night of 6/4/2010

i am supposed to be developing a presentation on autonomous agents, to give at a company the next day. D. is on the phone. "have you got some good jokes?" i am supposed to have gotten some jokes. i haven't worked on the presentation yet.

i am driving up north to get some weed, for the pain, so i can work. i keep trying to get over to 880 but the highway splits are too successively sudden, i'd have to drive straight across the highway. i give up and stop off in the city where R. and his father live, up high in an apartment complex. R. is playing a four-necked stringed instrument that sounds exactly like an accordion. the song is beautiful. i hear steps approaching the door and know it is A.; i get behind the door to surprise him, but when he enters he sees rather easily behind the door, looking nonplussed. why would i want to surprise him? soon the apartment is filling up with persian relatives and i see it is very late, i need to go. on the way down the stairwell my anxiety mounts; i will need to go directly home; i will need to develop the jokes; i won't have time. (i do think of one joke on the spot but it is not very good.)

outside i think to impress passers by with my autonomous car. i say: "watch this!" and leap into the air, secretly pressing a button that wummons the car. i leap enormously high and peripherally see my red convertible pull out of a parking spot and zoom toward me. it overshoots, though, and circles around, and then overshoots again. i linger a while in the air and nudge myself over, but can't get the car to cooperate. finally it flips itself into some recess in the ground, and i have to sink down to earth to go after it.