the rix mix

The problem is  when I'm having a lucid dream & sort of know it but I'm not yet fully aware it's a dream. Unless you know it's a dream, it's even more difficult to manipulate it. It's hard to get dream beings to pay attention to you,.You know they know you're there, but they ignore you. If you can get them to talk to you, they speak perfectly fine English but what they say often makes  little  sense. They don't like to give you straight answers & explanations; or more likely, they enjoy giving confusing & evasive ones.

Someone was arrested in Kansas using my identity. I'm curious. So I go to Kansas, some small ugly city. I ask where the county jail is. Outside of town. I see a rental car agency across the street. Next thing I'm pulling into the jail parking lot in a rented pickup.

Some jive ass punks get out of a car next to me, joking around. Maybe this a juvie jail.

I  go inside. A large echoey room, two rows of wooden benches down one side, people sitting in them, fidgeting, some children. At the far end is a reception counter of some kind. I walk over. I can't seem to get anyone's attention. Finally, a guy walks over, looking through some papers, looks up at me, "Yeah?"

"You have someone here named Robert Rixon. I want to see him."

"Why do you want to see him? Are you a relative?"

I answer, evasively, "The Elizabeth NJ  police Dept called & said he was here."

That seemed reasonable, so the guy said, "Then give your name."  & he walked away, Give my name to whom? Someone in a uniform  was sitting down tapping away at computer. Two other staffers were behind the counter doing some other work. Clearly, the prisoners were beyond a door on the left. People walking in & out of there. Around this point I'm beginning to understand the game, why I'm there. I want to find out if this person using my name name is me, or not me. If me, at what age. If not me, what my impostor looks like & why this faker  wants to see me, enticing me all the way to dream Kansas, I've been to real Kansas twice & disliked it both times.The first time I got caught in massive swarm of locusts & stayed in a hotel downwind from stockyards. The second time I rode a bus west to east across the entire damned  state.

 At this point the dream ended.  I somehow became aware I was napping, & my interior mental alarm clock had gone off at anout the 30 minute mark, which is the max length I want for naps.

Futile anyway. I wasn't going to see this person using my name. I know these dream characters. Maybe I invent them, maybe they are, as poet Jim Cohn suggested, Bodhisattvas. He said I should try to talk with them.  But either way I give them form, & personality, & they behave with the same, succinctly cryptic talk that I use when I'm avoiding expressing a direct opinion or emotion. They toy with me & mock me,  partly, I think, because I act  in the dream world as if it were the waking world. Oh, these people are in charge here & I need their permission to go in the back room & find person using my name. Once, I ought to try saying, "Look, this is my dream. I came here for a reason, get out my way."
 ***
4/12
This dream was, I believe, an unclear premonition of the the news I received on Feb. 3.  I went away to a college in Kansas in Sept. '66. I hated the college, the town, & my roommate. I was homesick & I missed my new girlfriend back home. Without the girlfriend -  I was still falling in love, & I'd never felt anything like it before,  I probably wouldn't have had the nerve to bail on the college after two weeks, knowing how pissed off my dad would be, but chosen to stick it out  through one semester.  Trying to make sense of my strong reaction to Karen's death, I had to go back & find the young man from this dream, because now I know he was me at age 17, not an impostor. Where did the dream come from? I don't know.  But the characters in the dream couldn't tell me why I was really there. Maybe they didn't know.

Labels: dreams, Karen Battell

This video gave me a slightly nightmarish WFMU dream last night. The typical DJ nightmare - all radio DJs have them - involves a strange or changed studio, or being late for a show. But in this dream WFMU was having an open house party. The station has an "open door" for volunteers during the annual marathon fund-raiser, a lot of people may be there for some shows, never an open house party where it's packed elbow to elbow. You have to know someone to attend the big in-house  holiday party. The station's crowded Final Night of Marathon event got too large & is now mostly at Maxwell's in Hoboken. In my dream, manager Ken & I were the only staffers who showed up. Therefore, we were responsible for everything. Ken kept finding me like he wanted me to do something specific, I was willing to help in any way, but he never asked, he always got distracted & swallowed up in the crowd. The only other person I recognized was a particular nincompoop cashier from Pathmark who'd probably be working the popcorn wagon at Walmart entrance if he wasn't in the Union. But there was an ample food table, a buffet.  At the end of the dream, Ken was last in line & putting scrambled eggs on his plate.  Me, I'd had enough of the party & left by waking up.

Labels: dreams, WFMU

I have most lucid dreams just before I wake up & during naps. They're probably just fresher & easier to recall,

This morning, my ex-girlfriend's long-deceased dad wandered into a dream. I was with her for years, then not with her for years.  I had no idea why he was there, the dream wasn't making any sense to me. He just seemed to be out for a stroll & looking around.  When he was alive, I felt he neither strongly liked nor disliked me.     A devout Catholic, he certainly disapproved of  his daughter & I residing together without blessing of Holy Matrimony, but he loved her dearly, & she was by his standards rebellious before she met me,  in the sense that she stubbornly did what she wanted.  She was a very talented young woman.  For him, I failed in all the basics; not Catholic, not married to her, not employed in  a respectable vocation. But she was equally  responsible. I wasn't preventing her from going to church, wouldn't  have objected if she did. She was my third Catholic girlfriend.

In the dream, he was healthy, middle-aged, wearing a tweedy jacket I think, & sporting a small mustache. Maybe he had always wanted a mustache. He was a man of good manners. He said something, I don't remember what, then he turned & began walking away.  I said, "Wait, can I ask you something?"  He turned around & said, "Sure."

"Are you in Heaven?" A question I had never before dared to ask dream characters.

He looked a bit puzzled. He either wouldn't or couldn't answer the question, the dream froze & faded.

Clearly, he was in a good place wherever it was. If  he was only my memory of him, then I remember him fondly. He'd been through a lot, had three daughters, a saintly wife, & he appreciated peace.  He represented a part of my life, the relationship,  that  "died," & which I've thought about far too much.    Most of the characters I meet in dreams are inventions, I don't know who they are, although they're faintly familiar, some  of them are strangely amusing, so they're probably extensions of me, just as  dreamscapes are visual representations of one's mind.

Labels: dreams

Had the kind of dream - always had them, you probably have, too - that might give an idea of what it's like heading into middle stages of a dementia disease. I was supposed to meet some older WFMU DJs for lunch at an outdoor cafe in downtown Elizabeth. Downtown doesn't have outdoor cafes, but no matter. In the dream I was still living with my parents, driving a Volks Beetle, & attending Ramapo state College - which didn''t exist at the time. So the timeline is screwed up. I was running late, got to Elizabeth, parked in a familiar lot, found the cafe, & the guys weren't there. How could I be that late?  It was just getting on noontime, Was it a brunch thing?   Well, I was hungry, so decided to walk on down Broad St, toward the Courthouse & get a cheaper hot dog or burger. Somehow I wandered off Broad, on to Elizabeth Ave., & into a different retail district that   wasn't so familiar, although I had some idea where I was in relation to the Courthouse, a tall building you can see from anywhere in Elizabeth if you get a line of sight. But I couldn't see the Courthouse, &  some of the streets were sinister (which indeed they are today, & always were in my experience),  Elizabeth Ave. wasn't the quite the  wide busy street it actually is that ends in front of the Courthouse. I was increasingly baffled, frustrated, saw a sign "to Goethals Bridge" that didn't help, except I felt I was around U.S. Route One east of Broad St, & I didn't have the sense to ask a traffic cop standing there, "Which way is the Courthouse?" Which would have instantly restored  my sense of direction. The only thing to do was wake up.

Labels: dreams, WFMU

I have railroad dreams from time to time. They're always in Jersey. Some are a bit sinister, involving abandoned rail yards or scary station platforms,which one does see & encounter in NJ Transit real life,  or delays.  But they never become nightmares.  Last night I was in the cab of a diesel engine. It had something to do with Pearl Arts Store, one of the two engineers - both women - was an assistant manager when I worked there,  a fair, sane, intelligent person.  We  were in a hurry to get somewhere, delivering art supplies for all I knew, racing down tracks mostly through woods.  For some stretches there were no tracks, just railroad bed,  but she was steering the train across those stretches. It  was scary & exhilarating like an amusement ride rather than an impending  catastrophe. The most amusing part was we passed a complete retail store, like a Walgreen, on a rail car parked on a side track, & all lit up like it was open for business & just needed to be moved somewhere & installed, which is how those those kinds of stores are designed. You see a property cleared for construction in Jersey, &  two weeks later you drive past & there's a   brand new 7-11.

Labels: dreams

In my dream I'm sleepy when I get on the subway & I fall asleep. I wake up as the train pulls into a station I think might be a safe neighborhood in the Bronx, & I get off the train intending to walk around to the other entrance, pay the fare, & go back to wherever I was. But it''s like some of the street exits in Manhattan, where you come up out of the subway , you're confused at first & have to orient yourself to uptown & downtown, & you're a block away from the entrance to the trains in the other direction. I need directions to those other trains. I ask a guy also leaving the station. He's friendly, but he treats me like I'm harmless crazy. Apparently I was saying crazy things in my sleep on the train. He thinks I need money. He reaches in his pocket & hands me some wrinkled paper money, gladly. It looks like fives & tens. He's generous. must be more loaded than he's dressed. But I don't need the money. I just want to know where the entrance is. He walks aways. There I am, in a not unpleasant but strange neighborhood, no subway entrance in sight. I don't recall where I intended to go in the first place, which doesn't seem to bother me, I only want to get back to where I started, should be easy enough if I could find the darned station.
***
All week I've been writing current event blogposts & leaving them in draft. Could use a shot of heat in the apt tonight, not gonna get it. The shower water wasn't hot enough today, though not low enough to complain. It wasn't at full steamy warm-the-lizard temp. I should have hiked crosstown this evening & left a standard form for my shrink to fill out. It's a form he completes every year, wish it was sent directly to him. Next scheduled appt is two more weeks, have to complete form before them. & there's a staff nurse who will have an considered opinion on swine flu shots. I also need to wander through downtown, buy some underwear, a pair of cheap jeans, a watch battery, & check out the sneakers at Payless.

When I tried installing my beloved Slam Tilt pinball on this PC, the game software threatened replacing existing drivers with the ones on the CD without offering a don't replace option & I couldn't risk whatever that might have done.

Labels: dreams

Me: What's up?
Former Girlfriend: I'm waiting for Eliot to get back from the store.
Me: Why?
F G: He's bringing me a sandwich.
Me: We were supposed to have lunch, that's why I'm here.
F G: Well, he was going.
Me: Why didn't you wait for me, we could all have lunch.
F G: I don't know.
Me: It's a long walk, why didn't you drive him?
F G: He was going anyway.
Me; Sheesh.

Not a nightmare, but I woke up annoyed. We didn't break up over this kind of thing, yet it's something I never missed about her. She was a nice person, & generous, but she had a blindness, I was always waiting, or making adjustments for inexplicable minor decisions.

Labels: dreams

What is the meaning of a dream where I can't get out of Philadelphia?

I don't know why I was in Philadelphia. I had driven there with two others - a poet I haven't seen in a few years & a girlfriend from when I was 21. She may have been registering for college. I wandered a large store & noted that a nearby neighborhood looked kind of run down & probably dangerous. I don't know Philly beyond center city & the historical & arts locations. I've seen a few concerts at the Spectrum in South Philly, easy to reach from Jersey. When I drove to Philly once for a performance at Temple University I followed precise directions & had no idea where I was in relation to the rest of the city.

In the dream, trying to drive back to Jersey, we were on a limited access highway headed toward a Delaware River bridge, but I didn't know which bridge. I was hoping it was the familiar Walt Whitman but it felt more like the Ben Franklin, an old commuter bridge to Camden with confusing connections on the Jersey side. I saw an exit sign for Rutgers, which would be downtown Camden, an awful place, & another for Bristol PA, a town north of Philly with a narrow lift bridge, interesting if you're sight-seeing bridges. If the Rutgers exit went to the Ben Franklin, where was I going if I went straight ahead? I was so befuddled that I stopped the car. At that point I told myself to end the dream & wake up, I was not hassling it anymore. If I figured it out & got to Jersey I'd still have to find the Turnpike, & I didn't want to drive around the streets of Camden, the most unpleasant city in Jersey.

Labels: dreams

I dislike dreams where I'm trying to go somewhere in Jersey. Last night, I was with some people - who they were probably wasn't so significant - & we needed to catch a NJ Transit local train to get to a town to pick up a car to take a boat to the Jersey shore. After we were in the car, it was suggested that we stop by a local bar & give a friend a ride home from a party. We went to the bar, our friend was there sitting at a table, I recognized a number of Jersey poets, the party was breaking up, it was very late, & we were wasting time trying to pry our friend out of the joint. At this point dream lucidity began kicking in, & I was thinking how absurd it all was. You couldn't possibly take a boat from there to the shore, yet outside was a canal with a number of small boats all going to different places at the shore. But it was the middle of the night & I was tired of traveling, & not interested in taking a long boat ride or engaging any of the dream companions in conversation to find out what it might really be about, because even familiar characters in dreams rarely are who they appear to be, their answers are always evasive or cryptic, & you have to approach them with bemusement if you want to enjoy the encounter. So the dream ended without any resolution, & I woke up with the annoyed feeling of not having been asleep at all but of having used a lot of real world energy inside a dreamscape, to no purpose.

Then my daily horoscope for Scorpio was: Are you hungry for a more intellectual connection with that new cutie in your life? Start getting comfortable with the idea that it just might not happen. Oh come on. There's no "new cutie," & I was 22 years old the last time I was with a woman I might have referred to as a "cutie," & that was her nose. They've always been "cuties" to me, intellectual or not. "Intellectual" has never been a qualification. But "ignorance" has always been a disqualifier.

Labels: astrology, dreams, love

Almost no sleep last night, but the one dream I had left an impression. My mother was in it & it took place in a creepy but not scary dreamworld Atlantic City I used to visit quite often, so I knew where I was. The real Atlantic City was creepy (still is) but I didn't realize it until later.

Treated myself to a taxi to appt this morning; on the way out the door I passed the furnace repairman coming in. I recall this annual appt last year because it was probably the coldest day of the winter. Took bus back downtown, checked new Michael Connelly novel & a bio of Count Basie out of the main library; spent too much on underwear, always costs more than one expects for a 3 pack of Fruit of the Loom briefs; bought a clip on light at the rummage hop; chatted for five minutes on the street with someone whose name slipped my mind; the kind of encounter where you're trying to pay attention but you're distracted by thinking, "I know this person's name. What is it?" Of course, I connected the dots & recalled it afterward. Part of the problem was that the name was so ordinary.

Joe Weil has two poems in the New York Times online edition.


Suzette sent word of the death of Alfred Shaheen, age 86, designer, manufacturer, & popularizer of Aloha shirts & garments in the Fifties & Sixties. I'd never heard of Shaheen, but he's now one of my culture heroes. I passed the news on to WFMU, & Robin replied with a photo of her favorite Shaheen print for a dress no longer made, & which would cost a mint if one could be found at a vintage clothing store.

Labels: culture, dreams, Elizabeth NJ

Check out this funny fictional letter from Gen. George "Little Mac" McClellan to Gov. Sarah Palin. He's the guy who called Lincoln a "gorilla" - something Robert E. Lee wouldn't do. Lee didn't underestimate Lincoln, but he sure took McClellan's measure.

Sara Palin attempting to link Obama to Sixties terrorism through the 65 year old philanthropic Woods Fund of Chicago is an OUTRAGEOUS SMEAR. Right out of the old Richard Nixon playbook. I mean Nixon's really old playbook circa 1950. I remember Nixon, & you, Sarah, are no Nixon. You'll pay for this, it is the worst possible political karma for you right now.

Woke up with tension headache across my forehead & in neck, I hate that. I'm in bed asking myself why before I get up:

1. Too cold in the apartment last night. Heat not on yet.
2. Need new pillows.
3. Eyestrain.
4. Final intake of caffeine yesterday in form of hot chocolate was earlier than usual.
5. Strange Dream.
   

Only cure is to get up, put on socks & flannel shirt, take an aspirin with the coffee. Hitting snooze button won't help. In the dream, a yappy little dog chased a couple of mice around a room, caught a squeaky one near a fireplace, & ate it. A bit gross, but not a nightmare; I was amused by the dog, even proud of it, & I have no love for house mice.

I passed on calling a taxi to get to the dentist yesterday when I realized the rather bleak-looking day was excellent for the mile+ walk. The clouds broke open on the way home. As expected, the dentist, a short, attractive Polish woman, was not delighted to see me, but courteous & professional. She had my chart & there was nothing to do but ask her to put the insurance request through once again & have new x rays taken. The outcome didn't change. She knows I won't be a regular customer. The oral surgeon she brings in every other Saturday is getting a big piece of the insurance, but she doesn't have to refer her patients elsewhere & hope they come back. I have to trust her experience. Her office is no frills but she looks & acts competent, & touches you carefully. She doesn't advertise; name, addess, phone in yellow pages. No neon sign in her window, no happy smile posters hanging in her small waiting room, no grab for the off-the-street whitening & bonding business. She has a large, loyal clientele that somehow found her, & two professional people I trusted highly recommended her. My guess is she makes oodles of money taking any kind of insurance, working hard, & keeping her overhead low, & she flies to Poland every year & dispenses many gifts to her relatives.

Labels: dreams, Elizabeth NJ

Buddy, you created this bar
& now we have to work in it
so you can hang out with us.

I served you an awful draft beer
in something like a hookah,
charged you seven bucks for it,
you drank it right down,
it was cold, humans get thirsty
even when you're asleep.

I told you I was going off-duty
& you should move to the tables
over by the bandstand, your friend
from the job you quit ten years ago
is playing, I know he sucks,
but the waitress is one of us.

Interestingly, you stayed in your seat,
eyed the woman resembling Joanne Woodward
in "The Fugitive Kind" where she played
an alcoholic nymphomaniac,
she's one of us, too. Believe me,
you're not getting laid with her.
Then you fumbled with your change,
dropped it on the floor,
stuffed it in your wallet -
you have pair of tens in there
if you can find someone else to serve you.
Or you might have enough for taxi fare
since you're wondering where you are
& how you're getting home.
Let me reassure you, this bar is
approximately where you think it is.

True, you're more comfortable
around us because your poet friend
advised you to be more sociable,
but you still don't have a clue
what questions to ask.

Labels: dreams, poem

Last Friday afternoon, a man being transported to a mental health facility freaked out in the back of an ambulance on Interstate 78, threatening an attendent with a pair of scissors. When the driver pulled over on the shoulder, the deranged man jumped out of the ambulance, leaped over the highway guardrail, & ran toward downtown Springfield NJ. He was wearing a hospital gown - presumably the common style that never quite covers your ass. He ran through the back door of a Chinese restaurant, into the kitchen. Most employees & patrons quickly beat it out the front door, a couple of cooks cowered in the dining area. But the crazy guy wasn't holding them hostage. Maybe he didn't even notice them. Apparently, he just wouldn't go to the hospital, through the door that locks from both sides. So he grabbed a big knife & held the Springfriend police, a SWAT team, & the County Mobile Emergency Communications Unit at bay for a few hours. Until they got tired of hanging around & trying to reason with an unreasonable man who was causing serious rush hour traffic tieups. FInally, they tossed in a flash grenade, barged into the place & tackled the guy.

I have no idea what was wrong with him, & I'm not approving his violent method of escape. But it's no stretch to feel sympathy toward someone so upset, so frightened, so confused, that he actually did in real life what nearly all of us have done in our dreams: Gone out in public naked or nearly naked, in a place where such lack of clothing is inappropriate & unexpected. I still remember one of those dreams, must have had it when I was 12 or 13, I was riding a bicycle on a busy street in my hometown, a community where "everybody knows your name" as the Cheers theme goes, & realized I was wearing only white cotton briefs. That probably wouldn't raise an eyebrow in Finland in July, but it was humiliating for a shy boy in Jersey passing through puberty. The dream was so traumatic that I can recount it now as if it had actually occurred in reality. So when & if the unfortunate man in the news the other day gets his wits back, I hope he doesn't remember anything about the incident. Or he might need additional therapy.

Labels: dreams, mental health

It was a pleasant dream at first, I was playing acoustic guitar in a band at a loose recording session, & nobody seemed to notice that I can't play guitar & was plucking combinations of notes that fit with the country-rockish music (I never remember the music in my dreams, it rarely happens & it's usually pretty nice & may even be original). But I was wishing I was at a piano or organ. Afterward, I'm in the backseat of a car with some of the musicians at a gas station, & we're pooling money for gas, & I reach out the window & hand the attendant a twenty, which he tucks in the breast pocket of his greasy shirt. Now he's got more than enough to pay for the gas & owes us change, but starts walking away. I say, "Hey, I gave you a twenty." He says, "No you didn't." So I say to another man working there, "I just gave that guy a twenty & we have some change coming." The man shrugs. He's also carrying a pipe wrench. It's not a big chain station, an Exxon or Shell, but pumps in front of a funky repair shop, & pursuing the matter is not only pointless, it's probably dangerous. That part of the dream ended, my unconscious mind lucid enough to abandon the narrative thread & move on. But I was annoyed when I woke up. (This seems related to yesterday's post, but the feeling was entirely different.)

A Jersey Transit ticket machine ate a fiver last month late on a Wednesday afternoon just as a train was due. It surprised me because those machines are reliable. It took the bill & clunked into the no bills no change mode, nothing happened on the ticket selection screen. Couldn't even cancel. I knew I'd never see that $5 again unless I made a special trip to the ticket window when it was open & fought for a refund. I also knew I'd gotten much more than $5 in a free trips over the past year from conductors not collecting my ticket on crowded cars between Newark & Elizabeth. I have a card that lets me buy tickets on the train without the surcharge, so I said to the pestiferous panhandler lurking near the machine & watching me, "You can have that five bucks if you can get it out of there." As I walked down the platform to meet the train, he was banging on the ticket machine & pressing all the buttons. I'm sure it kept him busy for awhile.

Labels: dreams

A vaguely familiar location,
East Village, Hoboken, Soho.
He was on the other side of the street.
I thought, I must speak to him.
I knew he was dead.
"Allen, Allen Ginsburg," I called out,
as I walked toward him.
"How is heaven, or wherever you are?"
He was holding something, a gold medallion
or a religious medal, he looked young.
He didn't notice me.
He wandered down the street,
across an intersection.
I called louder, trying to get his attention.
"Allen Ginsberg, Oh Soul, Allen, wait."
He kept walking, in his own thoughts,
like he had someplace he needed to go.
He turned the corner out of sight.
"Allen, Allen, Allen." I shouted,
then stopped, feeling embarrassed,
there were other people on the street,
what would they think? This man
yelling at a ghost, or at empty space -
someone only I could see
named Allen. Maybe they couldn't see me.
I realized I didn't know where I was
& what I was doing there.

Labels: dreams, poem

"Am I a man who just dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly who now dreams about being a man?"

Zhuangzi

Dreams provide us with physical & mental experiences that happen in the waking world. Most of us are fortunate to get around on a functional pair of legs, but we have all experienced forms of paralysis in dreams.

Last night, I was walking down Mitchell Ave. a dead end street in Linden NJ where I resided for 12 years. I liked the apt. on Mitchell Ave. & the neighborhood, a lot happened while I lived there, so no surprise I occasionally revisit it in dreams. But as I was walking another more lucid & observant part of my mind remembered I didn't live there anymore. That was alright, except I couldn't remember where I did live. I turned around, confused, wondering if this was senility. My lucid mind told me to get out my wallet & look at the address on the driver's license. My photo was clearly on the license, but the print would not come into focus. In a panic, my imagination sought a way out, & WFMU Manager Ken Freedman - who I met nearly 25 years ago while I was still living in Linden - pulled up in an old car, with other people in it I vaguely recognized, & drove us to a house in an old suburban area that resembled but wasn't quite one I'd ever seen. We all got out & went up to a second floor apt, & it was all very friendly, but I still wasn't home, & now had no idea at all where I actually was.

Over the past few years I've had dreams where I found myself in towns like Kenilworth & Union & walked all the back to Rahway - exhausting ten mile epic journeys through Roselle Park (where I grew up). Roselle, Cranford, Clark - only to realize I had no specific destination. I'm not angry in these dreams, I understand my situation & the immediate surroundings are often familiar, I'm just befuddled by the blank spaces in my mind. & I am not always inclined in the dream to reject the dream state even after I become aware that it is a dream.

(After having these dreams, I often turn to the poetry of Jim Cohn, who advised me to talk to dream people, which I forgot to do last night.)

Labels: dreams

Last night about 1 am I happened to glance at the calendar icon on my start page. There in red letters was "radio show tonight." I briefly panicked, but quickly remembered I had accepted an overnight WFMU fill-in for tonight, not Saturday, & then traded it almost immediately for one next month, before I scheduled the automatic e-mail reminders.. But it was enough of a shock to give me The Dream.

The Dream comes in many forms but it is always exhausting & like not sleeping at all. I'm somewhere doing something when I realize I have to do a radio show & I won't get to the studio on time. Or I'm at the studio & the configuration of the control board is changed, maybe there's only one turntable & one CD player, & then a song ends & I have nothing cued up & even if there's 1000 CDs in the room I can't get it together to pick one. The dream I had early this morning was just another variation on a theme. I was having a fine time with familiar friends at a wedding reception, no idea who was the happy couple. Suddenly I remembered I had a radio show at 2 am. I looked the clock: 1:40 am. No way I'd make it, but if I phoned the on-air DJ right away that I could get there by 2:30, maybe I wouldn't be in big trouble. I asked someone to call for me as I frantically looked for any kind of music to throw in my bag & get me started. Oddly, the wedding reception was near my music shelves. I randomly got some stuff together & was about to race out to a car I had 20 years ago when I looked at the clock again: the time was 4:20 am. How the hell did that happen? I felt an almost paralyzing anxiety. I woke up. As I said, like not sleeping at all.

Labels: dreams, WFMU

I lay down for a nap & fell asleep.
In my nap I was taking a nap,
I saw myself taking a nap next to an open window.
I was under old blankets, & the bed
was in a kitchen next to a stove.
The kitchen was in a large house.
There were familiar people in the house.
Most of them were going upstairs,
on a stairway I didn't see, but I wasn't interested,
I knew what was on the second floor;
the WFMU radio studios, & I could always
hang out up there. So I decided to get up
& have a look around the first floor of the house.
It was quite large.
In the first room off the hallway I saw a horse
resting on the floor. When I walked in the room
it stood up. I wanted to stroke its nose
but I had no apple for it, so I let it alone
rather than make it anxious.
In another room two people were either assembling
or disassembling an artifical Christmas tree
I realized I didn't know if it was before
or after Christmas. A few of the rooms appeared
to be bedrooms people used, with doors that probably
opened into bathrooms. They were sparsely furnished
& fairly neat, so I didn't look at them too closely
or disturb anything.
Coming back down the main hallway toward the kitchen
a large entry way on the left opened into what had been
a living room when a regular family lived there,
but now it was mostly empty. A man
was stretched out on the floor relaxing. He was a
strange looking man, but not so strange that you
would notice him in a crowd. On the walls were
large posters that were like the artsy greeting cards
graphics companies sent me when I worked for a graphics studio.
"It's a nice house," the man said. "Yes," I replied,
"but everything on this floor was probably donated
or loaned, everything upstairs we bought."
& that was the end of my dream & my nap.

Labels: dreams, poem, WFMU

Exhausting night, wandering New Jersey in dreams after dark, from Route 22 to New Brunswick - where, after walking around Albany Street circa 1972, I inexplicably boarded a southbound train by mistake. My backpack was stolen but I found it & berated the thief. Finally, near dawn - the sky brightening in dreamland - I caught a local out of Trenton, headed back for Rahway, & woke up in Elizabeth an hour before the clock radio was set.. Oh well, who knows where that train would've gone had I stayed asleep?

The dream was probably generated by Sunday's possibilities. Glen Jones, his lovely companion (who lives near me) & I mulled over driving home then going back to WFMU for the evening festivities, decided against it mainly due to the lousy chilly drizzly weather that would keep the crowd overflow off the third & fourth floor outdoor decks & probably create elbow-to-elbow conditions in the rest of the studio building. At WFMU parties Glen likes to park himself in one place with a beer where he can chat & not be constantly jostled, while I get antsy & tend to circulate. Although I would've liked to have been in the chorus for Chris T's rendition of "Convoy," we hung around until six-thirty & then called it a day. Hoof 'n' Mouth Orchestra didn't wrap up the finale until after one a.m. with Ken Freedman's howling rendition of "Whole Lotta Love," dressed peculiarly as Uncle Sam (I was watching the cam). Fortunately, I observed the afternoon rehearsal - they needed only one run-thru. But what if Robert Plant, who's been listening to WFMU recently, had decided to make a personal appearance? Would it have then been a duet?

The food was unusually good even before the catered stuff arrived. Mrs. X-Ray brought a very tender whole turkey with trimmings, which I had. But there were burgers on an outdoor grill, fried chicken, baked ziti, & more junk munchies - donuts, pastries, home baked cookies - than one could comfortably sample. Nobody can brew a good pot of coffee, tho.

Labels: dreams, WFMU