churn of the tide, Golfer's Digest last century

i wake up in a room. everything is dark. the mattress is on the floor. i turn to my left. a horrible looking something is right next to my face. it turns out to be a basket. i get up slowly and quietly - proceed with caution till i know what i'm dealing with (this often is the case). The room is dark, dungeon like. a hodge-podge of items are strewn around the floor, against the walls. rod-iron decoration. stucco panels with golden emblems. dark wood tables. a bookshelf full of middle-eastern and Indian looking chachki. I walk over to the door. there is a full-length mirror propped up against it. its border is red with gold lacy/jewely decoration. I want to look at myself but am still nervous about my surroundings. also nervous that i don't dig mirrors in dreams. it's just a creepy concept. I take a quick glance. an all black caped figure with a white line at my eye level looks back at me. grim-reaper shit. i'm a bit shaken, but i let it go. i'm distracted by a wall hanging to the right of the door. Its a brownish, gold wooden plate with a faded red border. written clearly across the middle in black is arabic text. (typically in dreams text, for me, is jumbled or nonsensical. or it's not actually there, but is perceivable. this text, though i couldn't read it because it wasn't in my language, was clear as glass. if i had a photographic memory i could write it for you.) i realize at this point this is not a dream, this is a place and a memory. i have not been here before, but it is real. i will not be able to manipulate what happens, the scene or anything, no silly protective spells, nothing. The only difference between how i feel here and waking life is i know i'm dreaming.


i push the mirror out of the way, open the door and come out.and the couple standing in the bathroom greet me warmly. there are at least two other figures moving around. i know they know me. "this is strange, and don't be concerned, but i just woke up and i don't remember my room." They look at me lovingly and with concern, but are not getting it. "like...i've never been here before. i don't remember who you two are. i dont know your names. i don't even know my name." They console me, give little advice, ask questions. Did you eat something weird? Did you hit your head? Maybe there was a gas leak... I kept trying to wheedle answers out of their diagnoses. Like where we are...what is my role in relation to you. what do i do here. I know, from the conditions of my room that i am of a different belief system, and of a different socio-economic status. I gather from the arabic writing in my room and my headscarf I am muslim. I pull and fidget with my scarf. trying to show my discomfort, trying to prove to them i am a different soul in the body of whomever this person is they're used to. I'm not delusional, i just don't know how i'm supposed to be whoever this is. Usually i'm given a set of understanding as to my role, in addition to my conscious, waking knowledge. This time i was purely me inside someone else. How do you communicate that to someone? I keep thinking back to the room (which is confusing in dreams, thinking back to something gives you a mental visual image of the place, but the dream itself is a mental image of a "place" or scenario, so it's easy to get confused as to where you are at any given point if your thoughts are disjointed/not focusing intently on the now...(this is why i think most people consider dreams nonsensical---there associations spin out of control) but i know that i was with them THINKING about the room, and didn't actually go back to the room, because the dream faded out as i was trying to get some answers)


i wake up again. my room is as it was, but a little bit more haphazard. i open the door. the everything is dark as before and the house is completely empty. my face is still covered. i keep thinking - maybe this is the fall of afghanistan -- what ever it was that happened there in the 70s or 80s i believe it was, i dont really remember. i'll read about this when i wake up. i head down the hallway and try to be very quiet. i don't believe i should have left my room. Something is wrong. the air is heavy

a ledge by the window has a stack of magazines and newspapers...all in english, american. i know that i'm not in america. this is somewhere in the middle east i know. there's something vaguely tropical about the climate maybe? the scenery is not so lush though. just hot. the house has lots of large windows (but is still very dark) and a lot of access to the outdoors (like homes in central america)
The newspaper on top is from Chicago. I try and read the date. my dream eyes are hazy, but i force them into focus using the edge of the golf magazine (if i try to hard, i wake up. i'm getting better at not forcing or thinking about things too hard. it must make me too concious/makes me wake up. sometimes (most of the time) i can get my dream back to where it was, or at least on the same train of thought, but there's always something a little bit different about it) - The date reads December 18, 1988. What happened in 88? this is a year after i was born, so I know waking me is not this person, or i'm not having some sort of "past life dream" or even a personal memory dream. I'm pretty sure i am a maid, or house keeper of some sort. there's obviously something Not Right going on, though out the window the grass is green and the sky is shining sunny blue. I try to commit the cover of the Golf magazine to memory to reference when i wake up - find the date - find the edition. I see a silhouette of a figure move past a window to the courtyard behind me through a reflection in the window. I decide to go and follow it to find out what's going on. I realize that the hostility in the air could very well be some racial tension that I'm on the ass end of...in fact i know this. I follow anyway.

I'm led to a neighboring building. Inside a room there is a meeting. I can tell i am not welcome here.
i intrude anyway. "excuse me, i don't mean to interupt, but I am having a problem i need help with." I get the feeling these people acknowledging me at all would be significant. I figure I'm expected to be and act a certain way, and to do something extreme will get there attention enough to listen to me. I'll get some sort of answers. I take the hood of my burka down and reveal my face. "Does anyone here know me that can help me." Everyone is silent. "none of you know me?" I look them each in the eye one by one to agitate a response. An elderly woman towards the front center folds her hands and fidgets.

She steps outside with me. I give her a similar schpeal i gave the couple in home home earlier. She spats some crap about understading the stress i must be going through given what's happening, it must be post-traumatic stress syndrome or something. I take the whole burka off to reveal myself in my entirety. trying to do something the person who i am wouldnt' do. trying to show that i am not her in here. The woman looks at me with concern, but i think she's getting it. or at least she wants to believe me. There was obviously something greater than me going on. I guess now that i think about it i should have been more concerned with trying to figure out what was happening that made everyone so tense. But i didn't want to overstep the boundries of the individual whose body i was seeing through. (stripping her down to her skibbies OBVIOUSLY didn't compromise any of her morals...silly me) I didn't want to get her hurt or worse killed. like i said, this wasn't a dream, it was an occupation.

men at the foot of my bed that aren't there really. you can't see them, but they're there

i am feeling to restless too sleep and this is my dream. i get my guitar to play and make me feel better. it is has new dents and is terribly fucked up. i decide i will have to bring it to get fixed somewhere and from then on it will be left at home.

earlier dream - i'm walking and stop by a radio station. the equipment is in a closet like thing and the floor is ankle deep in water. i think about how dangerous this is. the man is about to change cds, i say excuse me. he starts to play guitar and i sing along. he tells me to sing louder because he can't hear me. i apologize. my guitar is with me

so i realize that this dented guitar is not mine, but his. i'm horrified. i have to think of a way to get mine back. Kaitlin is leaving to go pick something up from someone who is at a place called "moes muffins" on "the west end"

i get on my computer to pass the time. my room is as is. will granberry sends me a video chat invite. everyone is there, including some obscure cat. in the video shot of me there is a man sitting behind me on my bed. i am laying on my belly, in the dark - the light highlighting me and a MAN is sitting with his legs off the side of my goddamn bed. he is not there really, but he is there on the screen. i move my screen so i don't have to look at him. i think this is a dream and ask "do you guys see man behind me?" chelsea laughs saying "yea, hah who is that?" i slam the computer close and wake the fuck up.

to dream, you need new york

lincoln,nebraska -i can skateboard enough to get by. three great men go to yoga. i can't tell them in which direction it is. well maybe i know the building. i take one to the barracks. we get back, only to intrude on a painting class. 'it's okay,' i say,'i am a painter!'

a play with all my people in it.
they were all each others' people. i had no place there.

so i left. my shoes, my purse, my crossword puzzle were back at the stands. i walk home in my socks.

grandma wanted to go back to the nursing home. she tried to drive herself with my car

outside my door i heard her say "maybe you're a genius, maybe your something else. or maybe you are one of those procrastinators. remember volume, remember light! " (said in a less accusative, more monologue sort of tone). i knew she was there. i didn't have to respond. i was napping.



worst case scenario: i ride my bike - you show me the way home. i'm being followed by a man. i tell you to slow down. i'm being followed by a man. i tell you, you don't understand. you think i'm signaling keep going. this man is following me and you notice to late. you see, you slow down. it is too late. you try to punch him. you knock him off his bike. he lands in the road. he will get hit by a car. we can't just leave him there i say. but we can you say. we keep going. the man in the road yells - i am him!. you realize it was a misunderstanding. you can't take it back. a car runs him over and you can't take it back.

he is still alive, but this is post-scenario talk. he drags himself to the side of the road but where to go now-- he is a twisted shape in a marching band - crooked and mangled amongst hundreds of identically dressed and poised men.

i said i'll go up if you carry me. everyone else refused but you complied because you're strong. i thought "what a specimen" (much as i do when i am awake.) you carried me up the stairs, then walked back down, just to could carry me up again.


a dream from earlier in my nap:
ansley pike gave me a christmas present wrapped once in white tissue paper (which was wrapped once over white tissue paper covered in green holly leaves). it was a book. i had no interest in it, but thought of something to say that would make me sound like i did. she got sam an hour glass. he had more interest in the book

i collected seashells by the shore. they were teal and salmon and mustard yellow.
a fat woman stepped on my them. they were in a pile on a ledge near the shore. I found a better one. it had ashtray potential.
the water was a louder clapping silver here. the tide pulled me in.



which makes me remember...

being on the beach in france, if france was a truman show type carnival. instead of sand there were glass beads. i thought of all the money i would make selling jewelry made from things i got for free.

i was with someone and we were sexing near the water. the beads made that weird squeaking, gritty sound they make when wet and rubbed together.

and kyle said "sometimes you just gotta wet it first then add a lil' suddz as need be."

too many to count. too many to remember.

home videos at warehouse lobby. me chewing gum, me with toothpaste smeared everywhere, me covered in paint, body blocked by a chunk of beige painted foamcore. Me lying with my grandmother's pig, my grandmother's fire-dragons chewing at my face. I wore red and orange.