dreams

Ping Pong Balls

Faulty ping pong balls made from faded red styrofoam.  They're mushed together in the package.

Rubber Boat

We are headed out in a little Avon soft-bottom inflatable dinghy with a small outboard.  I try to angle across the bow of a small (about 150 feet), slow-moving ship, thinking that she will turn or slow enough to miss us, but apparently they don't see us and plow into us.  They aren't going fast, just a little faster than we can go, so they don't sunk or damage us, but we are stuck on their bow.

We shout and attract their attention and they slow enough for us to get unstuck.  The little ship is crowded with people, men and women, and it turns out they are all Japanese.  Fortunately, R is with us and can translate.   The ship's captain is upset.  We have dishonored him by causing him to run into us, even though there is no damage. 

I manage to mollify him by apologizing profusely (through R's translation).  We are next to a spit of land or an island with a brown beach.  There are some pressure washers there.  I select the second one to spray our boat clean.  The first one has been used by a woman in our party and may be spraying something besides water.  As I am taking up the spray gun I see a small Japanese girl who has been sleeping under the sprayers.  She is clutching a doll or a blanket.

By shouting we catch the attention of the ship just before it leaves and the girl is reunited with her people.  The good deed of finding her and getting her back to the ship has cleared the air and there is good feeling between us and those on the ship now...

Thornhurst

I am cross country skiing in a great loop through open fields.  ML is with me but she is riding a self powered sled, like a dog sled - bent wood and raw hide.   She has rescued someone.  We look at some broken piston clips, like the bronze swivel clips used on dog leashes, only larger.  I comment that it is good that she arranged for them to continue to be manufactured in Scotland - that the Scotland Company has been bought by the bigger McWare [no perceived irony in these names]. 

There is a man we don't really know who has decided to follow us on our trip.   He has left his home and gotten a job working for an oil company in Canada so he can be near us.   He drives off in a big oil truck with a teal green tank.  I am surprised it can go in the snow, but, although old, it is massively powerful with great back wheels churning ahead.

ML will go ahead with the rescued person.  I direct her to climb a small ridge just ahead and follow it up as it will lead her to a road out to the highway.  As I follow, I realize that this is a piece of land that used to belong to my mothers family.  The snow is gone and I am walking up the field from Rocky Point to the former site of Thornhurst, my mother's mother's childhood home, which burned before I was born.   

There is a new house at the top of the field, a small flat roofed house about the size of a house trailer, painted the same teal green as the oil truck, but with black trim.  Past that, at the site of my former great aunt and uncle's house, the house is gone, but a big barn remains.  I take the left-hand drive out and come across a big house that I have never seen, but that looks old and that I assume has always been there.  Beyond that, where once were fields and woods, there are now many large undistinguished, but expensive, new houses. I am in a hurry to get away from this place that is so different from the way it was in my childhood.  I run up hill to my right to get on the right-hand drive which will get me away sooner, and hop on my bicycle...

Ice Dancing

I am skating with a young woman, A.  We are skating down a frozen river of smooth gray ice.  The banks are snow covered and lined with white pine and white birch.  It is night and the sky is jet black.  There are no shadows, no light source, but I can see everything with perfect clarity. 

A is to my right.  I have her left hand in mine and my right hand rests lightly on her right hip, her right hand on mine.  We are doing a very definite sequence of steps:  step right, left over right, step right, step left, right over left, step left.  After four of these sequences, I turn and skate backwards; four more and she turns and skates backwards with me; then four more I turn and skate forward again; four more and we're back at the start. 

This sequence repeats again and again.  We are skating smoothly and in perfect syncronization, but quite fast.   The sensation is effortless and lulling, yet remarkably vivid.  I can hear the 'crish, crish' of our skates on the ice, see the vapor of our breath in the cold air, feel the warmth of A's hand and hip.

Gradually, I notice that the ice has turned black, and that the banks of the river are retreating and curving away on either side.  Ahead is only black ice and black sky.  A lets go of my hand and starts to skate faster.  I skate faster too.  We are skating like speed skaters, bent over, arms swinging, but still in rhythm. 

I look down at the ice which is so black as to be invisible.  When I look up again A is gone.  I am standing on a beach of black sand.  The transtion seem perfectly natural.  I realize that there is full moon, which is why I can see so well.  I also realize that the 'crish' sound I thought was made by our skates was actually the sound of little waves hissing on the sand.  I have a surge of emotion that wells up like an adrenaline rush, but I don't know if it is happiness or sadness...

Club dinner

I had apparently been admitted to some kind of club.  Only men were visible as members.  I came into the club suite of rooms several times.  After a couple of times people started making comments about chicken.  It dawned on me that I had been scheduled to provide a chicken dinner for all the club members.  I felt guilty that I hadn't done so, but continued to ignore the comments and play dumb.  I presumed there was some schedule posted that I should have been aware of.

I went to take Bill A and his family to their room, which was # 212.  It  was supposed to be in the basement of the same building with the club, but in fact wasn't there.  We realized we had to go back to the information desk to find out where it was.  To do so we had to catch a blue shuttle bus.  Someone pointed out a building as possibly where we needed to go, but it was a Domino's Pizza.  I wanted to get the trip over with as quickly as possible.  I was looking for a shortcut to get down to the level of the buses.  I climb down a ladder with thick aluminum pipe rungs...

Laundromat

Taking a pile of clothes to the laundromat.  The machines are surprisingly small - stainless steel and black trimmed, front-loading washer/dryer combinations in one machine - but all my clothes fit, and it only costs one quarter per load.  S is there with his wife N.  They offer me some clear, viscous liquid poured from an unmarked silver can with a small round hole punched in the top.   I am not sure whether it is laundry detergent or something to drink, but I put it in the washing machine...

Jib reach

Two parts of the same long dream: 

First, We have moved into a new loft to build some really big sails from Cuben Fiber.  The floor is actually sand and sloped like a beach, although not too near the water, but there are huge tables on which to roll out cloth.  I guess it is someone else's loft.  Peter Conrad comes down stairs and is introduced to me.  I can see him trying to decide if we have met before.

Later, we go sailing to the start of a race.  Several of the boats have our Cuben Fiber sails.  We are waiting for the start of the second in a series of races.  I find out that they have changed the course to one that will only consist of a jib reach.  I am incensed, because I think this will favor certain boats...

Noodling

A rather long dream, about which I remember little.  What I do remember is that for most of the dream I had my bass guitar with me and I was noodling away on it.  I had overheard someone else doing a little figure on the bass that I liked, so I puzzled it out and then improvised around it.  I got a lot of enjoyment out of doing so.  One other detail I remember was a woman talking about all these magenta impatiens-like flowers she was going to plant around her house.  I think she was PD, a contemporary of my parents, but in the dream she was a young woman....

graphics

Just a fragment ; pieces of light fabric printed with a batik like mainly orange and red pattern.  They are sail blanks of two sizes, both square with an arc cut out of one corner...

Journey to a heater

A group of us is about to set off on a sailboat race.  I am distressed to find that AR is in the crew.  She has bribed her way on by giving out cocaine.  I have to fire her. 

The race course goes to the east.  To get there we have to weave our way through some islands before reaching open ocean, as though we were going from Buzzards Bay south of Cape Cod.  My father has equipped the boat, so I am confident that we will have the right charts and tide tables, but we'll have to figure out the best route underway because it's time to go.

As we come through the first passage there is a turn to the right and under a two bridges. I can see that there are a couple of large, square-rigged boats under power coming through the opposite way.  I am vaguely surprised that the square rig is still popular for pleasure craft.  These boats are causing a bottleneck, so we change our plans and decide to take an earlier right turn.

The trip changes seamlessly from one through islands on a boat to the interior of a house.  We go down a flight of stairs then do a u-turn to the right and back up a parallel flight of stairs, then left along a hall and down a third parallel flight of stairs.  At the bottom of the third flight, our way to the right is blocked by a yellow door, slightly ajar. 

Through the opening I can see an old woman in a red quilted housecoat.  I stick my head in and explain that our group must pass through her space.  There are a couple of other women in there as well.  The room is slightly shabby, with with flat white paint thick on the walls and woodwork.  The floor is darkly stained wood, uneven and sagging in places.

The women acquiesce to our passage, but complain about the cold, specifically their little space heater that is broken.  I am thinking that I remember we left a space heater behind back where we started from, but, not wanting to go back, I decide to look at theirs to see what's wrong with it. 

The heater is a small brown electric heater.  It's plugged precariously into a light-weight extension cord along with a couple of lamps.  When I plug in the extension cord, the heater comes to life.  I can see the heating elements glowing orange inside it, and its little fan rattles noisily.  The amount of heat it puts out is small.  The vibration of the fan is causing it to slide across the uneven floor.  I can see that it will soon pull out the extension cord...