Shortly after moving into the Villa Seurat I had begun to record my dreams. And not only the dreams but the associations which the act of transcribing them induced. Doing this over a period of several months, I suddenly began to see. "To suddenly see," as Saroyan says somewhere. - Henry Miller; Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

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I am to be arrested, it seems. The officer is in mufti, with no identifying cop regalia at all. We are, after all, in Mexico. It's a bother, but I'm not overly concerned. I walked away from an arrest by this guy only this morning.

He stands behind me and takes my arms in sequence and fastens them with a combination of string and wire. There is no other restraint. We are in a large lobby, like a hotel. I sit down. I'm conscious that I have to mime being tied, as the bonds are loose and the "Deputy" may do a better job if I flout his authority by loose limbs. I make to bring my wrists together, though I'm sitting with my hands in front of me now.

A voluble and animated lady sweeps into the vicinity. It becomes obvious she is a realtor, and she carries with her a book of illustrated snapshots of properties.

"Just look! Only $1,330!" I take it that's American dollars. I don't mind telling her I'm under arrest when she notices my loose bindings. You can be arrested for anything in Mexico. But she ignores me, as I might distract from her business.

I am ready to walk away again. The "Deputy" is away somewhere, probably with the realtor. I stand to go to the john. But there is a group with dogs by the restroom, and I don't need the confusion.

I walk out of the hotel. I hear over beyond sight what sounds like small-arms fire. There is a bright halogen light right where a street goes over a hill in a tree-lined suburb. I move down off the road, into a culvert.

There are strange vehicles, myriads of them. They are arraying themselves all about the neighborhood. They are trucks, but they look like narrow apartment complexes on wheels. Two-storied and with stairs up the indented side wall.

I see a couple of canines where one of them has parked, and look closely.

Are there dog teams in all the odd trucks? Will they sweep the neighborhood? I note that the immediate region is a gated upscale community. Perhaps the revolution will reassert itself. Maybe I am a counter-revolutionary. After all, alone in a foreign land, you are as you are defined.

I kneel in the ditch beside the road. I'm hidden, for now, but if they're looking for me, I won't be hidden long.

It is a prefectly spendid cord. Nine feet of it. We have now completed weaving the last of a twenty one foot towline which will allow access to a trail. (What's strange is that...the trail does not seem to be steep. The line we've woven is now a cabled rope, and it lies along the path. But it's a great job we've done, and we're proud of it.

We (Niki J and Casey and I) visit a Buick dealer to "sponsor" our roadway. (It's no longer just a path.) He's a big guy who walks in a rolling swagger, and he asks how we're intending the road be built. We thought "sponsoring" had a sort of passive role for us.

He sighs, and steps out with a speaker. His shop is jammed, like a junk dealer. Maybe this is to announce the new road to traffic?

Next he comes out of the back with a huge front end of a '53 Buick!

It stretches gigantic, and it's almost flat, like a drawing for an ad. The big man steps up on a rope scaffolding resembling the support for the masts of tall ships. I understand we are to assist. I am very nervous.

He says, "It's all right; it's much easier going down." This is not encouraging, but I try and remain positive. I try and consider only my steps on the rope network (Reloj gave that as strategy for climbing the water tower back home in a night of misty rain), and not where I am in the universe of gravity.

It's done. The Buick frontend is suspended now all along the upper ropeweb. I can go down now. I step lower...

...and find I am already on the floor!

I have no idea how this happened. It's a long way up, and only a step down. I am so puzzled by all this business of building support for a path! I wonder at the Buddha and his eight-fold path.

General Grant while advancing along the Ohio pauses to limber up a field piece and fire a round of gallant salute. He has with his keen eagle eye spotted the ramparts of Fort Donaldson just rising above the morning mists down along the river.

However, as the smoke clears and there is no reply from the fort, the mist rises further and it becomes manifest the structure spotted was the turret of the SS Missouri, bound as he was for the Mississippi and Vicksburg. Whereupon the General ordered his artillery back in line and proceeded, and the event never made it into his memoirs.

I am within a new sleeping realm now, and so is everyone else. Left undetermined is how I know this about others. If you sleep on your left side, you dream of the future. On your right, it's the past that will be your topic. And on your back, the present is the subject.

This is universal, everyone. Most everyone sleeps on their right side. When they cramp, they spend very little time on their backs, then it's back over on their right. There are many studies which demonstrate this fact, yet none which explain it.

That is the dreamstate of my dream. This is the wake state.

I am in a classroom. I am a teacher. I understand this, although I have no idea how it came to be. I have neither the training nor experience for the job. I have a sheet from "the office" in the morning, and I detail a response on it and send it back, just like every morning. There are always two names on the sheet.

Here are some children. I love children. This I can do. I warm to them, smiling, squatting down. A parent is watching me, undecided. I have a colleague also, behind me. I must please her as well. Someone I see in a suit in the periphery. Maybe he's the principal. I don't know.

My colleague asks, politely, why I send the same report to the office each morning. I don't know what she means. Finally, I do.

If you train a monkey to perform a duty, he will do it repetitively but he won't evaluate conditions and factors. In the famous example from Hayakawa the van speaker destroyer, a monkey can drive through an intersection on green and stop on red. He will understand to do that. However, he will not be able to adjust his pattern if a truck is stalled in the middle of the intersection. He will plow on through on green.

I had learned to return the report to the office. The report was appropriate, once. It related to two stoonts and missing homework. However, it did not apply always to the same two and every night's homework.

I am caught out by monkeyshines.

The family, as loosely construed, is presenting a stage play. We are sitting around an indoor setting. The furniture is scant and obscure.

The "family" is Niki J's, actually, although no one recognizeable is presented here. They are all stand-ins.

Minerva is my center of attention. I am across the table from her in a small room. We are just sitting. There is an audience, of about the number of the actors. This Minerva is not my sister-in-law, but an unaccomplished actress playing her without any of her characteristics, which involve the comic theatrical sensuality of the ineluctably aging and much pretense. In the play, she just sits, as do we all.

We break. Stand up and move off the stage, out of the room. I know we are supposed to be back there for the next scene.

I am stepping through a high loft, almost like the upper level of a bank of prison cells, but there are no bars. These are bedrooms, only they are indistinguishable due to lots of fabric; curtains, bedspreads, clothing, all about, in no particular order.

One who happens to be walking the same pace and direction offers a correction to a bed. It is made of willow reeds bound and woven. He says, like this, and he straightens the head of the bed, which was bent upwards originally. I did not agree. I did not think he should be adjusting someone's bed.

(He is the type of someone I remember from the Army, sort of slack and flip. Used to lie at night in his bunk and talk dreamily with his buddy Roudebush, who was certifiable, in the upper. "I guess I loved her," this one once says.)

I am driving now, and too fast. I am returning to the stage. It is possible that all the actors have not returned. No, I'm sure they have not. I think we are remiss. The audience will expect someone to be sitting around our stage set when the curtain goes up.

I drive fast, and I see a building approach, like a movie run at a faster speed. I pull up, without noise or screech, just short of the door.

I take my place around the small room of the set, but I notice, something has happened to Minerva. Her blouse has been replaced by bandaging. She has been in an accident, I'm told. She must be in pain, although she does not show it, and no one offers any sort of commisseration. There is no alarm.

She lies face down in her place. This will be her new part. It's just another bit of the performance, hampered by her offstage accident, like a soap opera actress who becomes pregnant during the season.