Problems of Moments

2001-08-26T09:19:00.000-04:00

DREAM

There's an autobiographical picture-book written by a dentist in the deep south. It's found on the New York-Tokyo plane train. Miles Brown works for the dentist at his general store that's being opened. The dentist specially designed the store and its location so that Miles could get there even with his bad leg. The dentist is white in an almost all-black town. Some of the young folks in town are angry at him for their state of living, even though he's among the poorest residents. His extended family lives together in a three-room house near the railroad. His elderly mother-in-law prays loudly each night after watching the news to die quickly and painlessly. He is happy.

2001-08-24T09:33:00.000-04:00

DREAM

I'm at an incredibly luxurious, elite private high school, in 1959. There are others that have traveled back in time with me. We're in some hybrid of New York, Seattle, and San Diego. I take busses everywhere. You can get the most amazing taffy from a future man, on the corner of the park.

I've been studying for too long, and something inspires me to tell a girl at dinner that she's the same age as my mother, to frighten her, I suppose. We're overlooking the main dining hall under the great dome; we're just barely within range of the sweet potato that's thrown at us. The other time traveller with me is very angry, but the girl says "I know." She's wearing her burial suit, square and elaborately painted, with a spherical hat, with a date of earlier that year on it. Part of the painting is her spirit after death flying perfectly level with the ground. Ahead of her is a gliding magnifying scope into which various reels can be inserted to allow her to read after death. It was invented by her aunt. The girl is a little unhappy that this suit won't be the suit she wears for her actual death, since this was for a mistaken, small death. We talk about how she (now I) substitutes reading for sleep and adjusts to a 32 hour daily schedule. The eight extra hours are spread over a time-shared body.

On the bus ride back to the taffy man's shop, which has the brain scanning device I use to report to the future, I peruse the catalog. I'm surprised there aren't more games without dice and timers, to be played during the day of rest.

2001-06-17T11:28:00.000-04:00

(17 Jun 02001)
DREAM:

Mr. Hall is about to tell me his real name is Mr. Haljoud. He's a tall, thin man in his late sixties, in good shape. I'm walking down the stairs with a large package containing an unassembled crib, and he's describing to me exactly how my body will deteriorate as I get old. First my knees will go, he says, and then I'll get some tiny bone fractures when I am carrying a package down the stairs and have to sit down too quickly. He says he can help me through this when it happens, that he can tell me exactly what to do. "That will be fifty years from know, you said," I say. "I know," he says, "I'll be long gone. Let me help you up now instead."

(earlier) The brother and sister of my neighbors on the island were practicing with robins, imitating their sound so that they could make a proper trio. Derick stayed with them, and Howard Stern talked on the radio about what it was like, driving with them, with Derick doing vocal percussion all the time and the trio of bird sounds and their stunningly beautiful older sister that never spoke and always rode shotgun. The mother is driving me home because it's on the way to where they have to drop off a friend's robin and maybe catch a new one, on Wilson St., and she's describing what it was like to study with Howard Stern, and how hard it was to actually learn anything. We find another robin on the grass, with its bird's feet removed and lying beside it, and another in the nest above it, that won't move at all but its heart is still beating.

2001-05-22T18:18:00.000-04:00

OVERHEARD (Two men, probably early 20s, Rochester Public Library):

A: On the first day, your mind will just keep saying, "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry," but you don't listen to it, you see what I'm saying? You ignore what the mind is saying. And then on the second day, you look around and you have an intelligence. You look around and the people who're around you seem so stupid, you see what I'm saying?

B: Yeah.

A: And then on the third day it's like your mind is outside your body, it's like you're outside your body, you see what I'm saying?

B: Yeah, it's like your mind goes through these levels, one level each day.

A: It's like a drug, but it takes so long.

B: Yeah, drugs, like drugs were medicines.

A: Drugs were medicines and then people abused them and now they're drugs. But it takes so long,it's so hard to get through your mind saying "I'm hungry, I'm hungry." But it's the best drug there is, you see what I'm saying? Now you know about science. A scientist is one who studies life.

B: Yeah.

A: But people hear something above their head, something goes creak in the night, and what do they say? They say they're ghosts, right?

B: Right, like there's a ghost.

A: But really, in your house, the scientist says, there's all these microscopic particles in your floor and then the wind blows through them and makes it creak. No need to get mysterious. It's like some people proclaim their ignorance. Like look out that window. What color is the sky?

B: It's white, well it's blue and white.

A: Right, people look at the say and say it's blue and white. But it's black.

B: Right, it's black, because there's space...

A: But the scientist knows... you see there's the earth, spinning through space at a hundred thousand miles, it's a hundred and sixty eight square miles of surface. But the sun sends off this light that's moving so fast that it just bounces all over the place. Three quarters of that area is water, a hundred and twenty four thousand square miles. Now you've got light spinning off that water and all over the place, and people say the sky is blue and white, but it's not, the scientist knows it's black. You have to educate yourself.

B: People say it's blue and white, but the water...

A: Yeah, even the water is black. It's just because of the sun... when the earth turns away from the sun...

B: To the moon side.

A: Right, there's the sun, and the earth turns around, and there's the moon, you see what I'm getting at? On the moon side, you look at the water and it's black.

B: But the moon, it's light, it doesn't make it's light....

A: Right, there's the sun and the moon reflects a little bit, because if you took away the moon, at night you'd be bumping into all kinds of shit.

B: Heh.

A: But if you look at the sun, the people say it's yellow, but the scientist knows it's black, because it's all colors together. If you go out in space and look at the sun.

B: Yeah, I saw a picture of it, the sun was black, and then the sun was black, and black and red, and then red, just arcing out like.

A: Right, the scientist studies life, you see what I'm saying? Now you know about God.

B: I learned this one today.

A: Oh, right.

2001-05-21T10:18:00.000-04:00

DREAM:

Yosemite in winter, all the flashing lights denoting the ages of the oldest trees. People drive too fast through the thicker snow. Slipping one SUV into an older tree, a landmark the announcer says, and it shakes but stands. A compact slips into the gorge. These cars are built to disintegrate and shatter to protect from fire or flood, but this one sticks solid and we ski down to rescue them.

I'm cleaning out the room I share with two others, and the auditor laughs at me. "So little you carry" he says. I've kept too many clothes that are much too small for me. My parents find the random notes I left, and are angry at me for writing down such apparently meaningless things. The better a cappella group is on, pulling down the roofbeams to dance with them. They'll hold auditions for their college in the outlying buildings later.

2001-03-19T12:46:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

To fly, you just need to type it repeatedly, and eventually it works. 'Daffida' is the last word in the incantation to set the beam moving, which is the only way to shut down a rogue robot, sliding them into each other or the electric net. Daffida is also the name of a Sarah, excavating with a young Indiana Jones in the Nile Valley. Fly, then south, then west, watching carefully for the proper hole while avoiding the white weasel. There is a translation there of Goethe by Robert Isabel Jordan, author of Icewind Dale, who takes his children with him on a flatbed truck as he drives across the country, dictating his books into a tape recorder. He is not allowed to admit that he has translated Goethe, so he chooses me to put my name on the translation. This is a long and previously untranslated poem, which starts with roses and travels through death to roads and suns. I go to the bookseller to try to secure pre-orders, but there is a woman in California who has already begun translating this poem, and it becomes clear that I don't know a word of German. I am sent to the back room, where I am in constant danger of being crushed by falling shipping boxes and rogue robots.

2001-03-06T13:24:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

I improvise the role of a modern-day king. Though I know it's a role and so does everyone else, it slips into everything. The renovated Eastman Theatre has levels on levels of complicated balconies, with no railings. A singing group has an audience with me, when I say "I wish to dance." The soloist looks upset, but I say "No, no, we can dance to your song." I choose a girl at random and start out with a simple swing dance, but find myself doing more and more complicated moves until I am on a stage with a host of supporting dancers behind me. When we end spectactularly, another girl takes an amazing leap over us from another balcony, spinning wildly in the air. She lands on her head. A group of people pulls her from this balcony, but they drop her and she falls all the way into the lowered orchestra pit. More people rush around carrying her up the stairs, but I order them to stop moving her, and I wait with her for the ambulance.

2001-02-13T09:20:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

There is a large and complicated comedy about everything, turning back on itself in unexpected ways. I am forced to sell promotional candies in a giant mall. Anna, Araw and I work on recording sayings for a car-saying device. As well as the 'door is ajar' sayings, there is 'let's take a vacation' and many more.

2001-01-30T08:08:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

We've hired a new Old Music Director since the old one threw a fit in a public concert about a bad harpsichord tuning. The new one comes to our house and owes his success to my dad. They talk in Latvian all day. We're celebrating and the new guy lifts me up on his shoulders and encourages me to throw the first glass bottle through the window. "Why don't you have any class pride?" asks my dad when I hesitate. He tries to get me to shout my year. He says that everyone in the band/video game company I started has speeding tickets. I remind him that the only time I ever got a speeding ticket was when I had job interviews in three states in the same afternoon. When I get back from the other states, my mother and sister steal the car from me. I go for a run, but it's very slippery. In the alley between my house and the elderly housing, a sports car lifts up on its back wheels to make sure a tractor-trailer stops in time. The sports car then drives under the trailer. I start running down Talbot Ave., and the truck pulls out and starts driving in the same direction I'm running. It starts spinning out of control, through people's backyards, finally splashing down in a river at the end of the street and sinking almost immediately. I yell for an ambulance, and my voice is that of a small child's. It's difficult to be heard. There's a house at the end of the street (where the church is in real life) and I try to get the family that lives there to call the ambulance. I have to explain the situation to them over and over again, and the mother of the family keeps interrupting me and asking me unrelated questions. Finally they tell me that they don't have a phone and I should try another house. I'm sure the truck driver has drowned by now.

2001-01-24T02:30:00.000-05:00

GREAT HACK:

Ah, I do love a good creative act of vandalism. There's no better way to celebrate the next four years of the Reagan administration (or was that the Carter administration...I keep forgetting).

2001-01-23T12:17:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

I'm at a sort of a talent show. An enormous woman and her three singing toddlers are on just before my trumpet solo. There's not enough room in the corridor for her to get by me, and as she squeezes through past me, she accused me of fondling her and punches me in the mouth. My mother opens up my mouth and patches my face up somehow, saying "I always have to do everything for you! You're so inept! Remember when we went to eat with the Florentines and you had to ask me to ask someone to pass the salt?" I go to play, realizing I haven't prepared anything, and just make up a tune. I head upstairs to the chapel, but on the way, a tooth drops out. I pick it up, but realize it is still attached to my mouth. The rest of my teeth all come tumbling out, tied together with rubber bands. Upstairs, my family and the Norton Jennings' and Becky Green and Karen Morrison and Anna Johnson, all dressed in a reddish-purple or a blue or white, are singing at the front of the chapel, but I can't join them because I have no teeth, and they've already started. This is the last time I'll see any of them before they rise into the sky.

2001-01-21T10:58:00.000-05:00

DREAMS:

I've received a grant to go to a composer's conference on Phobos. It'll be my first time in space. My direct flight is cancelled, but I'll be able to hitch a ride on a freight plane that will swing around Neptune to replenish the fetuses at the orbiter plantations. The last shipment hatched in transit.

At the conference, a version of me from the future is presenting my work, and explaining how we can universalize art so that everyone is an artist.

We go hiking in the surrounding forest. The trail markers are new because somebody thought that the original markers, painted four hundred years ago by the mythical tree-pissing man, marked which trees were supposed to be cut down and gutted into canoes.

Deep in the bayou of the forest is a volleyball net with a swampy pond behind it. It's healing to swim in it, but the large green clam-beetles give a nasty bite. The tree-pissing man tries to pee on us from up in the hollow of a giant oak tree, but I lie down and deflect the stream back at him with my shoe.

2001-01-10T06:24:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

I am an inanimate object, but my heartbeat requires observation and maintenance. I am in an airport when I leave my body and aether travel toward the plane of water. When I return, I am in a different airport, and my body is signed with the names of all the people that have watched me and the places I have been taken to. I think they expect some kind of compensation.

2001-01-09T08:46:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

There's concern about the barnacles at the ocean entrance to the theatre. Also, the exterior lettering was hastily done. The letters are much to narrow and closely spaced, and they run around the corner. Sure enough, the tides are higher than they anticipated, and there's a black goop around the ocean entrance. I swim out to the entrance, but the currents are strong and it's difficult to return to shore. I finally get back, resolving to take those swimming lessons. In the theater is some corporate function with a gospel choir. We calculate the ratio of corporate concerts and concerts just for show to the real thing, and it's not good. On my way out the land entrance, I go through the high school work preparation center, where the students do grunt work for insurance companies for free.to get a diploma. In the basement, students have drawn cartoon portraits of the anarchist heroes of the week, all of whom are bank robbers and gangsters. I search the archives for programs that Anna's played in.

2000-12-20T13:45:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

Even though the Kennedy's are related, we hate them. They'd never come to our parties anyway. Not even when we were lost in the desert, and the reflections of the sun confused us as to which way was east, and I was so delirious I thought I might have been injected with heroin by a passerby. All the Time magazines with their pictures on the cover are torn up on the kitchen floor. My dad confronts me about investing in Microsoft, but settles down after I show him that it's only one share so that they'll lose money sending me the annual reports. We have a big square dance in the living room to celebrate our liberation from the Kennedy's. Grandma J is there, dancing like a dervish and charming everyone.

2000-12-19T13:52:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

I'm interviewing Charlie Chaplin, and I can't get him to stop talking about his prodigious sex life, including the time his entire regiment paid ridiculous amounts of money to be serviced by Bertra Erlecht, the legendary Catlioness. The very next week, Newsweek breaks the story that I couldn't pry from him: he has a new novel called _Bound_, all about the life of Bertra. I was just part of an elaborate marketing strategy to put Chaplin and Erlecht back on the public radar.

2000-12-18T03:36:00.000-05:00

DELAY OF WIT:

At 2 a.m., some kid buzzes my apartment: "How'd you like to suck a big juicy cock? Huh? How bout it? How'd you like some cock?"

WHAT I SAID:
Nothing. Just went back to bed.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID:
a) "Yes, I'd like two, please."
b) "Sure, just slip it under the door and I'll pick it up in the morning."
c) "I just made some delicious baklava. How'd you like to suck on some of that sweet juicy baklava? How'd you like that, cunt-puncher? Well, TOUGH LUCK cause it's ALL MINE!"

2000-12-16T23:53:00.000-05:00

DREAM (nap):

Most folks had moved over to this other house while they added soundproofing to Tanglewood Hall (didn't look anything like Ozawa hall or the Shed). Gavin Chuck and Alan Pierson and Ossia were doing most of the work. There was a band called Legendary Conguero that played while we work. "That's Andriessen's Die Stadt" I told a girl with a lot of cats. (In real life, the bass line was from a Prokofiev Piano Sonata (the funky minor third one)). "It's the Dutch concept of _werke_ to take the bass line from a modern piece and use it in a pop tune." The girl was berating her cats. "If you're going to all go out together, you should come back together." Their names were Hiroshi, Miyamota, Werke, Enable, and there were more. Soundproofing the Tanglewood Hall seemed to consist in building red brick moats around the walls. The lead guy from Legendary Conguero was offering a Valentine's day contest. One prize was that he'd make a giant message in the snow to the winner's sweetheart. The other was a "beer device get-together", which he didn't explain. Legendary Conguero was very happy with their distributor, a small boutique label. "They're one of the few companies that can handle both the big ca$h acts and the little art-shit acts. Since the rap breakup of the big bunny, things have been good for the independents."

2000-12-11T21:39:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

Last night I dreamed all night of playing with an abstract baby. I could remember all of it on waking, all mundane. I never saw the face of the child, or the mother. Just before I first woke, it cried, and I went back to sleep and soothed it for another hour. I slept four hours more than I intended, going back to this dream again and again.

2000-11-29T08:33:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

Many people aren't used to hunting, so I pilot the jet over autumn. All boundaries are relatively arbirtrary; here, the marsh is a good place.

2000-11-28T09:11:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

Here I've found the test, and there's only three of us. I put my sketched notes back in the cardboard tube. This is one of the lives in the catalog that I can't figure out. Maybe I should try a correspondence naval simulation instead.

2000-11-22T14:31:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

If you have a suggestion, I'm not the one to talk to. Ships will always be slow, and horses will always run on apples. She keeps the staff low so that she can have that look on her face. The clerks here are the most competent around; she pretends we're idiots so that when the lines get long, it's not her fault. The edible mints are just the thing for you, sir. Stay a bit back from the pool while the swimming competition is going on, or the Festiva might slip into the water. In all the time we've had it, this is the first time it's wanted to leave of its own accord. It must be the percussion ensemble. They're all in white, because too many wear all black. They play Boulez twice in a row. But it's not Boulez, it's Varese. We are leaving of our own accord. Underground, but the underground that is really your own backyard. It's amazing how long it goes on with no one knowing. Upstairs they're still sleeping, and we are going underground. The thought police are coming to resolve things, but we'll be long gone by then. I bet you never thought we'd be on the cover of Time. I'm not the murderer, though. Everyone thinks we're idiots, because the lines are long, but we're the most competent around.

2000-11-21T02:29:00.000-05:00

Mm. I could taste that apple cider long before I was finally in the door.

Short rehearsal today. The guys were a bit antsy today, with the holiday break coming up. Sound was solid, and tunes were focussed, even though the group went every which way every time we came to a double bar.

Many hours today were spent helping folks with arrangements. Geoff's found a tune with great potential, and Ian and Dave have been working on a Backstreet song - "Shape of My Heart" I think the name is. I refused to be ashamed to admit that it's growing on me. The lyrics are utter nonsense, the singers can't, and there's a billion dollar media machine shoving it down my throat. But somebody at the console is an utter genius. The arrangement needs a lot of tweaking before it'll be singable, but it'll get the audience screaming at high school gigs, I'm sure.

In doing my "research" for this tune, I broke a rule of mine and confused the heck out of myself. I had told myself I'd never use Napster. The reasoning being that if I were making my living selling albums, I'd be monkey pissed if people were ripping me off. Never mind the fact that only pennies of your average record sale are going to the actual musicians. Never mind the fact that when I am making a living as a musician, it certainly won't be because of album sales. And never mind the fact that the real people that actually make this music work get next to zero recognition for it (there, that's three.).

But I think I might end up buying this album. I learned something from the production on the tune I heard, and there might be more gems of wisdom lurking on the rest of the disk. I'll have to listen to it without all that wonky MP3-blurriness. And I never, ever, ever would have considered picking it up if I hadn't heard an MP3 ripped from it.

Returning me to my default state of confusion.

2000-11-20T12:20:00.000-05:00

DREAM:

If you count up just the time I spent scrubbing tables, it's three and a half years. If you spend the time required to become a master chef, it's apparent that you'll end up with the temperament peculiar to all country chefs. My girlfriend's father is stuck on a plane at Logan airport and has been for two weeks now. "Maybe it's a different flight than last week" someone says as they tear off a postage stamp for me. They then start rattling off statistics about delayed flights. You can get a lot done inside an airplane these days, anyways. Here is the game: to trap both players to a pole at the center of the graveyard. But you have a weakness: the flashlight. When the guard shines his light on you, make this apparent to the players. Your flesh should shrink away. It appears that you're talking through half a mouth, but really your mouth is on a half of your feet. You are walking on your hands to fool everyone. Webbed hands. Later, I'm with all the other zombies, in dog form, drawn in caricature. The rest of the pack comes and says it's time to fill the slave ship. My assignment on this planet is almost done. It'll be good to go home to the dog world. We give rewards to the humans: for every family member they turn in, they get a lottery ticket. Five numbers in a row gets you a hundred dollar bill. Quickly the value of money depreciates, and the lottery tickets and pieces of them are the new currency. I have a whole stack of them. I buy several Manhattan blocks. But soon people are making paper airplanes out of the lottery tickets. All money is worthless when the skin-removing plague is coming. Simultaneous to this is a rough cut edition of Strangers in Paradise. It's amazing how many decisions go into a story like this. There are pages detailing how the ice skates connect in the air. Maybe these pages will be the next money. Or maybe skin will. It's a toss-up.

2000-11-20T03:43:00.000-05:00

A bit better. It will serve.

2000-11-20T01:32:00.000-05:00

Laundry is done. One last shot at this, then it's bedtime.

2000-11-20T00:22:00.000-05:00

Laundry's now in dryer, and I still can't figure out how to get rid of this ugly green color.

2000-11-19T23:07:00.000-05:00

Ah. Laundry has entered washer.

2000-11-19T22:49:00.000-05:00

Welcome to today's method of avoiding the laundry.