Translates to lust

Our little gang is trick-or-treating. The leaves are golden flakes soggy and crisp along the edges of the side walk. We are walking back and forth between each others' houses. Walking west, it is spring time, walking south, autumn. In spring/west, it's violet hues and balmy, in autumn/south, it's orange and black and dark.

He's wearing fingerless gloves and a peculiar enthusiasm for whatever he's suggesting. I've never dreamed about this person. Now that we're assembled in the living room by the wood stove, he crouches to be eye-level with us. He's bombastic right now. His typical intellectual acuity is overrun by a gruff and furious enthusiasm. This is translating to me as "lust." He's trying to speak to me in a secret and lustful language. We are going to do his idea and I'm draw to it purely via lust.

"Maybe we were doing MDMA?" I start to lucidly think. Then, "Maybe [me and an unrelated crush] we should do MDMA!"

1. Working at GO 2. Can't win at adultery

1. Working at Grocery Outlet again for two weeks. Eager to get my paycheck.
2. I am visiting the area to gain access to some rare documents for study. The city is now home to a lover of mine from years ago. (I can't believe I still dream about him.) I happen to be studying a subject that his wife researched for her doctorate in psychology. I'm working on my master's thesis. I'm in their guest room. He steps in to check on how it's going with the book. It's a tough book.  He leans over my shoulder and reads what I have so far. I'm only taking notes, but they are displayed as if it's the first chapter of a book. He leans back in a chair, and with the casual machismo he exudes, his body posture is expansive, hands on back of head, knees out. He says "It's pretty depressing. Do you think the subject is that depressing?" It's a very science-based research project I'm doing...I say "No, it's not depressing, it's just that this is the first time I've ever examined this specific subject and I don't have any reason yet to agree with the conclusions out there. I'm starting as a skeptic, and you think that's depressing?" It's very unlike him to dislike a skeptic. He starts to chastise me for also having a Glamour and Cosmopolitan magazines under my rare research book. I'm embarrassed. We are having a sincere and easy conversation without any awkwardness or misplaced smiles. But something about it feels stuck. In the past, in conversations with him it was easy to see that we still desired each other. I feel like I have been friend-zoned, officially. His wife comes in to say hello and when I bring up something from the book she goes off on a tangent about the particulars of some dead king. They bicker about it, and I realize that maybe she's smarter than I am. Maybe she's funnier than I am. Maybe she's more beautiful than I am. I worry that his love for me is dead at the root and he's only being "nice." They had scheduled a dinner party, and I go back to working on my thesis, but I can't concentrate. I hear the clinking of glasses and their merriment. I go out to ask a question about my cab to M- and though there's no invitation to join them for the party, his eyes linger on me for longer than necessary. I realize that I do not want his sexual attention because it would be a mess with his wife, who I realize IS more beautiful then me, and smarter, and more charming, but is wife-flavored to him. I have been friend-zoned "officially", but unofficially, there's still a possibility for our lust to take off. But want him as I do, I want him as single man, not as an adulterer. I can't win in this game.

1. Underwater motorcycles 2. Breaking in to friendship 3. K's backstory as an amateur opera singer 4. Weird production with characters from Lord of the Rings, Batman, Who Killed Roger Rabbit, A Midsummer Night's Dream, & weird stagecraft

1. Swimming through Olympia with my dad on motorcycles.

2. I wake up and immediately go for a walk. It's sunny, the grass is dry and ochre, I'm headed through tracts of land, there are not sidewalks. I am following a little grey cat who disappears. When I get to a backyard, I can't see any way around it, so I keep walking through it until I reach the house which is fenced on either side...the only way to get beyond the house is to go through it.
There are plates with half-eaten food on them. I didn't think anyone would be home but there definitely is someone home. It's too late for me to choose not to risk it, I'm in the house. A brunette woman comes out of a hallway to see me traipsing through her living room. I briefly explain myself and she seems upset. But somehow we make amends and by the time I leave we are old friends.

3. Going to see a dress rehearsal at the Seattle Opera with the opera gang from Evergreen. K is a singer and during the opera I watch her so intently engaged that the dream dissolves into her backstory. We're at a crime scene, the police are here, and a camera crew. K's parents are being interviewed. The mother, a heavy-set southerner says "Ever since she was a little girl, we knew that she wanted to be singing."The dad interjects, a wiry, leathery man: "Once she said 'Daddy, I don't need to go to the opera'" But we knew better! I just laughed!" I'm watching my feet move through tall grass. The camera crew and the police are going to a house in Olympia where Kate used to live. We're talking to the current woman who lives there. She says K was one intense roommate as the leaseholder. There are a lot of trendy but functional items in the home and a box of records. When I look at the records, which has homemade subject dividers covered in lace, construction paper and "self" laminated with packing tape, I understand that K and I have lived in Olympia for the same amount of time.
The mother comes in the door and says "Nineteen. They just found nineteen shot guns. Why did she have to go buy another one?"

4. The opera gang heads into a a seminar room at evergreen afterwards. We're passing out scripts. I'm Bottom, who is really Bilbo baggins, as well as Bottom, who is Bottom. That was a flashaback. The show is tonight. From the audience I see the stage, this is a weird show! It starts with Bilbo Baggins and a wizard, then goes to the Joker and a kind of Jessica Rabbit number. The Joker character is to the side of the stage with his head in an aluminum box. He is speaking, but every few seconds he pulls a sheet of aluminum quickly across the box with a tab at the bottom to mimic cameras flashing. When flash has happened, he has a new expression on his face. He's incarcerated. I go on stage and say my first few lines which are about being hesitant about something. I look at the rest of the script. I'm not sure I can memorize this all within a few minutes.

1. Bus Cliff, 2.Dressing Room, 4. LAX Mushrooms

1. Bus Cliff
I'm with C and we're on the bus going down Division. The area where there is a farm on one side is actually hundreds of feet of elevation below the road of Division, so there's a cliff edge there. Well, that's one explanation. The other is that the bus has a cliff face on its underside and that's the one I think really was happening in the dream. Anyway, the bus makes a wild turn, but the door is open- it was a warm day. A man slides out the door of the bus and so do I, C tries to grab me but fails. I fall out, attempting to grasp onto something. I see the man hit, firmly, and like he was already dead, a little horizontal platformish creation of the cliff. But I'm able to grab onto something, a very small bit of cliff that is a perfect handle. But I hear someone say that it's going to take twenty minutes to get me rescued. I don't know if I can make it twenty minutes. I know there is a lot of efforting going on at this point for me to be rescued...and then when I am safe I answer questions for the news. "How did you think to grab something?" - "I just thought to myself as I was falling: There is something to hold onto." "But had you ever seen this before? This is really one of the only things available to hold!" "No, I hadn't seen it before, but I knew I just had to hold onto something."

2. Dressing Room
I'm taking a long shower in really deluxe accommodations. Three sides of the shower are glass, one is tan marble, the floor is tan marble, the towels are sage green, its' normal to the people who live there. The Dad comes by to let me know something I don't remember now. When I get out of the shower its a locker room, three girls from school are standing there fully dressed and one is like "Do you KNOW people in LA?" The other says "Well yes, that's the only way you get anywhere. I've worked with a lot of people. The way you do it- you and me, say, we'd go into the studio and they'd recognize me or not, but I'd say 'Don't I look like a lot of fun?' And ta da!"  She has huge eyelashes.

3. LAX Mushrooms, Bugs for ghosts
I get to my parents' house and ask where Isaac (my cat who died in waking life) is. She says 'Oh he's alright but I don't know if you want to see him. He's in the cat door. He got into some fungus. I realize that my roommate was hiding a bag in there that said "LAX mushrooms" on it. I feel so guilty even though it wasn't my fault. I go to the cat door and get him unstuck. He's fine- not purring, but fine, and he's been shaved so the white of his  undercoat is showing. However, he has really strange flat bugs crawling all over him. I try to catch them but they won't be caught. They don't get onto me, only him.

Performance art propaganda at the Assembly of God church

I had been making a big pot of stewed meat for the luncheon in the massive kitchen at the church. I was not a congregate, though. I was something of an insurgent. I came in alone, but then several of my friends showed up with me. We stayed in the kitchen and the lobby. I was there because I had been selling copies of Gentle in Carnations (IRL poetry book skirting issues around sex.) In one of the back rooms, I had even done a performance of the works- but they were musical/dance reinterpretations of the poems rather than the poems themselves. The points in the book were still made, causing the audience to slowly leave the room one by one. Earlier, I had put copies of Gentle in Carnations in many of the church pews. Now, I peeked in to see the congregation in the sanctuary- it was packed with people who were in the full swing of a "holy-spirit" filled church service: hands in the air, eyes closed, mouths murmuring prayers, and a sermon that spoke clearly of shame and its importance for keeping one holy. I spotted one of the copies of GiC and was wrought: this was a bold move to put that with the hymnals! And even more so that I even took the name of the hymnal publisher and put it on my copies of the poem book! Right on the cover! Bigger than the title of the book, even. Why did I do that?! And isn't that illegal? I snuck back into the kitchen as the service let out. A large, somewhat shy man came up to me and said that he really liked my book. A woman from work joined us, gave me a hug, but completely avoided the issue of what was in the book. I gathered my things while the man was still talking to me and said cheekily "one last thing!" and grabbed a few bits of meat from the bowl of meat I had set on an armchair. The man said that he hoped that I'd keep in contact with the church with the work I was doing. He kept saying he liked it, but I didn't understand how he could both like that book and like the church he was going to.

1. Grape arbor make out 2. Jon Pon's new career 3. Art as understanding, the artist as a coward

1. He stops over, out of his way just to lay beside me and hold me in his arms for a few hours. My bed is under a grape arbor. Early nineties slow jams are playing as the soundtrack to an animatied movie that gives blue flickers to the otherwise warmly lit room by projecting on the walls. We have to stand up to reach the grapes, bright green big ones. J comes in and says that he’s been lasso-ing them with a metal wire and pulling them down. Then J says to me, pulling me aside “Are you sure you want to be kissing him?” - This is because man who has me in his arms is dating my friend in waking life. I don’t answer. It's just such a warm and loving moment that happens to be rare and stable enough to both confine itself to that single moment and last forever because it is so absolutely loving that it seems very weird to think of "fidelity" as anything but the end of happiness.
2. Jon Pon is married and has been funding his life by panning and digging for gold for the past 7 months. He’s got a baby on the way. I’m watching him get ready for his next big trip and looking at samples he brought and the shiny gold tears in the soft and dry rocky clods. 
3. At C’s art opening: an installation piece with a laser point that randomized briefly and then settled on a fixed point inside a box that no one could see. It made me extremely angry. I was so furious. I started walking to the bar, and he came up beside me and asked me to go for a walk. We went for a drive instead, up a mountain. We got out at a waterfall. I was thinking about chocolate milk in cartons. I was still so mad at him and finally I said “You knew all along about uncertainty. Your piece is all about uncertainty! When you make art like this, I just know you get it, you get that commitment isn't about the end of uncertainty, and it makes me so mad that you couldn’t ‘get’ me!!!” There was a tour guide that was trying to get us into the fold. I wanted to cry, and I also wanted to kiss him. He looked exasperated and sad. I wanted to be comforted, but he had no idea. 

1. Chess with mother 2. Funny Doctor 3. Artistic merits of amateur work

1. Playing chess with my mother, she effortlessly beats me three times in a row each time within only a few minutes. One time, she checkmates me with the knight! How do you checkmate with the knight?!

2. Getting a Pelvic exam from J O’J- there is a chart behind him that suggests that I am dangerously dehydrated. In his characteristic way, he both chastises me for this and makes it a fun experience. 

3. At a resort with Ms. Carley, a vocal teacher I met at a camp last year. She had let me borrow her journal to make some drawings. I drew many conceptual things- including an idea for a sculpture: “the foot” “the step” and two others. When I gave her journal back to her in the dining room of the resort, she asked my artistic opinion. As if I was her art teacher, or a critic, I had already written in responses to her drawings. We had both been reading a book that mentioned feasts, and I told her that all she needed to do to her drawing fo a feast table was to choose a focal point or a shape of focal points, highlight those objects, and take a fine dark pen to the shadow sides of the the many fruits and bowls etc. to define their shadows- and the shadow side only. She had just taken a shower and was drying her hair. 

1. Married to a conservative Hindu romantic who changes into a misogynistic radical spy in South Africa.

1. As soon as I arrive in South Africa, a sweet Indian man starts to seduce me. Before I know it, we are in a building having a wedding ceremony. We are standing on a big white sheet barefoot. The officiant shows up rarely: mostly it's my fiance talking to me about beautiful circumstances in nature and so on. Then we both are supposed to sing. My wedding party sings my parts for me because I don't know the tradition- the witnesses in the audience also sing. There are little dishes of nuts and herbs that we pour oil over until it overflows onto the white sheet. Then we cover each other in oil, and I unceremoniously finish with his feet. He takes a long time getting to my feet and mirthfully confides that because women take such wonderful care of their feet, it's the most special part of their body. I feel lucky- he is very romantic. Then he starts singing the final song. I'm standing up but my bridal party nudges me to bend down. I bend from the waist like I'm folded in half. The bridal party not so subtly forces me to lay prostrate, not looking at my fiance. I feel embarrassed that I can't get it right. The song is all about how the man will lead and the woman will follow, always kneeling beside her husband in devotion and in the honor of his mercy. I become unsettled at this. When I do look up, my fiance is now some chiseled white guy. The lyrics are sung in colloquial American English- he is not from India or South Africa or wherever I am. I realize that he is a spy and that we're in a Fascist country and that he's saying these things so as not to be called out by the militant powers that be. But I'm still critical of his methods because now the song he's singing is a satire of female subordination, but somehow despite its satire, it still fails to make any posits for the worth of women. I feel ashamed that I was embarrassed to kneel "improperly" and ask myself if I should have knelt at all. When the ceremony is over, many people come to speak with my now husband, but I am not to do that. I half listen, but mostly stare out into the crowd of people who were from every different country, and out through the back windows which look out into lush, gorgeous land. I'm super thrilled to be here even though I'm confused and worried. Am I really married? Can he refuse me exit of this country?

1. Ophelia 2. Doses in New York

1. Out to lunch with someone who says that I should play Ophelia. 
2. I decide to get a ticket to New York. I meet A and he’s on his way to his aunt’s apartment. We’re going to go see a show, but we aren’t in the city. We’re in some seedy city far outside of any of the buroughs of New York. Her apartment is one room with a balcony and she has two cats. His other aunt had taken us there and she says “this is the extent of it for these cats.” I don’t think it’s such a bad deal for two cats, could be worse.The aunt that brought us there leaves, and then many of his friends show up, and also Jamy shows up. She says “How do you like your new phone?!!” I say “I love it!” But for some reason I don’t want anyone else to know.  A nurse comes to the door who has A’s aunt’s morphine. The nurse takes a great deal of time to explain exactly how it works: One digests it but one shouldn’t let it touch their tongue. There’s a high likelihood of regurgitation. She says that the dosage is mix of DNA-specific mucilage from the mother and the father of the patient. Despite this seemingly patient-specific morphine cocktail, as soon as the nurse leaves, A’s aunt discusses how we can all share it. Suddenly, A’s (former?) junky brother and sister are there, and a whole bunch of random scene “friends.” A takes a little bit of this morphine, which worries me, but I do too. I take only a drop or so. A’s aunt is watching carefully, totally unworried, but reminds the party that she does actually “need” a certain amount. She gets hers, and then we leave for this show.  A plops into a wheelchair and one of his friends pushes him. My head is heavy and instead of a narcotic I feel that I’m on a disassociative or a low dose of psychedelics. We keep walking, the whole gang kind of ambling through a street. The wheelchair gag is over. There is a woman who has a stroller shaped like a VW bug or perhaps an Old Rolls Royce, it is white leather and has miniature car wheels with shiny rims. Inside are two little children, and two enormous dogs. She’s blasting pop music from her stroller and stops to watch a tennis match. Suddenly I'm in a car with black leather seats. I look down and see that I had grabbed the the morphine from the dashboard- which though it had always been in a big bottle with a syringe tip (not an IV syringe, but just one that will make the liquid go in a very pointed direction) now it is embossed with “HEROIN” which makes me nervous and makes my hands shake...which makes me more nervous. 

Half remembered 1.5/3, 1. Errands 2. Politician

1. Going shopping. I leave Ross Dress for Less with a nice haul. I'm on my bike and I peddle hard up a hill, as it's starting to rain. I'm in the grass as I crest over a hill I realize that this is a jump! So I'm airborne, then land, safely, no crashes. Phew! But it's starting to rain even harder so at the next house I pull in. All my coworkers from Radiance are there and we're all getting ready to go to sleep. Micha offers Brandy her yoga mat to sleep on. I'm not ready to sleep, I worry I'll be too loud, so I take off again.
2. It's important to get where I need to go that I follow the actions of a politician closely. It is not Condoleeza Rice, but someone like her. This is going to make me a lot of money.

1. a. “Readers” on American Idol b. Backstage 2. a. Sex b. Cake c.Costumes

1. 
a. “American Idol” has a new segment/spinoff. Viewers submit their letters to the show to be “read” by singers who improvise (or are they prewritten?) melodies to perform letters about the audiences' lives. The “readers” don’t change erroneous grammar or repetitions or incoherencies in the writing. I find one woman to be very skilled. Most wouldn’t peg her for a TV personality because she is quite overweight. I tell her after the show that I liked what she was up to with her “readings.” She thanked me, left. Afterwards I got the impression that this had happened before and the other “readers” were resentful towards her, because she kept getting the best letters to perform. At first I had thought they just auditioned people from the audience, but now I wonder if they’ve cast for these folks. I wonder to myself if I could do this.

b. I go back stage to see about getting involved. I go into a dressing room where there are two dudes rough-housing with each other and pulling on each others’ afros. I think they are both pretty cute, one propositions me. I look down and notice that my toenails are no loner painted. How did that happen?

2
a i go to a crush's house and he kisses me. oh god, finally. He says “i want to do this,” which in the dream sounds like the most sexy phrase I have ever heard. We announce all that we do- our intention to do it and our acting out the actions. On one hand, this feels silly. On the other hand, I appreciate our emphasis on consent and so I say so. He's shy, stern, serious - so I couldn't read whether or not he was into it. He's into it.. He is on top of me, with his mouth right next to my ear, whispering breathy ideas about what to do our what he wants to do. It occurs to me that we’re actually pretty clothed. His rhythm is incessantly straight, which seems dull, but also strong. He stops, gives me a swat. Ugh I am really quite helpless over him and start begging him for... this and that...Well, yeah it was a sex dream, okay?

b. then there’s a knock on his door and his roommates come in with birthday cake. Up in a flash, fully clothed, he blows out the candles and smiles. It’s a red velvet cake. One girl has wavy hair, one kinky hair, and some guy who is just tall and quiet. I think “What goes in red velvet cake? Wheat flour... wheat flour.” 

c. A few dawdlers are left and I am telling them about something I think we should do- which is dress up like characters of figures from a play or a movie and walk around during carnival times or create little skits.

1. Real teen screenplay & criticism 2. my parents' animal flood

1. I am watching a pilot episode. 7 girls on the day they turn 14. The premise is that they are conscious of who they will be when they're much older, but they're telling the story from when they're 14. All of the girls in the pilot episode are real people who I went to middle school with. There is a voiceover that comes in and foreshadows what will happen next and gives creepy "insider" information. When D is on the screen, the voiceover says that I went down on her in middle school. (There is no mention of what effect this has on D's life.) In disbelief I say "That just didn't happen." There are few others that I don't remember now, the last is a girl- Mary, sits up in a top bunk bed. She says to the camera "I just turned 14 this minute, and I just now got my period." Then the camera does a close-up of her chest. She is wearing a hospital gown, removes that, then starts to remove her bra.  I say audibly -"Now this is in poor taste, I really hope they don't go there." She removes her bra and reveals breasts that have had a horrible boob job, perfectly spherical and with odd indentations in the skin on the outer underside.
I turn to A and start having a discussion with him. I say "So that's my screenplay." He shrugs, and I say "but I was thinking about having this one part where she takes off her bra and we see her terrible boob job." Then he says "You can go that route I guess, but it seems like overtelling. The audience is already going to assume the worst...so if you put that in there it'll just take away the fun of them getting to know her story more slowly."

2. There are a lot of animals showing up randomly: a jackal, possums, squirrells, raccoons, hares, deer, large insects and arachnids, armadillos...etc. They are coming in one at a time to my parents house, and they are neither staying nor running away quickly. I'm trying to help my mom have a yard sale. We are just looking at some bright coral colored cutrains together and a man is about to sing a song. I go into the garage where I pick up an old swimsuit. I open the door and see a jackal bounce away like a kangaroo. There is ocean water coming up over the stairs and it keeps coming. I say to my mom "We have to just keep going." We go out the livingroom window, and walk past the Rolleighs' house and just kind of leisurely relax in the sun. A few hours later we go back home, everything looks kind of fine, really, but I know that we ought to set up an appointment with the carpet cleaners.

1. Sharing with artists and the mirror rock 2. Crush interview in a yellow jeep 3. Savannah Viewing Vista 4. Burning popcorn/anthropology

1. Sharing a room over the summer with two other creative women I know from school or town. They are filmmakers and musicians. I've been at a flea market and come back with a big stone that looks like a big angular mountain range covered in mirrors. I go to put it with our current art piece, which we have installed in our window sill. Currently, there are portraits of us, big 1foot by 3/4 foot ovals where we've blown up photos of us as kids. We then taped sweatshirts to the glass underneath our faces, and put our sweatshirt arms around each other. Then there are "talk" bubbles where we write what we feel about the day and how we feel about each other. I can't figure out where to put my mirror rock. Sometimes I feel in on the joke, and sometimes not.
2. Sharing a room over the summer with M. He sees me come home with a bunch of newspapers from the convention and gets that I'm reading them to be better in touch with my crush. He says "Ok, so tell me about your boyfriend," in a singsong voice. He takes me for a ride in a yellow jeep.
3. The whole gang- we can't believe our luck. We knew there were supposed to be some good photos out of this, but this is unreal. We are in a white hallway with large arched, noglass windows on either side and as we look out the window we see different things as they begin to engage with us. We peer out the window at lions, a whole pride. They come by us. The other window, we see a flock of birds and then have the option of riding on the back of an airplane. As I'm looking out onto the airplane vista, a lion comes into the hallway from the other side. It brushes up against me, and the stands in front of me. I'm holding its teeth as we both look out onto the airplane vista. Then tigers start coming from the lion vista window.
4. Waking up to the smell of "burning popcorn." I ask myself these questions in relation to the smell: How does a culture know when to be scared of something? How can they tell when something is a trick or a lie?

1. Plane Crash 2. Late for the Airport

1. The plane is going down. The flight attendant is not panicking, but she is alerting us of what's going down. She's blonde and she has a southern accent when she says "Ok, well, the stink hole is overflowin'" which means that the plane has tipped so that the latrine is emptying out onto us. She instructs us to sing "kumbaya my Lord" which we do. We are all holding hands. It's dark inside the plane. Suddenly, we are all standing up wearing parachutes, or if we aren't wearing them, we're partnered with someone who will try their hardest to hold onto us. We all jump out of the plane. We are over farm land, so it work out. I'm worried that people will break their legs when they land on the ground, but they don't. Back to the plane: there's one man left. He was (where?!) somewhere else when the instructions were gone over and he realizes he's the only one on the plane. The flight attendant's name was Wendy. She may have figured out how to save the man on the plane, but maybe not.
2. I am taking a plane with Jamy somewhere. We had a vacation planned. We leave from Snohomish. I'm meeting her on Main Street, but while I wait I watch the bar through the window. I was on the first plane that crashed with a whole bunch of celebrities, but also a lot of ordinary folk from Snohomish. I watch as those folk wait to get seated. The host brings them shots of alcohol before they're even seated. I find this hilarious. When Kieran and the other friends show up, I tell them this, as I think it's very funny. They are surprised, and so am I, that I survived that first flight. Jamy shows up and I don't really tell her that I was in a plane crash. We get ready to make our flight. I had a car, my grandma's old 1987 Chevy, but she directs us to this paved trail where we are walking and sometimes biking. Suddenly I realize that we'll never make it to our flight if we go this way. But I don't remember the time that our flight is, so I don't want to turn around. I start fiddling around with my phone, trying to get it to display the information I need. I put a speaker system on it, I put a calculator head on it, none of it tells me what I need. I call directly. They say I can come to the airport and take the next flight. They don't see our names (but I can see the chart the man is looking at, which has our names. I realize he just can't understand me over the phone.) I'm relieved, but I wonder if it's going to be much more expensive to change our flights.

1. I'm the new girlfriend catching spiders 2. Bass in the park

1. I have joined their relationship (a man and woman) in an idyllic haste. I want to be one with their world. It's so sunny and nice, so I try to put it behind me that they are really too-hippy for me when it comes down to it. They show me their house. They have a child I never meet, a tarantula, another, skinnier spider, and a snake. I sleep over one night, and then the next I get shy about the spiders. I ask if we can put them in their tanks just for over-night. I'm having a hard time catching the tarantula, and I feel bad and anxious because I'm nervous that I'm hurting it. I consider how I've pet it before.
2. We ride our bikes away from the house. Going down Harrison, I veer off by Foote Street where there is now a huge park. Scattered about the park are instrumentalists. I happen upon an upright bass, and start playing.

1. Family vacation 2. Spa with Brooke 3. Bridge Machine Nightmare 4. School

1. Flashback to a family vacation I've never had where a big sister is covered in a mud wrap or seaweed wrap on her abdomen and trunk. Little brother keeps splashing her ("Stop it!") and diluting her wrap before it is to come off. There are huge tropical plants overshadowing the dark wood decking where the soaking tubs are inlaid. Mom and Dad are in love again and not paying attention to brother and sister, which, ultimately, is a good thing.
2. Brooke Stepp is giving me advice at the outdoor spa. We've been soaking together and in our own sea weed type wraps. (These kind are supposed to stay underwater.) I know that the next part of the routine is to eat/drink this thick fruit shake. (Is it fermented? Tastes really bland and starchy.) Brooke tells me that the spa attendants hold the cup for you so you can remain with your whole body submerged. She says you can also have a little to eat like tuna or cod; she likes cod better because it is a little sweet. I realize it's raw fish she's discussing, and then envision a whole sushi bar. I start to really get behind the idea of chopsticks.
3. Nightmare in which I probably die. I am driving a van on a bridge. It feels like Vancouver, B.C., but it also feels like Tacoma, Wa. I look to the side of the road and I see an alarming feature: a building that has a large glass tank filled with tires. Above the tires is a yellow accordion pump (huge: 20-30' tall) pushing down into the tank. Above the pump is a filter that is a chimney type thing and there are thin, but yet still black billowing clouds coming from it. A sign says: "We are willing to melt your old tires but this device does emit greenhouse gasses." I continue driving and look ahead and suddenly that the tire recyclery has become a VEHICLE and is right in front of me. I am nervous that it is very combustible. The bridge starts to shake and falls apart. I get tossed around the van and I wonder if I should try opening the door in mid air. Directions pop up into my field of vision as if I'm watching a computer screen but they are not encouraging. I panic. I fear that once I'm in the water, there will be pieces of the bridge and other vehicles still hitting the water and perhaps me. I wake up still in a panic, too hot, and resolved to carry a hammer with me to break out of whatever car I'm in. I'm still trying to figure out how to escape, awake. I consider that all of the pieces of the bridge will probably fall somewhat in the shape of the bridge- a line, and a van won't fall any faster than the pieces of the bridge. But I'm pretty convinced I've died in the dream. I tell Isaac that dying isn't any worse than my worst menstrual cramps, or kidney stones, right?
4. T Spells is teaching the class I want to be in for spring quarter. It's about sculpting characters. Again, all dudes in my class.

1. Dinner date 2. The unconsummated affair in the Chinese house 3. Rest Stops

1. I'm housesitting for my mother who suddenly has a very palatial house. She calls on the phone to say that she'll be a little late. I'm throwing a dinner party, and only one guest has shown up: an authority figure I know from real life. He is kind, and all of a sudden is carnally direct with me. He has a sweet smile as he suggests extremely naughty things. They sound like good ideas and I'm confident that the walk will be as good as the talk. More guests start to arrive, but this man doesn't disappear into the crowd; he is always close. We are held together by our sexy secret.
2. A. C and I have plans to meet and when I show up at his house we end up chasing a rabbit around. He has just bought a house and moved in with his new girlfriend, but she's not home yet. I notice how happy he is to see me, and I feel the same way. His house is totally bizarre and ends up connecting to my house, even though my house is miles away. She gets home and we realize suddenly how not appropriate it will seem to her that I'm there and I hide. I go down one of the white hallways and slide underneath a stairwell. Under the regular stairs, there are tiny, tiny rounded pink stairs that almost look like a ramp. The detailing in the house is somehow Chinese. There are lots of engraved botanicals and jade as detailing. There are small rooms that seem to have no purpose, but they are beautiful. The house is under partial remodel. Whatever is being remodeled isn't destroyed, it's just covering up what is so ornate and creative and beautiful. When they stop yelling, I get out of my hiding spot and walk back to my house, but, because my house is attached, I never actually put on shoes to leave.
***REAL LIFE: Isaac now wakes me up with his paw on my face. I feed him. Go back to sleep***
B. We had made plans to meet again around 11:45 pm when he would be sure that she was asleep. I had brought my bright orange tent and a sleeping bag so we could hang out not in the house, and not outside either (though the weather was nice that evening.) I walked by and saw his form get up from bed through the window, he's wearing a white robe. I see a second white robe rise. She looks out the window, and immediately sees me. The sky was a night sky, but when she looks out at me, the sky is bright as day, and I stick out very obviously. They begin to yell again. I am trying to watch without further being seen. He holds her and I go back home.
3. A and I pick up Jamy from her trip. She had been camping. We were in the cab of a truck, and Jamy seemed to be surrounded by a long stream of paper that wrapped all around her and got in the way of me seeing the road. But A was driving, so it was fine. She was talking about still being high on mushrooms. "It will probably only last another hour" she says. We stop at a rest stop.