Reb Livingston's recent celebrity dreams: here.

I looked over the bridge at the Yarra River and watched a young woman in the water swimming for the joy of it.  The water seemed clear and deeper than usual, after recent heavy rains.

‘It’s wonderful.  Come on in,’ the girl called but no one joined her until out of the blue another girl splashed in from the shoreline.  I had been wondering what it would be like to dive into this water from the bridge itself, not that I would do this.  It was sure to be dangerous.  The girls mucked around together in the water and called out occasionally to people on the shoreline.

 The people on the shoreline sat in groups.  Many of them had disfigured faces and scoriated skin.  Most of them in some way or other had surrendered part of their skin to the ravages of fire, some on their faces, others on their chests, backs or arms.  I soon realised these people had come together for this reason.

 Entire families, some of whom had several members with significant scars had come together here.  I took to talking to them.  Their burns reminded me of the way the tectonic plates of the earth shift by centimetres every year.  When one plate shifts into another, slowly and year by year, each plate moving northwards by as little as a centimetre and growing at the rate of our fingernails - the Indian plate for instance jammed up against the European - then mountains form.  Just so the burned skin as it sloughs off and heals leaves layers of skin rough and patchy in places without pigment, like scrubby mountains.

 And then I was with my daughter and husband on a train travelling with some of these burned people.  Our train passed through a display of army vehicles, tank on tank in khaki and battleship grey.  The first lot we passed were left overs from the German war.  Then we passed through a collection of Japanese fighter planes, trucks and tanks.  I worried for some of the people who sat near me who looked as though they might be Japanese or at least Asian.  They might be as traumatised by memories of the war as might the group of Europeans.

Then it was time to go to one of a series of concerts put on for charity.  I overheard one from the burns group saying that she could not bear to go to the performance  put on to discuss disability.  She would instead go to the one on racism, the one against racism, the one I also intended to attend with my husband and daughter.

We stood in a queue waiting to get off the train and into the theatre.  My husband worried that we needed our train tickets to get in.  He had lost ours but we found them again on the floor.

A couple of old friends and my older sister began to fling their arms around my husband and me, as if we were not there.  I joked that I did not exist but then decided to take our daughter to change her nappy.  But there were no public toilets.  I decided to try to change my daughter in a corner of the garden.

 She protested.  It was too public, even for her a baby.  I stood her in a garden bed and my daughter's feet sank into the soil as did mine.  She lost her little shoes.  We then struggled to find another place on firmer ground but equally private, and I changed her sodden nappy.

 I left my daughter outside seemingly asleep while I planned to go to the concert.  It did not seem so strange to me that I should leave my daughter alone in the foyer, until she woke and called me.  She was distressed that her birthday necklace had broken and her nappy fallen had off.  I decided then we might go in to the performance together, mother and baby.

An African man with skin the colour of jet busked on a street corner in the village square.  I stopped to watch with several other people.  His act looked uninteresting until he managed in one breath to draw in as much water as necessary to blow out a waterfall of colours that came out in a burst not only of colour but of pattern.  The performance went on for at least a minute and was so extraordinary that people applauded for equally long.  Then the busker sent his hat around to collect signs of our appreciation.

‘Don’t give him anything,’ my companion said.  ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘I’ll only give him my small change.’

I fished around in my wallet and pulled out some coins, which I threw into the hat.  It was not much money but the sound of the coins crashing onto other coins made it sound like more. 

The busker’s eyes lit up and he went to hug me.  I pulled away and started for my return journey back to the room in which I was staying. 

I had been on holidays in this Indonesian island with a female friend who had already huffed off ahead of me.  The busker followed. 

‘I’ll take you out to dinner,’ he said.  I did not want his advances and managed to escape through the bushes.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ the man said, ‘after you change your dress.’

I had no intention of returning but somehow I managed to get lost in my attempts to avoid him. 

I walked past a raised section that enclosed a deep pit.  A dog leapt up onto the wooded ledge and jumped into the water, which was visible not so far below but too far for any dog or person for that matter to scale the walls for escape.  The dog tried but could not get traction.  He swam around frantically and I raced off in a panic about getting help for fear the dog would exhaust itself and drown. 

I went looking for help but my friend whom I found at last said there was no entranceway to this pit from the kitchen area. 

I went back alone with a net on the end of a rod intending to drag the dog out.  I swirled the end of the net around in the water but the dog was not there.  I woke up. 

A poet who goes, who grows, who glows, by the numb in the number, by Who knows?, 25, published a translation, a pulp, a carnation, in The New Yorker of all places, in the heart of my dream. He was young, he was mean, he was the drop of a hat and more genius than me. He was (in parentheses) Alan something G- something, one of those sanities, those post-grad manatees or careerist wannabes, a poet-chef or con-man camping in the Andes, dazzling and brilliant and dapper when appropriate, like accepting an award or daydreaming Oprah. One of those who glows, who grows, and goes by three names, who references Han Shan, the etymology of shambles, the shimmy, its catharsis, and the history of the shaman, all by inserting the phrase catch as catch can into the first line of his jigsaw meditation on Tristan Tzara's short poem “Route.” At first I think it's nothing that hasn't been done before, or I am jealous of his connections that make me feel like a jalopy puttering in the middle of a five-lane highway, then I realize it's how he would feel too if he were me, and I see him standing in a tree over the forsythia at the edge of the woods behind the Swing-and-Slide Playset, a little boy with my hair, middle finger in the air.

I dreamt I was on vacation with my wife Louisa in Philadelphia.  I followed her into a large drugstore, where she needed to buy some things.  I noticed my cousin Rick Kaplin and Ronnie Gerstle, both of whom I knew from Camp Kennebec in Maine, standing at a cash register behind the counter.  By the time we reached the counter, Rick had disappeared and Ronnie was alone there.  I forgot all the things I planned to say to Ronnie.  It was as though I suddenly forgot everything I knew about him.  So I asked him where Rick had gone.  He said Rick had returned to his store across the street.  After she paid, Louisa stopped at a high round table, where someone might sit with a coffee or a drink.  She started balancing her checkbook, endlessly.  Impatient, I headed outside without her, even though we were on vacation together.

The butcher shop across the street had a long, narrow entrance hall and a large room in back, ballooning out to the right.  Five men were working there.  “Is Rick Kaplin here?” I asked.  The apparent owner pointed to a guy in the middle.  It wasn’t really Rick, it was someone else.  This Rick looked incredibly young.  I said, “Hi, Rick, it’s your cousin, Michael Ruby,” speaking more soulfully than I planned.  There was something wrong with Rick, he couldn’t look at me, he seemed to be hiding his face.  He was schizophrenic, I decided.  Also incredibly muscular, so overpumped he was almost toppling over, and covered with small pink pimples.  “You remember me?” I asked.  “I’ve gotten your emails,” he said, probably referring to emails I’ve sent out in the past announcing various books.  “I don’t think I’ve ever sent you any.”  “I’ve gotten your emails,” he said, his tone faintly negative.  He walked slowly toward me, reaching out to shake my hand, but then he gripped my hand very hard, and I realized he wasn’t going to let go, he was going to try to kill me.  Of course, it made perfect sense.  Rick hated my guts, Rick hated me the most of any person in my entire life, Rick hated me with a supernatural hatred.  How could I have forgotten?  I struggled fiercely against the muscleman’s grip, trying to reach the door down the dingy hall.  Why did the hall have to be so long?  Suddenly, the tarnished bronze knob was in reach.  If I could open the door, I could yell for the police.  There were police on the street.  At this point, I awakened from the nightmare.  My first thought was: Thank God this is a dream.  My next thought was: Rick can’t hurt me, he’s been dead for 25 years, struck by a taxi in Central Park at the age of 28.  This was a dream about seeing my dead cousin, the person who hated me the most of anyone in my life, and he tried to kill me.

A scary celebration with dark hallways and running had just taken place.  Best friends were in the field with tall metal statues.  Time to fly, so  walk up the hill a little and run for momentum, kick off.  Only got a little air between feet and ground.  Heavy body; why does a light body become weighted so quickly? It was the right time to fly.  Does anybody have enough energy?  Now all of us on the hill, all dense perfect circle rocks thrown into a reflection pool of water, no, metal instead.  Thudded slowly.  Finally with exercise and practice our perfect circle bodies became aerodynamically smooth stones, and we shimmered off the hill into the air.  Weaving through the metal statues some of our wings were more apt for tight turns.  I had doggy-trained tricks, having watched a red Australian Cattle Dog as he maneuvers body between posts, every muscle utilized simultaneously, a block of twists and strength.  As a mass we flew through a brick neighborhood, a Philadelphian metropolis, passing a sprinkler and young tumbling boys, moms in garden jeans stretching hamstrings before dealing with the peas. 

Excited with hopes of future kisses, going to the house of the boy I loved who didn't love me yet but his family would.  The wood floors would squeak as I walked to the guest bedroom at the entrance of the house for a blanket; pulled off the bottom quilt, the pillows atop moving with the tug but ending up still on the bed, a clean swipe.  Mom of the house was being a host with older brother's friends, and watched as I ruined her organization.  "I will fix it."  Outside with blanket I was the hero watching out for the continuation of clean dry butts.  Sun would've been the hero if I wasn't here. 

My own mom came to pick me up as if from a sleepover birthday party, too much pizza and staying up all night scared of being alone in a room full of girls all better friends than me despite my having known all of them for longer.  So glad to see mom.

The crowd -- friendly, well-behaved -- hampered my progress though Logan Airport.  For compelling reasons hard to articulate now, I was lugging documents under both arms.  These burdens challenged my command of time and space when fishing for wallet, blackberry, whatever.  Yet I brushed aside offers of help.

I was en route to the college from which I had graduated 36 years ago.  The taxi made good time till Memorial Drive in Cambridge, where the engine gave out.  Rather than apologize, the driver thought I should compensate him extra “for the music.” 

He had underestimated me if he thought I was going to pay for what the taxi’s radio had supplied, don’t worry.  Besides, hadn’t I put up for miles with a gyros sweating on the spit in the passenger section?  Assured of the justice of my position, and braced by the opportunity to show my skills as an oral advocate, I told him "Fuck YOU!"

 

Relatives of the cabbie converged on the scene as if for a wedding rehearsal -- children and elders, male and female.  They surrounded the vehicle in an unthreatening manner.  

The meter read $4.90.  I gave my driver a five and moved on to new challenges. 

From where I stood beside the highway, a rustic path led uphill to where the "river houses" might well be.  The layout, the landscape:  Things had changed since my college days.  There was no telling for sure what lay beyond the forested ridge where the path, longer and steeper than it had looked at first, took a turn into some trees.

A physical sensation of unfairness welled in me, coupled with doubts about the necessity of my mission.  Its precise scope was growing elusive, too.  Had it ever been evident beyond this point?  The important files I was carrying felt heavier than ever.   

I'm in an industrial type space w/ a huge baywindow
overlooking a desolate landscape that's pitted & has no vegetation
- it seems to be mostly or all clay.  I'm there w/ someone else,
maybe another guy.  We're there to procure a giant vehicle,
I think for time-travel.  Outside the window, there're at least 2 types
of vehicles visible.  The one we're to use is huge, like a heavily armored
tank or some type of land-mover.  They have a solid wall on their fronts
w/ a cluster of giant hole-saws.  All around us the clay of the surface is
cracking open & rhinoceroses are emerging from underneath.
They're not struggling out of the earth - it's more as if they're coming up
standing on elevator platforms - but no such things are visible.
I don't see any of them actually completely on the surface & moving around.
The landscape w/ these rhinoceroses is menacing & the hole-saws on the
fronts of the vehicles are interpreted as being for defense.  Despite the menacing
nature of the environment, wch may not be Earth, wch is more likely another planet,
the 'salesperson' that we're dealing w/ seems unconcerned about our safety
& the presumed vulnerability of the glass wall/baywindow.  It occurs to me
that I have no idea how to drive the vehicle I'm about to get so I ask if it
comes w/ a driver.  In a quasi-lucid meta-realization w/in the dream, I realize
that by asking this question I'm making it so that, yes, the vehicle DO come
w/ a driver & that if I hadn't asked this question the vehicle WD NOT HAVE COME
W/ A DRIVER.  It's then explained to me, not necessarily by the 'salesperson'
- who may not even exist as an incarnated figure - that one of us (myself
& my invisible? companion) must agree to learn to copilot the vehicle.
I realize that doing this is probably fantastically difficult & that it's asking
entirely too much of me.  Both the 'salesperson' & my companion may
just be 'figments of my imagination' or projected parts of myself.

I was in a huge business complex type sprawling skyscraper type bldg in the large lobby.  Perhaps there was a school group or some other type of community group there that was about to leave in a bus or some-such.  A friend of mine's son was still not w/ the group & I was worried that he'd get lost so I asked him what was happening w/ him & he told me his father was coming to pick him up.  His dad did so - so I was reassured & I went somewhere else. 

I was doing something in another part of the bldg.  I don't remember what, I have vague memories of walking thru a generic big rm - maybe w/ tables & chairs.  Eventually, I decided to leave & someone might've asked me to get something for them.  It was suggested that the best way to leave was on the outside of the bldg.  In the dream that seemed reasonable - I thought I wasn't high up in the bldg: maybe on the 1st or 2nd floors.  I went out thru a hole in the wall.  The outer walls of the bldg, wch had been solid, as if finished, up 'til now, were now just metal framing that I had to climb down on & I realized that I was higher up than I thought at 1st.  Already climbing down the side of the bldg was a youngish woman w/ a baby in her arms.  I may've complimented the baby.  As I started to realize how high up we were I might've suggested that we climb back into the bldg.  In the meantime, the woman told me that she was from Virginia(?), specifically Newark(?) (even though the Newark I know of is in New Jersey).  She had seemed 'sane' at 1st, despite her climbing on the outside of a skyscraper w/ a baby, but then she started asking me about my reading her notices in some publication in the area where she was from.  Since I was just 1st meeting her, I didn't know anything about what she was talking about & I realized that her thinking that I did indicated that she was a paranoid schizophrenic w/ delusions that I was omniscient or some-such.  I deduced from what she sd that she was looking for a person she knew but hadn't seen for a long time &, at some point, I further deduced that this was either Franz Kamin or that she thought I was Franz.

We tried to re-enter the bldg.  We had footholds in that thick plastic mesh that's sometimes used as fencing on construction sites & there was some sort of close-together wiring or mesh that blocked our way into the bldg.  There was another young woman, maybe more, on the inside who was irritated by us or maybe just by the woman w/ the baby & who was reluctantly helping us move the obstacle out of the way.  The tension between the personalities was contributing to our not being able to get inside.  I stayed calm & reasonable & practical.  The baby was helped thru the gap but then the mother was unable to get herself thru - the climbing was too difficult.  I noticed that she was wearing flip-flops so I suggested that she remove them so she cd get a better toe-hold in the mesh we were standing on.  This worked & then I got inside too. 

I had, perhaps, started out on the 7th floor & was now, perhaps on the 5th floor.  The bldg was still like a large commercial bldg - maybe a huge hotel.  The woman & I parted & I went into a large rm where I saw that Franz Kamin was sitting.  My past in this bldg was now as if I had decided to leave while performing in one of Franz's pieces.  I walked to where Franz was & bent over his shoulder to say something to him.  He was very neatly & cleanly dressed.  I noticed in the large rm that he was sitting near the perimeter of that there were round tables w/ papers on them that people were sitting around & I concluded that they might be assembling one of his publications - perhaps as presents for them to receive b/c they'd stayed to the end of Franz's performance. 

Franz & I talked to each other & I mentioned that the woman I had met was looking for him & that I thought her name was Susan or Suzanne & that she was from Virginia & that she had a child.  Franz seemed to know who I was talking about & gave slightly cynical laugh, acting somewhat relieved that she hadn't found him, & asked if the child were about 10.  I remembered the child as a girl around that age & sd yes.  I then went to an elevator to take a safer way down thru the bldg. 

The elevator started going sideways & I realized that it was more of a train that started in the bldg - perhaps some sort of courtesy vehicle for patrons of the hotel.  I noticed that I was barefoot & realized that if it was cold outside I'd have a hard time of it.  Then I checked to see if I had money in my pockets so I cd take some sort of transport when I got off the train - perhaps a taxi.  I realized that I'd lost my money along w/ my shoes & that no taxi-driver wd pick me up w/o shoes anyway - assuming that I'd be indigent.  Thinking that the train wd just take us outside the bldg, I was surprised when it kept going.  It stopped somewhere not too far away & I asked one of the passengers whether it went further.  he told me that it went to a place the name of wch I didn't recognize but wch I thought wasn't too far from my destination so I decided that I'd be able to walk barefoot from there. 

I exited from the elevator/train at this next exit - wch was at the outside of a European-style large park / plaza w/ some sort of wall surrounding it w/ large archways opening regularly into it.  The outside of it was dotted w/ small café type tables & there were vines growing on the walls.  Perhaps there was some topiary.  the same woman who'd previously had the baby/10-yr-old-girl exited the train ahead of me, although I hadn't previously seen her there, & bent over at the waist so that her short dress hiked up over her ass to reveal that she wasn't wearing underwear & was, therefore, naked w/ her ass exposed to me.  She looked over her shoulder to smile at me & to say something, presumably sexual, that I didn't quite hear.  She didn't have a child w/ her anymore & didn't really look like the earlier woman but I thought she was the same person.  Apparently, she liked me. 

We walked together, perhaps we were going to my destination together, & she asked if there were someplace where she cd get a drink.  We were inside the plaza/park now & I sd, yes, being somewhat familiar w/ this park, & told her that there were food places about & then we saw one directly ahead of us.

I was walking into a toilet at a mall, possibly Broadway, an Asian man half my age was going through the door at the same time. He said "We have the same coats". I was wearing a long black lightweight jacket which I'd bought at In Denial in Glebe years ago. It was a similar shape to his but noticably different. "It has the same logo" he said indicating the square black sew-on patch on his jacket that was unlike the silver printed one in the same place on mine.

By then we were alongside the urinals. I moved to the furthest corner one. He followed me and stood uncomfortably close. He was looking at me as the urinal I was using changed into a circular chrome grate in the floor. It had had a Duchampesque appearance when we walked in. He was looking at me in a friendly way as he stood next to me directing his stream of urine at the same part of the grate as mine. Then without moving he was slightly further away and urinating on me, firstly on my shoes and then gradually aiming higher up my legs. "Hey" I said or thought I said. He looked as if he was pleased and expected me to be. I knew I couldn't stop him and although he was slightly shorter than me and not an obvious physical threat he had complete control of the situation. He leant back and I could feel and taste his warm slightly sweet slightly vinegary urine flow into my mouth over and between my lower teeth.

I woke with a subtler version of the same taste in my mouth.

I was outside a large bldg, probably someone's home, maybe a big party was starting.  The area I was in was like a patio surrounded by plants.  I had just gotten some records.  My neighbor in waking life, Mark O'Connor, had picked one out for me & was playing it on a device that was outside near where I was.  He wanted me to listen to it.  It was by a Spanish musician named "Raf".  At 1st it semed vaguely like electronica.  I walked over to where the turntables were to take a close look at the record & saw what might've been a circular shallow pool - like a fountain but w/o water spouting in it.  The bottom lip of the bowl-like bottom of the fountain was about 2&1/2 or 3 feet off the ground.  On it there was an approximately 3 foot long piece of what looked similar to model railroad track - w/ a slight curve for a few inches at either end.  At 1st I thought that this was some sort of new playback device for a new recording medium - perhaps invented by Raf.  I looked at the end to my right & thought I saw some sort of little object like an optical reader.  I looked closer at the whole thing trying to figure out how it worked, looking to see if there was some sort of flat object moving on the 'track' being read by the little object at the end but concluded that there wasn't. 

On a pole rising above & behind this 'track' there were a few, maybe 3, turntable like objects stacked above each other separated by enuf distance so that they cd be clearly seen w/o blocking each other.  They were each protruding from one edge of the pole, the 'front' from my perspective, at about a 30° angle downward.  Each of them had on it what looked like a record but larger than 12" - maybe 15 or 18".  I looked at each one, moving my gaze up from the bottom, until I reached the top one - wch was the only one that was spinning.  As such, I concluded that that was the Raf record that I was hearing.  As I looked at the record I cd see a sortof hologram above or in front of it that showed the guys who were making the music.  As w/ most dream descriptions, what this 'was' is likely to be pinned down by any description here.  In the dream, I simply saw an image of these 3 guys w/ a somewhat lo-fi image quality & truncated as if by a screen edge that wasn't there.  There was a musician playing an instrument on the left & a guy singing, who I deduced to be "Raf" in the middle - w/ a 3rd guy somewhat hunched over to the right, possibly singing - the furthest away from my viewpoint.  Their visual presence didn't obscure my view of the large disc.  

I was a bit disappointed by these guys b/c the more I pd attn to them & their music, the less imaginative they & it seemed.  The guy I presumed to be "Raf" had what I'll call here a 'horseshoe' mustache - a mustache over the lip w/ 2 perpendicular lines of hair on either side of the mouth growing down to the chin.  He had medium length head hair & looked fairly 'normal' - just a bit scruffy as if he partied alot & didn't have to look 'presentable' for a job.  Having lost interest in the music by now I wanted to take the 'record' off but cdn't see any easy way of accessing the 'turntable' - wch was maybe about 6 feet above the pool of water & set back 18" or so from the lip. 

I looked at my hand & realized that I had about 5 shards stuck in it that I hadn't previously noticed.  There was at least one sliver of glass & the rest were possibly metal objects - one like a finely machined part.  I Pulled each of these out of my hand & saw that the part had left behind a hole maybe a quarter inch in diameter that wasn't bleeding profusely but that was bleeding enuf, & open enuf, to need attending to. 

I went into the house wch was, I slowly realized, more of a palace - w/o the typical magnificence of one.  I was searching for a bathroom & a medicine cabinet (or some dream-world vague thing perhaps like it) so I cd clean & wrap my hand but all the bathrooms had lines of people waiting to enter them - although b/c the giant foyer I was walking thru was so large (no end in sight - at least 40 or 50 feet wide) it wasn't glaringly obvious that these lines existed.  Apparently the 'party' (some sort of social event) was starting in earnest & there were now alotof people there so every bathroom, & there were probably alotof them, had people waiting.  The large foyer or hall that I was walking thru was plush but not glacially untouchably so as a museum wd be.  It was well-furnished - perhaps w/ such things as oriental rugs & vases & chairs & such-like - & seemed comfortable - w/ everything well-crafted - as might be expected in the home of people who can afford objects made by artisans - but there was no feeling of class snobbery. 

I awoke while I was still looking for a bathroom where I cd clean my small wounds. 

The thing about many of these descriptive details is that they were more like amorphous things that seemed appropriate to fill the atmospheric gaps rather than fixed concrete objects.  Imagine walking thru a space & having a part of yr mind instruct a storehouse of images to furnish the room & having these furnishings only sortof become 'real' - solid enuf to appearances but potentially shape-shifting w/o this shape-shifting even being important enuf to notice.  Most of my description above of the more banal details are more like 'filler' - what I'd somehow 'expect' or 'want' such a space to be like - rather than anything actually solid.

*

There was a car, a Jaguar (but not really), on a hill, perhaps, & I had some casual connection to it - perhaps I had taken on the responsibility of closing its door or some such.  As I was doing whatever I was doing I noticed that there was a panel of sorts protruding from the side of the car & that easily visible inside this panel there was an array of keys.  Since it was my intention to secure this car from theft by closing the door I realized that this array of keys was easily accessible from the outside & that, therefore, the car cd be easily opened w/ them & then driven away.  I decided to try to close this panel - but it didn't seem physically possible. 

People were behind me talking about this car & discussing the difficulty of selling it for the asking price of $500,000.  Sometime around this time, a woman in her 50s or 60s w/ whitish hair saw me asked me I'd like the job of coming & sitting w/ the car from time-to-time - sortof like the way people house-sit in Switzerland to make houses seem occupied while the people who live there are away to prevent squatting (this comparison being a waking one & NOT one made in the dream).  I explained that I don't really like cars & that I wdn't really be an appropriate person to do this.  In the meantime, the car had probably grown - perhaps no longer exactly a car anymore.  The woman explained that all I had to do was hang out at the object (perhaps no longer a car at this point) & that I cd watch outdoor movies from the hill (or some-such).  This started to seem like it might be fun so I sortof agreed to do it.  By now I may've been standing on the deck of this object - wch was now a boat.  The woman was off the boat, near its back, & she realized that she wanted me to sign some paperwork. 

This may be out of sequence.  The car was somehow outside of a sortof bay/parking-space/driveway cut into the ground for it that had a slight depth to prevent the car from rolling forward out of it.  The woman pushed the car up to its capture point in the bay to secure it. 

Back on the deck of the car-turned-boat, the woman joined me & the boat started to roll forward - the bay hadn't successfully contained it.  It was going downhill, picking up speed & going in more & more dangerous areas - such as along a tree-lined sidewalk where people were.  The boat was also getting bigger - although its growth wasn't something visible - it was just that it wd be one size & then a bigger size.  I advised the woman to jump off the back while she cd & she did so.  By the time she did the boat's back was probably at least 10 ft above the ground & was also moving fairly fast so it was remarkable that the older woman cd jump off w/o hurting herself.  I wasn't sure whether to jump off but after the woman jumped off it seemed too dangerous for me to do so. 

The boat was obviously increasingly headed toward conditions under wch it wd be more & more difficult to control.  I shouted off its back to people to throw me a rope so I cd tie the rope to the boat & try to stop it.  Some people tried to do this but they had no skill w/ the rope & I got impatient & somewhat angry w/ them b/c of their inability to even throw the rope at all.  I searched in one of the rms of the boat & found an abundance of thin yellow rope, perhaps plastic-coated, that was on top of a table - w/ one end of it partially threaded around the walls near the ceiling as a decoration.  I started gathering up the rope, even though it seemed too thin to be strong enuf, & taking it toward the boat back - w/ the way the one end of the rope was laced around the rm making it difficult to move w/ it. 

When I got to the back of the boat again it was going down a ramp into a body of water.  I was again considering jumping off but as it went down the ramp the back was now very high & jumping off wd've been very dangerous.  There were people in the water below & I shouted down to them asking how deep the water was - hoping I cd jump into it & not break my legs on the bottom or drown in the process.  The people were so far away that they looked very small.  I looked toward the front of the boat to see whether I was about to head out to sea & was surprised to find that not far away was another ramp at the end of the space I was in & that that part was indoors.  As such, I was in little danger of going any further.  The people in the water were trying to turn the boat sideways so that its momentum wd be stopped by its becoming wedged in the now-smaller space.  Somehow I managed to luckily pivot the boat up on top of a railing surrounding this docking area w/ an effortless shifting of my weight & that was that: the boat was stopped & turned sideways - out of the water & up on the railing.  Stopping what had previously been a juggernaut-like motion had taken nothing but an unconscious shift of my position.  On the ground a man commented that he'd come all the way to Jamaica for this - & I was surprised to learn that that's how far the boat had careened (w/ its presumed point-of-origin having been somewhere on the NE coast of the US). 

WAKING NOTE: This seems to be a typical dream for me insofar as I think I've had many dreams where something small grows into something big & out-of-control.  What may be unusual is that it stopped so effortlessly & had a 'happy ending'.

 

In my dream I am devastated by the news that I only received a score of 155 out of a possible 250 for my English literature creative writing assignment. I had hoped for a score closer to two hundred.

How could it be?

Once the shock had worn off, I went to tackle my teacher about it. My teacher was new to me. He took fifth form students for literature and had seemed friendly enough. He was gay and seemed familiar to me, a cross between my hairdresser and other gay men I have met over the years.

I gathered that he had heard I was upset and was prepared for my tirade, but not as much as I was when ranted at him about the mark. Even I was surprised.

I have never gone to battle over the results of any of my assignments, but this one seemed particularly unfair.

A mark on an essay somehow becomes the mark of a person and for me especially my literature essay. I had worked hard on it. I had done my best.

‘What’s wrong with my essay?’ I asked.
‘Too many ideas,’ my teacher said. ‘Too many ideas threaded together. It’s hard to follow.’

This infuriated me more. To me, my teacher now seemed such a creature of his times, a simpleton who wanted ease of reading and limited complexity.

I could not concede that he might have been correct in any way, though his words nagged at me because I had been criticised before for too much complexity, too many ideas in my writing.

‘I might try to find another teacher,’ I said, and even as the words slipped out I knew it would be impossible for me to slot into another class so late in the piece. My literature exam in my dream was part of my final year at school. I could not find another school nearby whose literature class would take place at the same time of day.

I was stuck.

May 5, 2011

I had fallen asleep with the intention of having Robert Kelly's collaboration with Brigitte Mahlknecht (The Garden of Distances) lead me into a dream that would, in the morning, allow me to formulate an essay about Robert Kelly's poetics for the Logic of the World: Poetics of Robert Kelly symposium. 

The dream was an expansive geography -- as if I was in a video game simultaneously aware of the map and where I was on it. I was following my old boss, Derek Owens, out of a small doorway at St. John's University (where I recently quit my job) and into woods. Not wilderness, but woods cleared by smooth paths. I was aware that Derek did not want me following him, but the dream had no other purpose and I had a strong desire to do so, so he didn't have a choice. He led me to a circle of houses, and I entered one of them. I was very happy to see that there were lots of people there including Lee Ann Brown and her daughter Miranda. My daughter was there with some of her friends who are boys, and they all wanted to play football. So I said ok, let's play football in the house. (There wasn't any furniture.) I found a huge blue ball and started throwing it around, but realized that it had holes in it and so was letting out lots of air. I then realized that beetles were eating the ball from the inside, which really grossed me out. I tried to throw the ball far away from the house, but it landed only a couple feet from the door. Derek (who was outside) took the ball and tried stuffing it into a hole around the side of the house but this was very upsetting to me because I didn't want the beetles anywhere near the house. So I went outside (not where I wanted to be) and tried to pull the ball out of the hole where he had stuffed it, but it kept getting longer and longer. Obviously there was a part of it that was stuck for good.