We are having a discussion on the street. It's a question about physics, but I can't bring it back to save me. Very technical and a revelation to me. I am with son Casey, and his science teacher in high school is our ah hoc instructor.

He holds out his hand. Casey laughs, and we pass on. I realize...he's now a mendicant street professor. He must beg of pedestrians, and his busking gig is science. He is neatly dressed for a wandering science beggar, but a little slipshod for a teacher. He was a very funny guy in school; everyone liked Boomer. (This isn't him; it's someone playing him.)

We pretend he's kidding, leave him on the street, forms passing in all directions. He smiles, and allows the outhrust hand to be ironic if we like. But he isn't kidding.

I don't like it. First you think, a scientist, you'd insult him by giving chump change. Then, do you not humiliate him more by ignoring his request?

I never know. I'm no good in these matters. I never studied science.

Here we go again, traveling. We're in a limo of unknown size roaring up a dark mountain road. I am frightened to see how high we soar, especially considering how I cannot see where we are going and that's an acute problem since I'm driving. I take solace in how everybody does this. We all have blind spots driving, so it's not unusual I can glimpse only fragments of roadside as we soar like over a giant expansion bridge.

I hold a discussion with some guy over the proper grooming and feeding of canines. He's talking about Scoob. I explain to him very logically how what I do is right, as we ever must. I happen to be in a tree of bare branches, about ten feet from the ground. It is also logical I be there, I think.

This isn't going anywhere. Long as I'm here...

11/01/1980

I am waiting for a lady in an off-beach shopping center. I'm in a central location so she can see me, `where the fountain should be,' which was the odd arrangement.I wander onto the sand, circle a dark figure of bizarre aspect set out on an expansive fabric laid out to protect her from the sand, a huge beach towel only much larger. She has many vague comforts about her, like a child's bedroom. She smiles at me. She's in a deranged silent dark mood, apparently, her face is like Boticelli's springtime women but with no softness. She hands me something.

I carry the gift away, hurriedly - maybe the one I'm waiting for has come and not seen me where I'm supposed to be. I don't know how this gift from the dark lady on the sand will go over. I don't know what the gift is, and even in the dream I've no idea.

The lobby of a funeral parlor. I have no direct reference to death, but I'm here. I am to somehow show solemnity, and I do. It is one of those stage sets, a den of an old Victorian with drapes and embroidered lampshade tassels and fabric table coverings.

Here, says someone in an upper room. Here is how you see him. Him means the honcho. This one shows me a hinged door on a sloping side of the inner closet to the bedroom, and I push on it and with difficulty it opens. There is a passage which goes on and on, a scaffolding in the dark with dim light only from somewhere high up. I have great confidence, only because someone seemingly in authority told me to go this way. We're all such children.

I am now in the bedroom where the Chief rests. He lays back at an oblique 45° angle to upright against a plush comforter on his bed. Saying nothing, but I understand. There are gifts for me I've forgotten now. I was pleased. The sort you receive from attending a very cheap timeshare hustle.

I intend returning to that lobby, but - I go by way of the bedroom door onto the landing and I am high up and workers are on a scaffold where the stairs should be. They see it not in their contract to convey safe passage to me, so they don't break from hammering and measuring. I ask. They say, you can - and they describe a rigorous pattern which would allow me to lower myself onto the bottom floor. But I merely stretch and hold, for I notice if I do so, the floor below, which had looked like a fifty foot drop, is only inches from my feet.

Which are unshod, by the way. I have left my shoes, which are unique and like the slip-on Robin Hood stocking Puck boots from the old Howard Pyle illustrations, are not where I left them. There has been some rearrangement to the furniture and the five or six pairs of shoes scattered in one corner are none of them mine.

I lace up some tennies, and am stopped at the door. I really didn't mean to steal them, I say, I had only mistaken them for my own. I didn't even realize these were the ones I had picked. It's not very credible, but it's true.

I leave, barefoot, and wonder if I can write or call for the shoes. I turn back instead, and I am not greeted with warmth at the door. Not at all. I escape all this opprobrium by exiting a back entrance. Or entering in reverse a rear exit.

Which leaves me in a strange neighborhood. I think, I'll just keep walking and somehow my evnironment will be familiar. That's what keeps us all going.

A tightly-thatched community, with wild vegetation and shacks everywhere; a ruddy pickup backs up towards me from below. I think, he'll stop, but he doesn't. Catches me right at the tailgate of his truck and pushes me uphill in the swarming grass. I complain, and the driver, an elder black man, lets out a stream of invective directed at me.

I keep walking, and he keeps yelling. He is very angry, and it isn't going away. As I approach what looks to be disheveled public buildings (maybe like the old tin cotton mill from my old home town, abandoned like a forgotten graveyard) there appears to my upper left a string of vehicles - they look like road graders but they are very narrow without blades and a louspeaker blares from each of them into the neighborhood at large.

"Be on the lookout - a vagabond invader is in your midst - you must be careful of contamination - report him as soon as he is spotted!"

I wonder if stealing sneakers is behind all this. Or merely being different.

I hop aboard a float. I'm nervy that way. It begins to approach a waterfall which runs through the old forsaken derelict structure. Down below is an actual run of ice. We will flow on our stream into the center of a large barn, and from there a landslide will bring us home.

I will be free of the anger, at least.

The ice wakes me.

My companion is a little pup. Scoob is offstage for the moment, like when we go to the beach. The pup and I sit at a small table which is part of a restaurant, but it's angled and obscure like a labyrinth so you cannot see out of your immediate fern-beclouded setting.

There is one who is hiding behind the greenery spilling from a planter box over our table. He has a camera. There is one plate, set before me, as you don't serve hounds in this place. The photographer intends taking our picture. I don't know why, but I don't mind. The waiter has no badge of office; he's like somebody in charge in a Mexican joint in his cleanest casual.

I see on my plate chips of what may be beef. I intend it for the pup anyway. Underlying the dish, whatever it is, maybe hidden by gravy, is a slab of steak.

Then the steak comes up missing. I follow the photographer into another part of the forest. He is in different dress now, but I recognize him. He's pretending to be on other business, behind a long counter like in old-time diners.

I ask the waiter, who is slouching nearby, hey, where's my steak? He shrugs. That guy took it. More shrugging. You have to replace it then. Still more.

They both think they can just wait until the dream is over. Time is on their side.

They're right.

In the morning I will suit out in my dress greens. There will be two of us, my first drill sergeant, a lanky sort with brevet stripes, which meant he was acting as a DI. I don't remember his name. It's been over forty years now. Maybe he's reading this, and will write and tell me his name.

I am to show up at work in my dress greens. This I don't question. It's an office requirement. Okay.

But it's morning and I seem to have left off gathering my uniform until now.

It's the busdriver's suit, you know. I hustle around and look for parts of it. Brother Joey and I will take the bus. He works somewhere else, but he's wearing dress greens too. I cannot find everything. It's been such a long time.

I am on the bus. Oh, wait, I say to Joey. I have on white socks. Joey says, that's doesn't matter.

Joey says not to worry. But then I think, hey, wait, I don't have my headgear! It's against the rules to be outdoors without headgear. I better go for my busdriver's hat!

I run back. I look in my apartment, then in Joey's. He has one small one-bedroom on the same floor. I am very late, I know, but don't look to see just how much late. I think, wait, there's this corner, and I go back to my apartment.

Find where old gear is gathered. Here's Joey's work cap; it's a sharp modified baseball cap, part of the fatigue uniform. Sure enough, I find my flat dress green headgear. It looks like Ralph Kramden's. I go out now.

I take the stairs rather than wait for the elevator. But that puts me down in a strange street. I run this way and then bend over that way, and then find a bunch of people at a stop. I stop.

It is some time here before I ask which stop this is. It's Third and Fifteenth. Oh, dear. I need Third and Second! Second Avenue is the route that takes me to the office.

I take off running up Third. I'm very late.


Do you know how pretty are the ridges up here? Like coral reefs in the sky. The bright colors are to warn away aircraft, you know. I ride it down the slope; it's like the spine of a Triceratops. Wheee!

The coral is now slithery, sinuous.

I catch up to the head of the snake. It flashes forked tongue, rambles.


Here I am now set down in a garage. I'm traveling with an Hispanic guy on bicycles. We're going somewhere, you bet.

He stops off at the window along the cavernous pathway. I ask, where is the school. He indicates, so I keep going.

But now I have to slide on my back, the way I swim. I pass others. Here is a child with a mother. It's my child; I have fathered it, but it's only like I jaywalked or something. Sorry, but she understands.

I am swimming over the pavement, the way I swim, which is floating on my back and paddling. I now am before the registrar. She shows me a mark in my record, her jaw set like it's a D. It's another child I've fathered. I'm chastened, but it's not like I failed the course.