Tuesday, June 28, 2005

26-Oct-1980

It's Reloj and me on a trip to Monterey, CA. There's a Mexican restaurant in Watsonville, on the way, and evidently also in Montery.

A giant green road grader roars into the lane next to us from off right; it's clean and neat and a chicano sits high up in the cab.

Asks if he can to park heere.

"Si," I tell him, with all the simpatico at my disposal.

We're alongside a long tan building. There are trees and a gravel road running by it.

"I like you, mon," the grader man smiles.

Inside now, Reloj and I are in conference.

"Champagne," either one of us says.

"Champagne," mutters a disembodied voice.

A plump ma is grinning over her stewpot, rolls like dough from her fat cheeks and arms, "Champagne, yeah, shore...champagne," she seems to be melting into the pot, cackles and all.

On the road again, without any champagne, a small plane swoops in a circle, around behind - it's one of those aerobats but I wonder if the pilot is in control.

It zooms behind us as we watch, squanders altitude, pulls out of fearful freefall and continues to circle in front now - amazingly it keeps its nose pointing at us like a hex.

It sidles around us; I can hear someone onboard it chuckliing like ma as the plane circunmnavigates...

I am back at the restaurant in Watsonville now. Oh, shoot, I slipped a cog in progression. Reloj is still in Monterey on real time. I have to go back.

Inside at the counter, in Monterey, someone sits, and a lagging lilting brunette is behind us, reaching for something. She is rummaging in the high racks of flat displays. The higher she reaches the more of her bare lissome stretch is available to the public behind her. I wonder if she knows this. I wonder why they place all the common flatware so high. I am hardly ever cynical while dreaming.

(I forgot to mention earlier while we were there someone we called Pop had come through after the lunch crowd with a pushbroom - I had a straw broom I'd taken from the auto - my old red VW of Mexican venture days when dreams merged with the jarring world again - customers pick up their feet while the long head of Pop's broom whisks by...)

The lissome lady comes back around the counter, drops something there, everyone shuffles up and heads out - I see it's one of those juicy chocolate chip cookies I'm now addicted to and am glad.

Reloj's in the car when I go out. He has on a striped shirt. We discuss how we came to be separated. He had gone somewhere, and I hadn't. I didn't know. It's all right now. The auto we sit in is a sports machine, like the Triumph TR-3 I once drove.

We nod together and I fire up.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

I wake a time or two every night, and the first time, I thought, that's a good dream, I'll surely remember that one. Then I was asleep again. And when I awoke, all I remember of the dream is...

The kittens over the minefield. The enemy had cast them out there to clear the mines. I was panicked. The enemy are scum.

But I managed to call them all back to me without tragedy.

In the next sleep segment, I am visiting someone and am reminded, you forgot to do the film. Oh, boy, I sure did. I was supposed to help with the film last visit.

This is a multiple-adult house. I go to the machine. It has a keyboard and a long window viewport into a box about three feet by six, and inside you can see several small wax figures. You prepared them for the scene by the keyboard. For one shot, they are held horoizontal and glue is applied. This is so a material will stick to them.

Then they will be programmed to act the scene, with the special effects, and it will look on your screen exactly like any other movie, yet these actors are all about six inches tall. It's a remarkable studio to have in one room of a private home. A spectacular explosion and auto crash scene costs five dollars, and looks like anything you'd see at the mall.

But it's the end of the shooting day, and I go to tell Mischa, the producer, there'll be no real footage today. I see someone I know, have known before, and she is cold and ignores me. That's best sometimes.

This is Gone In Sixty Seconds III, and it's becoming very expensive. I think I'm responsible for some of that, because of my tardiness on the set. The price is ballooning up above sixty dollars American. But, with European distribution, we expect to gross around two hundred million, so everybody will be friends again when the receipts start rolling in.

Monday, June 06, 2005

The boys drive off in a jalopy to my left, and the police to my right. I am expecting both to return soon with trouble. I am anxious about that. I can be whupt or arrested.

A blonde in a roadster passes by, left to right, and I call to her. I pick up a huge surfboard and hurry to where she has stopped. I figure she must, for I am in danger. She does. I sit down in the passenger seat, and nevermore is the surfboard a participant.

She immediately turns onto a hidden road winding down to our left. Opening up in the dell is the prettiest scene, a pond and an escarpment like a mushroom; it's the illustration for a child's storybook.

In the house, I amble along through the rooms. The blonde has spoken not a word to me. I see children rambling through a sunken den of sorts, and I continue on.

Pause at a door. There are two men in there, I'm guessing, although both have yet to rise this day. They are different ages; maybe the father and brother of the blonde.

There are strangers everywhere, although the family isn't large, neither is the house but it has narrow passages. I should introduce myself, I suppose, but nobody pays the slightest attention to me.

Scoob is here with me, and there are puppies, too, who cavort and bark, but the barks are subdued, like whispers.

[Two events in waketime history may account for these scenes. One is when I skipped out of Ft Polk, 1969, and spent the first night, after being shaken down by the Leesville city police in Lousiana, across the border and was immediately on awakening accosted by the cops from nearby Jasper, who took identifying numbers and drove off "to check" and meanwhile I expect at anytime the MPs to come across that bridge over the Sabine I had just crossed in the night.

The second was when my brother Joey took me to the house over in Dodd City, a little burg east of Flatlandia, to meet with and perhaps take a young lady somewhere. She invited us in, and Joey wisely declined, and I went in to sit in a circle with strangers. Nobody introduced anybody.

This circle was brought to mind recently by Joey's recalling what I had told him about the conversation I overheard. It was hilarious, now that I remember it. Two old guys are talking trade. One says to the other,

"Lem, how'd you swap that 'ere five five Chevy for my Pontiac ?"

And Lem squints at him, growls:

"Just like you didn't have nuthin'."]