Missed Plane, Moving Along

I buy tickets to go to Oregon. Mom and I talk over the phone and it’s a good talk and we plan on going. I buy 2 others, one for Brian and one for another person just in case.

The plane leaves at 3:30. I get to the airport an hour early. There is a sense of well-being and relaxed agency.

Then, mom doesn’t show up. In what seems a matter of minutes, instead of being an hour early, I’m am an hour late. The tickets are no good. I’m driving out of the airport.

Are there eight tickets or four? I finger through four folds of tickets with two studs per fold. No, the tickets are in two parts each; so, there are four tickets. That’s good, because I’d be even more upset if I ended up wasting eight tickets.

I think briefly about going back to the airport and asking for a refund. It’s a brief thought and it actually seems quite possible.

I drive out of the airport in a fog of emotional upset and quickly arrive into the pleasant offsetting quiet of the suburbs. The children see me speeding down the hill. A police car follows me.

They shrill “ticket, ticket…” all the way down the street. I’m sour-lipped with fear of being punished.

The police car purposively stops in the middle of the T intersection, blocking traffic. I wait a number of minutes looking at the cop car until I realize the radio is broadcasting a bust going on in the house the diagonal right of me and in the street left of me.

I was just scared and guilty for missing the flight; the cop wasn’t after me but focused on the bust. It’s time to get going. I take a right, away from the cop car, onwards.

The Icy Reflection Pool

Dad talks with another landowner about the reflecting pool’s rising a number of inches to near the top of the pool. He tells him he plans to sell it once it’s rose to its peak. They both agree to this as sensible, both planning to do it as a studied matter of course.

Dad dives into the iced-over lake/pool. I wonder “won’t this hurt his body, especially his heart with its condition? How can he even swim amid the ice?”

I myself can barely move, kneeled down in an iced-over love-seat recess embedded in the pool’s edge.

Then my weight breaks the ice open: it splits down the center of the lake, right where dad is swimming.

I stay kneeling in shock, unable to move. Eventually, I start scooping out watery snow around my knees; I’m almost clear; still, I can’t move my legs; I’m so tired; I was tired even before the ice broke.

Then, Dad yells for my help from the icy center. I worry at the moral dilemma of trying to save him. I don’t have to — the risk; besides, I can’t even move, and I’m so tired.

Sighs at the Country House

I’m at some rich place.

There is a sickly woman here.

I’m hungry and I get out some pizzas. I eat one right away then I wait while the oven heats up for the second one. The first pizza is from a different restaurant than the other. The pizza is made by developers. We talk about it and I emphaticly agree that developers are cool. ??This pizza will make a computer or will turn into a program?? The conversation is quiet and cultured, with the birds tweeting outside.

We like one another and we take off my pants and plaid shirt and get to it.

Then we run outside onto the gravel parking lot; it’s like she’s escaping from her desperate life. She falls in front of a posh car as it parks.

Inside the car is her husband and his mistress/business associate. She looks up at him, headlights glaring into her.

There is an understanding that its an open marriage because she’s sickly. It’s her loss; my relationship with her is a settling of sorts. The mistress gets out; she’s very businesslike, same as the husband.

We go back to our room… there’s actually two pants and plaid shirts.

My Stranger Chords in the Middle of the Street, House

I’m in the middle of the street playing my guitar. Some kids are playing there. A mom looks out of her window and wonders about me. Eventually, the kids, two blond boys about 12, are playing right next to me. I wonder if they even like my playing.

Then, I’m in the kids’ house. Their father is there; it’s a laid back good time. I’m still playing guitar.

Eventual their mom comes home and she is nervous I’m there. I sense this. I’m not even sure I should be there, even though I like it. I know it’s time to leave. I say my goodbyes. Before I go, I notice I’m carrying some red curtains or long hand towels. I don’t know how to put them back.

Steampunk Class Struggle Moment-o-rama

I am a big commander in some streampunk dystopian future. I’m being driven in a limo to talk with someone about something important.

The scene cuts to an intellectual: he’s smart and ambitious — one of those slender Scandinavian academics — thin and vital, at home with intellectual work. He works in his office or study; he talks to himself about some things. He gets up and begins a mathematical equation.

I walk in, almost imperially. I talk to him as he finishes his equation; it looks like a physics equation. Part of me wonders, though, how he knows physics; he’s so learned but does he have such scope to be proficient in all areas? I thought he was more a professor of humanities?

In fact, as he is writing the last part of the short equation (there are chalkboards full of equations), he mutters with vehemence about people not understanding his time — by “his time”, he is referring to the 60s!? — but I thought the 60s was all warm and fuzzy.

With his assertion lingering in the air, a miner walks in. This vital, amber-brown-bearded man lifts off his brass steampunk glasses and the fact that he’s covered in soot is now unmistakable, his coal grey face revealing striking eyes and healthy, white-pink circles of skin where the goggles had been.

He’s in his young thirties and layers of experience constitutes his sturdy body. He can’t say anything, though… it’s not his place due the class struggle and the reality of the mines. I can see in his quick, wise, intelligent face that he’s been responsible with and a leader of these efforts; his face shows there is much to be learned from him, despite the passion and ambition of our privileged intellectual.

Dissolved in Her Kiss

There’s a lot of hustle and bustle going around.

A straight-haired brunette walks in, not even my favorite and still so beautiful.

She used to seem out of my league; now our ages are close to one another’s.

I pick her up, chest to chest, and rotate her around. We are both wearing overalls. We talk some more. I brush a strand of hair past her ear; she likes it.

I lean into her gentle buzzing kiss and dissolve into awakening.

Old Room’s Got to Go

I’m hobbling around the apartment. There are some really old computers here: computers with screens build into the box, some screens with monochrome orange.

There is a young blond here who is a wiz; he knows all of these machines.

“About time I got rid of them,” I say.

The scene shifts; I’m in a public workroom/gymnasium.

I look up to my room; it’s at the top of a very high cinder block wall like a prison barracks. Some young, strapping men are there.

“Look at what they are doing to your hat,” someone says in mild disgrace. They hold my hat out the window/hole and rip the hat to shreds to spite me.

Some guys still have respect for me and say things to the effect of “for the sake of the old-timer”.

And, I do reach for than leash/rope and stay up, suspending gravity a while, but miss grabbing it. Then, I want to quit, but I try again and realize to get at it I have to wake up for real.

Will Have Snakes Free Before Amusement

I have two snakes that come out from inside me. One is a nice snake; the other is mischievous.

The ticket booth demands I swallow the snakes as a condition for entry. I refuse to enter. The snakes go about their way as I stand before the amusement park entrance.

Dealt the Tarot Deck

A woman is dealing out cards to me. As I receive each card I analyze it and tell its meaning.

After a while I realize I’m describing Tarot cards and its philosophy.

Brown and White

I’m in a classroom. A black woman talks with another couple of black people.

Then she asks me “if you could be a black person, would you be one?”

I fluster at this question and say… well I’m not a black person, so I can’t be one.

Class is about to start.

There is a pool table with some brown plastic eggs and some white plastic eggs; they are all separated in half; I quickly go about matching the halves with there appropriately colored other half and put them all in the pool pockets.

A lady professor is about to lecture.