To keep the mosquitoes from biting

Fragment:

in Alaska
white landscape
cold
in a contest
a sponsor gives me a case of beer
supposed to use it on my skin
they have a jingle
with the phrase
"to keep the mosquitoes from biting"

This is not the dream that I wanted to remember

bodybuilders or wrestlers ironing
in a auditorium
all of us waiting for something to begin
I am sitting in the back
maybe the balcony
red plush seats
an annoying woman from the old bar
is sitting a couple of rows in front of me
I don't want to talk to her
the wife of a friend who has cancer
comes in and sits in the row in front of me
between the annoying woman and myself
I can overhear their conversations
the annoying woman says
what should we get to eat
the wife says
I don't have much money
the annoying woman replies sarcastically
in that case we should all just move to vietnam
and save lots of money on food
a girl that is into hard rock comes in
sits next to the wife
she has a mullet
morphs into a guy
down in front of us
another guy with the same style mullet
is walking down the aisle
I say
there's your boyfriend
then I realize that they are twins
he tells me
he's gay
I say
I didn't know
everyone is there to sell their book
I realize that because of modern production methods
Penguin now has the cheapest catalog of books
in the world
then I think
this is not the dream that I wanted to remember
there was one before this one
that was more important
it had all of these people in it
as major charcters
not spectators in the audience
sense that all of us are waiting to watch
that dream begin again
like a movie up on the screen
I realize it is up to me to remember it
but I can only remember this dream
of waiting in the auditorium
with this annoying woman in the seats in front of me
talking about nothing

We don't travel, we voyage

a campus lounge area
similar to the science and astronomy buildings
at the Universities in Dallas and Austin
low lying concrete bunker style buildings
with black reflective glass
there with an older man
who wears a round bowlers hat
he is a suspicious character
an old crony of mine
that I don't remember
both of us dressed in shabby clothing
he is talking to some students
I walk over to a bar nearby
reminiscent of the Posse East
wooden picnic tables out front
see a group of guys I know
we greet each other
they ask if I want a beer
I lie and tell them I am waiting for a friend
(the man with the bowler hat)
mention I don't have any money
act like I didn't mean for them to...
but a casual friend that works for the Police
reaches into his pocket and counts out 61 dollars
a roll of ones
gives it to me
I put it in my pocket
saying that I will try to get him back in a few days
this seems to displease him some
so I say I will try to pay him back
either later today or tomorrow
he tells me
just whenever you can
another guy I know that works at UT
also gives me a roll of cash
sort of cynically says
yeah pay me back "whenever"
like he is never going to get his money back
as soon as I put the money in my pocket
I know that I am going to go buy drugs with it
I start thinking about who to call
where to go
where to buy a apparatus
without anybody made aware that I am using again
I walk back over to the campus lounge
now more of a cafe
pass a group of recent graduates
dressed in caps and gowns that don't know where to go
standing in the middle of the street
huddled on the corners
the shady man with the bowler's hat
is still there at the cafe
wondering where I have been
he's been waiting on me
I don't tell him
I've got a lot of money in my pocket
but he knows something is up
he leaves and I follow him
wanting to get away as soon as possible
so I can score some drugs
we are walking across the campus
on white sidewalks where there are no trees
he takes a circuitous route along the sidewalks
away from where we need to go
walking fast and getting ahead of me
I cut across the grass to catch up with him
ask him
why did you travel away from where we were going?
he says
we don't travel, we voyage
saying this last word with a lot of flourish

Vectors

I figure it might be interesting if, in addition to nightly dreams, I document the merging of certain vectors: lines of separate meaning that suddenly intersect - sometimes back into themselves as uroboros. The usual term for this is synchronicity, defined by Jung as "meaningful coincidence." To my way of thinking, this discounts the effects of intentionality, particular illuminations of discrete arenas/circles of awareness. Overlap may seem merely coincidence or just contingent, but there is meaningful connection, albeit beneath the surface. Events like the peaks of mountains above the clouds.

Curiously, both of these were initiated though research on The Shaving Mug Review.

• A shaving mug with the slightly erotic image of a female barber :: the colored etching from 1787 of the woman with a razor to the man's throat :: Samson and Delilah in the background of the etching :: Samson's strength originating in a vow (logos) to God, symbolized through his hair :: Delilah cuts his hair, indicating that he has broken his vow to God :: Havilah Rand email about her album Delilah's Gold which shows her on the bar at the Horseshoe Cafe here in Bellingham

• Fraternal shaving mugs :: JLT gives me the book, Fraternally Yours which gives short histories of many secret societies, fraternities and lodges related to Fraternal Shaving Mugs :: read in particular about the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows :: reading Utopias on Puget Sound about the Equality Colony :: the BCC leased the building for their headquarters in Edison from the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows (pp. 66)

•  Additional vectors for the rough span of 30 years straddling the end of the 19th century: 1885 to 1915 :: LeWarne's Utopias on Puget Sound - 1885 to 1915 :: Tuchman's Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890 - 1914 :: Steiner's "imagined garden of liberal culture" from In Bluebeard's Castle:
  
  
  

  Our sensibility locates that garden in England and western Europe between ca. the 1820s and 1915. The initial date has a conventional indistinction, but the end of the long summer is apocalyptically exact. The main features of the landscape are unmistakable. A high and gaining literacy. The rule of law. A doubtless imperfect yet actively spreading use of representative forms of government. Privacy at home and an ever-increasing measure of safety in the streets. An unforced recognition of the focal economic and civilizing role of the arts, the sciences, and technology. The achievement, occasionally marred but steadily pursued, of peaceful coexistence between nation states (as, in fact obtained, with sporadic exceptions, from Waterloo to the Somme). A dynamic, humanely regulated interplay between social mobility and stable lines of force and custom in the community. A norm of dominance, albeit tempered by conventional insurgence between generations, between fathers and sons. Sexual enlightenment, yet a strong, subtle pivot of agreed restraint. I could go on. The list can be easily extended and detailed. My point is that it makes for a rich and controlling image, for a symbolic structure that presses, with the insistence of active mythology, on our current condition of feeling.

Anything that can run away is not worth killing

Fragment:

a Chicano cook
who had been fired from a bar
was telling me that
anything that can run away
is not worth killing
there has got to be a struggle
then I was watching television
a man in front of a tribunal
I thought
you must speak truth
in the face of power

Taking the skins off of potatoes

Fragment:

I was taking the skins off of potatoes
rolling them up into flutes
covering them with mashed potatoes
and stuffing them hollowed out potatoes
memories
light the corners of my mind
misty water colored memories
of the way we were
on violin the background
I couldn't bear it anymore
and made myself wake up

In the blink of a dead dog's eye

was designing an ironic entry on Wikipedia
about relationships
Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days
playing in the background
took a photograph of a man on fire
holding a baby
play on madonna and child
in a large stadium or arena
music playing over loud speakers
glory days
they'll pass you by
glory days
in the blink of a dead dog's eye
thinking in dream
that's not the lyric
but that's funny
because a dead dog's eye
doesn't blink
noticing that the music was still playing
in the background
as I was thinking
reminding me of the theta/beta brainwave
post that I am working on
my awareness of this
moving me out of the dream
the music now acting like
an internal alarm clock
I woke up to see if it was around the time
I had set the alarm for
I was 11 minutes early

note: the actual lyric is:
in the wink of a young girl's eye

After that comes a tiger

walking through gardens similar
or the same as
my Grandfather's on Inwood
circled by cedars
shrubs lining sandstone paths
traveling off to deliver a message of war
thinking that merely to assemble all the soldiers
to outfit and train them
move them to the place of war
would take years
then the battle
then the deployment
the war would go on for 19 years
noticing that as I am walking through the garden
I am being followed
by something in the underbrush
beside the path
at first I think it is a small bug
then a cat because it seems bigger
the shrubs now more like brush and bush
then I think a lion
instantly after that comes a tiger
I realize
upon the verge of waking
that I am dreaming a tiger
still dreaming
I think of what Borges said
that when you are afraid
you dream a tiger

This is what the music means

my family
biking out in the deserts of New Mexico
starts raining
stop in 50s style rest stop and motel
out in the cactus gardens
bus stops
moves on
man says in Spanish that it is full of whores
la autobus esta llena de putas
I begin talking to him in Spanish
an ex-priest friend of mine is listening
another Mexican man next to me says
the president's son like a lot of whores
I walk into the restaurant area
a hacienda court yard
we might be staying overnight
looking for a picnic table
place to put a tent
people from the old bar are there
go inside the shop
my sister and I playing games
the family is there
my last girlfriend is there with her son
she gets a photo made into a t-shirt that she is wearing
picture of her laying back on a table next to her son
who is laughing in a booth
she is acting like she is bench pressing nothing
shirt says world's greatest bench presser
my stepfather and I walk around the shop
looking at guns and knives
wife of the owner tries to sell me a mis-made gun
she says it is very interesting
weird pistol and hatchet blade formed together
comes with a black leather holster
I don't want it
my mother gives me some money to buy it
a lot of cash
end up buying it
even though I am worried about money
I get more change back than I thought
this makes me happy
the lady is now walking around doing book returns
tries to sell me a copy of the Life of Pi
tells me it is a good deal
my sister and I tell her we've already read it
go to play games with my sister
my stepfather gives me some quarters to play
I am able to open up the machine's coin box
take quarters out of it
I find a big old half dollar coin
put it into my pocket when no one is looking
a guess the tune music game
my sister keeps telling me that I am doing it wrong
I lose game after game
soon I only have one game left
give the game to her
she starts playing
writing mathematical notation on a blackboard
at the same time
at first I think she is playing Pachebel's Canon
then realize that it is actually the Concierto de Aranjuez
writing these sweeping notations on a blackboard
looks like calculus but it is not
notations indicate the interior architecture of the music
diagrams of the swelling emotions
I am talking to my mother at the diner-like food counter
my sister keeps calling for my mother to come over
look and listen to what she is doing
yells out
this is what the music means

Who had better helicopters

my ex-wife and I are drinking
in a house similar to the Princess house
where I grew up
a helicopter dropped us off from some other worksite of hers
we are drinking a chocolate liquor-beer that I don't like
she pours hers onto the table out of a wide mouthed jar
looks like two balls of syrupy chocolate
scoops it into a cup
pours more juice over it
I don't care for it
she keeps trying to refill my glass
she finds half-full glasses all around the house
a co-worker and ex-lover call and want to come over
I feel some resentment at this
but say nothing
she is happy they are coming over
tells me they are coming via helicopter
I am concerned
since she and I had just arrived by helicopter
the neighbor's would get upset
one was working at a gig with Martha Stewart
I hear the helicopter landing in front yard
I hear it take off
he shows up at the door
tells her that Martha Stewart got him the best copter
to one-up her employer
a lot of banter between them about
who had better helicopters

All the thousand things you have to do

working in a bar
restaurant
gym
a bartender from the replacement bar
was also working there
also people from the old bar
my ex-wife was there as a customer
people standing in long lines
at one point a guy named Seaman entered
the crowd reacting
like a sitcom entrance
he went around to a stage
there was a podium
someone was giving him an award
he and I were behind the podium
a guy in front of us was blatantly
making fun of his face
this reminded me
that I had a dream about him
I had also seen his name in the paper
the day before in another dream
in this dream
two girls were fighting over us
then I found their diary
where it said it was all fake
as I was reading their diary
the dream dissolved
and there
as I was telling him about this
I had another book describing
exactly what I was saying
there was a shimmering
then a huge rush of people came in
I ran downstairs to the restaurant
and saw that no one was prepared
the sister of an ex-fiancee was
working as a waitress
a bar was down there also
I was trying to get them ready for the rush
a cook burned some food
asked if he should serve it
told him no
told a waitress to take it out
to the trash through the kitchen
she whined
are you serious
I thought to myself
I should say
you're fired
but instead
I said
yes
I doubted
she actually would
I thought about
all the thousand things you have to do
to run a good bar
I thought about how hard I was working
at the replacement bar
before everything got messed up
what a good job
everyone thought
I was doing
but then
I thought
I really wasn't
because of the drugs
it had just seemed that way
to me