Dream XVIII

I was invited to attend a meeting of some people who did some spying, but not very important spy stuff. A young lady invited me because she knew I wanted to publsh my stories, and one of their members was an editor.

I was called rather suddenly to one of their meetings, where various people showed up an apartment and made themselves at home. Because of the rush to get to the meeting, I hadn't brought any of my stories, but I reasoned that this was just an introduction and I wasn't worried.

There were several cats in attendance, including a small kitten who slept in a basket full of ice water. Another cat yowled and hissed until I vacated where I was sitting, which was his favorite spot. The cats were dark brown and yellow, and one was colored yellow from his head to the middle of his body, then dark colored out to his tail.

I learned some interesting things about their operation, but didn't get a chance to talk to the editor. I walked from one end of the apartment all the way to the other, which was a black painted corridor, just to see if I had met everyone. When I returned to the main part of the apartment, I noticed that several small paintings of mine were gathered together. No one seemed to know how they had gotten there.

There were several stylized paintings of everyday things, some murky green covered canvases, and some works with small bits of paper pasted on to them in collage. One painting showed a cartoonish picture of me driving a car through the city with my father sitting in the back seat.

The largest canvas was perhaps ten inches across; most were smaller, five inches square and such. I gathered the paintings in a paper shopping bag, the kind that has cords for handles.

The young lady and I prepared to leave, then. I had met the editor, but not in his capacity as such.

Another attractive young woman, who was the one who arranged contacts for the meetings, was asked how she would prepare the next symbol to announce the meeting--in this case, the symbol was "a big butt." She dropped her pants (she had a lengthy blouse) to illustrate. I asked her if she had had any formal art training, and noted my degree from Sewanee. I also said the canvases found here were not my best work (which they weren't.)

As the first young lady and I left, we noted how dark the sky had become. It was only 2:48 in the afternoon, but the light outside was like evening. This was due to a huge storm off in the distance, rapidly approaching.

Remembering that I had arrived empty-handed, I noted to the young lady that due to the suddeness of her call, I hadn't brought any of my stories with me. She apologized, saying she had called my cell phone but no one answered, and she had also tried other numbers in the same hunt group. I explained that I didn't carry that cell phone around much, but I had my work phone with me. I resolved to have my cell phone route to my work phone, but then reflected that this was probably a bad idea.

We agreed to meet later, and I went back to work. Everyone was looking out the window at the approaching storm, which in some cases was a huge column of black cloud, blotting out buildings as it moved nearer--somewhat like a hurricane in appearance but without the destructive power. I wanted to get a picture but had forgotten my camera at home. I was also going to go swimming and wait out the storm, but I had forgotten my trunks as well.

I began driving toward home, imagining in my head the radio announcer saying, "And the Manhattan Bridge is now completely impassable." I decided to go with a group of other people to an underground mall, and pass the time there waiting for the storm to abate. The mall was quite nice, with good lighting and a kind of old-fashioned atmosphere.

I went into a very nice-looking book store, where the decor was all wooden and old-library-like. There, I found a collection of Get Fuzzy cartoons.

In one, the dialogue went like this:
Bucky: See! He[referring to Sachel]'s one of the Om Island Men!
Sachel: Oh, Ti[referring to Bucky], I'm not!
Rob: Good Lordy!

In another, the action consisted solely of Bucky hitting Sachel on the head with a bat, and Sachel hitting Bucky on the knees with another bat.

Dream XVII

I was in a large, outdoor sculpture gallery, which had as part of its exhibits the inner skeleton of a two story bar. There, they were filming a documentary on pianist Cecil Taylor. At one point, he played one of his compositions and yellow smoke erupted from the piano at tthe conclusion.

As part of the show, he was playing a role in a play that was taking place at the bar. A young woman was making various pronouncments about the awfulness of life to her boyfriend. Her face was very stressed-looking and she made many painful expressions as she spoke. I wanted to take some pictures of her face so I could illustrate what I was going to write about the play. I used 1/60 second exposure time and my camera on manual. She was conscious of the camera and seemed pleased by my attention to her, but she did not break character.

Later, I met Mr. Taylor at another part of the sculpture garden, where some arc-shaped benches were ringed around some non-descript shrubbery. He asked what I thought of the play. I didn't like it, but didn't want to say that so I told him why I like David Lynch's films.

What I said was that the films may not make sense on the surface, but they give the impression of a very thorough logic just hidden beyond reach. If one could graps the nature of this logic, the films would make perfect sense. That is why I found his work so compelling; it wasn't just senseless, but ordered on a different kind of sense.

I used a story of a bankrobber to illustrate my thesis, showing how the eight segments of his story were contained in a greater whole, but if you removed the outer whole and only had the eight segments, the actions would seem unrelated and the story would make no "sense." As I was showing Mr. Taylor the poster I had illustrating the eight segments (getting up in the morning, getting dressed, going to the bank, robbing the bank, escaping, etc), jazz pianist Thelonius Monk joined us and sat in the same stone bench as the two of us. He seemed to be enjoying the discussion as well and made some appreciative remarks.

(Truth to tell, I was a bit awed to sit with Mr. Taylor but he insisted. Having Mr. Monk there as well made me feel truly out of my depth.)

Mr. Taylor was pleased by what I said, and also liked my camera. I had goten a few dots of green and yellow paint on the lens (where the numbers were, not on the lens face itself).

I then left, and watched a video of a slow pan across the lower facades of some marble buildings, as the soundtrack was of newscasters unprepared to speak of what the video was showing. They kept trying to make sense, and worse, trying (and failing) to anticipate what would be seen next. They would then have to retract this pronouncements with embarassment.

Later, I was back at work, where they were filming a movie, a live action Christmas movie teaming Jim Carrey's grinch with the Scooby Doo gang. All of them were kidnapped by a huge monster, who thrust them in a huge santa sack. However, I only saw the last part, when the Grinch and his lady friend were kidnapped. The monster then placed the bag on a huge piece of furniture (a dresser, or bureau) in his lair, which was like a giant Victorian house interior, festooned with Christmas decorations. He then undid the string on the bag, which opened slightly. But it was enough for the Grinch to open it the rest of the way.

The Grinch, who spoke in a sophisticated accent, asked if his companion was all right, and it turned out he was siting on the others. As they were kidnapped before he was, the Grinch was unaware that they were beneath him; this was intended as comedy.

They didn't even notice that the monster had opened the bag; that was to be another part of the comedy, as they would slowly turn and look up, see the monster still standing there, and became frightened. But that hadn't happened yet.

Dream XVI

I was a well-known science fiction author, and I was checking in to a hotel in Washington, DC. I asked the desk clerk if he could mail something for me. It was a short story that I was sending off to a magazine. He said that he would, and I gathered my things and went to my room.

The room was stark white, except for some blue drapes. It was also, aside from the bed and a chair, completely devoid of furnishings.

Once settled into my room, I realised that I had accidentally grabbed some of the desk clerk's papers. And among them was a short story that he had written. So I sat down to read it.

While I was reading, I began noticing some of the insects and other animals in my room. Up near the top of the drapes was a small lizard, and down in front of the closet door was a large frog with some kind of animal in its mouth.

The clerk's story was a science fiction tale about a man in an office who gets a phone call from a colleague, who tells him that because of an accident, he now has control over all matter. He is a nervous man who had always been belittled by everyone but the office man on the phone, which is why he calls him with the warning. He demonstrates this power, and the office man has to try and come up with a way to defeat him. Since he couldn't defeat him physically, he uses psychology in a very clever way, and the world is saved.

I finished the story and thought it was pretty good. The whole story took place as a phone conversation, with a few added asides from a frightened, motionless woman seated near the office man.

I took the story back down to the desk clerk, and told him that I thought it was good. He asked me if I had read the notes, which I had not, and he pointed out that the voice on the phone character was based on me. Apparently he was a big fan of mine. He had originally sent this story to me and was very excited about getting a critique (his notes reflected this) and I had to tell him that I had never received the story. He was disappointed but was glad that I had finally gotten to read it.

We got to talking about the story, and I mentioned the only part that I would change was one line of dialogue near the end, which I showed him. I told him I would, thus, change the title of the story from "Four Words" to "Seven Words." He began talking about making me a co-author, since the line of dialogue was crucial to the story, and I had improved it greatly; I was unsure about co-author credit, but he was able to convince me.

I then went back to my room, where Jeeves the butler was unpacking things. I asked him to read the story as well, and after a great deal of reluctance, he agreed and sat down to read. It was hard to tell if he was enjoying it or not, he seemed to be making a point of having no expression.

Shortly after that, a pair of middle aged people, who were someone's in-laws, showed up in the main foyer of the room, and the woman insisted that we listen to this group of loud, musical clowns that were parading through the hotel. It is possible the clowns were from France, but I didn't want to look at them and thus, encourage them.

Jeeves and I tried to ignore her, and them as well, but ultimately without success. The noise became overwhelming, and we stopped trying to do anything other than wait for the clowns to leave.