Hike with Emery

 

In last night's fever dream, I was hiking with Emery in a mountainous ravine, somewhere in the upper elevation of Angeles National Forest. It was a treacherous path we'd chosen, and by the midway point, she'd gotten cold feet, literally, as well as figuratively. 

"I don't want to keep going," she said after one misstep too many into one of the slushy tributaries which fed into the bottomless pool at the base of the mountain. 

"We have to get back one way or the other," I told her. "We can rest for a bit, but we can't camp out here. It will get too cold."

She grabbed my coat, and I kind of towed her along in a slow moving cattle train fashion, with lots of grumbling from the cattle. We finally got to the bottom and made our way back to the greater Los Angeles area. We stopped briefly at my place in Downey, but soon she left, headed for her place in Whittier. 

We promised to keep in touch, although cell phones were not part of the equation. I only had a landline with no long distance service and a CB radio. She tried to call me on my landline, but it came through as a collect call, which I grudgingly accepted.

"I don't know why it's collect," I whined to the operator. "I can receive long distance calls. I just can't dial out." It dawned on me that Emery's situation might be similar, so collect was the only option.

We talked for a few minutes, but I was growing antsy about the charges, so I recommended the CB radio as a way to communicate for free. She agreed, and within a few minutes I heard her voice coming through my crackly Cobra 2000 speakers.

"I'm staying at this place in Whittier," she told me, and she proceeded to give out the address over the airwaves, along with a bunch of other details of her personal life.

"I don't suppose you want to really broadcast that kind of information," I told her. 

She couldn't hear me however, and the conversation soon faded into the static and traffic of other radio users in the area. I made an attempt to get my equipment in better working order, but the dream was already fading as well. I woke up with a screaming sore throat and a temp of 99.4 on Day 3 after my exposure to Covid. 

 

 

 

***Belated congratulations to myself for my 1000th published blog post. It kind of snuck up on me, or I would have made it extra special. Really, I meant to at least have a cupcake with a single candle while I celebrate by singing "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" to myself. Oh, well, maybe next time.

Pill bottle blues

 

Uncle Steve should never leave me alone with his stuff. The last time he did that, I wound up rearranging his room, aided by some hookers he'd paid to look after me. This time, I wound up eating all his frozen food and swallowing a whole bottle of Allegra, which I spent the rest of the dream trying to dislodge from my throat. I'd swallowed the whole 300 pill prescription, bottle and all, and I could hear the pills rattling around in the container, lodged somewhere in my chest cavity.

"Where's my burrito?" Steve asked as he walked in the door, his new girlfriend at his side.

"I ate it," I croaked. "Right before I swallowed a whole bottle of Allegra. I need to google 'effects of swallowing 300 Allegra' and also 'is a plastic prescription container digestible?'"

He just looked at me with that look he reserved for idiots, the look of disdain, annoyance and general disgust with existence, aka, his basic resting face. 

Later, I was in my mansion in the foothills near a college town. I lived in a verdant, upscale neighborhood, well treed and private, but still, those college kids got around, so security was a concern. On this particular day, I caught a kid riding his bike around on my property who had no good cause for being there. The only reason I knew he'd been there was the presence of some reflective stickers that he'd dropped on the ground outside my front door.

"Are these your stickers?" I said to him before he could get far.

"Umm...no?" he said, clearly searching for an answer that wouldn't incriminate him.

"Well, fine," I said. "In that case, I'm keeping them. My bike needs some reflective stickers. And by the way, you're trespassing."

I began to discuss, with this kid who could have been a potential thief, the need for smart doorbells that sent emails, and he agreed that they would be a good idea. I mean, what if you just didn't hear the doorbell or were in the other room? I could really see the marketing potential. I think I'll google it when I'm done transcribing this dream. (Spoiler alert: anything I can possibly dream of has already been invented and is available on Amazon.)

Anyway, in the midst of all this pill bottle swallowing and million dollar patent pondering, I had employed Bob Hansell to paint my living room. It was white, and I wanted to paint it--white. How imaginative, I know, but you've got to go with a proven winner.

"What's all this crap on my bike tire, Bob?" I said as I wheeled my bike across the carpet and saw a giant patch of white appearing on its surface with each rotation.

Bob was no longer there, so I had to piece together the possible scenario in his absence. What I figured was, Bob had cleaned his paint rollers on the white carpet, thinking that it would blend in since it was the same shade. I felt the carpet, and it was indeed wet with paint, and now my bike tire had become a paint roller, tracking paint into the rest of the house, making a broken line reminiscent of those down the middle of a highway.

At least that would allow for passing, I thought to myself. No one was ever around to hear my jokes, so the idea of people passing each other in the house became less funny the more I thought about it. I decided to go for a walk in the rain, along the soggy hillside near the college. I took an air mattress with me for some reason, maybe for a security blanket, I don't know. This was my air mattress, and it was all I needed.

When I got to the college, I found the embankment leading up to the campus had the perfect angle and moisture content for doing some grass sliding. Although there was a small gravel component, the grass was slippery enough to compensate. I took a few test slides and found that I could direct the air mattress up and down the face of the hillside like I was surfing a giant wave. Most satisfying, I thought, and I contemplated bringing it up to the college board as a Phys-Ed activity.

Unfortunately, the gravel punctured my air mattress, and by the time I was done sliding, it was completely deflated. I rolled it up and headed for home, feeling a bit deflated myself. I still had the prescription bottle somewhere inside my digestive track, and I'd probably need X-rays and a surgical procedure to extract it. The dream had become a loop at this point, and I came back to my house to find the trespasser, the reflective stickers and the painted carpet scene already in progress.

----

Addendum: Two days ago, my neighbor Stan needed a ride to pick up his car from a mechanic, so I drove him. Today, he emails me and tells me that he is as sick as a dog and has tested positive for Covid. It was only a five mile drive, but the windows were rolled up, and neither one of us were wearing masks. Needless to say, I'm feeling every ache and twinge as a possible sign of infection, and I'm anxiously awaiting day 5, so I can take a home test. Perhaps there is a connection between this and my dream about having a pill bottle stuck in my throat, I don't know.

Denise's CVT and basic zombie strategy

 

I dreamed I was down in the valley doing some business at an auto body shop, and I ran into Denise. She was thinking of trading in her 2004 Civic for a newer model, and she wanted me to take it for a test drive. The CVT was acting up, and she figured she'd get ahead of it by dumping the car before it dumped her. She asked me if I wanted to just take the car, since she didn't anticipate getting much for it.

"That will depend on the test drive," I told her. I didn't want to wind up with a hopeless project on my hands.

I got in the car and pulled out of the parking lot. Immediately, I remembered why I never wanted to own one of these cars. CVT is an acronym for Continuously Variable Transmission. I don't have a snippy metaphor at the ready, so I'll just say "they suck." 

Rather than having distinct gears, this type of automatic transmission relies on some kind of magic ratio between two variable diameter pulleys to provide an infinite number of speeds and torque profiles. Call me old fashioned, but I like to know when a car shifts, and I want it to be directly related to what my foot does on the accelerator. A CVT feels like one long decision that never gets made, just continuous slippage as the car slowly ramps up to speed.

The car exhibited a bit of judder on takeoff, though not bad for an older car. The inertial damper, aka start clutch, usually goes out on these things, causing a bit of shaking as the car makes its initial jump to hyperspace from impulse power. I recall (no pun intended) doing a fair amount of warranty work on those stupid start clutches during my time at Honda. 

Halfway up the hill, it began to get a bit more sluggish, and I decided to peremptorily call a tow truck. If Denise could dump the car before it left her stranded, I figured I'd call a for a tow before I actually needed one, so I could cut down on my wait time on the side of the road. They could just look for the car that was limping along, and we could do a slow motion version of one of those car chase transfer maneuvers. You know, the ones where the getaway car boards a larger vehicle via a loading ramp that is usually dragging and laying down a trail of sparks. 

I met with the tow truck driver, a blonde, curly haired lady in her mid thirties dressed in the obligatory flannel shirt and construction boots, and she went over the rate schedule with me. We loaded the car the old fashioned way, via a winch and hook, while she described the various discounts for Auto Club members. Apparently, sales was a part of her job, and she was a hoping for a commission for her roadside proselytization efforts. I denied her this pleasure and stuck with the standard rates.

I was finally deposited at my destination, but I'm damned if I know where it was, exactly. I think it may have been April's trailer up in the hills, in an area of Paradise I was unfamiliar with. She was standing on a makeshift front porch, a kind of wooden platform erected next to the trailer, cooking something on a gas barbecue grill. A grey haired fellow with a beard was standing next to her. He was holding a rifle.

"I like to make sure we're safe when we're out here," he said. "Minimize the time outside, if possible."

We all knew what he was referring to. Zombies. We were living in the days when the lines between video games and life had blurred, and a lot of the game strategies were now proving to be essential survival skills. 

"I favor decapitation," said April, smiling broadly as she flipped over a steak. "I just use my sword and--ZSHING!" She made a slashing motion with the meat skewer.

 

I described my own particular protocols, which seemed dull by comparison. Keep the doors closed. Always. Have a defensible space with a view. No hiding places for lurkers to pop out of and surprise you. And yes, decapitation was fun, but I preferred a rifle with a scope. Why get all that zombie blood on you if you didn't have to?

That's all I can recall. I'm stretching the story pretty thin as it is. Perhaps, one day, I'll take this dream journalism practice into the real world and discuss some of the actual events that have transpired in my life. Maybe in my next life, when I'm recalling this one as the dream.

Irreducibility

 

I started my first day of class at the university at dawn. Wanting to insure that I got a good seat, I made it a point to get there early, before the big rush of students. So early, in fact, that the tables and chairs were not yet arranged, and most of the faculty was still unsure of their own curriculum. I was there to take a class from Forrest Hartman, a journalism teacher at Chico State with whom I played briefly in a band last summer, but who was being assigned in this dream to teach a comic book writing class. I was looking forward to gaining an understanding of the basic concepts of the medium.

I rolled into the great hall in my wheelchair and took in the atmosphere. It was a little overwhelming at first, as one could almost hear the wisdom of the ages echoing off of the cathedral-like walls, the ornate crevices of the gothic decor, sinister repositories of secrets, physically collecting every word spoken, history meticulously recorded in the dingy, tobacco colored patina of antiquity. In the oppressive early morning silence, where every footstep seemed a trespass, every cough or sniffle a violation, I was glad my conveyance was relatively quiet, its electric motor whirring demurely as it brought me to my class.

Within minutes, people began to trickle in, and the spell was broken. Soon the everyday clatter and prattle about this and that, where and when, who and how, and God knows what filled the hall in a cacophonous rush. Since I'd arrived early, I was on the leading edge of this wave of humanity, and I had my choice of seats at the table where Forrest's class was to be taught. Using my wheelchair as a bulldozer, I gently nudged the table away from to wall to give myself sufficient access and took the spot nearest to the where the instructor would soon be standing. 

A girl came in and sat beside me. She had straight blonde hair and a studious air of sensibility. Her utilitarian outfit, a white blouse with a simple pattern reminiscent of baby clothes or hospital attire, faded jeans and low top canvass sneakers, included a well-stocked backpack, which she laid on the table and began to unpack in an orderly manner. She'd make a good neighbor, I thought, as I re-positioned my seat one final time and waited for the teacher to arrive.

Forrest ambled in with the last of the students, a bit flustered, since he'd only received his teaching assignment that day. His only qualification for teaching this class was that he was a huge fan of Batman, a fact that he made known in his impromptu introduction. I raised my hand and asked him a question.

"Will we be going over the elements of artistic style that involve reducing the subject to its most basic recognizable essence?" I thought my question was well-informed and showed an apt appreciation of the medium.

"What you are talking about is irreduciblity," he said, and without thanking me for the segue, he put up a picture on an overhead projector.

The picture was of a rocky outcropping on the coast of Ireland, the kind upon which one sometimes finds a lighthouse or stone structure. Ocean waves were engulfing the outcropping with power and persistence in an unceasing assault, and yet the rock remained unmoved, unchanged for millennia. 

"That is the principal of irreducibility," he said, tapping the projector with his pen for emphasis. "The rock has been battered, but it cannot be broken down any further.

"It's a stalemate," he went on. "Will the ocean win? Theoretically, it's possible. But no, the rock isn't going anywhere. Even as it is seemingly being eroded, new mineral deposits are forming, reinforcing its structure and keeping it in perfect stasis. Irreducibility."

I was kind of seeing how this related to my question about getting to the essence of things artistically, but I still wanted to know about the actual techniques a cartoonist might employ to get the subject to this final irreducible state, so I asked him as much.

"For that," he said, "you will have to take copious notes," and he pointed to some tables piled high with notebooks from previous classes. 

I wheeled over to the table and began thumbing through some of the notebooks. I was looking for a blank one, since I'd forgotten to bring even a single scrap of paper to write on. All of the books were already filled out with notes and scribbles from last semester's lectures. I thought perhaps I'd get some free cheat notes, but they mostly contained equations, timetables, lunar cycles and things unrelated to this class. 

I was going to ask the girl next to me to borrow a pen and paper, but she was engrossed in the lecture, taking notes of her own, and I didn't want to bother her, so I did the only logical and sensible thing I could think of. I woke up.

Dream date with Emery (and Hugh Grant)

OK, so it was a date of some kind, and I dreamed about it, but it hardly qualifies as a "dream date." For one, I was a third wheel, there in some kind of intermediary capacity, possibly as a spoiler or a witness, not personally or romantically involved in the event. Second, her parents were not altogether in favor of my being there, as Hugh was their golden boy, a hand picked shoe-in and odds on favorite for later marriage. 

As in most of his movie roles, Hugh was a combination of upper crust sophistication and storkish awkwardness, an entitled, overly self-assured snoot, with occasional glints of everyman likeability. He could be a decent bloke, if his damn ego could just get out of the way once in a while.

I was waiting around by the docks, in a composite beach town that had elements of Santa Monica, Venice and Marina del Rey. Emery's folks lived on the waterfront, in an apartment on the second story of a pier, with a view overlooking the bay. As I waited for Emery to come down the stairs for our "date," her parents met me and looked me over disapprovingly.

"You aren't really dressed for this, now are you?" her father said, eyeing my threadbare hodgepodge of unfashionable attire. 

Ragged jeans, unbuttoned flannel overshirt, T-shirt with faded beer logo, sneakers and a beenie, I looked like a homeless person, or one of those archetypal grunge rockers from the 90s. I guess I could have done better if I was thinking I'd be going on an actual date with the always classy Emery.

"Why don't you try on one of Dad's shirts?" Emery's mom suggested, handing me a tasteful pale pink button down shirt that looked about three sizes too small.

I tried the shirt on, and this was indeed the case. I was bursting out of it like the Incredible Hulk. I decided to keep it, however, noting that if I didn't breathe much, it fit me in a most flattering way. It didn't alleviate her parent's concerns about my overall personage, however, and the shirt only highlighted my unworthiness to even associate with their daughter. 

Emery arrived, followed by Hugh, and it was then that I became aware of my role. Emery was going to break up with him, or get closure of some kind, and I was there to help her get leverage. Hugh was witty and persuasive, and things had a way of always turning out in his favor. I was to be the fly in his ointment.

The trouble was, I couldn't exactly not like him. He did have a sense of humor, and as the date progressed, I kind of bonded with him over our mutual love of Emery, although I suspected that his love of Hugh superseded the former by quite a margin. I tried to remain on track, giving Emery support as she pointed out that "this is why I am breaking up with you" when one of his jokes would land stiffly, revealing his callous side. She was committed to the breakup, and I was committed to helping her.

I don't recall how things wound up with the two of them. Things are a bit hazy now. I remember we all went out to dinner, Hugh, Emery, her parents and myself. Hugh was overly self-assured, cracking jokes and generally being an ass, and Emery was apoplectic, or "cheesed-off," as Hugh would say. He had failed to impress her with his tabletop artwork, a life size sculpture of a cow lying on its side, made up entirely of raw ground beef.  

"All this is going to do is stink up the joint and draw flies," Emery said curtly.

To Hugh's amusement, I spelled out the word "hello" on the table with vinyl letters that looked to have been cut from the restaurant booth's beige upholstery. Seated next to Emery, I put my arm around her back to reassure her, tickling her a bit in the process. At some point, I knew that the situation would resolve in her favor, so I left the group and set out on a journey across the streets and avenues of my boyhood Santa Monica. 

I was traveling on foot, heading south from Euclid and Bay St to Ocean Park. I found an abandoned skateboard, which I quickly appropriated to hasten my journey. The skateboard soon morphed into a unicycle without a seat or pedals. It was basically a single bicycle wheel, 29 inches in diameter, which proved much more difficult to ride, since one was expected to jump on top of it and roll it like a lumberjack atop a waterborne log. This mode of travel proved untenable, and soon I was back to the skateboard. 

I passed by some older houses that all had tree house storage sheds with little covered chutes suitable for delivering grain or produce or any number of goods from the shed to ground level. The chutes were too small for a human to slide down but were reminiscent of a covered version of a playground slide. Some neighborhood kids had found it amusing to slide things down these chutes and had gotten one of them all jammed up in the process. 

I climbed the tree house ladder and entered the shed, and looking down the narrow passage of the chute, I found it completely blocked with scraps of construction lumber. I felt like it was my duty to unclog it, so I began pushing the wood through using my skateboard. Eventually, the majority of the stuff broke free, and I sent the skateboard down after it to nudge out the final remnants.

And that's about it. From its humble beginnings to meaningless denouement, point to pointless, another dumb dream in the life of me concluded.

Red Tide

 

Mom, Greg and I were taking a vacation by the ocean, and one night we were out on the beach watching the phosphorescent glow of the surf during a seasonal red tide event. I was throwing clumps of wet sand into the sea, watching them make little bioluminescent explosions as they hit the water and imagining that I was a farmer broadcasting seeds into the ocean using the hand grenade method. 

The trick was to wait for the tide to go out and then run as far as possible into the wet sand, maximizing the distance into the sea that one could hurl the clumps and making the splashes more dramatic in the undisturbed deeper water. 

This would also be, according to my well-reasoned interpretation of the Nautical Farmer's Almanac, the optimal distance to ensure a good germination, giving the seeds plenty time underwater, while at the same time allowing for some sunlight between waves. Never mind that the waves were certain to wash away any crops that might even begin to take root in this turbulent saline environment. 

My technique got me into trouble when a couple of waves backed up, and I suddenly became engulfed in a big surge of of rushing foam. My shorts got soaked, so I shed them, but I continued to play on the beach in my my underwear unperturbed. 

Someone pointed out that the whales were migrating, and sure enough, with the red tide, it was easy to spot them. They left a glowing trail of sparkly spray as they occasionally broke the surface while powering northward at full steam. A few sharks and dolphins were also visible, distinguishing themselves by their unique dorsal fin profiles. 

It got late, and we all packed into a hotel room, conveniently located right on the sand of the beach. It was a little inconvenient having all that sand pile up against the sliding glass door, however, as it became difficult to close since it was always getting jammed up with sand.

I was looking around for a bed, and Sean came in, mumbling something about hotel hygiene. Mom looked at him with a knowing look.

"Bedbugs?" she asked, noting the can of bug spray in his hand.

"Bedbugs," Sean said, exasperated as he emptied the entire contents of the can into the closet, spraying himself in the process.

Mom, Greg and I retired to another room, and Greg and Mom staked out the single bed. I was standing there in the doorway, and right in front of me, smartly dressed in a turquoise skirt with black trim, a matching blazer and pillbox hat, was my grandmother, Verla Buckwitz. 

She was as I imagined she might have looked in her forties, still slightly overweight, but not so slim as to be unrecognizable to me. Her skin was taut and her teeth were as white and orderly as the string of pearls around her neck. Gone was the family gap toothed grill with missing incisors. She smiled demurely as she stood there clutching her black handbag.

"Are you guys seeing this?" I asked Mom and the now sleeping Greg. "Is this real? I KNOW this isn't a dream." 

I really did know that. There was no questioning that I was not in a dream, but in actual waking reality. My only question was of the appearance of my dead grandmother, revitalized and standing in the room with us.

"Yes, I see her too. And it certainly IS real," my mom said excitedly, with an air of "I told you so." She'd always been a big believer in the afterlife, spirits and the like, but I was still trying to wrap my head around it. 

----

Earlier in the dream, I'd been up at Lake Isabella, and Gracie and Bill were still alive. I was about the age I am now, but my mind was preoccupied with the kinds of thoughts a teenage version of me would have had, namely: where to plant the marijuana garden? 

I walked around the back and found that someone had planted a bunch of iceplants between the back of the trailer and the fish hut. Not the best placement, I thought, as I found myself stepping on them and crushing them. The rest of the property was as I remembered it, the cottonwoods in the back, the oleanders in the front, the garage with its giant barrel of meal worms and Bill's lifesize novelty blowup doll, the wood rail fence to the east with the neighbor's two story cabin overlooking the property.

Still, all I could think about was, "Where am I gonna plant my weed?"

I'm not sure when I woke up, since this part of the dream had occurred earlier. I suppose I was still in the hotel room with my mom, Greg and Grandma Buckwitz. It hadn't dawned on me in the dream which I was certain was not a dream, that Greg was also deceased. My mom didn't seem to think his presence was in any way out of the ordinary or that he was making a special appearance of any kind.

My wheelchair adventure and Oprah's big event

 

It all began with some harmless junk mail that I'd received from Oprah's Angel Network. I'd almost thrown it out, but when I opened it, I discovered several checks inside. One was blank, which piqued my interest right away. Who sends out blank checks? Another was made out to some businessman, whose name eludes me, for the sum of $858. 

I began to feel a twinge of guilt for the thought I'd initially had about trying to make use of the blank check for my own purposes. I looked around at the other contents of the envelope, searching for some evidence that it was actually addressed to me but found none. Clearly, some error had been made at the post office.

 As I sat there in my electric wheelchair, going through the other letters which were addressed to me, Oprah rolled up in her own electric wheelchair and asked me if I was going to her event downtown. The details were all in the invitation I was holding, she told me. Sure enough, among the checks was a bulk mail flyer announcing an event in the soon to be newly renovated downtown Marysville.

We both zipped away down a bike path at top speed, with Oprah in the lead, headed off to the big event. My wheelchair was a bit wonky, however, and I had difficulty keeping it on the path, which was itself quite substandard as far as handicap accessibility. Some construction had re-routed the bike path over a drainage channel, and the terrain would have been challenging for a bicycle, much less a clunky electric wheelchair. 

Oprah's chair handled the loose gravel and small creek boulders just fine, but I kept spinning my tires and veering dangerously out of control. At one point, I had to get out and push my wheelchair back up a steep sandy embankment to avoid getting stuck in the slushy muck of the creek. I felt like I was cheating, since I was supposed to be testing this chair out for a friend who was actually handicapped. Between the erratic controls and the inability to propel itself over rough terrain, this wheelchair was not going to get a good review from me.

By the time I got myself unstuck, I could barely see Oprah disappearing over the hill on the other side of the creek. I was going to have to find another way to the event. Circling back through town, I went down alleys and through more construction sites, looking for the venue. 

As I made my way across a dirt lot, a giant foam boulder fell from the sky and bounced harmlessly in front of me a couple of times before rolling down into another creek. I was intrigued by this obvious Hollywood prop, so I abandoned my wheelchair for a bit and climbed down some rather large actual boulders and waded around in the creek looking for this foam outlier. Its camouflage had been too craftily designed, however, and I was unable to distinguish it from the natural terrain.

I gave up and returned to my wheelchair, which I'd parked next to a building and was currently being looked over by a couple of homeless guys. I quickly took possession of it, and as I was about to wheel away, one of them asked me to guess his religion. I looked him over from top to bottom. Treadworn shoes, pants and coat blackened around the edges with road grime and soot from hobo fires, greasy, unkempt hair and beard, he was the embodiment of Aqualung, Jethro Tull's archetypal vagabond.

I wanted to say Jehovah's Witness, but just then he rolled up his pant leg, exposing a network of needle tracks which he began to poke at with a wooden meat skewer. Maybe Rastafarian, I thought? I wasn't sure about their stand on IV drug use, though, so I kept my mouth shut. The other fellow kept encouraging me to guess, but I decided to leave, not wanting to miss Oprah's event.

The dream ended there, but from my vantage point in the spot by the building, I could just make out the Civic Center, the venue where the event was to be held. It was going to be big.

Flying in the Northwest Corner and ordering a burrito from a man without a head

I dreamed I was standing in the bar area in the northwest corner of my dining room staring up at a giant clock behind the upper pane of a window that would normally look out onto my back deck. I was pondering this clock under glass effect, and I noticed that the clock, a square grandfather clock face without the accompanying lower cabinetry, was not ticking. Upon my noticing this, however, it began to tick a few times and then stopped. 

That was odd, I thought to myself. I wondered if I possessed some Uri Geller type powers and if I could will this clock into running again? Perhaps if I squinted my eyes and concentrated on the clock face, I could psychokinetically restart this ancient clock. 

No dice. It was as if my efforts worked in reverse and solidified its brokenness into permanent reality. My squinting and concentration was not without effect, however. Ever so slightly, I started to feel the bottoms of my feet lifting up off the floor. 

Oh boy, I thought, this is going to happen. I am achieving liftoff. I bet I could float all the way up to the ceiling. I did my best not to break whatever trance state had allowed for this temporary suspension of the laws of physics, and I felt my whole body gradually rise up to the point where I was hovering just above the window. I reached out toward the wall right where it met the ceiling and gave it a victory tap.

"Yessss!" I smugly announced, dropping back down to the floor. I was quite satisfied with myself for having definitively demonstrated the power of levitation, although there were no witnesses other than the cats, and they didn't seem all that impressed. 

----

Feeling all powerful, I donned a duster and grabbed an old almond branch walking stick and set out to walk the busy streets of downtown Los Angeles. A woman walking next to me matched my pace for a while and then broke off to order a burrito from a walk-up taqueria. I doubled back and stood in line with her, thinking to order one for myself.

Despite having numerous signs and menus displayed on the wall behind the counter, I was unable to read any of the menu items or their prices. The flyers and printed material were all posted one on top of the other, obscuring the critical information. I saw the beginning of several items that interested me like "Octopus burrito" or "Avocado burrito," but I wasn't able to make a decision without the rest of the information.

"Excuse me," I said to the lady behind the counter. "Do you have a menu I could look at?" She just stared at me and pointed to a tiny hole in the sliding glass partition. 

"It's broken. You have to speak louder," she said. "Into the tiny hole. Louder. Into here." 

I tried again with no luck. I looked up from the tiny mic hole and saw that the owner was standing directly in front of me. He was a large man, and I was only eye level with his mid torso. As I looked up to ask him about the menu, I noticed that he was without a head. His broad shoulders terminated in a neck that was tidily tied off and healed over like an amputee, leaving only a slit in the top, presumably for breathing and eating and such.

I mentally understood that there was no way that a human can exist like this, a walking, breathing version of Mike the Headless Chicken, but like my levitation earlier, I simply filed it away into a "things to be understood at a later date" compartment. I wasn't going let this anomalous incidence of incongruous reality upset my apple cart. After all, I had business to attend to, and I was holding up the line.

"Now about that avocado burrito," I asked the headless man, making certain to speak clearly and loudly, directing my voice at the tiny slit on his neck, "What else does it come with?" I had plenty of avocados at home, and I wanted to make sure I was getting my money's worth.

----

Prior to the levitation and headless burrito vendor incident, I was trying to get back to sleep by recalling the chord structure for Touch of Grey. Ba ba-ba, ba-ba ba ba. An image came into my mind of a modified toilet that utilized an old automatic gearshift lever as a flush mechanism. When you pulled the lever, as if to shift gears--SWOOOOSH--a sonic rumbling took place, and the toilet would flush with the power of a jet engine on takeoff.

Draft Dodger, a catchall post for dream fragments too small or insignificant to publish

I have had several dream fragments that I can't weave into any sort of narrative, however, I still want to make note of them, possibly for future reference. I'll list them as bullet points or headings, and maybe I'll fill them in later, or perhaps I'll leave this post as an unpublished draft.

A woman in a 1990s Chevy Lumina drove her car into my back yard, up the wheelchair ramp and onto my back deck. I found it remarkable that she managed to do this without causing damage to the car, the fencing or the house. She did, however, leave a few skid marks on the grass.

----

I was talking to a lady who drove a newer Subaru Forrester and asking whether or not she'd consider trading me straight across for my 2007 Honda Fit. She found this amusing.

----

I had a conversation with Martin Leon and a disabled vet who was wheelchair bound. The guy in the wheelchair was talking in a kind of self-deprecatory way, and Martin suggested that he might have some self-loathing tendencies due to his latent homophobia. I looked at the man with sympathy and tried to say something to assure him that everything was OK, but no words came out.

"I guess size does matter," he joked weakly, and we all laughed tentatively.

----

I dreamed I was with a woman of about forty, attractive, with medium length dark hair. I was trying to create a situation, fashion a moment, in which she would kiss me. I wanted it to happen spontaneously, so naturally, I used every manipulative trick in the book to achieve it, but I don't think it ever came about. 

----

Dean gets mean, insults Sharon, and it's ON! The title of a dream I intended to write down, but which evaporated before solidification. Dean was a the husband of Sharon's friend Laura, an old neighbor and horse buddy. In the dream, Dean said some disparaging things about Sharon, and naturally, I took offense. I confronted him in a stairwell, and we were about to duke it out.  

----

A tree in the back. Back in October, I dreamed that I woke up and went out my back door to find a giant tree had fallen into my deck. At first, I just stared in disbelief, since there weren't any trees currently capable of doing such a thing. Some of the deck railing had been removed, possibly by human agency, and placed on the lawn, creating a picket fence-like effect.

I rubbed my eyes, as if to will this whole scene back to the editing room. I didn't want to deal with yet another fallen tree. After a bit, my eyes adjusted, and I could see that the deck was still intact, and the tree was chopped into rounds, the wood stacked neatly in piles.

---- 

I was at Winco, doing some grocery shopping, and I noticed that someone had placed a giant package of American cheese slices in my basket. I never buy the stuff, so I picked it up and examined it quizzically, like it was an alien artifact. I put it back in my cart and continued shopping.

Later, I was outside, in the front of the store, where the homeless sometimes hang out, and I saw Bob Eckerman smoking a joint. He asked me if I wanted any, but I didn't want to get my hands dirty, so I declined. As I passed by him, he released a giant puff of smoke in a controlled blast, and it caught me right in the face just as I was breathing in. 

"Ahh...you got me!" I said, quoting every gunfighter ever to catch a bullet.

----

OK, so I was running through this apartment building, and some guy who lived there saw me and started chasing me. I ran. That's all I remember. It was a scary feeling, but I felt that I had a chance to outrun him if I ducked between a narrow corridor between two rows of buildings. I jumped a couple of railings and trespassed through a couple of patios, and I finally lost him, but I woke up still scared from the encounter.

Houa's VW, April's wine and chicken dinner and my roadside demise

I dreamed I had Houa at my house last night, and once again, he was being an annoyance to me. This time he'd partially disassembled a wrecked VW Bug, and he wanted me to help him put it back in order. I mightn't have minded so much, had he not insisted on starting the project in the middle of my kitchen.

I began by examining the radiator and then rinsing it out in the sink. (Yes, I know Volkswagens typically don't have radiators, at least not the older ones). I filled it up with water and set it on the counter for a moment while I started the car. After a minute, I realized that I oughtn't have started the car prior to installing the radiator, so I hastily opened up an auxillary radiator cap which existed independent of the radiator and was teed into the main hose going to the engine block. 

The car burped and belched hot air from the non-radiator coolant port as the engine rapidly got up to temperature. I quickly shut it off and emptied out the radiator into the sink, refilling it from a jug of coolant from the pantry. I looked around for the place on the car to install it, but I had to stop, since there was some front end damage to contend with first. I put the radiator aside and went to talk to Houa about the extent of the damage.

----

At April's house, I was being treated to a "thank you" dinner. What I was being thanked for I can't recall, only that she was going all out: Chicken Marsala paired with a nice red wine. I sat down at the table and took a big fingerful of the sauce before she had a chance to serve me.

"Delicious," I declared, helping myself to a double serving.

"I was thinking," April said as she watched me single-handedly devour the meal, "Maybe you and I finish off this bottle, and..." She gave me a knowing kind of look, which I believe I interpreted correctly as a bit of a come on.

"I can't..." I said, hoarsely. "I'll tell you the real reason: It's because I'm married. I have a sick wife at home." I was firmly convinced that this was the case when I said it, although after a moment or two, it began to dawn on me that this was not so. I was a widower, and single after all.

A friend of hers began singing Elvis Costello's "Alison," and I mentioned that I knew that song on the guitar. The friend thought that this was wonderful and hurried off to her car to fetch a guitar while April cleaned up the table from the meal. I waited around for a while, but the friend never showed up with the guitar, and meanwhile, April had made other plans for the evening.

I thought to tell her that I was mistaken, I wasn't married, but it appeared that I had missed my chance. She'd found another date for the evening and had dolled herself up in a smart white dress with a lavender belt and a matching hat. She looked a vision. 

I couldn't identify her date, but I knew one person that it wasn't (besides me). Danny Sudduth came storming down the stairs and brushed past me angrily. He was dressed sloppily in jeans and a t-shirt, and his hair was a tousled mess. 

"Hey, Danny," I called after him. "It's been too long. We need to catch up." He grumbled something at me and kept going, not looking back. 

----

I woke up soon afterward, realizing that it was Tuesday, February 7, and that I had a dental appointment at 9 o'clock in Rocklin. Sometime between the realization of the dentist appointment and the time my alarm clock was set to go off, however, I managed to slip in one last dream segment.

It was an overcast day, and I was driving down Loma Rica Road in a black Honda Civic coupe. I pulled over to the side to let some cars pass and found the front end sliding rapidly into a culvert filled with rainwater. I tried the e-brake, and then reverse, but the car continued to creep forward into a swampy marsh that turned out to be deceptively deep.

Before I had a chance to contemplate the gravity of the situation, I saw muddy water start to cover the front windshield as the car sank deeper into the muck. Within a minute the car was 90% submerged, and I found myself trapped in the back seat with all the windows and doors stuck shut and only a tiny air pocket left to breathe. 

I had time to think, "Is this it? Is this how it ends?" but that was about it. I soon woke up for real, and I made my way--very cautiously--to the dentist appointment.

Composing with Sergio What's-his-name

"Da da da da da--" Sergio stopped in mid verse as he hammered an imaginary piano ruthlessly. "No! That's not it!"

Sitting at my uncle's dining room table with a notebook in front of him was one of the great composers of our time, Sergio What's-his-name, a guy from my days with the cult who just happened to be heir to Elton John's musical legacy. I was witnessing his creative process at work, and frankly, I was underwhelmed. It was like watching a two year old playing with alphabet blocks.

"She na na na na NA," he stopped again, this time smiling as if he'd discovered a new element to add to the periodic table. "That's it! Right there! It goes up right there!" he said smugly.

I'd been sitting idly in the alcove, pondering my own artistic dilemma: how to sing a song in public when you are only vaguely familiar with the verses? Does one bring a music stand and read from it like a teleprompter?  I could bring one with me to my next open mic night in case they didn't have one handy, I mused to myself absentmindedly.

"She finds herself much OL-der now," Sergio continued with his composition.

I perked up a bit, because I could actually hear the beginnings of a song forming out of random notes and words. It sounded suspiciously like the melody from Junior's Farm by Paul McCartney, but it had a little more of a George Harrison feel to it. 

"She knew it wasn't easy, but -- HO-ly cow!" The gleeful Sergio was clowning on himself now, punctuating the "HO" in holy like a sleazy used car salesman or a religious huckster doing improv.

He kept banging away on air piano, and I drifted off to another place, suddenly finding myself sitting on the carpet in the living room of my friend Andy from group. All the curtains were drawn, and Andy was sitting on the couch in his bathrobe rolling a joint. His wife Jody came in from the other room and sat down next to me on the floor as Andy lit the joint.

"I suppose I'm going to find out what the good stuff is like," I said as he passed the jay to me. It was still moist with saliva, and it didn't want to stay lit, despite my vigorous attempts to resuscitate it.

"I mean...I grow my own," I said, wanting not to appear unhip as I struggled to get even the smallest toke out of the smoldering doobie, "but it's not like what you kids today smoke. It's good...just not great." At least mine would stay lit, I thought to myself.

I mustn't have been paying attention, or perhaps the weed was working on me very subtly, because I let my arm sag down a bit, allowing the heat from the cherry's embers to singe the back of Jody's hospital gown. I instinctively licked my finger and dampened the brown stained spot, and she turned around for a second and then went back to watching TV. That was going to leave a mark, I thought, rather displeased with myself.

Andy, meanwhile, was busy rolling himself another giant joint, as big around as a toilet paper tube. Waving it about like a shaman, it looked as if he could sage the entire house with it. I woke up before any such ritual took place, exiting yet another fragment of a poorly constructed, barely recollected dream, perhaps better forgotten.

Open mic muse

I dreamed I went to an open mic night in Nevada City. It was a small venue, so I was surprised by the size of the crowd. I started feeling a bit nervous, but that feeling was relieved when I realized that I hadn't brought my guitar. Good, I thought, I really hadn't been practicing, and I had no clue what I would have played anyway.

My anxiety returned, however, when I saw my friend Jason in the crowd holding out a guitar for me.

"You can use mine," he said, smiling broadly.

I accepted the guitar reluctantly and desperately tried to think of a song to play. Nothing was coming to mind except for the song "Julia" by the Beatles. I recently learned to play it and had sung it to my friend Emery for Christmas, swapping the names to personalize it a bit, since they both have the same number of syllables. 

I was contemplating whether or not I could pull it off without the words and chords in front of me, but I ran into another obstacle. I had no capo, and the song requires one on the second fret in order to play it in the proper key. No capo, no dice. Good, I thought again, I was off the hook. 

At that moment, I heard the strains of "Julia" coming from an adjacent venue. Someone was already singing my song and doing a pretty good job of it. I was definitely not going to play it now. The point was moot, however, because Jason had to leave, and he took his guitar with him. 

I sat down and waited for the show to begin. A blonde, matronly lady seated next to me grabbed my hand and whispered something to me that I couldn't understand. Looking around, I saw that everyone was holding hands, even the people up on the stage. 

The lights dimmed, but when my eyes adjusted, I noticed that the people up on the stage were unclothed, some completely nude and others with towels wrapped around their waists. It appeared that the stage was one giant hot tub, and the whole of the crowd was in a giant line waiting to get in. Those closest to the tub were perspiring, and I become a bit uncomfortable with the situation, so I split. 

The next day, I found a tamer venue in a jewelry shop. It was a much brighter room with sparsely decorated white walls and rows of folding chairs all pointing toward the store's front display windows. I looked around for a seat, hoping to find someone I knew, but I couldn't find either. 

At some point, magically, this venue turned into an outdoor one, in the middle of a courtyard of sorts, where everyone was seated on the grass. There was a building at the front, and stage was at the top of the stairs leading up to the front doors. I lay down on the grass and waited for the show to begin.

The first act was unmemorable, but as I lay there waiting for the next performer, I heard someone call my name. I looked around, but didn't recognize anyone. 

"Hey, Andrew," the voice called again. 

This time I could see the person connected to the voice. It was an Asian girl, mid thirties, with long hair, wearing a white sleeveless jumper. She was attractive in a Lucy Liu/Yoko Ono kind of way, more Lucy than Yoko, but I kind of got both vibes.

I still couldn't make out what the voice was saying beyond "Hey, Andrew..." and then some faint mumbly noises that mixed in with the chatter of the crowd. After a couple of back and forth exchanges of "Huh?" and "What?" she finally decided to move closer and sat down next to me on the grass.

I don't recall what we talked about, but we quickly felt comfortable enough that she lay down beside me and rested her body against mine while we watched the next act or two. Somehow, she convinced me that I should be performing, and reluctantly I left our cozy arrangement to try to round up some equipment. 

I started by trying to locate a guitar cable, and I began this unlikely process by making my way onto the roof of the building. I had to go through several apartments and a restaurant to get it, but I managed to locate a cord that was tied to the rain gutter with zip ties. I cut the ties and pulled up the cord, cleaning off leaves and dirt from it as I did so.

I still had to find the other end of the cord, however, so back through the restaurant and apartments I went, encountering various celebrities on the way, Jason Segal and Neil Patrick Harris among them. Eventually, I found myself back down on the street, staring up at the dangling end of this ridiculously long guitar cord, just out of reach. I knew I'd have to go back through the apartment, and I intended to do so, however, I woke up before I managed to do this.

I tried squinting my eyes really hard to get back into the dream, because I desperately wanted to get back to my muse, the Lucy Lui Ono girl, but all I got were faint images of her back in the jewelry store, where she had been someone I didn't know and who didn't know me.

No fun road trip

This dream has no discernible beginning and no end, just an intolerably unpleasant middle. I'm only writing it down because I have the obligation to record all my dreams, however mundane or fragmented.

I was in the Walmart parking lot, getting ready for a road trip with Uncle Steve and Richard Leon. For whatever reason, I had picked up a bottle of Ivermectin to apply topically to the tip of my penis. Being in a hurry, I went ahead and unzipped and dipped my dangler in the jar right there in the parking lot. 

I immediately regretted this, however, since the instructions specifically stated that it needed to be rinsed off within 5 minutes of application. I tucked back in and headed for the bathroom inside the Walmart. Police were guarding the door to the restroom, and there were cones and floormats everywhere. Apparently, a man was having an "episode" in one of the stalls.

I pushed past the police, explaining the exigent circumstances, and they warned me about the man in the stall. He was having a blood pressure related event and had become unstable. I took my chances in the stall next to him, but not having any water, I had to rinse off with whatever saliva I could muster. Sub-optimal, to be sure.

Additionally subpar was the floor of the stall I had chosen. It was covered in feces from someone's explosive diarrhea, the likes of which I'd never seen. The sheer area of coverage was impressive. It looked like an actual shit storm had taken place, covering the walls, the ceiling, everything. I was starting to see what the cones and floor mats were all about.

I glanced over the stall, and the blood pressure guy was just getting up to leave. He'd apparently recovered and was no longer a danger. He looked me right in the eye with the most piercing and knowing look, his grey blue eyes telling a story of trouble and begging my forgiveness, for himself and for the state of affairs in the bathroom.

I finished up and made my way out of the store, wiping the fecal mud from my feet on the filthy floormats as I went. I ran back to the car and climbed in, hoping the smell wouldn't linger too long.

The car was a smallish coupe, and I had to ride in a dog kennel precariously placed between the front and back seats, resting on the headrests of both of the driver and the passenger seats. This arrangement was untenable, however, and soon we either switched vehicles, or it managed to morph into a more appropriate conveyance, a class A motor home.

We followed some gravel trucks down a rutty dirt road, being careful to watch the vehicles ahead as they struggled with the rough terrain, hoping to avoid making the same errors. The trucks would pitch and buck as they encountered rocks and dips, but Steve managed to keep our vehicle on smoother ground.

"These motor homes are designed for people like us, to do driving like this," he said. "The average Joe doesn't have a clue how to drive on these kinds of roads, so they make 'em with the best quality suspension, with passenger comfort in mind." I couldn't argue with him there. The ride quality was excellent.

Steve got a phone call from someone out of state and began having a heated discussion with them about real estate. Apparently, we were off to look at some land that he was about to inherit, and the details had yet to be hashed out. I wasn't looking forward to it, since it meant a detour from our original destination, whatever that might have been.

And that was how the dream ended, as uselessly as it began, pointless in all aspects.