Waking Finnegan

Spinal Tap Dream

2006-07-15T16:38:00.000+02:00

I'm on a circus-sized swing tethered to something unseen above---feeling a mighty belly-rush as I oscillate forward, my toes stretching at the pendulum crest to make physical contact with the stuccoed wall against which is projected the lasar-light Hubbell images of phosphorescent stars and shadowy planets.

There is an uncanniness about the perspectival changes. As I swing away from the projection, the heavens become much more than a convincing illusion---the sudden display of starry light sends a tremendous sparkling megawatt charge through my spine. When the swing reaches the hump at the back of the crest, all is startlingly Big Bang, with time-lapse shifts of slivered, quartered, halved and gibbous moons encircling other worlds in an astounding and never-ending multi-dimentional complexity.

As I once again swing into my downward arc I make the sudden decision to close my eyes and let go of the ropes just like I use to do at the beach. But this time I'm letting go with no sand in sight. I am certain that if I let go while holding on to that intergalactic vista, that I'll be able to land on one of those other worlds.

Nested in the vault of my lids I lose my gravitational center. With a sudden dread, I realize that wherever I land will now be my grave. I'm holding my breath and cringing, knowing it will all end in a split second. I am spinning down mental spiral that makes me dizzy.

But a billion split seconds pass---the g-force tug on my guts and the bloodrushing thrill of the fall goes on and on until the moment I realize "I'm far past the point where I should have hit the ground". When I finally open my eyes, I realize I'm tethered to a rubber chain "bungee cord" connected to a deep-sea bathyshere. Someone inside is waving at me. Is it a greeting or a valediction?

A solar wind roaring by like a desert train while I try to get a fix on whether I'm right side up or upside down. I wonder "Is this tether tightening or going slack?"

But I succumb to an amniotic, weightless limbo where worries don't worry. It's all as clear as those distant stars that I can travel forever in this fractal dream by orbiting myself---that this is a small taste of what the soul is capable of when it leaves the body for good.

Note: I woke up this morning after having battled a herniated disc. It had me coiled in its grip like a mean snake for nearly a month. I'd finally fallen asleep last night after endless, excruciating hours spent wondering if this were the rare sort of pain women felt while giving birth to octuplets.

When I (finally) awoke to the bird reveille, my bed was soaked in sweat.
I felt like a boneless chicken who'd just wrestled with a fox...and won.

Nota Bene: My chiropractor warned me that the fox is likely to return disguised as boa constrictor.

Buckminster Fooler Dream

2006-06-14T17:51:00.000+02:00

I'm on some Greek island (Patmos? Samos?) leading an island "discovery" tour for a group of hearty old women folk from my grandmother's retirement home. I'm in the main dining hall of our chartered hotel picking up little snippets of hysterical giddyapchatterbuzz from a group of tour veterans dressed in travel khakis and pith helmets. They are also smorgasbord connoisseurs oohing and ahhing about the impressive luncheon spread before us: barrel o'pickles and pies and gelati for the mode along with open boxes of glazed and sprinkled Winchell's doughnuts, macaroni and potato salads on ice butted up against a massive bulwark of stacked up lunch meats: grouchy sausages, pork-and-roast beef, bratwurst, liverwurst, blood sausage, kalbsleberwurst, pastrami and mortadella and more mortadella and more pastrami. Long, hollowed-out loaves of bread looking like canoes are filled with skulking little finger sausages. "These are the terrible offspring of the worst wursts. BRATWURSTS! Und das pumpernickel mit dem family crests are branded onto zer bellies!" I jot this thought down in my memory for the big speech I'm to deliver sometime later. I'm jocular---"And some of these breads have finger-indented "handles" that each baker presses into them in order to create a certain quaint 'pre-golf era' medieval effect" Dungeons! Truncheons! Bludgeons! Cudgels! FORE!

I slip out of everyone's view to get a better glimpse of those great wheels of Parmesan, Gruyere and Emmentaler I'd spied when I first stepped into the dining hall. Up close they are all branded with what seem to be intricate bird-of-prey ensigns. All of them sit like hulking sentinels atop reams of paper. Office documents, magazines and newspapers from every kiosk in the world. The table of cheese-weighted paper goes on and on and on. Dumbfounded, I run across a familiar edition of Life (Kennedy assassinated! Oh no!) But I notice that the date is wrong. It reads "November 22, 1962" (here my distracted dream mind shifts back to an old boyhood fish tale arguement about R.C. actually seeing a WWII copper penny. "Was it or was it not in mint condition?---You lie!" I check to see that nobody is looking and begin gingerly unwedging Kennedy's face out from under the heavy stack. "Don't forget: The value is far greater depending on the condition" But I pull too hard and wind up on my ass with half of John F's. face in my hands.

This jerking movement triggers an seismic reaction which has me ducking for cover with dumbell cheeses and a billion words come dropping down on me with a terrible thud. I'm hurt. No, I'm not. No, it's landed on the foot of my sixth-grade teacher Miss Shaefer, who lets out a terrible, bone-shattering caterwaul. Then silence.

With everyone looking on, she begins sobbing, and all the attention is turned towards me, the leader of all this shit.

I slip and fall in the middle of the horn of plenty big mess, but finally gain my footing so that I can save face with an apology.

But she's not having any of it. She's clearly not a member of my group. She's got on Raggety-Anne Girlscout clothes. She's no longer that hell-raisin', bug-eyed, spark-shooting Nazi teacher I once dreamed of dousing with sulfuric acid. She's just a withered, toothless old bag lady. Christ, what a fuckin' world I live in!

She's rising up in tatters like a scarecrow phoenix, one hand slowly wagging her crooked index finger at me like a broken metronome. She isn't hurt anymore.

I ask her sarcastically, "Have you seen my Life?", but she says nothing. Instead she gives me a glassy-eyed drunken stare and starts chortling about all her hundreds and hundreds of former students. "And you all really believed that school was out?"

As Miss Shaefer continues to menace me, a woman I mistake for one of my mother's friends---or is it one of my grandmother's?---tries to decoy Miss Shaefer by whooping and pointing at some other commotion going on behind a curtained door. "Teacher, may I go to the bathroom?"

I'm the leader of the tour once again, everyone pressing me forward past the curtains to see what all the brouhaha is about. The lady who did the decoying gives me an "I've got your back" wink and smile. She isn't my mother's friend, she's my aunt Mary. I go up to her for a hug and realize that she's got the sweetest, noblest, most soulful face imaginable. Those eyes, my god! I realize a whole universe left us when she died. And then she leaves again, but this time through a side door.

Now I am in my elementary school auditorium and quite lucid about Buckminster Fuller who, on this "elementary" stage, is giving the same dymaxion demonstration that I witnessed on another stage in my life when I was in college. He's overseeing a loony procession of puffy breads like Yorkshire puddings. The little pastries are being shuttled on conveyors, puffing up and down like miniature bellows round his spotlit figure.

I joke to myself about this guy being "Buckminster Fooler" and "The Fooler Brushman" He's speaking in scientific ellipses, swinging his arms and sweating profusely all over the puddings. I'm wondering how this Bucky bread would go with the lunch meat and cheese and what sort of dressing to use.

Then just before I awake, something tells me there's a connection between the energy of those spry old ladies and Bucky's pastry puddings.

Lemon Song Dream

2006-05-21T10:21:00.000+02:00

A tilted cityscape of mixed-era autos along the strand---filmic black and white Wrigley's Spearmint youthful carefree barbeque enjoyment of halcyon summers. Beach Nuts!

News warnings interspersed with temple gongs marking the hour. Trying to count out the seconds along with the analog second hand to see if the radio's accurate: "...one thousand and one, one thousand and two"...tick...tick...tick. Look up to see I'm in Wrong City. I was heading to Pasadena I'm sure. Or was I heading to Sears in Santa Monica?

The Streamline Moderne architectural splendor of Macy's is right around the corner, but when I turn it there is no Macy's. "Wha...?..should to be right...should be there. No wait. Could I be on the wrong corner? Gotta back-track. In my mental rewind, I'm back in "real" dream time, driving where I think I was. "I parked my car after turning at 4th Street, here, then went up to level 2 there then went downstairs and turned right (?) towards the beach which is aha right where it should be. And so where the hell is Macy's?

Out among the jostling crowd I bump into P, wife of R. She's no longer the standoffish woman I'd been put off by long ago. Now a toothy, smiley, gum-snapping friendliness full-of-charm and wide-eyed little girl self-assurance. She's some sort of store guide telling me about the marvels of Bullock's Department Store and "Don't you just love all the departments stacked up high like this? On the 3rd floor you can get girlie stuff (nudge nudge, wink wink) and on the 5th there's more manly stuff like tools and jock straps (wink wink, nudge nudge)."

A humongous shopping cart the size of a single family home piled high with every sort of vestment known to humanity---jolly baby jumpers, designer jeans, bundles of corporate t-shirts, endless Fruit-of-the-Looms (very soft and very fine cotton) More quarries filled with formal duds like waistcoats, tuxedos and ball gowns stacked up willy-nilly among overalls and yet more packages of 3-for-one socks. At the corners of the cart are teetering stacks of baseball caps forming pagoda-like spires (with big-headed sizes at the bottom and tiny heads at the top). Beautifully designed Asian labels from Bombay, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore and Seoul grace the labels. I'm in awe of how much stuff humanity dishes up to itself. Creating. Composting. Cannibalizing.

Later I'm inside of Frank Ghery's Santa Monica car park looking through the metal grid out onto the sparkling beach tableaux. Each grid section frames a perfectly composed "seascape", forming a pattern of astonishing theme and variation---miniature masterpieces of shimmering spectral harmony.

I'm wondering where the hell I parked my car and what car it was---the Giulia?---the Blue Bug? A hot wind comes blasting through the mesh and I get shore sand in my eyes and am now getting swept back with all the cars towards another dream where a scratchy film loop of the Hindenburg is exploding again and again to the Lemon Song. I can see all the little people on fire running for their lives with that tragic zeppelin re-lighting itself like a trick birthday candle.

Biker Chick

2006-05-01T19:14:00.000+02:00

I'm driving through a lost Ville of dark diChirico shadows and glaring sun-bleached stucco. Mongolian desert devils are dervishing in the distance and my skull is getting baked. The air is so clear that the landscape seems ready to shatter.

Reflected in my rear-view mirror is a biker chick wearing leather pants and a tank top taking up the rear seats of the Mustang convertible I've borrowed...rented...stolen?. I'm trying to find the right button on the steering column to set the cruise control and instead I trigger a full-blown circus of windshield wipers, sprays, electric windows and seat adjustments. A tinny Jack-in-the-Box "intercom" voice comes through the horn speaker and announces that "There's a dead woman in the back seat...more news at the top of the hour". I turn around and the woman, much larger now, is sprawled out on a hillock of food encrusted fast food wrappers, cartons and beverages. She scratches her head slowly to gather up all her drunken brain cells and plant a hard stare on me.
"You were curious if I was dead, weren't you? Weren't you!

"Ah, M'am. Your weight is putting too much pressure on the suspension---the springs and tires are gonna go---this isn't even my ride!

I wonder about always being too polite in these situations. Maybe I should be more willful here so there'll be less trouble down the road. But then I'm apprehensive because she's so Big and Mean-looking and why's she scratching her head like a chimp?

Forlorn and tragic towns further on with bogus Sonoran cacti wilting in sidewalk planters. A Main Street billboard advertising "Race Shaving Cream" shows the finish line sprint with a dromedary trying to out-nose a buck-toothed donkey. Another billboard shows wild-eyed men with outstretched arms and distended eyeballs escaping from exploding mine shafts and oil derricks. Aaahhh! Terrorists! Oil! Eureka! More cinematic billboards posted. "Signpost City" As we exit the town a grande finale of billboards shows a foreshortened vanishing perspective view of an epic mastaba made up of rusted oil barrels. It appears to be some sort of land-going tanker.

I look back and she's still looking right through me and is now scratching her head with tremendous intention.

"You've got lice!" I tell her. I turn around quickly to see her reaction...and she's gone. Maybe she's slunk down on to the floorboard---maybe she's...

"And You've Got MAIL!" she screams in my face. "Harharhar. Took you a few seconds to figger out where that one came from dinnit? D'ya see the movie?" "Back of your cute little car is way too small and way too trashy which makes me look big and stinky which is what you're thinking and why I'm ridin' up front where it's clean and the leather smells excellent!

Closeup: Her five-o'clock face is freshly-shaven and her heavy talc is flaking off in the swirling car wind.

"You love music, so tell me where this song is from!" She begins humming and singing some weary country and western ditty with good lords almighty and jumpin' jesuses running around everywhere. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for any oncoming traffic and fleet-footed road critters.

"Do you mind if I turn on the radio? I ask. "I need to hear the traffic report."

She's working on another hymn and I decide to leave it on cruise and jump in the back. The trash has cleared and the car has become much more spacious and grand. It's a souped-up much plusher version of my mom's prehistoric DeSoto. "Push-button 25th-Century heaven brought to you by Buck Rogers!"

Bike Chick gets up close and in my ear gently says "Why don't you tune in?" "I'm here to show you a quality of sound that might heal you. Don't you get it?"

And she begins another song the same way as the others but then hits the luxury radio dial and sets off a sonic flow so sonorous and full of deep spirituality that I am instantly moved by it. She winks and then pops and launders a huge wad of bubble gum and, noticing the dashboard cracks---saying we'd better get it mended because it's an ideal breeding spot for lice and bacteria. She begins pulling elastic taffy stringers out of her mouth and curling them into little impromptu vinyl patches which she tucks into the cracks. I'm astonished how deft she is---wondering where she's gotten this sort of training.

She toys with the dial---picks up some sputnik blips and beeps and suddenly finds a rhythmic static. She opens the glove box and slides out a super high-tech mixing board and dials the knobs and says "We need the right galaxy. I need a Pulsar...got it!"

"Now I will sing from within."

A hip-pumping rhythmic flow sweeps over the cruiser and Biker Chick has become the man she'd been hinting at in my half-illuminated mind. She is Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Biker Chick who begins a slow-burning devotional song mixed with the Pulsar chorus from the tuner. Siberia. Tuva. Balinese Valhallas and Samarkand. Algerian wails and Qawwali howls to the moon and back. It is Khan himself!

I am lucid now, reconfiguring the bedsheets into sails for my drunken ship. This Mustang bed vessel had last been rolling up glorious oriental coasts full of hitchhikers and stowaways with Hunter Thompson always nearby. On we rode till the long awaited traffic report finally came by way of an old Yoda-like sage (who ended up doing all the driving) and began to warn us of tsunamis and end-of-the-world tornadoes. Tsunamis! Tornadoes! I remember telling him to go east at the next Pacific grove.

Koufax (Counter-Clockwise)

2006-04-16T00:07:00.000+02:00

The first part of this dream is here.

I'm pissed-off about my head and getting more frustrated---looking round for another tool---slamming shut one cabinet door---swinging open another...."I've already looked here... and what the hell are the hand towels doing bunched up in the corner there with battalions of dead soldier ants? And the old rubber scabbard I stabbed everyone with is sandwiched between the pages of an old squirreled away Penthouse. And here are some photos of me as a baby...

Shit! I'm supposed to cook breakfast for the neighbor's baby I'm sitting. Where's the baby? Where's the fucking baby!" I'm rifling through a multitude of drawers and cabinets and finding thingamajigs here and thisandthats there. More rifling. One drawer is stuffed with ancient Shredded Wheat biscuits and the other one a stack of instruction booklets telling me how to operate gizmos in every language, but saying nothing about where to find the lousy wrench or baby.

Memory smells. Freshly-painted surfaces. Domestic perfumes of renewal glide across my consciousness as I walk down a corridor and enter the wrong side of the kitchen. I'm standing where the stove should be. Disorientation. "This is not my kitchen". I realize I'm inside my next door neighbor's duplex looking into my kitchen window from their side of the driveway. The hedge has been clipped with a reverse-mohawk indent to open a view through the bottom of the kitchen window. A metropolis of birds is chattering inside the bushes. I'm thinking about the word "hedge" and that it's also a verb which means to "beat around the bush". I tell myself that the birds are in their own mini Vegas "hedging bets". I make a mental note of this.

I backtrack down the corridor towards my bathroom but realize when I enter that things have changed. Multi-sided and round-shaped, it has more sides than a hexagon. More than an octagon. And what is a nine-sided room called? Is an eleven-sided room possible? What about seventeen? And is there an especially bad number of sides that one should avoid? I figure I can work these questions out with some calculations. Geometry. I've got to solve this room riddle. "Let's see. I know there's something called a hypotenuse. Hypo-Ten-Use. I make the acronym HYTEN, as in Hyten one's awareness. H is the 8th letter; Y the 25th. 25 + 8 = 33. What the hell should I do now? All those theorems and proofs and chalky diagrams and worrying about my high school finals. Did I pass my finals?" Panic.

Sepulchral beams of light rake down through the faceted glass. The walls have been beautifully prepared by some master hand in preparation for the rare tiles to be laid. Understanding the reasons for the wrench, vaulted room and religious light no longer concern me.

Instead I'm prying open an old carton full of childhood stuff I'd discarded moons ago. My old Topps baseball cards! I'm riding a busload of joy as I peel the brand new cards apart and hold Sandy Koufax up against the rapturous light. I am home.

Sump (Clockwise)

2006-04-08T20:30:00.000+02:00

The gurgling sounds from under the drain won't stop. I'm tugging on the beaded chain and trying in vain to pull out the hardened, crusty plug. But the chain breaks off and the silvery beads go flying in every direction.

Half of me is in the cabinet below working delicately to break the rusted monkey wrench from an ancient block of sponge. "If I wet the sponge, it'll be way easier". And so in my ecstatic rush to test this logic I limbo my way out of the miniscule space. Then, rising up like Lazarus, I violently kunk the back of my head on the edge of the door opening. I realize there's a massive welt---maybe even blood---but I purposely ignore it, hoping it'll go away.

Having freed the sponge from the wrench, I'm back under the sink (supine). Now I'm having a helluva time trying to get the teeth to grab ahold of the u-pipe coupling. The iron monkey head falls off and clacks against my forehead. I'm embarrassed but mighty glad nobody is watching. Dizzy ideas begin flickering. "Is this really the right wrench? Haven't I heard about another, more effectual tool? Why am I fucking around with this antiquated hunk of corroded metal anyway?"

Once again I work my way out of the cabinet, but this time gingerly. I notice the silvery beads from the plug chain have become translucent little pearls. I'm wondering if the hardware store will allow them as barter for a better wrench.

Tru Fiction

2006-03-18T07:55:00.000+01:00

I'm at another redbrick loft party---this time in Zürich.

Sitting on a great velvet sofa with a wrapped foot propped on a big plastic ball. "A helluva hullaballoon" I say to the misplaced old man sitting next to me. He looks over at me slowly and then slumps forward and begins nodding his head in slow affirmation.

G, a former student, approaches me with his size 9 head and a leotarded entourage of feline dancing girls. He says "I'm really and Truly Capote, so go lightly...hahaha!...and as soon as I get his punch-line, a rim-shot with accompanying laugh track has everyone around me getting swept up in his mesmerizing party persona.

Little balloons, Lawrence Welk bubbles and confetti rise and fall in opposite directions like a great Broadway homecoming celebration. I'm wondering how G has attained this savoir faire. And where did he acquire his gumbo patois? Wondering why such a small brain needs such a big head. Questions.

Harper Lee (Keener from the film) is calm and measured and telling me the real story about "This here G's the one who manipulated Perry Smith's dreams---hypnotized him so he'd enter the Clutter home. That way he'd have his true fiction and become the sort of person his father feared. It's like you and your own fake father". This last remark taps the memory of some long-ago fictional father I'd fashioned out of Mr. Green Jeans from Captain Kangaroo. How could she possibly know? I'm wondering if this fictional father of mine might have been the real Mr. Clutter who was murdered in Kansas. I'm not certain whether the murdered family was Truman's or mine.

And now I'm brooding about Captain Kangaroo and that terrifying Dancing Bear who used to haunt my dreams with its terrible eyes. Was it a he or a she? Who was inside?

The fake Truman (G) saunters over with a wry smile and a tray full of drinks and makes a pun about my injured foot: "What a lovely supporting cast! May I sprinkle some fairy dust on it?" He pulls out a fancy felt pen and gestures calligraphically in the air and says "Now, where do I put my autograph?"

Argyle Dream (The Other Side)

2006-02-26T11:41:00.000+01:00

This is the last part of the dream. Scroll down to Argyle Dream "This Side" and work your way up.

I'm trying to locate the front side of the sac---find out which way it's pointed---in case of a sudden spring. But rather than positioning myself defensively, I sit down, feeling weary---feeling drugged.

The hump has morphed into a staring face with hollowed-out eyes. The animated surface I'd noticed
earlier must have been some sort of gathering together of its features. That same movement, which had earlier seemed like a heaving womb about to give birth, is now motionless.

As I stare back at the mask I become fascinated by the strangeness of its expression. "Greek Theatre", I say to myself. "Like tragedy and comedy as one". "Why are these two expressions separate?" "And is this convergence what the Zo-onna Noh theatre mask signifies?"

I can hear a muted gong coming from below the floor. Is it a funeral? A play? Questions.

As I begin to pick up the mask, a massive, heaviness slams down on my neck and shoulders and manhandles me to my feet. It's him again.

Man ~ "Drop it".

When he lets me go I quickly drop to the floor and roll my right ankle, falling into a crippled heap. The man feigns to jump at me, and each time he does, I kick up reflexively. I know my ankle is seriously twisted, but I feel nothing.

He laughs derisively and straddles me like a giant.

Me ~ "Are you Paul Bunyan?" "Are you famous?" "Could I have your autograph?"

My queries seem to confuse him momentarily. While he's ruminating, I try to kung-fu kick at his crotch, but his balls are perched too high. (Here I'm wondering how break dancers gyrate so maniacally, and how if they could couple those spins with Bruce Lee's moves it would be the perfect martial art. And why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Inspired by all this I try to spin around, using my hands to get up to speed, but it's no use. I have no clue. I'm all crossed up.

Man ~ "You damned fool!". "That ain't break dancing---that's broke dancing!" (laughs)

Frustrated and embarrassed, I try doing "new and improved" moves, but as soon as I think I've got it, he begins jumping over and around me like a potent manchild endowed with feline flexibility and strength.

Intercom voice ~ "Why don't you leave his sorry ass alone?" "Show us the mask trick".

The man suddenly stops, turns, goes over to the mask, kneels down (as if in prayer) and slowly picks it up.

With his back to me (I'm able to witness his actions reflected in the two-way mirror) he begins slowly fondling the inside of the mask as though trying to build up some sort of static-erotic charge. He then begins to press it to his face, making lip-smacking noises and darting his tongue through the voids of its mouth and eyes. He's like a lecherous carnivore about to defile something innocent. Mashing and pressing the guise to his face, he works it until it begins to take on the ruddy features of his earlier self.

And then he slowly turns towards me---laughing hyterically through an expression that is neither mask-like nor human. "You are possessed! Stay away from me!"

I try to scramble to my feet but realize they're fast asleep and also injured. I bang on them violently, trying to wake them up. It this how it feels to be paralyzed?

He's upon me now and so in my panic I close my eyes and begin flailing, kicking and yelling in a desperate attempt to ward him off. But nothing.

I open my eyes, expecting to be face-to-face with him, but he's no longer in the room.
He's once again a silhouette in that room full of others behind the two-way mirror. He's throwing his arms up in halleluja gestures, mocking my gestures and the break-dancing kung fu self-defense---heehaws and chortling all around.

Me ~ "Fuckers!"

In the middle of the floor is a gaping hole much larger than the diameter of the sockeyed object. I crawl over to it on my hands and knees and peer over the edge. At the bottom appears to be an undulating mirror like a pool of mercury.

Needing to "test the water", I pull off my dead-to-the-world rubber foot and drop it in, watching it bob gently on the surface for a few moments before seeing it submerge.

Argyle Dream (That Side Part 2)

2006-02-19T15:00:00.000+01:00

"One sometimes realizes, after the event, that one's consciousness has caught something unexpected on its outer edge, as though the two things had somehow got superimposed".
~ Kenzaburo Oe

The white floor and swollen undulating hump forms a large and horizontal abstract eye. Is this a butcher's...a hospital...a morgue? The combination of clinical, hard-edged sauberkeit of the space coupled with the damaged flesh makes my sense of nakedness palpable.

But then I'm laughing up my sleeve about "that darned sockeye". My internal giggling about the pun triggers television canned laughter in the antechamber. I'm not sure whether I should be amusing myself or the others (?) beyond the two-way mirror. My sense of security feels intertwined with this thought.

The salesman's voice returns through the speakers---this time with an urbane tone. "We appreciate a mind like yours, sir. "You are the preferred sort of customer" We just need to ask you a few questions...would you mind our mind survey?"

More laughter all around---I feel as if this were a stage---as if I were being watched by a very large audience whose feed were being transmitted through a surveillance camera. Have they been watching everything all along? Is this some sort of reality t.v.? I don't detect any mounted cameras.

But what about the transformation of the Republican into posh and understated gent? He's the same man who had earlier threatened me. A mean and nasty hick.

Me ~ "Were you acting for reasons having to do with selling off all the farm equipment and dealing with surly customers?" "I know farmers everywhere are being devoured by agribusiness goliaths".

A sudden biblical breakage---renting through a narrow isthmus and inundating the Aborginal European Mud People and their sad flocks of bleating sheep. I see hoards of field-hollering sharecroppers, un-landed and unforgiven trailer trash with everyone trying to stave off Simon Legrees who'd come to make manifest their destiny---to up the land-snatching, speculating ante. They came to kill the ancient souls of those who didn't know the concept of a fence. Kill their souls. Kill their soles. Filetted soles. And I reflect on moccasins, Rubber Soul, rubber feet and that infernal eyesac.

The man doesn't answer me, and so I rant something to the effect of "John Barleycorn and his angry and drunken square-dancing is like a lost coyote. He's not Mr. Blues who has helped stave off heartless shits like yourself who've never even had a soul to sell to the Devil!" I let out a bigger torrent of incomprehensible ravings and in the end am breathless and confused. A silence follows where I realise everything I cherish might be taken; that he'll "get away with it" if I don't change tactics.

Me ~ "Was it me or you who made everything disappear earlier? What about the darned sockeye in the middle of the floor?" "Will you play a fair game here and answer me with honesty?"

Man ~ "You need to look more closely at your mind".

Me ~ "Is that lumpy thing my mind looking at me?"

Man ~ "Something like that. It's known as Past Judgement".

Me ~ "You mean there's something in my past it wants to clarify, or something it wants to judge?"

Man ~ "To judge"

Me ~ "So what do I do?"

Man ~ "Examine it up close and peel it back" "You must confront whatever it is that emerges"

End of Argyle Dream (That Side Part 2)

Go to Argyle Dream (The Other Side)

Argyle Dream (That Side Part 1)

2006-02-11T10:48:00.000+01:00

While I'm pressing on my wounded foot, which makes a little hissing squeak whenever I release it, the man behind the mirror booms through the p.a. system. "Yer a dumbshit to be here....this ain't yer territory, an' yew know it. So why don' yew juss git out!?"

I begin applying an even firmer press-and-release on my foot, which makes it sing with an odd, lamb-to-the-slaughter bleat. The comic sound gives me the right clue, and so now I know with certainty that this ghastly foot isn't real. It's a magic store slip-on rubber fake which is covering my healthy foot underneath. I begin to ponder my little epiphany: "How could such a horribly real thing become so bogus? And why didn't I notice the metamorphosis while it was happening? Then I'm wondering if this fake foot coverall be marketed as a new-fangled sort of footwear? I'm sure it would sell like mad! But what would I call it?" More questions to answer.

Again lucid and aware that it's 4 in the morning, I begin to wonder about the many things in life that slip by our notice, such as moles, nose hairs and wrinkles, but I can't keep the thread alive and so I slip back into the same showroom with my faux foot and the Republican. Beyond the glass, he is a shifting, ghostly silhouette. And someone else is standing alongside him.

Everything is suddenly silent except for the muffled street honks and fluorescent buzzing. I listen to these sounds while I force the whole perspective through squinted eyes. I know now that I'm in control of this dream, and so I squint to make the mirror retreat and disappear. I squint and remove the rubbery foot. The same with the tractor and the rest of the farm machinery. I get a huge rush as I begin to delete things from the dream diorama one by one. I make sounds like dumping files into the trash on my computer and re-arrange the look of the room till it looks like a Soho gallery. I'm feeling nearly omnipotent now. "The power to change is always right there in front of you". I feel a surge of joy rush through me as the room becomes an infinite white. I sense it is my personal Philosopher's Stone.

In the middle of floor is a little hump of something chromatic and alive. Up close it is a livid, undulating sac which vaguely resembles what was once my bloodied argyle sock. Could it be? It's like a living, breathing soft sculpture stuck to the floor at the edges like a scab. Something is trying get out.

End of Argyle Dream (That Side Part 1)

Go to Argyle Dream (That Side Part 2)

Argyle Dream (This Side)

2006-01-21T07:51:00.000+01:00

Last night I hurt my foot when I got my shoe wedged in the treads of a tractor tire. I'd been walking around with C in Paris looking for a particular restaurant supply shop (where they sell phenomenal cheese graters) when suddenly she went this way and I went that, and I ended up kicking tractor tires and getting stuck.

The showroom (where I found myself lost) had an astonishing assortment of specialty farm gear on display. Diggers, cutters, choppers, whackers, splicers, pickers, seeders you name it, you betcha.

A huge sausage-faced Republican (who'd appeared from the other side of the two-way mirror at the back of the showroom) was eyeballing me peripherally. He had on a "farmers suit" like overalls; a pair of "huckster's duds" to help him cheat the local folks out of their hard-earned money.

Now both of us began moseying around the tractors and peeping at each other through the seat springs. I said to myself "Start kicking tires, Finn, I'll decoy him good". And so I began a wild dance around the showroom, thumping one set of treads after another, eventually losing both the shamus and myself. I dervished myself into that gone netherworld of billowy dream inquiry beneath the covers, waking up momentarily to take mental notes.

Suddenly he was looking down on me from the other end of the steam shovel. Out of surprise and sudden fear I swung my foot hard and wedged my boot into the big tread and then cowered and cringed like a trapped animal, knowing he'd be on top of me to snap my neck. From within my pretzel shape I willed a woman's voice from the loudspeakers, blaring a falsetto "Check OK on 13"! And then he was gone.

I pulled on my boot repeatedly, but the shiny tiled floor didn't allow me to get a proper grip, and so I gave a violent jerk and freed my foot and saw that my socks were mismatched (sanitary on the left, and Argyle on the right). I thought "What's wrong with you, Finn? Why can't you even get your socks in order?"

It was then that I noticed the wet Argyle. I'd kicked a set of steel-flanged "ice tires" and now my sock was dripping with blood.

I peeled the sock off slowly, revealing a horrid, bone-exposed gash that ran from my heel to my big toe. The Argyle had sopped up everything, leaving my foot looking drained, like that of a corpse. The other oddity was the rim of the wound, whose purpled edges gave it the hideous appearance of a metatarsal grin with lip-liner.

I wrung out the sticky Argyle and started swabbing the blood around on the white tiles, finger-painting little rocket ships and spirals while worrying about my wound, the ensuing infection and worse---that Republican huckster who'd disappeared behind the two-way mirror.

End of Argyle Dream (This Side)

Go to Argyle Dream (That Side Part 1)

Oma God Dream

2006-01-15T14:00:00.001+01:00

Poking my fingers through a linty hole inside the left pocket of my leather jacket. I'm searching for a tram ticket which I'm sure I'd purchased---where is it? The tram is heading my way, disrupting orderly puffs of steam that rise through vents at the edge of the canal. It is a European city, but neither Venice nor Amsterdam. I'm scanning the street signs and store windows for a clue, but everything is lit up in English. Trying to remember the canals in London. Did Dickens ever mention any canals?

In the near distance, I can see the tram passing a series of curb vents emitting steam. As it passes the last one, I remember about my ticket and continue fingering through the lintballs and sand deposits.

The vehicle looks different upon closer inspection. The front---shaped like the prow of a ship---gives the crowd of people around me a rush as it proceeds to pass. Gleaming and filled with demi-monde hustlers in suits, the first set of cars glides past, sloshing up a miniature set of beach breakers over my shoes. Everyone reacts in spontaneous disapproval to this sole-soaking. What sort of city is this? What town would create a hybrid oddity that moves along underwater tracks and whose eddies wet the tramsters and make the curbs disappear? Perhaps one of the Hanseatic cities like Novgorod or Bruges? (Here I am half-awake wondering about Hamburg, and if I saw anything there that led me to this Hanseatic thread.)

I feel very cold. I'm worried about my soaked socks and remind myself to wring them out when I get aboard. Weakness consumes me.

Pneumonia

And there is something medieval in this waterway. Something with the water rats.

Plague

By the time the rear end of the hybrid vehicle arrives (it is part train, part tram and part vaporetto) I realise I have to piss. Should I get aboard or should I look for a pissoir and wait for the next one? But I'm suddenly herded forward by the tramsters which makes my indecision moot. "Ok, the next station...my coat pocket...the ticket...my wallet? Wallet? Where's my wallet!" The conductor is forward checking tickets in the demi-monde compartments. I've still got plenty of time, but I need to find my ticket...money...wet shoes and socks...got to piss...mysterious city...

Sometime later I'm aboard the number 13 tram in Zürich. A hefty Oma (German for grandma) is now assisting me out of my damp clothes. I'm naked, but nobody seems to notice or care. There's something comforting and warmly firm and commanding about this buxom old gal that makes me trust her. She's quite animated for such a big woman. "Ja, Sie müssen Ihre nassen socken ausziehen, mein Junge. Legen Sie diese über den Kachelofen da drüben!" (Yes, you have to take off your wet socks and lay them over the tiled oven over there.) She's got my back, this Kitchen Queen of the Night mit Kompressstrumpfhosen. I'm not sick. Everything is old world and good. Ah, Europe!

But while I'm kicking back and wondering at my nakedness, I realise Grandma's got other plans. When she opens her carpet bag I spy her deluxe enema kit complete with hose, stop cock, and rectal tips and I wake up immediately.

Roadrunner Dream

2006-01-08T09:14:00.000+01:00

I'm chasing a stub-hooked tetherball down Oxnard Street in North Hollywood.

This reminds me of a dream from long-ago where I chased a ball I'd snapped clean off the playground pole, hitting it with comic book strength and sending it soaring into the blue sky while all the girls were watching. I said "I'll be right back!" and transformed myself into Roadrunner.

I chased that ball down with spinning legs, all the while bobbing forwards, backwards and sideways with my torso. I homed in on it with my two-way Dick Tracy watch and continued socking and kicking and chasing it over roofs and trees and buildings. I kicked it well beyond the neighborhood oh yes I did. I sent it clear across the City of Angels into Death Valley where I deftly scooted past Rattlesnakes, Gila Monsters and Horny Toads. I drop-kicked and pursued that ball well beyond the Sierras---sent it sailing over the Grand Canyon towards barking prairie doggies and waving Wheaties fields. I saw Huckleberry steamboats and kicked the ball clean over the Mississippi and then hightailed it for Chicago and New York.

And then I woke up and realized I wasn't so fast.

Sonic Dream

2006-01-02T19:14:00.000+01:00

An epic dream of buffeting winds, Kitty Hawk dunes and sudden basaltic cliffs towering over tilted Irish seas. There's an easterly on the western seaboard and a westerly where I am standing. I am able to shift my coastal location by closing my lids, turning round and blinking. I see the shifting locales as though looking through the viewfinder of a movie camera; my eye movements acting like a "shutter-drive", controlling not only the speed of the scene, but also the era. Rapid eye movements, which feel mechanically controlled, create a sensation of clarity. But when I switch to myself and try to control things, the sea, the dunes and the windy grasses begin to flicker as though I were watching a silent film. I practice at various speeds in order to shorten the divide between this machine-self and me, sensing that I'll be able to master it. My feelings, in spite of the bodily uncertainty, are curiously hopeful.

Later, a spectral newsreel-like montage of great personalities, inventors and inventions. Edison, Duke Ellington, Laurel and Hardy, Rod Serling, the Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, the Transatlantic Cable...the Transatlantic Cable. I'm obsessed about that early communication tether---my lucid mind is now envisioning those first cable telegrams and their sonic vibrations....could they be heard by whales and dolphins? And if so, how did they interpret those curious clicks? And are echo-locating bats the silent night agents who channel this cetatean sonar? Are they night beasts who relay and translate these codes through berries and blood?

I'm making mental puns about "reeling minds". Nervous laughter. But the other half of me is seriously exerting to manage the action by slowing everything down. The practical me wants to construct something magnificent and lasting from all this.

Later again, a figure is calling---waving distress signals through the windy ground mist. But I cut myself off from this "other". I can sense "it" trying to distract me from the thread of this bicoastal jump-cutting which feels like travelling through the carotid artery of sprung gnosis. There is something holy and profound here, something dependent upon my ability to will it into being through hard work. Yes, hard work! I begin blinking rapidly again, hoping that my cyborg self can call up the right set of actions to put this beast together---make it something unambiguous...transparent.

Back on a blustery Kitty Hawk dune facing the Donegal bluffs on the other side of this dream. I know I will manage this time. This is not like the other dreams.

Later still, the letters are freshly painted over the battened placard. The sign itself is quite old and pocked with a beautiful patina of salt and rust. It is standing astride a stony well, where I can see a hanging bucket attached to a cable.

Strand Dream

2005-12-26T17:28:00.000+01:00

The vast pristine beach is hot. My feet are making muffled, sandy squeaks as I pedal through the powdery sand. Vague memories of unrequited love is attached to this place---I have been here many different times before in reality and in dreams. The pre-dawn beaches of Santa Monica, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Ventura and the Channel Island shores are each hinted at. I can see mother whales with their calves breaching---heading in the opposite direction towards Laguna San Ignacio. I want to sit and gaze, but something presses me to move on and get out of this unrelenting sun.

My thoughts are dull and in need of ocean "smelling salts". A cluster of towers like ones I've seen in other dreams appears on the horizon looking like a floating Aztec metropolis. Earlier they'd seemed so fragile through the misty surf---like crumbling sand castles. But now the structure appears to weigh a thousand Gibraltars, with a spectral backlight making it appear Oz-like. I'm jogging now, moving to the rhythm of my breathing. But the faster I move, the more mired in the sand I get. I need to get over...to the wet sand.

A pack of huge dogs rushes past while I'm trying to extricate myself from the quicksand. The leader skids to a stop---looks back at me. They are not dogs, but hyenas. The leader and I stare each other down in a mental standoff. I tell him telepathically that he is to keep moving--- that his next life will be different---that if he does anything to hurt me, he will remain a stinking ugly hyena for many lifetimes. He starts toward me while baring his teeth, but then he stops again as I bare down on him: "Go on....don't look at me...move on...now!" And just like that they are all off running, frolicking and tearing up the beach toward the towers. As I'm wriggling to extricate myself, a rumbling, roaring breaker looms up and hits the shore like rolling thunder, quickly swallowing up the hyenas and then swallowing me.

But I'm uprooted from the sand, clutching at nothing and everything and tumbling around. My breath...panic...I'm going to die. But my focused mind tells me to breathe and as I do, a terrifying gurgle rattles around in my lungs and inside my head. I cough up a chunk of something and quickly gulp down underwater air to "catch my breath". Yoga techniques allow me to calm down and breathe effortlessly. The water is now crystal clear, and I can see the same pack of hyenas swimming like sea dogs alongside the mother whales and their babies. They are heading south towards Mexico.

Barbie-Q Dream

2005-12-11T18:58:00.000+01:00

Sitting in broadcast booth of some 'Murican littletown looking over a sea of prefab cheapniz. In the booth next to me is a radio neocon-man with a huge head and a toothy Mormon grin. He's chuckling along with his skinny sidekick about Ken getting roasted on a Barbie Q. Station break after station break (when will it stop?) is looping the same bellicose line-up of honks, whistles, train chugs and boingy effects. Through the static hiss of empty delirium comes the station's theme scream "KXTC!! KXTC!! KXTC!!" The two guys are flicking switches and pulling off head gear---going off line. The skinny guy is mouthing me a silent but demonstrative "You're on!" "You're on!" through the glass. More sound effects start blaring and distracting me from...I haven't got a clue. I blurt into the mike "testing testing 1-2, 1-2". I know this is my big chance but everything is subverted. I'm blowing up in front of the whole world with childhood dread and a fluttering, old man's heart. I take a slow, deep breath and begin faking a head-nodding, uncontrollable drowsiness. But my heart really is going. Am I going to die while on the air? Silence.

Later a nimbus cloud from far away quickly balloons atomic---starts raining tendril-winged "seahorse shrimp" onto the tiled, soul-dead stripmall. A topless double-decker busload of tourists careens round the corner, the bus skidding over the shrimpy street and onto its side, spilling out a hoard of screamers and laughers. Everyone jumps up in unison (unhurt!) to get out of the crustacean storm.

The same toothy fat guy from the broadcast booth (now Zero Mostel) is bouncing around with his oversized wheelbarrow "vat", his belly distended over the piles of wriggling horseshrimp. He's stopping to scoop up living, heavy heaps with his shovel, stopping after each scoop to mop his brow and blow his nose. I feel sorry for him from the bottom of my soul, thinking about how he used to be a little baby all innocent and maybe his mother was a hippo and maybe he just can't help it. Then as though reading my mind he bellows: "Barbie-Q, baby! All you can eat!"

Retablo Dream

2005-11-14T22:15:00.000+01:00

On my way from one part of a dream to another. Stooped in a car lot somewhere in the Dordogne "reading" a discarded sheet of International Tribune. The page is littered with misshapen, bulging text. I'm wondering about early type setters and if this rickety display isn't some print media ploy to hold onto its readership.

The car lot is filled with a humpy relief of old 50's Chevy rooftops---a low slung sea of dark, hydraulically suspended rides. Perched up high nearby is a glorious graffiti sign with Celt-ish knotted script that screams "Jumping Beaners---The Original Whittier Low Riders" painted in lurid day-glo colors. The sign is being given its finishing touch of shellac by a Mexican trio advertising themselves on their XL bowling shirts as "The Chino Masters" . They are a joyful work crew, cajoling one another into wilder phantasmagoric heights of graphic prowess while dripping paint, sipping cans of Dos Equis and listening to a crazy mariachi boom box tune punctuated with cartoonish laugh tracks. Rocking the jade-colored grid of bamboo scaffolding is a wily midget who's clearly the Master. He's gyrating and hip-pumping with an array of spray cans in his pouch and at the ready. He's a Norteño buckaroo jester---his golden necklaces all festooned with cell phones like amulets. He is EL JEFE.

I'm carefully wending my way through the lot to check out the amazing cruisers on display. Each one has a lustrous surface built up from dozens of dark layers that look like Japanese Lacquer boxes. Up close I can see between the layers a microscopic motion of glitter like fluttering showgirl eyes. And at the edges, near the chrome, the lacquer is subtly sanded down to expose a chronology like tree rings.

Mirrored off the hood is the upside-down image of the midget checking out my reactions. When I look up he's a humpin', grindin' paintin' fool without a care. He's grinning big---gesturing at his nose and indicating that I should "smell, smell!" So I bend down to get a whiff of a down-home aroma of freshly baked bread and vinegar. And now he's jumping up and down like a monkey waiting for my verdict, doing backflips and pointing to his mouth, "taste taste!" I start licking the hood, which is soft and salty under the hot sun. And now he's making facial signs with his teeth and lips to "eat eat!" So I buck out my uppers and press down into the tacky licorice. I get stuck and the heat of the base metal conducts through my head, but a slow turn and I surface with elongated streamers of black taffy glued to my enlarged, bucky chompers and start into braying like a donkey---for laughs---the three are hooting it up in slapstick ecstasy at my antics. But behind my jestering I am overwhelmed with awe at these subtle masterpieces of edible folk art which rivals anything in a any museum, anywhere.

Later, after another dream excursion through old neighborhood haunts, I'm back at the sign. It's bigger than before; rotating like a Vegas marquee. The flip side of the Celt-ish ad has a cartoon image of "Pachuco Pep Boys" who are the same three lacquerers from before. It is now crystal clear that these three are the original Angelino artists whose masterworks were long ago usurped by Manny, Moe and Jack.

And in the upper right corner of the big marquee is a retablo-like painting of a boiling pot with Earl Scheib's grinning mug levitating on a cloud of steam.

Riverboat Dream (That Side)

2005-11-04T17:31:00.000+01:00

The same sort of whitened rails from the jungle trail that I rode in on line the outer edges of the steamboat. The forward momentum of the dream stops where the boat is moored on a hump of basalt. The vessel feels lighter than it should---even hollow. I notice the rails are not the same supportive ones from the path, but instead are wobbly with loose rusted bolts. A feeling of imminent collapse is in the air, and so I want off. But now I'm far from the river's edge and while I'm debating about what might happen if I jump, the boat goes down.

The water below is crystal clear and fresh, like the inside of a fish tank. The vessel is sinking below me; somehow still whole but headed straight down. The paddle wheel is spinning mad bubbly swirls, cutting everything loose into smaller pieces. Like a runaway mower, the boat paddles down towards the sandy bottom, the rickety hull skin being shed while revealing something much newer underneath.

Later. I'm floating away from the crest on a broken chunk of "old-timer" wooden surfboard tattooed with Maori patterns. Looking back towards the river crest where I went down, I can see great masses of boat flotsam getting churned by the paddle wheel to the water's surface. And as I'm watching all the flotsam rise, the boat, much newer but still antique, emerges out of the water like a breaching whale, white spray spouting out the stacks. The paddle wheel is rotating madly, suspending the entire hull on the surface while turning the boat slowly round on its axis, upending, submerging, resurfacing, then splashing down and going under.

A pontoon biplane is heading towards me. It's as if it were riding on an invisible coaster track, touching the water lightly when dipping down. The hippy goggled pilot in the cockpit gives me the thumbs-up as he passes. He circles several times above the "dance arena", writing cryptic smoke signals that I'm unable to decipher. Then he heads straight up, nosedives, and at the last instant before hitting the water he swoops up, pauses and slowly descends tail first. The bi-wings begin rotating like a hover craft while the smoking tail-pipe gargles each time it alights on the water.

And then the crazy riverboat bobs to the surface, levitating above the water with wild paddle wheel gone insane and smoke stacks chuffing out a jitterbuggy tune and everything jumping like a whirly-gig---a gyrating rockin'-in-rhythm pair...and my epiphany knows no bounds. "Well this is really it. They are for real!"

But the scene drifts away, getting smaller and less real. I'm thinking "Why hasn't anyone thought of an old-time riverboat show like this?" With this gut feeling I realize that if I get back upriver and contact the friendly and talented pilot, I'll be able to convince him of my plans and collect a finder's fee.

Riverboat Dream (This side)

2005-10-29T07:54:00.000+02:00

Running barefoot along a jungle "exercise" trail in Nicaragua. "Fuera!" signs posted by Sandanistas are riddled by Contra bullets. I'm carrying a special backpack containing urgent code sheets for the Ortega brothers. War is in the air. Bullets. Muffled explosions. "You are Phidippides. Now run!"

My left hand is sliding along an "energy rail" installed to protect peace-time trekkers from falling over the edge into the churning river. I'm able to manipulate my weight on the ground as well as my forward movement by varying my grip. My feet are barely touching the trail as I move along in a levitating, air-pedalling sprint. But when I let my grip slacken slightly, the jungle gravity brings everything to a slow-motion crawl. A buzzing, pulsing surge (like a video controller) is being conducted through the railing into my wrist and up my arm. I flex my fingers and eventually locate the proper "energy" grip. The feeling is giddy as my body starts to lighten and I move forward again.

The river is moving faster now as I'm heading up a steep incline. A Mississippi steam boat is paddling at the crest trying to get over. As I move forward along the rail, it's as though I'm zooming through a lens. At the back of the riverboat a wheel of heavy paddle blades is spanking up the river water and churning up a heavy mist. I'm trying to see through the spray to have a closer look. I can hear the firing of the steam engine below the deck and a swinging big band sound is coming through the smoke stacks like a pair of giant grammaphones. The band, the engine and the water churning all fuse to become a cacaphonic wall of abstract sound. As I swivel my head left and right I'm able to locate the main beat by concentrating on the engine. I continue squeezing my hand and turning my head and eventually dial in a righteous "heady" groove. It is narcotic, physical and ready to devour me.

Floating above this mix coming out a smaller set of pipes is Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra singing a divine ode to something lost. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful ballad that I'm familiar with and trying to recall..."What song is it?" But I can't locate it. And after infinite sadness and despair the great architecture of sound is tangled and crossed. The paddle wheel becomes a paddle wheel again and there's no Armstrong, no Sinatra.

Sponge Dream

2005-10-18T15:46:00.000+02:00

Lying sick in my old attic room on Griffith Park Blvd. My mom is sitting next to me with a galvanized bucket of sponging medicine, mopping my forehead with a giant swab, chanting a "cure" with her far away voice. The sponge she's using is an undulating, effervescent living creature---each time she brings it to my face for another medicinal wash I can see a schaumy mass of bubbles brewing in the fissures. I peer over the side of the bed to watch her "sponging technique". As soon as she plops it in the bucket, it darts out of her hand to move behind a large chunk of galvanized bucket coral. While I'm holding myself up on the side rail to get a better look, I lose my grip and slip down onto a drenched batch of bedding. Is this all my sweat? My mom chortles: "Boy, you're sweating so much it looks like you're in a washing machine, heehee". I'm buoyed by the sheets, but the sweat is running out of my pores. My hands can feel all the facial seepage while the bed keeps filling up.

Later the bed has morphed into a night pond filled with water lilies. I'm in the garden of my aunt L's house---the light from her kitchen illuminating a cluster of guppies swimming round my body. Surrounded by a starry sky with frogs and crickety sounds, I can hear my mom speaking calmly as though I were still in the room. But her voice trails off and I yelp for her to come back. I know my fever will worsen if I stay in this dark pool and now in a hurry---working to extricate myself from this backyard bayou. A heavy dark plastic sheeting is hooked over the pond border, collapsing each time I try to raise myself out. As I close my eyes to meditate, a montage of educational footage from primary school warns about drowning people having superhuman strength. (The narrator sounds like George Stevens from his classic "D-Day to Berlin"). There's a "highlight" portion where some Tarzan guy jumps into the ocean to save a drowning man (to illustrate the danger). As the two are fighting each other for water supremacy---they're both drowning---a Jaws shark starts circling. The scene switches back to the smiling narrator who says: "Join us next week folks, when we find out what happens to our heroes".

I'm away from the edge now, dog-paddling towards the middle of the pond where the lilies are. I get nowhere and so turn over to do a backstroke. Now my legs and feet are tangled in a patch of...lotus roots? My feet and legs are suddenly grazed by something. The closer I get to the center, the easier it is to move---as if being pulled by a current. I finally reach the lilies and hold on to the edge of the biggest one, but it collapses. I can feel something sucking at the bottom of my feet. The lilies are turning now, round and round and I can feel the undertow sucking everything down.

Later I'm standing in a middle of the drained pond. It is alive with woebegone trilobites, catfish and little guppies all flopping and sucking for the mother pond. Near the ledge where my bed was, I see the same sneaky sponge sliding behind a large outcrop of bucket coral.

Clown Dream

2005-10-06T17:49:00.000+02:00

A big snarly red faced wino clown is knotting balloon tubes for a pleat-skirted gang of parochial schoolgirls. He's not a real clown, but a smelly disguised hobo with bad intentions. The schoolgirls are innocent---I want to warn them---but he keeps eyeballing me suspiciously---so I'm waiting for the right moment to charge him so they can get away.

He flips the switch on his massive tricked-out ghetto blaster, its console full of dials and dancing lights. A big Merengue tambora leaps out the speakers with thumping bass and the wino clown ups his pace, now assembling an astonishing array of rubbery dogs, cats, horses, bunnies---I'm entranced by the candy-colored zoo multiplying around his feet---his head bopping and fingers flying---the girls screaming 20! 30! 40! 50! Suddenly he flips off the blaster switch, pulls off his wino face, wig and his billowy clown togs, revealing a splendid dapper-dandy. A real magician.

I'm stunned. He's had me completely fooled. Harharhar! He's pointing at me and honking a giant bicycle horn going harharhar HONK HONK! The parochial girls join in the big heehaw---are they his floozies? I'm disgraced, muttering confused apologies to the magical hobo clown and to the girls for having wrongly accused him. They're circling me now, and so I curl up into a fetal ball, his goose horn honking something wet and sticky over me.

Liquor Store Dream

2005-09-27T20:01:00.000+02:00

As my eyes opened, I realized the room I had hurried out of was the same one I was in. I'd been half awake while sitting on the bed with my dead father, who was asking me why I had stolen that carton of cigarettes from Jake's Liquor Store. There was no way out now.

Cheeseburger Dream

2005-09-22T22:31:00.000+02:00

A long battery of fry cook griddles are aligned inside the stainless steel rebar cage. Flash-frozen boxes of ball park cargo labeled "Full-o-franks" "Boigies" and "Fries" are being elevated to our work floor on a clackity dumbwaiter hitched to cords of hemp. A cling-a-ling bell goes off, sounding like "dinner time!" and "back to work!" The platform stops, quickly jerks off the goods, finds its alignment again, and then is swiftly pulled upward to the opening in the floor above.

I get on my knees and stick my head past the floor opening and dangling ropes to have a look. I can see more platforms hoisting multiple rows of the same vapory cargo---those descending going down slowly, smoothly---the rising ones more in subtle fits and starts. Is this a relief station---are we a cook-crew for hurricane victims? I can see into an adjacent storage facility---a polar-cold warehouse staffed with refrigerated workers who are busy loading up the big dumbwaiters...more ropes....more flats on frozen boxes full of eats. There's a "foreman" tugging at the hawsers to signal another jacking. He turns to motion in my direction...is he waving at me?

I know I should be in charge of some station, but I haven't got an inkling---all the maneuvering---where do I fit in? Feeling like I'm squandering something, I watch as wax papered patties and frozen weenies are getting slapped down, peeled and rolled into alignment by my "sous chef" son. He's wearing a baseball cap and apron combo which both have the same looping, cursive "Pit Stop" logo embroidered into happy faces with lumpy burgers for eyes. My own sad apron has got a coating of polymerized fond glazed over the upside-down and backward logo. While I'm trying to pick out the sticky bits from the apron strings, I suddenly see the many customers lined up in multiple rows on the other side of the cage, pressing jailbird faces and yowling "Hey, there's a goddamned ball game going on so hurry it up!" More workers have appeared (thankfully) and Ty is now doing all the griddle piloting (without a worry in the world!) "Doublecheese! "Extra fries...order of nachos...three vanilla shakes!" As the orders are shuffled, he twists around a cooker dial and (whoosh) up slides his service door. He looks over at me with a benevolent shrug that suggests he needs me. But I can't stop toying with the tacky apron strings. He chortles "Don't worry---the cage is plenty sturdy; they can't get in, because I did all the welding myself." I'm nodding in agreement and wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

Svengali Dream

2005-09-15T16:44:00.000+02:00

I'm both the observer and the observed in an old b&w film of epic joy and sadness---a story that both answers and opens questions about the tin pan characters of my life. G.V. is the young, full-o-charm actor/director, handling the camera, grips, make-up and every other sort of equipment splayed out on the carpark tarmac. V.A. is his make-up "powder girl" who is joyful and nonchalant. But I can see through her frank goodness that she's shielding trouble. She's running loops around the equipment, scooping up film cans, jumping over cables and mindlessly plopping valuable and sundry gizmos and foodstuffs into a large plastic cart---set clothes, lenses, jewelry baubles, clipboards, cables and packaged crew snacks. I'm sure she's toting around the cart because she's homeless, Everything she's squirreling away is hock-able at a pawn shop. But I'm worried about her getting busted for this charade; wanting to tell her she doesn't have to worry about all that this time round. "I'll help you", I want to say. But all the stage-set hubbub keeps me distracted and so all this concern dissipates.

A gigantic black boom-mike "X" is girded overhead, feeding down a cracklesputter pair of high-tech pickups. "Quiet on the set!" G yelps. Everybody waits as the boom settles down to a low hum, with workers tuning dials on portable mixer panels....then silence. Surrounding the wooden stage is a gaffed set-up of arc lights shrouded with prismatic gels and morse-code blinkers. G is fiddling with the nobs on his dated walkie-talkie. Feedback squeals from the monitors..testing, testing one two three. I sidle up to him, wanting to get close, wanting say something (what is it I want to say?) and he's suddenly fatting up my ears with highly technical jargon about the museum-piece Arriflex he's manning---the special wide-angle lenses, adapters and filters he's had manufactured for this crazy dream shoot. I'm awestruck by his le plus vieil homme du monde knowledge. I ask him diffidently "What...how...when did you learn all this? I never knew!" He rakes me under his arms and shakes his head at me scoldingly...tsk tsk tsk! Then lets go, hikes up his jeans and confidently approaches the three-legged Arri, deftly unspooling a wriggling kite-tail stream of perforated film stock, tossing the ribbons at my feet and yelling: "I need a goddamn cartridge! Get me a fucking c.a.r.t.r.i.d.g.e.!"

Later after sundry manic dream forays, G is back (from a nap? a holiday?). He's now extremely dark-skinned, but not naturally, curiously covered in blackface like Al Jolson. But the bogus hackjob around his eyes and neck...he's got a shit-eating grin and so...bar-har-har! It's the dignified G turned shithead vaudville, not at all the dignified one commanding the stage. No, he's lampooning himself---the crew joining his raucous mirth-filled hilarity---big teeth all around.

But then he wipes off the grease paint, raises his spectral finger into the light like a medieval raptor, arcs it down toward me, and at the last moment whumping its beak down on my chest. Then again and again, screaming with each stab. "Homes, you need to learn! You need to learn!" There is a dull pain that I know is deep and serious, but I can't feel it like I should. Then he's back with that earlier sneer, bearing down on me with all the weight of his soul. I'm a low down dirty in his mind. He's getting me back for something that my lucid mind is trying to recall. This is a slippery dream of recriminations and doubts.

He pulls out a load of clinking miniature (whiskey?) vials from the velcro pockets of his fisherman's vest, uncapping two, three, four at a time and chugging them down glugglug. Wiping at his mouth with the vest, projectiles of comes flying in my face while he burps and coughs at once. "Damned good!" And he's winking and friendly again, giving me the knowing eye about some past funny only we share.

More dream close-ups and wide shots pass the night from this Mother feature. I can see he's been puppeting my mind and making me shrink---directing me with kinetoscopic Svengali eyes for the big make-over. "Watch me. Learn what you need to learn and then have copies made for distribution. IT is all here". And I understand "it" is the mystery about his residence. But I feel clamped like a vise by Him. Like a trial with him as judge, I'm at His mercy.

Doll Dream

2005-09-08T07:33:00.000+02:00

I'm anxious about revisiting the bungalow on Ambrose Ave where I once lived. The same laconic Gene Autry cowboy from Saturday t.v. matinees drawls: "There was a little girl who lived nearby. I don't know who she was, but I seen her in my dreams; I'm certain she's the one and it was here". I don't know that it's me talking or some other. Or that this is an old song I've nearly forgotten. But this is like the long ago dream about that same talking, pull-cord baby doll that was both fictitious and real. "You can't possibly remember anything because you left this place for elswhere". At the door, I press on a sad little bellbuzzer that's hooked up to springy electrical wires and hanging from the same battered fascia board and feel the mild charge in my fingers. Brrriiiiiing brriiiiiiing! Behind the blackened screen door I can see the same dark gray corpse of a crone smoking in her rocker. What was her name? She was the woman who used to plant things only at night. The vapors of her cigarette are trailing towards the gridded, galvanized mesh. The smoke comes through like Indian signals revealing that she's got the doll.

At the tail end of a snaking customs queue with Ty, Elena, Geoff, and a much older Gena. They're each wearing a wreath-like "crown o leis" chin-cinched with vines of cascading holiday tendrils. Their heads are bopping to some sort of Hawaiian slide uke that's playing over the p.a. I'm not partaking of the festivities---I keep bumping up against a hodge-podge of dented, military-issue jerry cans. The canisters are stenciled with stippled white symbols, all of them visually suggesting the direst warnings which my dream mind runs with: plutonium, aids ebola, cholera and bubonic pestilence. The "family" directly in front the containers seem infected---something is seriously wrong with their skins. The pink freckled dad with his flattened haircut has got something to do with all of it. He's got the girth of a savior, but is going down with the wife and kids. He's got scabrous blotches coating the back of his arms and neck----poking through the appendage openings of his pristine starched white shirt. He looks like something ancient...beached. I'm trying to get the other four to notice all this, but they are now far back towards the tail end of the line. I'm yelling and waving while the crowd surges, but my vocal projection is chord-cut and feeble---drowned out by the funky cacophony. The four of them are now clapping, stomping and whooping it up---entertaining the crowd around them by weaving a Celtic knot of a well-rehearsed barn-dance. The Hawaiian twang of the p.a. is metallic, hard-edged and deafening. We've moved forward in the line, but the canisters, and the family in front of us, are gone.