Dream

Posted on February 28, 2003 in Dreams

I am in a cemetery taking photographs. My father accompanies me. I have to lay on my back to photograph an extremely tall monument dedicated to some man who worked for the State Department. I say something about needing to take more than one picture and my father takes offense. He kicks me while I am laying down. I respond angrily that all I said was that I had to take several shot to get the whole tower. He tells me that he worries because he doesn’t want to just give me things, lest I take them for granted and not achieve great things as I should.

I ditch him while he goes into the cemetery office and tells his story to the funeral director. I think my response to him aloud while I go off to another part of the cemetery. All the people I have known who made it got there because they had advantages, I mutter. The ones who had to work hard for them seldom made it. We should honor those who did, but remember that they are rare.

Lynn and her cousin Tom join me in the other part of the cemetery. There are interesting murals at the exits. Elderly black men — all alike — putter around the gardens. Young black men throw frisbies to one another.

Tom finds a tomb stone with a recessed relief that he can fit into. I try to take the photo while dodging frisbies. I drop the camera, pick it up again, and point it. When I look through the view finder, I see in any direction except the one I am pointing the camera. I growl and find that the lense has been dislocated. I take it apart with the help of Lynn and Tom. It grows bigger when we take it out. We disassemble the camera focus assembly and put it back together very crudely. I’m angry because it means that I can’t take more pictures at the cemetery. As we rollerskate off, Lynn asks if it is still under warranty. I say that it is and she says “There you have it.”

We rollerskate down a long avenue filled with people. We enter a district where they sell flowers. I lose Lynn here, among women who wear yellow blouses like the one she has on. I call her name, but she doesn’t answer. Tom and I skate on, figuring that she will find the way back to our hotel, which is by Disneyland. My father rented it for us. He will be angry at me for not going back with him and for losing them.

Tom and I skate on. We come to a fork in the road. I tell Tom which way I am going and then, after passing through a tunnel lined with museum exhibits, I stop to ask a woman the name of the avenue to the east of us which runs north and south, “from Burlingame through San Pasqual Valley” I explain. She remembers it as “Claymore”, the best cross-street to take as McInness.

I look for Tom. He’s disappeared. I call out his name. A furry-faced old black man tells me that someone with a gun is answering to that name. I look around and notice the much heavier traffic on the other fork. Mine seems to be going nowhere. I skate back to the divide and move quickly through a grove of eucalyptus trees along a dry river, looking for Tom.

Dreams

Posted on February 27, 2003 in Dreams

Sometimes I have dreams inside of dreams, that occur to me as I break out of sleep into levels of higher wakefulness. In this dream I had this afternoon, I found myself in a church. For some reason, the ceremony had been interrupted. I used the opportunity to cross the auditorium quickly. Suddenly, the priests, the acolytes, and the choir all entered abruptly and blocked my way.

I woke from this into an apartment. It was somewhere in Japan, I think. We’d been taken there by a friend as political refugees. The daughter of the household next door brought us cooked vegetables and the mother showed us how she’d mastered cooking roast chicken with white gravy as she believed Americans loved it.

I felt paralyzed in my bed. I woke up and looked out the window, which was to my left instead of behind me as it is in my real world. A dark city skyline illuminated by the light of the setting moon draped itself along the window sill. “What country are we in?” I asked Lynn. “I don’t know.” And then, with an effort, I broke out of this sleep into this one where I blog and rinse my mouth in the aftermath of an extraction.