night of 7/17/10

fighting my way over steep crags, through caves whose depths spiral back beneath themselves, winding roads atop cliffs. enormous waves crash over the land. usually the trek is not so dangerous but there is a storm; people can die when there are storms. sometimes i see others a ways ahead. there are so many doublings-back that someone well ahead on the path can appear close by. (this is all part of some intrigue of espionage. some opponent has failed this journey, or follows me, or is my target ahead.) i am not quite sure when i take a fork that it is the right way; there are many ways, and each poses its own dangers in different conditions. eventually i emerge into a bright lit open office area where others are gathered; i have made it; exultation.

scene of my mother and grandmother driving, trying to approach by a different path. here there are monsters that disguises themselves. they are pointing at the motel signs and discussing them. of all the motels clustered here, only two are real; the rest are monsters. even one of the real motels has its roadside signs dwarfed by a false one looming overhead. as they approach, the sign melts and slumps; the monster is unable to maintain the illusion perfectly. we, waiting safely in the office, watch this on a monitor.

night of 7/14/10

I am wandering the city with R.H. We are at a company retreat and have been asked to partner into teams. We are looking for something to climb, like a building under construction, or being torn down. The south of the city is in some disrepair. This may be San Francisco. We give up and go to rejoin the others. I get ahead and discover them gathering at tables in a field. I fly up into the air while I wait for R. R appears and the boss D.S. calls to him, says Oh, you can be my partner, I need one. R points me out as I come to ground and says he already has one.

D explains that the activity is a painting competition. We have blue vinyl folders with advertising designs which we are to paint over. Mine goes rather messily but I decide that this is a reasonable interpretation of graffiti, and I try to extend the motif. I think I've got something worth winning when the painting begins to become indistinct. Over a period of confusion it disappears altogether. I look around and notice that the others' paintings are also disappearing. I say: "It's a trick!" D is grinning and laughing.

night of 6/17/2010

enormous piles of luggage are everywhere; our group is getting set to leave the island. there is a big dinner and a movie like star trek on a big screen. all the plates have been taken. i know there were enough, so that means some people have taken two. i go into the kitchen to find more plates. this is my mother's kitchen, though it looks nothing like her actual kitchen. two of the brown plates we used to use are on little display stands. these end up being the only ones i can find. i go to wash them in the sink. there is a cumbersome scrubbing and washing attachment on the kitchen sink hose, but eventually i get them scrubbed. i talk a while to the older black man who is the cook. everyone eating is seated outside on a double-decker boat in the lagoon. occasionally, just for the spectacle, a plane comes to pick up the boat and then drop it to splash back down onto the water. this splashes little and doesn't bother the other, much smaller boats in the lagoon except to surprise them.

outside snow covers everything, but nevertheless there is a golf tournament. i am walking across the green and can hear the announcers. the man at the tee hits onto the green, and the bal rolls through the snow to the base of a snowbank, where a depression indicates the hole. the announcers think it is a hole in one but obviously someone will have to go check. trudging through the bank i meet the golfer's five daughters; ranging in age from about three to nine. i say hello; they are very friendly and crowd around. the youngest is a bit distraught. the oldest explains that they've just been through a divorce. i say, hoping to comfort, my parents got divorced too. the oldest says: isn't it weird to have someone ask you how you're doing? i think she means by a new stepmother her father has recently married.

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.

night of 5/24/10

i am tortured.

i am herded through the entry to the school in Rafah from Joe Sacco's "Footnotes in Gaza," forced over the ditch and barbed wire, the soldiers bearing big sticks awaiting. i am beaten.

night of 5/21/10

janine and i are trying to pull out of a parking lot. a car is blocking the way, having tried to cut the line in. i pull up, window to window. i recognize the driver's face from tv but don't recall the name. he asks if he can cut through. i say: "sure, man! i love your music." i'm talking to janine about who it was. at first i think is might have been a fictional singer, whom janine says was played by eddie murphy, but then i realize: "that was pootie tang!" i mean the actor who played pootie tang.

then janine and i are looking at a new house. the kitchen is spacious but lined with yellowed, behemoth appliances from the seventies. i say "and we just replaced our oven!" there is a separate freezer that i don't recognize as such, at first, because the element consists of a great metal enclosure inside the door, like a giant version of a tiny hotel room freezer. back toward the bedrooms two of the doors are closed with light behind them; i am hesitant to go back since i don't know if anyone is home. i want to see the bedrooms though because if we're going to buy the house i should look at them. i go with janine back to the door that is open. it looks like a kid's bedroom with a bedroll for a bed. at first i think the room is tiny but then i see that the bare floor continues under dark green carpet like moss. under the carpet the ground is lumpy, with raised sections. this is not really a very good bedroom.

night of 4/24/10

i am on my way back to school. i join a highway from the smaller rural road and suddenly there are ground-hugging, futuristic enclosed motorcycles filtering in among the cars; these are the others also heading for the school.

i am in the empty offices; my tie is undone and my belt off. i want to get them on before anyone arrives. i put my things on someone's desk and fumble at the tie. someone enters. i say i don't know which desk is mine--i have until now attended remotely. or, i know that i have appeared to attend remotely; i don't remember whether i have bothered.

the students are gathered, sitting in various chairs and desks, and await the professor. someone asks me where the students i've sponsored are. i have a chart. my name is written next to two other names. i don't recognize the names and don't remember sponsoring anyone, or knowing i'd need to. i wasn't prepared for any of this.

i am on the train we take to go to our places. i make my way up through the whole of the train to the very front, the first compartment, where ride the special few with near-magical abilities. it is not hard to sneak in. the doors to the sides are open, but only occasionally does someone enter; the remaining mass of crowd presses past toward the back of the train, not seeing the first compartment at all. there is no need for security. they speak a while, cryptically, while i look at their faces. one finally sniffs the air. he looks at me. he says--

night of 3/13/10

my father takes me to a little country house. i realize then that i have been there before, when i was a child, but the memory is indistinct. one wall is full of bookshelves, the hundreds of books dating mostly from the 60's and 70's. i look at one title: regarding the role of lauren bacall in the popular imagination.

i find a record and attempt to play it on a series of players. they are old and wooden but accept records through a slot on the side, like a CD player might. after no success i discover that the record is still covered in its inner sleeve, which is a dark rubber lacelike material that was hard to see.

my father asks what i am playing. i say i don't know. the outer sleeve resembled a group like the rascals or the animals. it is janis joplin we hear.

in something like a diary i read a page. it is about our visit here when i was younger. i had suffered some sort of episode, probably a psychological break, and needed to recover, and was brought here, then also by my father.

night of 12/30/09

i am standing at the front of the room. fiddling with something or writing on the chalkboard. delaying because what i have done is not enough. or not good. this is the final. i am last. everyone else has gone. it is a performance or a poem. i don't think i ever start.

night of 11/01/09

sometimes this is a movie that i am in, or am watching, and sometimes it is real. i am stuck in a south american country. on leaving the airport after arrival, the people i am with are saying that it is worrying having my passport taken. we see someone taking pictures with a polaroid and my they say i should have my picture taken to prove that i was here. i beg him to take my pictuer and finally he relents. it turns out that he has already taken on where i am in the corner, and i am given both. as i examine the pictures, i am worried that not enough detail appears for the location to be identifiable.
almost immediately i try to find my way back home, accosting anyone who appears to speak english (mostly other white travelers) to ask them how they are getting home. it turns out that their passports were taken too, but most of them are offered them back the night before leaving. i am on a shuttle at the airport where everyone else has their passport. i must remain on the shuttle when they get off to board the plane, and sneak back into the airport without appearing suspicious.
back in the terminal, i see out the giant windows that the wind is coming up, making it hard for the planes to depart. a pack of twenty or so of the small planes are all trying to take off at once. each plane needs to bounce its wheels off of a runway a couple of times in little hops in order to achieve lift. the pack of planes takes turns doing so, the successful ones veering up and off to allow for others, but the effort is desperate; one plane veers off into a building. the plane i had wanted to board isn't going to make it, and releases a giant inflated structure, like a multi-story moon bounce, into the air. the passengers are strapped to it. two young women fall out of it together. a zoom of the camera shows their faces, and they are scared, but don't appear to be assured of death. we see that they are strapped to a separate couch-like inflatable, and they land safely. the larger structure lands as well, but is sliding into the water, as the passengers desparately try to remove the complicated straps and belts. the ones toward the water are being dunked repeatedly; some are not going to survive.
back in the airport i am begging an airline worker for a way out of the country. she mentions a bus to a southwestern american town. she asks if i have money. i have a lot; i say i have 'some.' she says that's good, i can pay a 'gas tax,' by which she means a bribe, to the right official, and be on the bus. this is wonderful news. (she is played by an actress i recognize from independent films.)
she recommends i be careful about my possessions. as i empty out my pockets, she is horrified. among other things for which i would be arrested, there is a highly subversive libertarian book. i say i don't know why i have these things, but in fact i have them because i have been told they would be useful in getting away from the country, possibly by someone underground. i manage to throw the things away.
as we have been speaking, four men in kilts have filed in to the large hall and have now dropped to their knees, in a line, before a group of people. this is worrying, as the scottish of this country are a minority with a nationalist movement, and some are terrorists. as i back away they lift their shirts, and they have bombs strapped to them.
i run desperately around a corner, dive into another, and cover my head. i hear someone just getting out of an elevator to my left. there is a massive blast, and shattered glass falls over me. soon there is a group of the survivors in a circle together. several of us ask: 'why are our mouths so dry?' i have a bottle with a little water in it. i take a tiny sip and then pass it on, saying: 'take a tiny sip, and pass it on, and pass these words on.' as i walk away, i hear the next person begin to repeat this.

night of 10/31/09

someone has been taking my poems and making them into popular songs, without permission or royalty, and this angers me. i am trying to collect all of my poems, which are slim hardcover books that keep spilling out of my hands. some fall through a doorway with a deep darkness inside, like an elevator shaft. i fly through and manage to catch the poem-books but can't ascend again to the lit doorway, and am sinking, unable to fly back up. janine is in the doorway, and i beg her, desperately: "help me!"

night of 10/18/09

visiting, some party in a warren of elegant rooms. i prepare a surprise; i am planning to manifest a lavish and opulent dinner table, running the length of a long dining hall. i duck my head into a passageway and yell out for a color. orange, i hear. good, i tell janine, for halloween. i concentrate. the dining room is orange, all right, and somewhat rich, but set up like a cafeteria, with varying food stations and the little runners for plastic trays. i realize that there is a cafeteria next door; the influence must have bled over. i concentrate again. now a kingly table appears.

night of 10/16/09

janine and i make a living for a hundred years in a giant metal tube stood on end.

night of 10/14/09

messy hotel room
sex?
glass wall. like buffalo.
someone cleans up the whole half of the room behind me in a moment
forgot i had to check out today; 2-day conference is over
go back in and

night of 10/11/09

i join up with the superhero theater at the local community center. several of the previous cast have moved on and they are looking for replacements. rehearsal is held in a big audition hall with many balconies. ropes and pulleys festoon the walls and ceiling so that we may fly between them. we have extravagant costumes with capes and masks. i attend for some time, and then i quit. there is consternation that i am abandoning the cast. later i return to the registration, through which one passes on the way to each meeting. i am signed up for both the superhero theater and a writing workshop. i cannot attend both. i am counseled by someone that at least with the superhero theater, i will please children and then can get something out of that, possibly from their parents. the advice seems excessively selfish. i return to the theater. as i appear in the hall, i am received positively but with some hesitation. i fly over to the balcony where the cast has gathered. i do this unaided by the ropes; our super powers are now real.