lean forward so I can open the tire compartment where I'm stowed by bag. We're on an approach to the Bay Bridge and I tell everybody I think I've made a mistake. The ramp has taken me up to an intermediate level where it is becoming clear that further progress into what are becoming one-way corridors will get us onto the freeway system, way above us, going exactly the wrong way. Apologizing profusely, I simply bring the car to a halt and begin to explore how to, at least, extricate us from this lower level. Getting back into the car, I make a series of back and forth maneuvers to at least get us out of the light traffic flow, then pull the car over somewhat out of the way. I get out, walk down a few stairs, then go back with the realization I can simply pick the car up and carry it down the stairs with me! Someone from the ramp where I've left the car comes down and joins me. (Fin)

4:56