Dream 1-24-2011
I found myself in a convenience store, dressed in fieldworkgarb, helping the Virginia District Manager install equipment. The manager and the food manager constantly bickered over the placement of the food warmer. Our guy and the employees wanted it to block the food manager from customers, because he was unbearably gross and hurt appetites.
He had a routine of going into the back and returning to the front, face and hands and arms coated and dripping with off-color bodily fluids and solids. Once up front, he would proceed to make sandwiches, while the female employees gagged and vomited.
I began to grow weary of all this, so I took off my belt and gave it to the manager, as I no longer needed it. I left the store, carrying along two Playstation controllers. When I emerged outside, I was surprised to find myself in Paris, KY, my hometown.
I passed a bench in front of the FIRST!!!! Baptist Church and two girls shouted , “There he is! There he is!”
Yes I is.
Instead of going around town to get home, I crossed through the Church parking lot and then through the grounds of Paris Elementary and High School. From afar, the campus looked barren, but hundreds of students suddenly appeared once I stepped on the sidewalk. My legs stiffened, turned to marble, so I had to drop the video game controllers and manually lift and drop my legs to progress along. All the while, shrieking elementary kids pushed and ridiculed me.
I turned a corner, escaping the horde and bumped into an old friend.
“You think you’re better than me,” he said. “You never visit me and my girlfriend.”
“I’m sorry. I just like being alone.”
“Whatever. Go that way,” he said, staring at the grass and pointing ahead to what looked like a corral.
I wanted to go home, but I had no idea how to get there. So I went in his pointed direction, walking through the corral under a low doorway into a darkened kitchen. The kitchen staff all had long beards like ZZ Top. I passed through into a brightly lit alley that ran between low buildings and emptied into a vast meadow. In the meadow, an immense roar startled me.
The brother of a fellow student from high school rode up on the back of a gigantic alligator. He stopped the monstrous animal a few feet from me; its curved teeth towered over my head. He looked at me and yelled, taking his hat off and waving it in the air.
I had no response.
The ground shook and his brother approached from the opposite direction on the fin of a tremendous shark. The shark was even more huge than the alligator and glided on the ground as if it was ice. He called out my name and I saw that he was regressing in age by the moment until he was as I remembered from pre-school. Then he took his hat off and turned into Mickey Mouse.
“Hello Todd! It’s Mickey Mouse!”
Dream Over
Dream: Trying to Leave the Spiral University
Dream December 16, 2010
I was walking along the inner radius of a spirally designed university at the center of which was an airport and space launching pad. The school was situated in the heart of a vast forest, and as I walked, I stared out at the trees. I was a few years younger and knew it, and the limp with which I had grown up was heavy on my heart and subtracted from my joy at being at the University.
Reaching into my pocket, I worried at the boarding passes there, then switched them to another pocket.
Elderly professors walked all along the cobbled path of the spiral, nodding and smiling at me. However, once I reached escalators that rose to the airport, the smiling faces were replaced by a clusterfuck of anxiety and confusion. Screams of children and sobs of forlorn women and growls of impatient men.
I rose on the escalator. Above was the airport, and above that was the interstellar launching pad. The airport gates were below a transparent dome of blue glass. I could see ships up there, amorphous forms taking solid shape at the hands of scientists.
A stranger whispered in my ear: “There she is, Todd. She won’t take her eyes off you. She’s lovely.” I turned on the rising stairway and saw a gorgeous young woman with blonde hair staring seductively at me. She reached for me, and I hesitated, then was forced onto the ticket platform. I fell down, and my boarding passes whistled out of my pocket and ripped and multiplied and ripped. A forceful wind tore through the platform, scattering the thousands of torn tickets around the gates. I scrambled to grab them, unsuccessful, while people pushed past me toward their gates, trampling on the passes, shredding them.
I looked up at the interstellar platform and saw a ship forming through the blue glass that I had not seen when at first entering the platform. Its hull bubbled out like an aluminum balloon, revealing portals and structures wonderful. A vessel meant for journey beyond this galaxy.
I had to get on that ship, and I realized that my multiplying tickets were akin to the loaves and fishes. It was a miracle for me to reach the heavens! I scurried around the platform, which was constructed like an M. C. Escher drawing, each corner an ouroboros. The stack of tickets in my hands became thick and heavy as I watched the vessel above me grow larger and closer to launching.
Through the knots of passengers I saw a man who talked to others as if he were in charge. He stared up at the vessel, then routinely checked a piece of paper he held in his hands.
With my collected tickets, I ran to him. “Captain,” I said. “Captain! Here are my tickets. I have to get on that ship. You have no idea where it can be going if only I am allowed to board!”
He looked up from his paper for a moment, looking at me and my bundle of tickets with derision.
“I’m not going to let you distract me,” he said, returning his attention to his document.
Frantic, I rushed over to a long queue in front of gate counter. An unknown amount of time passed, but I felt my hair grow and the skin of my face loosen and sag. An explosion above startled me, caused me to drop my tickets on floor. Looking up, I watched the wondrous vessel disconnect itself from the launching pad and rise into an oblivion. Gone.
A young woman in front of me turned around. I recognized that she was the same one from the escalator, but strange and different. Her face was not real, but rather an imagined idea of a beautiful woman separate from any chain of DNA we knew.
“It’s you,” she said. “You look old and tired, you know? Everything within you is used up. Have a safe trip.”
I thought to say that she looked different, too, but did not say.
She grabbed somebody’s hand and walked through the gate door.
I was walking along the inner radius of a spirally designed university at the center of which was an airport and space launching pad. The school was situated in the heart of a vast forest, and as I walked, I stared out at the trees. I was a few years younger and knew it, and the limp with which I had grown up was heavy on my heart and subtracted from my joy at being at the University.
Reaching into my pocket, I worried at the boarding passes there, then switched them to another pocket.
Elderly professors walked all along the cobbled path of the spiral, nodding and smiling at me. However, once I reached escalators that rose to the airport, the smiling faces were replaced by a clusterfuck of anxiety and confusion. Screams of children and sobs of forlorn women and growls of impatient men.
I rose on the escalator. Above was the airport, and above that was the interstellar launching pad. The airport gates were below a transparent dome of blue glass. I could see ships up there, amorphous forms taking solid shape at the hands of scientists.
A stranger whispered in my ear: “There she is, Todd. She won’t take her eyes off you. She’s lovely.” I turned on the rising stairway and saw a gorgeous young woman with blonde hair staring seductively at me. She reached for me, and I hesitated, then was forced onto the ticket platform. I fell down, and my boarding passes whistled out of my pocket and ripped and multiplied and ripped. A forceful wind tore through the platform, scattering the thousands of torn tickets around the gates. I scrambled to grab them, unsuccessful, while people pushed past me toward their gates, trampling on the passes, shredding them.
I looked up at the interstellar platform and saw a ship forming through the blue glass that I had not seen when at first entering the platform. Its hull bubbled out like an aluminum balloon, revealing portals and structures wonderful. A vessel meant for journey beyond this galaxy.
I had to get on that ship, and I realized that my multiplying tickets were akin to the loaves and fishes. It was a miracle for me to reach the heavens! I scurried around the platform, which was constructed like an M. C. Escher drawing, each corner an ouroboros. The stack of tickets in my hands became thick and heavy as I watched the vessel above me grow larger and closer to launching.
Through the knots of passengers I saw a man who talked to others as if he were in charge. He stared up at the vessel, then routinely checked a piece of paper he held in his hands.
With my collected tickets, I ran to him. “Captain,” I said. “Captain! Here are my tickets. I have to get on that ship. You have no idea where it can be going if only I am allowed to board!”
He looked up from his paper for a moment, looking at me and my bundle of tickets with derision.
“I’m not going to let you distract me,” he said, returning his attention to his document.
Frantic, I rushed over to a long queue in front of gate counter. An unknown amount of time passed, but I felt my hair grow and the skin of my face loosen and sag. An explosion above startled me, caused me to drop my tickets on floor. Looking up, I watched the wondrous vessel disconnect itself from the launching pad and rise into an oblivion. Gone.
A young woman in front of me turned around. I recognized that she was the same one from the escalator, but strange and different. Her face was not real, but rather an imagined idea of a beautiful woman separate from any chain of DNA we knew.
“It’s you,” she said. “You look old and tired, you know? Everything within you is used up. Have a safe trip.”
I thought to say that she looked different, too, but did not say.
She grabbed somebody’s hand and walked through the gate door.
Stranger in a Strange Land - A Turd with a Plastic Halo
Stranger in a Strange Land - A Turd with a Plastic Halo
Before I had any money to buy books, the library was my sanctuary. I especially loved to investigate the science fiction and fantasy shelves, marveling at the titles and covers. It was there I picked up Ray Bradbury's 100 Greatest Short Stories and many others.
Around this time, I checked out Robert Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset. I tried and tried to read it, but it was so awfully boring, I returned it. Twenty years later, with no Heinlein in between, I opened a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land a friend had given me. This novel won the Hugo; it's considered one of his best.
Nothing had changed. I had thought that maybe his fiction was at that time beyond my grasp, but having just finished the peripheral story of Valentine Michael Smith, I see that Heinlein failed twice by me to write a story that consistently compelled me to want to know what happens next.
Flaccid characterization and lack of immediate conflict are the novel's major flaws. 375 pages into the book, I realized that nothing of major import had really HAPPENED. Conflict does arise early, with Michael twisting people and objects into discorporation. I liked this. But Mike quickly becomes a dull character, with much of his actions told through Blah Blah Blah dialogue, interspersed with an over-preachy narrative style.
Granted Jubal Harshaw is an initially interesting character, but his sauciness becomes stock and repetitive, and he offers no surprises.
There are no surprises here.
The grokking and "Thou Art God" are definitely weighty ideas, but Heinlein fails to weave these ideas into gripping characters and a gripping story.
And the women. As Mike first views Jill and other women, they are difficult for him to distinguish from one another. Whereas Jubal has the most beautiful face he's ever seen. Well, all the women are good for GROKKING.
Michael's destruction at the end of the novel could have been lead heavy in a better writer's hands, but I had absolutely no invested care in what happened to Mike and what he did next.
Just altogther unremarkable. And even worse for the fact that the story offers promises that are never kept.
I grok schlock. No more Heinlein.
Before I had any money to buy books, the library was my sanctuary. I especially loved to investigate the science fiction and fantasy shelves, marveling at the titles and covers. It was there I picked up Ray Bradbury's 100 Greatest Short Stories and many others.
Around this time, I checked out Robert Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset. I tried and tried to read it, but it was so awfully boring, I returned it. Twenty years later, with no Heinlein in between, I opened a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land a friend had given me. This novel won the Hugo; it's considered one of his best.
Nothing had changed. I had thought that maybe his fiction was at that time beyond my grasp, but having just finished the peripheral story of Valentine Michael Smith, I see that Heinlein failed twice by me to write a story that consistently compelled me to want to know what happens next.
Flaccid characterization and lack of immediate conflict are the novel's major flaws. 375 pages into the book, I realized that nothing of major import had really HAPPENED. Conflict does arise early, with Michael twisting people and objects into discorporation. I liked this. But Mike quickly becomes a dull character, with much of his actions told through Blah Blah Blah dialogue, interspersed with an over-preachy narrative style.
Granted Jubal Harshaw is an initially interesting character, but his sauciness becomes stock and repetitive, and he offers no surprises.
There are no surprises here.
The grokking and "Thou Art God" are definitely weighty ideas, but Heinlein fails to weave these ideas into gripping characters and a gripping story.
And the women. As Mike first views Jill and other women, they are difficult for him to distinguish from one another. Whereas Jubal has the most beautiful face he's ever seen. Well, all the women are good for GROKKING.
Michael's destruction at the end of the novel could have been lead heavy in a better writer's hands, but I had absolutely no invested care in what happened to Mike and what he did next.
Just altogther unremarkable. And even worse for the fact that the story offers promises that are never kept.
I grok schlock. No more Heinlein.
London scribble
July 18 2010
Flew into London with Dad and brothers. Spent a day rustling around this huge city, jumping on and off the Tube, drinking ale and eating food which hardens the arteries.
I really don’t think they noticed London. Too fast.
From London to Thornbury, staying in Edward Stafford’s Thornbury Castle. While at the castle, the BBC used it as a setting for the production of a comedy series entitled “Whites”, starring Alan Davies. We met a crazy lady named Lisa who wanted us to accompany her to a beer-soaked public named The Plough, where she would subsequently teach us Flamenco Dancing. I think she was riding some kind of narcotic lightning, for her toes splayed and unsplayed, as if in throes of some eternal spasm.
Left Thornbury to Eastbourne, stopping in Bath, Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral. Stonehenge and the Salisbury Plains were as brilliantly mind-shadowing as I recall from seven years ago.
Did our British ancestors conceive of us? Some Bronze Age imagining of an Earth cluttered and drooling with homo-sapiens?
Salisbury Cathedral still so vast. Another structure making us seem like busy ants, but ants with some great power to suffuse mind and body for these minute beings to construct that hall of possible divinity.
And then Eastbourne, The Grand Hotel along the English Channel. Beachy Head, that chalk cliff breaking away into the salt water. Wow.
Now, Lomdon again. Reading Blood Meridian near Victoria Station, soon to grab a beer.
On a bench overlooking the Thames, I sat in melted Cadbury chocolate. I walked around London with Cadbury on my arse.
Flew into London with Dad and brothers. Spent a day rustling around this huge city, jumping on and off the Tube, drinking ale and eating food which hardens the arteries.
I really don’t think they noticed London. Too fast.
From London to Thornbury, staying in Edward Stafford’s Thornbury Castle. While at the castle, the BBC used it as a setting for the production of a comedy series entitled “Whites”, starring Alan Davies. We met a crazy lady named Lisa who wanted us to accompany her to a beer-soaked public named The Plough, where she would subsequently teach us Flamenco Dancing. I think she was riding some kind of narcotic lightning, for her toes splayed and unsplayed, as if in throes of some eternal spasm.
Left Thornbury to Eastbourne, stopping in Bath, Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral. Stonehenge and the Salisbury Plains were as brilliantly mind-shadowing as I recall from seven years ago.
Did our British ancestors conceive of us? Some Bronze Age imagining of an Earth cluttered and drooling with homo-sapiens?
Salisbury Cathedral still so vast. Another structure making us seem like busy ants, but ants with some great power to suffuse mind and body for these minute beings to construct that hall of possible divinity.
And then Eastbourne, The Grand Hotel along the English Channel. Beachy Head, that chalk cliff breaking away into the salt water. Wow.
Now, Lomdon again. Reading Blood Meridian near Victoria Station, soon to grab a beer.
On a bench overlooking the Thames, I sat in melted Cadbury chocolate. I walked around London with Cadbury on my arse.
Big Truck Motherf***er
At the Piggly Wiggly, I parked my modest Volkswagen at the far end of the lot, in a sea of carless asphalt. When I finished shopping, I discovered some watermelonbrain moron had parked his gargantuan pickup truck in the space next to mine. The tires were right on the damn line, and the expansive body of the truck bulged outward, rearview mirror casting a shadow on the hood of my car. I had to squeeze between his door and mine, and could only open my door a fraction.
I was sincerely pissed off. I pictured the driver, wearing the visor which hung from the rearview, his expansive ass planted in the seat while his meat-red face munched on a hot dog that dripped ketchup and mustard on his polo-encased manboobs, rolling down the parking lot in a pickup with a bed that has never been used, listening to some numbf**k sing about his daddy’s old boat, while the truck’s cyclopean gastank burned and burned swimming pools of gasoline, the map of his imagination and perception never inspecting anything outside of his skin as he parks his micro-phallic instigated purchase directly beside my car, ignoring the ocean of empty spaces around.
I hope he gets caught naked in a deluge of tasmanian devils.
I was sincerely pissed off. I pictured the driver, wearing the visor which hung from the rearview, his expansive ass planted in the seat while his meat-red face munched on a hot dog that dripped ketchup and mustard on his polo-encased manboobs, rolling down the parking lot in a pickup with a bed that has never been used, listening to some numbf**k sing about his daddy’s old boat, while the truck’s cyclopean gastank burned and burned swimming pools of gasoline, the map of his imagination and perception never inspecting anything outside of his skin as he parks his micro-phallic instigated purchase directly beside my car, ignoring the ocean of empty spaces around.
I hope he gets caught naked in a deluge of tasmanian devils.
Consider my magic solution
Consider my magic solution.
Ever been to a Fairy Tale?
I have.
I walked around Snow White and her short friends. They were paper-thin. Every time I stopped, they began to move and play their games. When I moved, they just fluttered in the fairy-tale breeze like paper silhouettes thought up by some apathetic creator.
Rode a sailboat with Sleeping Beauty. She wasn't asleep; she was dead drunk from a pitcher of martinis. You ever seen somebody passed out from too much Grey Goose and olive juice? It isn't very beautiful. Doesn't even approach flattering.
The Prince was there pretending to be both the Captain and the bosun. I held the Book open for him. "Says here you're going to kiss her, wake her up and love her," I said.
The Prince just frowned and poked her snoring face with the end of the mop we used to clean the deck. She moved a little bit.
"I'm not going to kiss her," he said. "Stupid drunk bitch. She can't even afford Grey Goose."
Sometimes on the shores of the lakes and the rivers, blue people appear and smile. It doesn't happen as much as it used to. That fucker Disney invaded that world, made everybody wear white gloves and be happy all the time. He gave everybody the same script. "Do it this way and I'll have real people dress up like you in Florida and Anaheim. You'll be famous."
I guess it's not all his fault. Sure isn't my fault, though. When I visited, I gave chocolate to Goldilocks, so she wouldn't go to the Bear's House for fucking soup. I tried. She didn't like chocolate and got mauled anyway. Just for soup.
Nobody there likes to dream anymore. Too many folks getting hearing-aides to better hear what's going on in halls that smell like antiseptic and reality. Nobody likes to dream anymore. Yeah, I've been to a damn Fairy Tale.
I'm not going back.
Ever been to a Fairy Tale?
I have.
I walked around Snow White and her short friends. They were paper-thin. Every time I stopped, they began to move and play their games. When I moved, they just fluttered in the fairy-tale breeze like paper silhouettes thought up by some apathetic creator.
Rode a sailboat with Sleeping Beauty. She wasn't asleep; she was dead drunk from a pitcher of martinis. You ever seen somebody passed out from too much Grey Goose and olive juice? It isn't very beautiful. Doesn't even approach flattering.
The Prince was there pretending to be both the Captain and the bosun. I held the Book open for him. "Says here you're going to kiss her, wake her up and love her," I said.
The Prince just frowned and poked her snoring face with the end of the mop we used to clean the deck. She moved a little bit.
"I'm not going to kiss her," he said. "Stupid drunk bitch. She can't even afford Grey Goose."
Sometimes on the shores of the lakes and the rivers, blue people appear and smile. It doesn't happen as much as it used to. That fucker Disney invaded that world, made everybody wear white gloves and be happy all the time. He gave everybody the same script. "Do it this way and I'll have real people dress up like you in Florida and Anaheim. You'll be famous."
I guess it's not all his fault. Sure isn't my fault, though. When I visited, I gave chocolate to Goldilocks, so she wouldn't go to the Bear's House for fucking soup. I tried. She didn't like chocolate and got mauled anyway. Just for soup.
Nobody there likes to dream anymore. Too many folks getting hearing-aides to better hear what's going on in halls that smell like antiseptic and reality. Nobody likes to dream anymore. Yeah, I've been to a damn Fairy Tale.
I'm not going back.
Gandpa's Potage
Gandpa's potage.
1. I mean, this was back in the day, Patsy.
This was back when the only connection between serfs and waves were the cascades of rye flowing right by the shadows of the Black Forest. When the Lord came to take your best-looking daughter for a private Maypole party. Here's what the Lord said: "Hey you! Serf! Ganpa Serf! Fetch me some of that butter. Fetch me that plump daughter; she's a barleycornfed lass. She will fetch me some pleasure, then I will cast her aside for the scullions to enjoy at the Manor. Fetch me a ladle of that potage. What's this? Is this a chunk of hare in the potage? You thieving Gandpa! The Medieval Rules clearly say that lowly serfs like you can have none of my graceful rodents. Illegal pottage. Fetch me a sword with which to disembowel you. Now you are dead. You were a faithful serf."
Yeah, Patsy. This was back in the day. Before freedom. Count yourself lucky. You see, Dinty Moore never needed to explain the beef in his stew.
Fetch me some sense!
1. I mean, this was back in the day, Patsy.
This was back when the only connection between serfs and waves were the cascades of rye flowing right by the shadows of the Black Forest. When the Lord came to take your best-looking daughter for a private Maypole party. Here's what the Lord said: "Hey you! Serf! Ganpa Serf! Fetch me some of that butter. Fetch me that plump daughter; she's a barleycornfed lass. She will fetch me some pleasure, then I will cast her aside for the scullions to enjoy at the Manor. Fetch me a ladle of that potage. What's this? Is this a chunk of hare in the potage? You thieving Gandpa! The Medieval Rules clearly say that lowly serfs like you can have none of my graceful rodents. Illegal pottage. Fetch me a sword with which to disembowel you. Now you are dead. You were a faithful serf."
Yeah, Patsy. This was back in the day. Before freedom. Count yourself lucky. You see, Dinty Moore never needed to explain the beef in his stew.
Fetch me some sense!
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