Friday, March 29, 2002

Forts

Walking through the woods of the neighborhood I grew up in. But nothing looks familiar. I’m with a TV actor – Danny from Boston Public. I keep pointing out old treehouses, we use them as support to hang from like monkey bars when the ground isn’t there. Because we’re walking along the edge of a drop-off, as if erosion has washed away an entire hillside. There are old ladders made of 2 by 4s, ropes and trap doors that open above us onto small platforms. The first one I think is my old treehouse, the next two are not mine. We travel hand over hand along various planks. At one point he hangs onto me as I use a narrow grip to cross a wide space. I notice that my strength doesn’t waver. We come to a long ladder and try to climb down.

Tuesday, March 26, 2002

Come in from the cold

Traveling over ice flows with a group of guys. An ocean liner screams across our path in the distance slicing through the ice. As it crosses directly in front of us, I see that it is a semi-truck, not a ship. When we reach it’s path, the ice disappears. I am wearing boots or one of the other guys is. But we start swimming. Before I even see any shore, we are dripping wet, sitting near the top of a stone staircase and wearing floral print swimming trucks. A woman opens a large glass door at the top of the stairs. We have interrupted the yoga class she is teaching. She asks, “You went out swimming?” I reply, “No, we just swam in.” She is shocked by the realization that we just arrived on shore.

I am in a store filled with old radios, mainly big cabinet sized ones. I find one marked for $60 that is really beat up.

Thursday, March 21, 2002

King of all media

I am looking at a book of pictures. It is not a photo album, but an actual bound book. The pictures are of my family (Mom, Dad, Stac and I) around a big swimming pool with white columns and statues around. One shot is of an ornate wall statue of two reclining Greek god types with flowing robes, except that the figure’s faces are Mom and Dad’s carved in the stone. Stacy has made or given me this book. But we have never been to such a pool and I know that the images are from another dream I had long ago.

I am talking to my Jersey buddies on a cell phone. I have trouble hearing Vin, so I try attaching a weird speaker/microphone. It is a cord with a rubber cap shaped in a half sphere. I talk into it and hold it to my ear and then the phone. Then I realize that I am also hearing Fred from the Howard Stern show. Is he talking to me and/or my Jersey boys – or has he replaced them in the conversation. I can’t tell if we are on the air or not.

Thursday, March 14, 2002

Keep it real

Watching Blind Date with Brooke. I yell, hey that’s Suzanne. Then the show cuts to Clarkin sitting at a table with several kids.

I am walking up a set of stairs. Was there someone else there or did someone fall? Then I am I upstairs in what appears to be a cafeteria. There are several plain tables around the room. I am sitting at a table full of black guys. They look vaguely threatening, but I seem at ease. We are talking about race relations. I say, “…then you have guys like me saying ‘Keep it real.’” Everyone laughs.

Wednesday, March 13, 2002

Bail

I am on a giant speedboat tied at the dock. People (parents and kids) are preparing to launch the boat. I think it is members of the families that Mom and Dad hung out with when Stacy and I were growing up in Cleveland (the Standerings and Farrells) but none of these people look familiar. I am attracted to the Farrell daughter, but it is not her. One of the sons is driving the boat and takes off very fast. I am standing in the bow of the boat and see that he is heading straight for a large concrete embankment. I wave him off, but he makes a sharp banking turn too late and the bottom of the boat scrapes the embankment. The boat shoots toward the opposite shore which is a narrow strip of land covered in stones and pebbles. The boat is headed right for the tip of it, where a woman is holding her baby. I try to waving my arms and pointing to tell him to turn. I am yelling frantically, but he doesn’t seem to pay attention to me. The boat stops, slowing running into shore. The woman is below me, standing just under the bow of the boat.
The boat starts to back out, but suddenly the entire desk is covered with water, as if the boat is a full bathtub. I grab a rope tied to the bow and begin pulling the boat into shore. The rope is impossibly long and thick, yet I pull the boat in somewhat easily. Then I realize that the metal work from the boat (it is not a cleat, it looks more like a small railing) has come unattached and that is all I am hauling in. Then several of us swimming down into the water to find the boat, we aim to retie the rope and pull in out. Soon we are walking around on the bottom, making no effect to breath. At one point we find a flat wide space that is deeper, we decide that it is the perfect place to pull the ship to in order to have room to raise it. We have to climb out a steep hill covered in layers of silt that are different shades of dark and light brown. No one tries to swim up, we climb.

I am in some kind of amusement park or arcade. There is some kind of track with mini cars. Then I am playing some kind of weird oversized pinball shaped game.

Saturday, March 9, 2002

Listen to teacher

I’m in an unfamiliar high school. I seem to be the age I am now, but no one notices me walking around. I see Craig Watson and Adam Langston. Adam looks younger than he did in high school. They are wearing Hawaiian shirts and Adam does not acknowledge me. There are photocopied flyers on all the walls. One that is everywhere has a picture of Angie Chambers on it. (A story I read last night called Fishboy in the Oct 2001 issue of Playboy featured a boy with an obsessive crush on a classmate pictured in a flyer for the seafood place she worked at.) At one point, the legs of my gray corduroys (that I wore out last night) were too long and I skated very fast through the empty halls with the leg ends around my feet. I skate across the stage of the auditorium. A play practice of some kind is taking place. I continue sliding into a back room where boxes of doughnuts lay. But they are oversized muffins so I tear off a piece. And a male teacher tells me they are for faculty only. I leave as he tries to kick me out.

I am in a contest with Jim Perez (an art director at Portfolio Center) the object is to place my white objects between his red ones – while he tries to do the same. At least I think that’s the object. It starts very orderly and logically, then things begin to change. There are beads, golf balls and odd shapes stacked in all manner across a long table. Some pieces are different colors and balls are stacked like oranges so it’s impossible to get a piece between them. At one point, I drop marbles (beads?) into a test tube hung in a row of them hanging above a stack. Then I am tearing off bits of white Styrofoam to use as pieces. Have I run out? I feel futile. I don’t know the rules or strategy anymore. All this taking place in front of a classroom of little kids sitting in chairs raised movie theater stadium style. They are staring ahead zombie-like with smiles frozen on their faces. The teacher is praising how well behaved they are and doesn’t care if they are paying attention.

Friday, March 8, 2002

Sounds like fun

There is a pile of junk in a vacant lot. Was it the remains of a burnt out building? I’m helping a group of black kids carry boxes of it to a dumpster around the block to keep them (or me?) from getting in trouble. Then I take a box to a different dumpster filled with odd things, like a brass headboard and a ceiling fan painted with wild colors in a funky pattern.

I’m talking to a hot girl on a paddleboat and then in an amusement park. I think she’s interested but I don’t make any moves. I want to sleep with her, but don’t because of Brooke. Then I see the girl again on a front porch, she has big tits and a perfect body. But now she blows me off.

There is a large group of kids in a field watching a tug of war contest. A kid driving a mini back-ho is pulling another kid in some kind of cart like a forklift. They pull up on the street in front off the field. The kid driving asks the other, “Should we join in?”

Monday, March 4, 2002

Leisure time

The actor that plays Nate on Six feet Under (Peter Krause) is doing a radio broadcast. We are in a mountain chateau. He hands an turntable or other electronic console out the window to me on the roof. Dad is there and asks if I want steak for dinner.

I am in a park handing a joint to Todd S. under a stone table. Earlier, Langston had teed up a golf ball, but he cut in front of a snooty guy with his foursome. I apologized. Had we just been walking through the course? Todd and I sit at the table smoking the joint. And as I hand him a large sandwich baggie stuffed with dope, several cops in blue raid the park. I drop the bag under the table in a feeble attempt to hide it. Langston’s brother is there. Todd screams at me, something about why did I bring so much, there’s always plenty around. He is fearful of jail time. I consider picking the bag back up, but don’t act.

Sunday, March 3, 2002

Troubled

I was called into the high school principal’s office. He toys with me for awhile, talking about the security cameras around the school grounds. I have no idea what I’m in trouble for. He fills out a form, hands it to me and asks if that is how I spell it. Along the top next to “Complaint:____” he has written in HASH and then marijuana misspelled. I try explaining that there must be some mistake, because I didn’t smoke up until college. But he continues lecturing, only now we are outside. And I am wrapping a blanket around myself. I realize I am laying in a 4 lane street and the principal is gone. I slowly get up and walk to the sidewalk, leaving my mattress in the lane of oncoming traffic. I believe the principal is under a blanket on the grass beyond the sidewalk. But when I pull it back, Dave and Paige are sitting there. I ask “how did you find me?” and they respond that they’ve been waiting for me.

Friday, March 1, 2002

Your honor, this man has been framed.

I’m in a courtroom. The stenographer has an earpiece. The guy (the prosecutor?) at the table to the left (looking out from the judge’s bench) is talking to him on a walkie-talkie. It is in plain sight, yet I know that it is secretive. What am I on trial for? And why has it been fixed?