Backlogged Dream Journal Entries

8/24/10
Some kind of picnic or gala. Don Draper is there as my father figure, while I'm relegated to the kids' table.
Frustration.
I discover there's a different homemade apple-butter at each table, so I scurry around sampling. The apple-butter takes on a white creamy texture more like sour-creamy, but still tastes like apple-butter.
Then a coach-type is scolding me for being great at the sport but I've got to get better with the women. So I go drive, catching up with Don Draper, and then wake up.

8/28/10
I'm a new member of a diving team. Teams go around almost a track underwater, collecting fish, shells, and other target objects in a frenzy of activity.
I can feel that I'm slow and ineffective, but getting better, more valuable, and I start contributing and thinking of new strategies and remembering where to search.
In a sneaky move, my team installs a few huge blue plastic tubes to help our flow and distract the other teams. Bits of seaweed cling to the outside of the tubes.
Felt like visiting Michigan State.

9/2/10
Sounds of a revolution. An office and desk in an older building, perhaps a university.
A woman—older, professor-type—alternately looked up to and scorned.
Loading the mag of a pistol from a box of mixed bullets, keeping the odd bullets for other potential uses.
An envelope marked "4:30: He's been snooping."
The gun at the small of my back in my waistband.
Bodies surrounded by cops.

9/18/10
I'm in a hospital or doctor's office, and I go to wash my hands, taking some telescoping object with me to wash as well. The bathroom is there, behind all those people.
Muslims, many in traditional garb, are gathered in protest or something.
One comes angrily forward, demanding to know just what I think I am doing trying to profane their presence on my way to the bathroom.
There's a stirring.
Volume increases, people start jabbering, and suddenly I'm in the middle and the target of an angry boiled-over tumult.
Some people try to interject on my behalf, becoming Uncle-Tom targets of anger. The mass is embroiled.
Violence.
People pushing, grabbing collars, circling, screaming, threatening, grabbing, pushing, surging, snarling, growling.
And I'm in the center of it all, being thrashed around. In my own circle of violence and counter-violence are a few specific faces, while everyone else around is a blur.
Then two friends grappling become a hug, which spreads among the chaos.
I'm crying.
Quiet.
Debris and sobbing and understanding and remorse.
Exhaustion.
Peace.

1/29/11
A series of vignettes, all taking place in a space I understand as the climbing gym.
I wander around lonely, in search of a climbing partner, seeing birthday parties and groups of kids forming, but my time is ticking and still no climbing.
Out a window I watch the tops of the World Trade Center toppling, panic noises and confusion. A few people egress the piece of tower, and one little girl is borne up on an updraft or something, falling skyward in a little white dress.
Then a kid shows up as I'm stretching or warming up. I can't tell if he's retarded or just ugly, like the Kakos kid from church, but he's extroverted and talks a storm.
A guy my age shows up—known by the ugly kid—who is also seeking a climbing partner, so we strike up a conversation. Food topics, juice or soda, and other et cetera indicating greed on part of the kid.
There's a slight outdoors shift, though still "in the climbing gym," and we see a variation of frisbee being played.
Then a small pomeranian-type dog runs out on a powerline like a squirrel. I'm told it's a sort of invasive species—or maybe just the one—and then the thing has a fat joint. This leads to a discussion of how it would strike a lighter with no thumbs.

9/30/11
Somehow Brooke and I get involved in a foursome with a woman and a newly-woman. The setting keeps changing, including a dorm-like hall, a post-bar walk through SF, and someone's home. There, we all inspect each other's shoes for white flakes. I have none. The tranny has "almost none." Brooke has none, but mentions my lack of flossing, as if it were another possible STI indicator, to which I protest, I have been flossing plenty.
We all give the go-ahead and sign the papers, but doubts remain, esp about the tranny (who is still rather mannish).
Some movement happens and some things I don't remember, and then I am in a mall trying to navigate to the men's room with a tray full of wine. I find my way in, navigating back through the tunnels/hallways of consciousness, and wake up having to pee.

11/18/11
Sitting at a beach-side cafe table with Jag and (Mairaj?). They get up, go away. A spoon flies at me from behind a rock—I catch it and start eating my cereal, re-torquing the silver decorative spoon to make it straight.
They reappear, and I know they've thrown it, representing magic. They announce the spoon as a token that I am the sage/magician/wizard of our group of friends, and present me a janitor/mechanic-type overshirt, with "apprentice"/"assistant"/something on the tag, inside out, with ballpoint writing describing my new position.
I put it on, and pretend to vibrate, shake, tremble, as if overwhelmed by the power, tilting back and falling over in my chair.
From the floor, I say, "That's my official acceptance speech."
Erik joins and they tell him what went down.
"Nice," he says.
Then we all start roaming or looking for something specific to do.

Associations

"Can you mute it? Or at least turn down the volume a bit?"

An arc of fire leaps out from the screen, searing space in all directions. Magnetic poles twisted to the point of its eleven-year reversal, the sun unleashes laughably large bursts of energy in the form of flares whipping out half a million kilometers past the surface.

Finger frozen on what she thought was the Volume button, she adjusts her position toward the TV, and takes in the whole incomprehensible scene. Distracted now worse than before, I almost ask her to switch back to the innocuous drivel on the last channel, but think better of it and adjust my own position to accommodate her and the quarks flashing onscreen.

She sighs. "Can you see?"

I look under her armpit, but the view is slightly blocked, so I settle deeper into the couch with her and watch over her shoulder, occasionally kissing cheek or neck. Moved by the deep-space images of a binary star system, we push and pull, rising and falling with our own orbits of interest.

"This is amazing!" she cries, eyelids flickering.

"I know!" I agree, running the gamut of significance.

Space exploration is still in its infancy, the narrator reminds viewers, but astronomers have increasingly cool gadgets to study the outer reaches of the tiny little fragment of space we can access.

She giggles and presses back, fingers dancing along mine, encouraging and teaching, guiding her own experience with her own imagery with her own narrative. I'm her passenger. If I'm the rocket, she's the liquid fuel and the fire, the chemical reaction that unleashes energy from matter, the plasmic brilliance under the delivery vehicle.

A splash of color represents the unfathomable geography of an interstellar cloud, the placenta of a star. The screen shows a gathering of particles, the slow accumulation of mass, the massive overload and nuclear fusion of hydrogen, the growth from intense white dwarf to sage old red giant, the fusion of a heavy iron core, the inability to support its own mass, and the inevitable collapse.

The screen explodes in supernova splendor, sending its photons intensely, momentarily to the far corners of the room. We're both caught in the heady glow of the star's dazzling death knell, pulled into the transmutation of a black hole, a point of infinitely concentrated mass that's collapsed into itself, consuming and silencing itself, greedily converting the neighboring light and space and time into an other-dimensionly unknown.

The turn of a cosmic hourglass.

Halloween

Koo...pshrr, koo...pshrr.
The helmet was a little big, but the lightsaber was just right. With a hemmed cape and shiny black boots, I was invincible.
Koo pshrr, koo pshrr.
The air was misty with candy-coated promise; with streaks of mystery and ominous rumblings of thunder. My empty pillowcase hung ready to accept its burden, an incongruous capitulation against the unbending darkness of my grim attire.
Koo...pshrr, koo...pshrr.
I stood in the hallway, peering at things through the goggles, trying to discover the best cant for visibility.
“Ready?” my mom stood in a witch’s hat, buttoning a thick peacoat.
I nodded under my helmet, and waved the lightsaber redly.
Koo...pshrr, koo...pshrr.
“Did you take your inhaler?”
I hesitated. Waffled. Shook my head.
She brought it. I took it.
Koo...pshrr, koo...pshrr.
Croup was a frequent guest in my lungs, particularly on Halloween night, when November hung heavy over a Michigan sky. The cool damp air wreaked havoc on my larynx, and the excitement of Halloween crawled up my trachea. I needed albuterol near at hand.
Koo...pshrr, koo...pshrr.
“Mom. Help me take...this mask off…”
Puff. Puff. I passed the inhaler to my mom and replaced the helmet, wiggling until it aligned with my own eyes. Once my brothers were ready, we headed forth into the night.
Koo...pshrr, koo...pshrr. Even with medically relaxed lungs, I barely had to fake the anguished and sinister breathing effects. But it was Halloween. My favorite time of year, when I had an excuse to wear costumes and run around the neighborhood, when I was still fresh with birthday treasures, when a sackful of candy was allowed to remain in my room until it was gone. Generally sometime in December.
With the right amount of squint and smirk, the far-off thunder sounded like TIE fighter flybys, and my pillowcase could be mistaken for Princess Leia’s still-warm gown.
Koo...pshrr, koo...pshrr.
I brandished the glowing lightsaber and listened to its wwhan wwhan wwhan and clashed it against my brother’s legs until he whined and my mom scolded.
Koo...pshrr, koo...pshrr.
We knew all the best candy houses in the neighborhood: the ones with the king-size Butterfingers and Reese’s and Gushers. We hurried from one ding-dong-trick-or-treat-thank-you to another, eager to hit all the lit and decorated houses, and glowering at the ones left dark and unwelcoming.
Before it seemed possible, it was time to go home. The pillowcase was stuffed, slung over my shoulder like a drifter’s duffel. My cape was a bit bedraggled from dewey lawns, and I’d tricked David into carrying my lightsaber for me while my mom carried his bow and arrows. The albuterol had long-since worn off, but my pride fought tooth and nail to get home without another dose. I took off my helmet to enjoy the last few ragged spice-scented breaths of Halloween.
Koo...pshrr, koo...pshrr.
Until next year.


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