Hierophany

Eight, what is it? Ah, it's Monday, it's 8:43 pm right now. It's the 27th of August, two-thousand-and-one. [Clear throat] I've had a...not-so-pleasant day. I wouldn't say it was one of the worst days of my life, even though I thought that many times during the day.

I just, ah, felt kind of overwhelmed in my classes throughout the day. Didn't have anything to offer. [clear throat] And then, ah, I had a break from 12:30 to one. And, y/k, I was hungry. I didn't have any food. I didn't want to eat on campus. And what I decided was that I was gonna run ta Bread Co., the Bread Co. on the Loop? So I did. Had a half an hour. And, ah, and I made it. It was close. I got my receipt at about 12:38, and I got back to campus at about 12:54. Parked. The parking is atrocious there. It's a mob, it's a joke. It's an insult. It's un-fucking-believable and, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I haven't found a good option. I'm workin on my second Michelob Lite here. It's good. Shower's runnin. I got some laundry to do tonight. I was hopin to do it this evening, earlier. I'll get to that.

Parking sucks. I parked my car at 12:54 on Brookings. [clear throat] Went to class. American—early American Lit. A bunch of grad students in there talkin their blah-blah-blahh! blah-blah-blahh! And, ah, I didn't have anything to offer. Went to psych. Reading quiz: mm, didn't go as smoothly as I would've liked. And I didn't have much to offer in the discussion there because the discussion was CRAP! it sucked! It wasn't even about anything that we FUCKIN read about. It was just some bullshit. I mean, we might as well have been talkin about, like, fuckin AL batting leaders.

And I did a couple things the teacher probably picked up on. He's a social psychologist. I ran into him in the hall, before class. He asked me, he was like, "Hey, John, how's it goin?" And I wasn't like, "Hey, professor, what's up?" I was like, "Do you know if there's a vending machine around?" Cause I was so fucking thirsty cause I had eaten One Half of my Turkey Sierra sandwich from fuckin Bread Co. and I also had a tuna sandwich fuckin sitting there in my bag, since 12:45, which I didn't get around to eating until like four-a-fucking clock.

And then, after class, he was erasing the board. I had put my bookbag behind me—I was in a terrible position in the class—cause I got there fuckin late. I didn't get there late, but I got there late relative to the other students. And he was standing on one of the straps as he was erasing the board—it should be noted that he had to kind of stand around my bookbag as he wrote on the board during class—and, ah, I tried to yank the bag up—I didn't see that he was standing on the strap —uggh—ahh!—unbelievable. So I'm

like, goddam, it's nice to be done with class today. It's four o'clock, I'm gonna go home, I was thinkin about takin some bong hits [sniff], takin a bath, and-ah, I realized that I didn't have my keys. Thought they were lost. So, what do I do? I check my bag. Thoroughly. Not in there. Not in any of my pockets; I check all those. Probably about five times. So I'm like, "Shit! I musta fuckin' left 'em in one-a my classes." [tongue cluck] Went to Early American Lit classroom—there was a class in there. [tongue sound again] Went to the English office, asked around—"mmm, no, no keys turned in, I'm sorry." "Aw, no problem, it's alright." [The sound is made by putting tip of tongue behind top front teeth and sucking in briefly]

Continuing to retrace my steps, I go to the psychology classroom. Nothing going on in there, thankfully. And I don't, I don't see my keys, though. Thought it was possible that I left them in there. I had done some leaning back in my chair. Not there. Asked the psychology office. "Didn't see any, you might want to check, ah, office of student activities, or security." So I'm like, "Well...." I walk outside. Where could my keys possibly be? I can't go to the English classroom because most likely the class in there was still going on. So, I decide to check security because anyway I need to go over to the South Forty (which is where security's located)—to get this book, this binded book, from the campus copiers for another class for tomorrow for homework that I have yet to do.

So, it's hot. What I actually do is, I walk back to my car. Because it occurs to me, after I've emptied the entire contents of my bookbag, and checked my pockets five more times, that it's possible that I fuckin' left my keys in my car. I've been out there once, mind you, when I walked out the very first time, in order ta go home. My keys, indeed, are on the passenger seat. So, what options now?

I was trying
to catch a bus.

Ray was in this dream.
An apartment somewhere,
Jack Hunter.


Over by the bus in a short one piece body dress
was a black gal in my
Wills class

who reminds me of Nalo,
from high school.

Her dress
is riding up.

She's got no panties on.

Her clit is wet and throbbing.
We were waiting for the bus.
It was coming.

I think we were running for it.



[02.27.2005]

In a weight room/cafeteria.  Doing
leg lifts when alarm went off.  Staff there
was urban Af-Ams.  One guy explains his lingo,
"If you're electric and the other person isn't,
you've got digits." And he said,
"That rich guy has really broad shoulders."
Not me.  It was crowded there.


[02.26.2003]

Ray came by outside my window one afternoon.  We were chatting it up.  He had this big, light bulb-looking thing.

But it was actually a plant tuber.

It was long and cylindrical.  He had a package he said was associated with it that said something about When the cum stains on it turn brown.  It was African.  He was wearing it around his neck.

Then Ray changes character with a guy who was suspected in the town for wearing it 'round his neck.  It was an old tradition they had let die and wanted it that way yet.

He was attacked by a mob and dragged along the ground, but he wasn't quite Ray at this point.


Ray next appeared in a painting, with the tuber around his neck.  Except this time the tuber had hatched into being a red serpent, a snake dragon.

Ray was riding it through the water.  It completely trusted him yet he was not quite its master.

He was coming for the mob.



[02.25.2005]

John Kerry hit a home run at Fenway.  So did a very large black man with corn-rows, with whom I talked in the back of a car.  His was the highest drive I'd ever seen, up and up and finally over the wall when it came down.

I got excited when Kerry hit his home run but then he took a microphone and started making fuzzy campaign promises.  The worst was that the Green Monster was turned into a big video screen and Kerry's big face was on it talking campaign-speak.

                                                                    *

Elsewhere, I was with Taylor and some others, from Law School I think, including Carlos Z.  We wanted to catch a shuttle.  The one we wanted came by but was going to charge us $5 to get on board.  I was having problems getting my books together and didn't want to get on the same shuttle as Taylor.

                                                                    *

And Allison Barrett from Wash U and Student Life was active in politics and press.  She was about to give some kind of speech and had really weird clothes on but didn't look too bad.  There was a crowd gathered to boo her because in the 2000 election (according to the news report I heard in the dream) she was a big Naderite.

People assumed the same about her in this election but in reality she was not going to support Nader but the Democratic candidate instead.

So all of these hecklers had turned out in futility.  I was behind Nader, however, so I was pissed at these protesters and flipped them off and thought about doing violence.  One group held up a banner that had on it the word "Nicaragua" in red.  Then they collapsed the banner to spell "Nader", then opened it to read "Nicaragua", etc.


[02.23.2004]

(1)

So...this dream.  Early on in it I was going to, or I did, sniff some ether.  It was a funny color—not clear like it should've been.  It was a milky pink and I don't know what happened with it...


(2)

In what I would call the main part of this dream, I was peeping on a girl across the way.  I don't know where this was—it wasn't any place I know, like my apartment building.  The girl I was using my binoculars to spy on was someone I knew—a girl named Katja, from my composition course at WU.  She looked better in this dream than she did then: vibrant, fresh, willing.

Well, I got the binoculars on her and saw that she was undressing.  Then my view kept magnifying itself: I got closer and closer.  Finally, I was practically right in the room... and saw that someone else was there... they were having sex, or had just gotten done, or were just about to...

Somehow, my telescoping binocular vision actually became a reality...  I was in the room.  They weren't mad at me.  They were even friendly, and wanted to know more about me.  Somehow it came to the point where they—the guy (who seemed somewhat familiar to me: an old classmate?—wanted to look at my penis.

So I unzipped and hoped it was a good moment for me...sometimes it's bigger than at other times.  It was a pretty good moment for me.

How did they react?

With quiet grins, not quite smirks.  Did they think I was big or small?  I found the answer when the guy showed me his.  His was bigger by a significant amount...but ugly, crooked.

It was not so long but very wide, and slanted/crooked.  Well, fuck it.  I admitted that, yes, it was bigger, but what was there to do?  I congratulated the guy.

From there, we went on some kind of car ride.  I took solace in the fact that I was smarter than he was...I was going to law school.  On our drive, all I remember is going down a narrow ramp very fast, taking tight turns at a very high rate of speed.  I think we were in a Toyota Rav-4.  I remember telling him about IMSA...I guess trying to patch my self-esteem after being out-cocked.


(3)

B said she dreamed that one of my sister's friends shot and killed me.  B tried to stop this person but she didn't.  She woke up crying...and told me about it.



[02.22.2003]


the cbw responds to the last few

Been having plenty of dreams but I've either been too lazy to write them down or I just didn't want to write them because they were either banal or too freaky.  

Yesterday was a dream having something to do with 'distilled water'.

Last night, two threads:

(1) 

Woke up at 2:30 after a nightmare involving this naked blond woman who was either my wife/girlfriend or my daughter.  What's odd is that she was just plain naked walking down the street with me. 

I guess she was doing it for fun or maybe she was crazy.  The street was similar to 59th St. or Highway 15 in Belleville.

Anyway, I was more blasé about the situation than I should've been. 

I saw these two yokels/goobers in a blue Nissan pickup take note of the naked gal and start to get excited.  Seeing this I told her to go down a sidestreet, to try to get out of sight.  I was then gonna go get my car which was a little ways off.

But the goobers must've seen where she went because when I looked back they were tackling her.  I told someone on the street to call 911 and I was gonna go try to stop her from being raped.

But I think the two yokels had a silver pistol.  The blond's hair was braided into a ponytail.

The dream was so awful I woke up.  Feeling guilty, responsible.  I went and took a piss and thought about what my next move should be.  Grab my tire iron and just sprint like mad hell at them, make them shoot me.  Best case is scare them off or crack a skull with the tire iron.

(2)

 Willie Nelson in a bad mood.  My dad was somehow involved with this dream.  I remember us lodging at a strange hotel...  But we went and saw Willie Nelson at his house and he was really rude to me. 

So I was like, Fuck you, Willie.

I/we left and one of Willie's people came back after me and wanted me to come back so Willie could apologize...


[02.21.2007]

•  Patrick and Brook got a little too frisky in the attic.  We were all here and knew they were up there but...

•  We were going to get a cat.  I think it was Patrick's.  We weren't sure how Squirt would react.

•  License plate switcheroo.  Jack from Lost switched the license plates on my car.  This happened while I was at a concert.  My Jeep was parked near a White Castle.  I ran and found the cops.  Jack admitted to it.  He stashed my plates in a White Castle dumpster.

•  Eric Peters dream.  He got pissed at me when I didn't know about some past girlfriend he had, named Brihanna.  He questioned how good a friend I was and whether I was paying attention.  We had been getting along very well; planting pot or doing something with grass.  My mom came by and we tried to hide it...unclear what she saw.


[02.19.2008]



the cbw responds to several recent dreams

In a dream earlier in the night, B and I were in a house—maybe living there—and we were worried—or at least I was worried—about a break-in.

Someone did indeed try to break in.  It was a girl wielding a serrated steak knife.  I thought I recognized this girl—maybe I didn't know her but I knew who she was. 

Anyway, she was nuts.  She tried to cut me.  I might've had a knife, too—in self-defense.  I thought it would be a man trying to break in.

                                                                    *

The alarm went off at 6:45 a.m.  I re-set it for 7:30 a.m.  This was an active period of dreaming.  I experienced the sensation of feeling like I was dreaming for a long time, but:

I'm positive that in the real world, the dream I had during this stretch—which I will relate below—lasted only four minutes, because I woke up at 7:11 a.m. and I thought, Good, plenty more time to sleep.  Then I dreamt the dream I am about to relate below. 

After having said dream related below I woke up and thought, It's gotta be close to 7:30 ... but it was only 7:15.  Anyway, the four-minute dream:

I got violently mad at B because she kept talking about how great and cute this guy in her art class was.

I was slapping her and she was just smiling back at me and going on about this guy.  I slapped her and called her a fucking bitch and probably called her a cunt and told her to fuck off.

For some reason, I feel like some of this took place in my house in Belleville.  In my old bedroom.  And in my old bathroom.  I was enraged.  Not just because she liked this guy but because she was rubbing it in my face.

And, yes, in the real world, this dream took only four minutes.

Alternative explanation: The dream really began at 6:45 a.m. when I went back to sleep.  I woke up for just a second at 7:11 a.m. but didn't remember the dream.  And, either then (a) continued the dream upon falling back asleep; or (b) did not continue the dream but remembered it for the first time upon waking at 7:15 a.m.


[02.18.2003]

People after me big time

Cayman Islands

Invincible until the end

I've started this habit now, out of—what?—laziness, vagueness, whatever: of writing my dream from the night before/morning-of late the next night, i.e. later during the night of the day I woke up in instead of writing it right away that morning-of when I wake up.  It's not a better way to do it, and I should only write up the dream so late if it is a dream I didn't at all remember until some occurrence triggered remembrance during the waking day. 

Anyway...

I dreamt last night something about working as a cleaning person in a residence house...an authoritarian was leading the place.  It could have been a jail or at the least I have the feeling it was some place I was confined to against my wishes.

To have fun one night—I see a big, open room looking like a factory: metal stairs, maybe boilers, like a brewery...with the lights in the back of the place not turned on—

We wanted to have fun for a change; to have a good meal.  We were gonna cook chicken but we weren't allowed access to stoves or fire so how were we gonna cook that chicken that somehow we had gained access to...frozen breasts of chicken.

And we'd also gotten vodka, lots of it somehow...and fruit, I guess of the citrus variety. The though was: We'll leave the chicken in a big metal tub full of alcohol and citrus and it would be prepared like that.  So that was the plan.  I don't know how it all ended up.

There were other peers of mine in the dream.  A male, like Brian Ebel, and a female, maybe an Indian girl, a girl who's at some of Taylor / Brian H's parties...


[02.16.2003]

Had a tryst with an Asian named Snow Mae at some party or night club.  Ray or Phil might've been there.  I was completely trashed; met this girl; thought she was hot and we left together.  I was aware of my infidelity but said fuckit.  I do not remember what we did, if anything.  We might've done nothing but probably there was an attempt at some kind of sex.  (I awoke with a pristine boner.)

I ended up having B pick me up from where I was (I think...) but I don't know how I got home but when I did there were all these kinds of predators in the backyard.  B was awake.

It was about four o'clock in the morning.  She went outside for some reason...there was a sliding door...and we happened upon this menagerie of scary beasts. The one I remember most was this faux-leopard.  It was the size and shape of a leopard but not spotted—a solid, rusty orange—and it had not claws nor teeth!

So, it jumped on me but it had no real way of hurting me.   In any event, we ran back inside and then B drove us somewhere.

Maybe we were going to the police or animal control but we ended up parking in the corner of a parking lot of an apartment complex and sitting opposite us in this lot in some lawn chairs and having a sort of early morning picnic were Snow Mae and her family.

I didn't realize it at first.  But her mom or grandma started yelling at us and our windows were just cracked so we didn't hear anything.

But I was like, "Let's get the hell out of here.  This crazy lady's shouting at us."

I think she was saying something to the effect of: you just had a one-night-stand with my girl and now you're gone and you are a dirt-bag-creep!



[02.12.2007]



the cbw responds

Trying to remember the combo of a lock but I could not.

Rebecca Gordon.

Deep dish pizza.

Taking a class somewhere.

Getting a paycheck.

Enough for a Roth?


Also, Will Randall.  He was trying to find me.  He came to my house but I acted like I wasn't there.  I thought he was going to break the door down.  I crossed the foyer and I think he saw me.  I left via some other door to attend the class I was thinking about.

I flew.  Before class.  I was walking walking fast but then I picked up my feet and just scooted along.  And, damn, I even said to myself—this must be a dream.

The lock was for a locker for stuff during this class.

Separately, my mom was livin in a bad hood.  I wanted to move her.  I got shot at twice.



[02.09.2007]




The cbw responds

In Bahamas with B.  Bored for a day I bought two tickets for us to fly from Nassau to New Port.  I thought they'd cost $200 total.  When I got back to the room, I looked at the receipt and a $900 total.  I had bought them on my Commerce card and had certainly overdrawn.  I needed to go back and get a refund, if I could.

I told B I couldn't afford it for $900 but she took it personally and asked why I didn't want to spend the money on her, didn't I love her?  I got mad and said, "Fuck you!  Fuck you."

She had covered her head with a sheet while I was saying this.  It wasn't so bad though.  I sat down on a chair or couch in the room and remember her coming out from under the sheet, looking at me.


[02.07.2003]

My dream was about a girl who was having psychological problems and ended up killing herself.  I don't know my relationship to the girl.  We didn't know one another.

In the dream she was played by Maria F., a respondent in the club drugs study.  It was a tragic story.  I feel like I, with others, had a role in her death.

This girl had come to my place of work to get help.  I was working at something like a psych hospital.  Someone saw this girl as a patient.  After leaving her appointment one snowy day, this girl was having a lot of problems walking up a hill toward ... her school or place of residence connected to the hospital.

The girl kept slipping and falling and looking stupid in the snow.  I was a ways off in the distance with 3 other people, Dr. C was one of these for sure; Cathy S. was one; the other could have been Stacey, Brook, I really don't know.

We were just all-out laughing as this girl would walk a ways up the hill but fall and slide down on her belly, helpless, looking like a seal or something.  We couldn't stop laughing.

No one thought about helping her.  I was worried she could see us.  The others said no way.  At the least, I felt like the girl could sense us getting a laugh out of her handicap.

So I left, and walked around the other side of the building—and this symbolized a passage of time—there were some EMTs leaning over what was, I presumed, the body of the girl.  Some stairs rising out of the top of the hill obscured my view.  I'm pretty sure it was her because this was at the top of the same hill she couldn't get up before.

She had indeed gotten up the hill eventually and had then gone inside the building.  But then she'd hurtled herself though a third floor window of this building to kill herself.  I looked up at the window and all of the glass was gone from it.  Someone was measuring the width and height of the window for whatever reason.  Mike Shannon was leaning out of the window doing some kind of play-by-play.  I wondered what he'd said when the girl jumped.

Otherwise, I know this led to mourning in the residence where she lived with others.  Someone—part of my character?  I feel like my character split at this point—went to see his love interest who was a resident counselor in the dorm where this girl lived.  

I/he was ringing her room but she took a while to come down and was distraught when she did.  I feel like it was John ringing this counselor but whoever I was at the time saw this in third person.  I was over trying to get water?  Trying to gain access to...the convalescent center?  A long corridor that nurses exited?  I saw John meeting his girl over my left shoulder.

Later, Mike Shannon, or who he was affiliated with, typed up some kind of explanation of why the girl had killed herself.

I looked at the list/chain of reasons.  This list/chain was like a cross between a flow chart and a hierarchy.

I was looking in the list for the time when me and Dr. C et al. were laughing at the girl.  I couldn't find it listed explicitly or specifically but I did see on it "laughing" listed, and this was listed near the end.  I gather she also got laughed at in school a lot over the years, even at this school full of pupils receiving treatment at the mental hospital.

                                                                    *

In a preceding but not totally unrelated thread, a bunch of guys, friends from high school, college—maybe Eric Peters—in a house setting eating pizza and drinking beer and watching...March Madness?  Maybe watching or playing something else instead. This part is very spotty and vague.




[02.06.2003]