So now what? We wait.

Shipwrecks and Crowded Beds.

The wind started to push the ship that several hundred passengers, including me, were aboard for reasons and destination unknown.

A documentary about the first lady was on the TV, and I was getting really annoyed that the reception kept faltering, and the wind kept blowing cold rain in through the window. It became clear then that the ship was in trouble, and that I should be afraid.

We crashed on some rocks, and all survivors were ferried to the shore. We were then marched North, along an accident strewn 405 freeway, containing many liquids and horrific scenes of death and dying.

All passengers were herded into the apartment building where I live in downtown Long Beach, and the tenants (including me) were told to make room. There were several people in my bed and I could not find a place to lie down so I wondered into some sort of mini theater with red velvety seats. I sat down, and my best friend Kelly sat on my lap because all the seats were taken. I looked at my broken wrist watch, and asked the people behind us what time/day/year is it? They told me the date, and I discovered that we had traveled forward three years in time somehow. Kelly started crying, and I was telling her not to worry.

The next day I took my film in to be processed, because it contained all kinds of pictures from the ship. There was a tall, slanted escalator that I had to climb, using my film as a rope to get to the processing window. When I finally got to the top, nearly passing out from vertigo, a kind black man with gray hair helped me through. He took my film and gave me a blue t-shirt with my high school logo on it.
The end.

-Dream 10-20-09

not a unique situation with you

A delicious ice cream sundae offered up
to a full stomach...
It is yours for the taking.
A sweet passive object of
pure desire,
without a mouth to form the word "No", and
without the legs to walk away.
It is your discussion to pick it up
It is not an individual
It requires no respect
It is not a woman
It is not me.

new and more more more.

I am wondering if all of this added technology is worthwhile. These additions complicate and distract, leaving so very little time for other essential cultivations. These new toys are oh so very tempting though.

medical injustice, and breaking glass.

I entered a tall metallic corporate building for a doctor's appointment. In the lobby there was a mad dash for the elevator, and I was smashed up against the button panel i was facing by a big sweaty man with no shirt. The air was thick with heat and sickness, as everyone was on their was to the doctor's office on some floor above. I felt like I was going to vomit.

The elevator doors opened and the throng of sickness, (myself included) poured out, and rushed into a big blue and gray carpeted waiting area, where a doctor stepped onto a stage and told us all that we would be split into groups and that some of us were to come back at 6:15 that night. April and I sat in some office chairs as two medical assistants came up to us individually to see about our conditions. I lifted up my pant legs to reveal large soft bruises on my skin like rotting peaches. He gave me two packets of pills, one white and one green, and told me how much they cost. I said that I could only pay half, so he gave me the pills and said to just "take" them.

I could see the other medical assistant messing with April's leg out of the corner of my eye. When the two MAs had gone and it was time to go, I looked at April and they had amputated one of her legs below the knee. They put a plastic peg in it's place and saran wrapped it to her thigh. I start yelling "Why did they take your leg off?!".

In order to leave the building, we (April & I) had to walk through a narrow space that contained antique footrests and glass cabinets with porcelain figurines. We could not break anything, so we hobbled and helped each other slowly through, handicapped by our wounds. I cannot now, remember if we broke anything :/

...then we will be there

There was something I was holding in my head last night,
occurring in between jam-packed variables.
You and I were negotiating reactions, from two different countries,
speaking different languages. Our faces were blown-up on
digital video monitors for face/eye contact to the max.
The color and quality was one step beyond "Super 8", but vivid nonetheless.
Sometimes exchanges were honestly sad, and
sometimes there was a real breakthrough in communication
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

and then I woke up, and the waking up part was such a cop-out,

because you know what happens...

...

cutting back. what it means.

I met a nurse today that talked about slow cancer
coming from the skin inward and toward the lungs.
strangers seated restlessly in bars tell me these things outside of 911,
dancing with their hands to Diana Ross, and pretending to be your friend forever.
disease permeates, and you always said that the drinking would take you down.
It's just bad luck, our last name curse.
Well... stubborn men and all the painkillers in the world couldn't win last summer...
but try again in four seasons, and we'll see what happens.

Advised en espanol in the parking lot
of a strip mall,
about leaving and driving across town
four thousand miles away, she said
it would be a good thing,
to leave you and you, & my next of kin.

No time to be sedentary, couldn't spend it all between
miscellaneous acquaintances, and the television.
sad that I couldn't
see you in 15 years, hogging the lava...
but remember? I remember.
I'd have liked so much to sleep like I did
before math class for hours with the radio on,
in a warm, temporary shallow bed.
In the dark.

liver disease and technology

I had to appease the doctor by putting up with her lallygagging through shopping malls and restaurants. She was the doctor who was going to perform the biopsy on my diseased liver.
We walked through downtown Sacramento all night, when the streets were vacant and everywhere was closed. Not such a good thing for someone who could become very ill at any moment. I passed the time blanking out on her incessant talking, thinking about how much I have become addicted to the new culture of constant communication through technology. Having such vast resources at my disposal has made me a more impatient person... I need to make time for silence.
Passing by a restaurant window, she looked in and saw a bunch of her doctor friends at a table. It was morning now, and I was starving. However I was not allowed to eat anything for medical reasons. I sat in the booth with these people, listening to their bullshit, unable to order food and a drink. Finally I stood up and told them that they were all assholes, smoking cigarettes, drinking and eating pastrami, while encouraging others not to. Then I left, and woke up.

another underwater >>>>>>>

my father's mother @ "The Salty Dog"

I found this pick in my Dad's garage. Her and another woman owned this bar far awhile in San Diego.

i guess i jumped in on my own.

Dream 03/17/09

I was patrolling the coast of Long Beach, with some officers on a big military boat,
when we saw something floating over by the seawall. The wing of a medium-sized Boeing plane had been somehow ripped off the body and floated over, without the rest of the wreckage. We brought the wing onboard, but were worried it may have a bomb, or recording device inside it. It was a spy plane from the Persian gulf, that somehow escaped the radar of the military.

The next day, I brought the wing into work with me. My job was to take it apart and look for information, like secret cameras, microphones, documents, et cetera. The wing had keyboards, and screens with remotes inside of it. I unattached what looked like a game console from the interior of the wing, and turned it on. It was a war game. I played for five minutes and then gave it to my co-worker, and told him to look for secrets. I continued to explore the wing when, all of a sudden it turned on, because my co-worker had been messing with the dials on the control panel. The flaps on the edges opened and started to blow air, it sounded like a giant vacuum.

Later on, I turned the corner onto 4th Street, and walked through the front door of a green house, and into the backyard where there were tables and chairs set up. Anyone could come in and watch a movie projected on a screen, and be served snacks and juice by the two ladies who lived at this house. I sat there for a while hanging out with some people I knew, and then walked across the street to get cigarettes. While I was gone, someone had come into the yard and started murdering people. There were body parts everywhere, and one of the ladies who lived there was crying. I decided to clean her kitchen to cheer her up... it was a friggin mess.

After cleaning the kitchen I walked over to Stater Bros, but it was a 99 cent store. I went up to the counter to pay for a small bendable "Creature for the Black Lagoon" toy, and the other woman who lived at the house was working the register. She asked me to open my bag. There was a bunch of stuff from the store inside, and I told her that I don't know how it got there. I paid for all of it, and the lady gave me a plastic cup of juice. The end.

Dream 01/26/09

We all waited, seated in a classroom for our letters to be called.
I was at some kind of work or training camp in the mountains.
Once my letter was announced I went outside and stood in line with other people waiting
to slide down a ground-level slide made of polished oak that ended somewhere underground
in a cavern.

Kurt Cobain was at the front of the line waiting to go down. Men in suits then gave the okay,
and he jumped instead of sitting down. He landed and slid down the rest of the way, and everyone
laughed except for me, because it looked rather painful, but I knew that he had jumped for the sake
of the audience.

When I reached the top, I was handed some small round pegs of oak that fit into small holes at the
top of the slide, which I put in my pocket. I ended up deep underground in the cave, several yards from where the others had landed. We were all expected to stay in our places overnight, and emerge in the morning. We passed the time by
telling our stories to each other while respectively staring up at the dark rock ceiling.

When it was light out, I stood up and realized I was wearing boy's white briefs covered in soot, and boxer shorts that
kept falling down. I was embarrassed about this, and hurried to get the place where I could clean up.
After I was dressed, I walked outside toward a cliff, and standing there was a boy from the cave. I hadn't seen him,
but I knew that he had told the most compelling story about how he lived in a squat in Kentucky with a bunch of feral, and
runaway kids. His mom had to flee from the FBI, and leave him there. So he befriended a younger french kid named Tim.

He asked me to come with him, because no one really had anywhere to go.
I also wanted to go because this person contained a combination of many traits that I found fascinating.

Tim, (the french kid, grown up) landed a small airplane with an open cockpit, and we jumped in. We flew close to the side of the cliff where there were all kinds of words and pictures carved into the rock. Tim turned the engine off, and the plane started to drop like a brick. They were wearing seat belts, but I wasn't, so I held onto the blue vinyl seat as tight as I could. I was thinking that I never minded risking life and limb for a chance to learn a cluster of many things at once.
But we didn't die, we ended up in a small mexican town. I was looking for a place that served nachos. The end.

Murder Dream

All of our computers at work were broken or being used. I had to open up a file in illustrator,
fix it, and then send it to print, so I went across the street to a coffee shop to use a computer. We printed an L-word adhesive poster for their premier party, so I thought it was a homo friendly coffee place. One girl complemented me on my clothes, and I told her that her haircut was super-cute. She said "Eww" and walked away... I was like "Whatever!"
Then I worked at the coffee shop and someone had gotten murdered in the back, so we all got to go home.

I lived in a big craftsman-style house with several of my brothers and sisters, and a mexican dad who was a murderer.
He had a set of knives that where extra sharp on both ends, so they could only be held in the blunt center. Some of these knives were forked, and all varied in size. We all had to stay together in one room, because if one of us wondered off alone, he'd stalk and kill us. I saw my sister (Shane from the L-Word) get killed in the alley behind the house, I remembered there were shoes hanging from the electrical lines.

I took one of the small, long blades and put it behind my back in my belt. The knife cut my skin but I figured I'd have to get used to it. When our "Dad" was taking a nap, I got on my bike (which was spray painted black) and rode down the street to a small dock where I kept a steal 10 foot boat. I started to paddle up the LA river, when I realized that I'd forgotten my keys and phone. I went back to the house to discover that HE threw a fit when he woke up and left the house. I rode back to the boat, and he was waiting for me on the dock. He asked me where I was going and I said "to mom's house for Easter." He asked how I was getting there, and I said "the high road". He said "let me see this high road." I was trying to reason with him about the killing, while he pulled out a particularly nasty looking knife. I threw up my left arm while grabbing the knife from my belt. He stabbed my forearm, but I plunged my knife up under his ribs piercing his aorta, and said "Fuck You".
I woke up sweating!

I was living in a house, it was morning-noon-ish, and I was shuffling around a kitchen. My joints were stiff. My boss came into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. He was looking at me like he thought I was on drugs. Then _____ came in and gave me a bacon and cream cheese sandwich, along with a bowl of strawberries, bananas, and cool whip. She was over-worked, and sick, so I didn't have the heart to tell her that I don't eat bacon, or bananas. _____ and some guy came over, and were hanging out with _____. Then we were going to smoke a cigarette, so I walked down the street to a strip mall where we usually smoke, and they weren't there. The people at the coffee shop were staring at me as if I was a leper. I walked back up the street, and it was extremely painful, because of my stiff joints.
Then I was driving my Nana's gold Buick to the store. She wanted to go to a diner, she was drunk and demanding, and EXTREMELY annoying. We got to the diner, and I had like 25 cousins. They varied from white to black, and were all female. Most of them were cool, and I remember trying to find one that wasn't my first cousin to possibly date. My Nana was cheating on her husband with my Papa, they were both drunk and went into the bathroom to have sex. One of my cousins and I agreed to get the keys to the car away from my Nana and take off. We did and when we got back to the house where we all apparently lived, all of these crazy rednecks from Indiana where there, all distant relatives. I lived in a room in the garage. There was water dripping down through the roof from the swamp cooler, and black and green smoke coming from somewhere. I pointed this out to a man wearing a red ball cap, who started arguing with me concerning gays being child molesters. I went into my room and
grabbed one sketch book to save, and left with my cousin to go back to my Dad's house... What a stupid dream.