Three Blind Tries

1. There are notables of French thought arrayed up by an ancient rock wall. They're standing there at varying levels. I know of them. I watch. They don't say anything. Post-structuralism probably.
   
   
2. There is a grouping of dimestory Indians inside a circle of onlookers. From somewhere outside the circle comes another. He is in a fringed buckskin jacket. The camera, or our viewpoint, pans close up to the fringe.
   
   He is an ordinary chunky guy with a weathered face. Reminds me of that legal buffoon Spencer. The chief until the entry of the Fringed One falls in behind, calls out, "He is the leader in all things."
   
   The Fringed One takes them in a children's conga line, weaving like a train this way and that. The tribe attempts to maintain dignity. I am thinking they are deriving their culture from old movies, just like us.
   
   When he stops, the Fringed One addresses the tribe, or us with the tribe as characters in the play. You, he says, set up demonstrations. And you, he says, arrange an appointment with the Secretary of the Interior.
   
   
3. It is the time for slipping in. We go where we aren't allowed. We cause no harm, we only sneak in because we can. I cross some ground and hear the dogs bark over inside the compound. We can slither in this ravine to that fence. But I simply trot along the gulch.
   
   I'm too reckless. They come where I'm hiding inside the wall with lights. I step outside.
   
   I tell the one who has caught me, we can do good, we can show you where the defenses are weakest. He laughs. Do you think we cannot withstand such as you? He opens a door and I see another very solid one behind it. They had allowed us in simply because we were no threat.
   

Fire Etched on Ice

In my traditional setting for dreams, a dim room so I don't have to tax my visual imagination too much, I'm sitting over a printed circuit board. Miz Ethleen, my high school Spanish teacher, is watching me suspiciously, like she did the time Claudia in the seat ahead of me exposed lots of her middle to reach over for something dropped.

You can tell what folks look like by studying the chips on the PCB which represents them. You want to see conformity, nice simple sound lacing in the welds and pouty lips.

I am coloring a chip on the board we're studying. I am aware my betawife is complaining at one side. I'm waiting for her to desist. She says I shouldn't be coloring the chips on the board. Always she represents the public against me, thinking that will stand her in good stead. Very threatened.

It doesn't stop, so I stand up and walk away.

Onto a lift, which is nothing but the ordinary run into a henhouse. That's right, it's a riser about one inch by two feet with a crosstitch of a flat stick for traction paralleling all along the way. We shuffle up the run like chickens.

Up there are rooms where some fabulous displays are available. The art showings are in rooms decorated to look like where you go to find fresh eggs. One exhibit is fire etched on ice. Another is hope in formaldehyde. Still more is a still wind.

You cannot remove anything from these premises, not even theories. You will not even be able to remember the works long enough to describe them. Still we head on up.

Someone is shuffling extremely slowly just ahead. There is a gap in front of him, but I cannot pass. Maybe he's working as hard as he can to move up. But he isn't moving very fast.