Feeding the Baby

It's wartime and we are traveling along a steep, narrow, dirt road in my old Dodge Colt Vista station wagon. I'm up front in the passenger's seat and I push out the front window so i can see more clearly. We are weaving through a crowd of people all walking the other way. There is barely enough room to pass and I am sitting right up front where I can plainly see everything. Also the Dodge Colt Vista is front wheel drive. But, frustratingly, the car is being driven by the managers in the jump seat in the rear. They are facing the rear window and from that location they are trying to steer the car through the crowd. I am also a manager, but they don't trust me to do what they would have done in my situation so I am reduced to calling back warnings to them which I am not sure are getting through or if they are getting through I am not sure they believe me. It's a clown car full of managers.

In this dream I was at a  poetry  contest whose winner would be admitted to this  poetry  school. I had submitted my poem but all of the judges hated it. They felt my poem wasn't structured well and didn't conform to the rules of  poetry . I appealed to the white-haired chief judge. He decided that I could have one more chance. I could come to study with him if I brought him a 14 line poem explaining why I preferred wildflowers to roses. Easy! Anyway, I haven't written the poem, I really am not a  poet . But I have thought a lot about why I prefer wildflowers to roses. The easiest reason is my preference for chance and chaos over predestination and order. One ragged golden  flower blooming in a dirt parking lot  seems more beautiful than any vase of twelve white roses. Just from the contrast and integrity of beauty insisting upon itself despite the constructions of men. It is the reason why I prefer Janis Joplin to Frank Sinatra. The rough...

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. William Wordsworth Blindness to the mystical beauty of the world. Deafness to the sounds of our natural souls crying in desperate need. God! At least the pagan is suckled. Poor stupid Americans (OH, poor stupid me). So impoverished, and so unaware. Piling up mounds of things and sitting on top, alone, declaring how great we are and how everyone should be like us, while our c...

Five cowering in the dark at the end of the hall behind closed doors thin bones clacking. Waiting for  Kronos Red streaked yellow teeth whiskery gaping jaw hungry for his children This is a game we played at Grandma's house, it used to quite frighten me. We would close all of the doors into the hallway, on hot summer afternoons, and make a fort with pillows that we could crouch behind. Then all five of us would get in there and tell each other terrifying stories. We could stay there for hours. Later, when we were teenagers, we looked back on that game and in our adolescent sophistication, endowed with sure and certain knowledge of the world, we condemned our game as sick a symptom of a dysfunctional family. Because we were afraid, not without reason, of adults and the world. But it wasn't as bad as all that. What we really had was much more vivid and gruesome imaginations than were strictly good for us. I used to read fairy tales, the real ones not the Disney ones, and ...

Autumn I was in the high school Guidance Counselor's office, the usual goal setting bullshit.  What do you want to do with your life?  I said: "I want to be happy!" And I meant: I don't believe it’s possible, I meant:  it’s  an unobtainable goal.  Middle-aged now, I walk  Along the afternoon holding hands and feeling     that smile working out from deep inside my chest    I say:  "I feel happy!" And I mean: it’s as simple as sunlight. I mean:  it isn't a goal, it's a gift.

Last night I dreamt I was at work. There was a train of electric carts. We owned them. They were hooked together, but one had gone missing. There were people all around us stripping carts down. You know like stealing the hubcaps. The Department Manager, who was my boss before I got promoted, and who is now trying to bury me, had died. Like a massive heart attack. I thought, OH I am not surprised, she was so stressed out. I was looking into another woman's eyes thinking about the death. This woman had silvery wavy soft hair, wrinkled skin and clear eyes, and I thought, she isn't so much older than I am. I thought, is she afraid to die? As I get closer to the end of my life I think about this. I wonder and wonder, but no answers yet. I do know this, everyone's death is different. You couldn't write a book called How to Die and have it be a universal guide. But you could probably write a book called, How Not to Die. My sister, a pediatric intensive care nurse, taught me...

I had some good dreams last night.  Majic Puppies by Pending-Destruction In one I had a gift of 3 black dogs. They were puppies, glossy black, eyes barely open, tongues still soft. They seemed to be a kind of Labrador retriever and poodle mix, which I think might make a good pet, cause poodles are know for their smartness and labs for their enthusiasm and devotion. The other thing is  black dogs are the symbol of depression. As seen on the tarot cards or, Dennis informs me, English myth.  The next dream was at the Ivy street house. It was in the living room and we had a dining table set in front of the T.V. The boys were sitting up on high stools and I was sitting very low to the ground. Everything and everyone was far above me. As I observed this a professor I know stood behind my shoulder and observed too. He said, "I guess you know what this means". And I did. I guess I am not sitting up at the same table as the rest of the members of the family. In my mind ...

SENSIFICATION Sassifrass confabulation introspective speculation Tralala LA frictation. Stomach high absolutation Contrary-wise emulsification. Trust me now  instantiation . Chuckles chucked and freckles frecked, alias emancipation.

I had a sad dream last night. I dreamed that  Grandma 's  house  was sold for good and forever.  I went back there and it was like Judy and Claude's  house  those last days when you and Marcia had finished cleaning it out and were sleeping on mattresses on the living room floor. I felt so left out because all the packing had been done and there was nothing left but meaningless debris.  Workman in the back yard and everything covered with concrete out there. We were on a timeline to get out and we were never going to come back.  It felt so real, like all my lovely dreams of going home were over and I would never have one again.

Venus and The Night Sky Over Mammoth by by John Lemieux , New Dimension Films used under CC 2.0  I had such a cool dream last night.  One day a guy from the Three Dog Ranch came by to talk about his political campaign. He invited us to the Three Dog Ranch. So we got on the bus and rode way out into the middle of nowhere to the Three Dog Ranch.  The ranch is a neo-hippy vegan commune that is pretty well known. We get out there and as we were walking into a room a guy told me I had to go outside because my leather bag was upsetting to his dog.   Apparently vegan dogs get grossed out when humans carry skinned animals around.  I went outside with Dennis and we lay down on the ground on some blankets. We looked up into the starry night sky and cuddled while other people came and went and sat down near us. I closed my eyes and saw the sky still and then a poster of three Native Americans posing and the words above their heads were we are thre...

I dreamt that I arrived at work on a Tuesday and found a strange lady in the receptionist desk. She claimed I knew her so I smiled and said hello then went to my desk. My desk was piled high with papers and ephemera. I started sorting through it and realized that the receptionist had cleaned her desk off by dumping everything on mine. She told me she was going to be married soon and asked me if I was planning a party for her. Having met her only a minute ago I had to say no. I was helping the new technical person with his spreadsheet issues and when I turned back around my desk was gone. It turned out the receptionist needed more space to shred paper so she moved it a round the corner. I flipped out. I was so angry and I knew I had to keep a cool pretense because it's work but I also needed to set boundaries so she knew what I would not tolerate. Put my desk back right now and never touch anything on it again.

I did have a crap nightmare or two. Night before last I woke up to what I thought was Dennis tapping my foot to gently wake me up. But when I looked up all I could see was a very dark room and hazy mass of shadows at the foot of the bed which I took to be Dennis.  I think he tapped my foot again and I said Dennis? No answer. I'm waking up more and feeling scared so I say louder, "Dennis?" No answer.  I look hard and I see the form at the end of the bed swaying forward and back, so odd! I am really alarmed so I call out "Dennis!" and realize at the next moment that he is hanging by his neck from the ceiling and swaying on the rope so I cry out "Dennis!!!" and he answers me from the space on the bed where he normally sleeps, "what?"  I am released from the  dream   and flushed with surprise and joy because he is right there in bed beside me so I say, "nothing, just a nightmare."Then jump out of bed and run to ...