THE EPISCOPAL VICAR decides to construct a Celtic burial ground on a rise / knoll near her parsonage. Somehow, the parts have fallen on her: incredible stone crosses and monoliths, etc.

She engages my Lady of Gardenias to help on the stonework.

Getting there. we keep coming upon the rotary in Kittery, although the Vicar’s house is suspiciously like a restaurant at a rotary in Manchester in size and placement. More than once, I miss the right exit (or nearly do) – again, the tension of responsibility.

I remember raising Tibetan prayer flags in that cemetery-garden, too.

Rotary, or traffic circle, I now hear as “rosary.”

 

WITH MY LADY, ARGUING ABOUT where the town of PHARES was – are we trying to get there, together. What state?

I awaken and search my U.S. atlas: it’s nowhere!

 

I HAVE TO PICK HER UP AT THE AIRPORT. (Hey! That element again.) Take her to a ranch house, someplace we’ve rented. Lots of other people are around, as in-laws or whatever.

Not sure now whether she had a tattoo – think it was a fake, to goof on me. Washed off.

She has two babies now, the newest a curly haired boy with brown/black hair, who PURRS as I’m stroking his head, “putting him down.”

I’m building a wood fire in the fireplace while the phone’s ringing. “Will somebody answer that?” but all too busy.

Chaos! Chaos of her!

Every time I get near her, she backs off. Eludes me in the social scene, whether party or family gathering. Yet shortly before she’s to leave – and shortly after I concluded it wasn’t worth my effort to continue – she confronts me, invites me, draws me into a small room – a closet with a window, actually (like my bedroom in the bungalow long before I met her!) – and opens her blouse, asking me to caress her.

 

AS I THEN SEE, we’re in her apartment, also shared with a newspaper office – overlooking the workspace, like the residence in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Shakers are trying to recruit me, but I turn them down because sex is too important to me.

 

Am marrying the Nazarene, the Texan who can’t cook or keep house. I feel happy to be having such a sexy woman, nice body, etc. but also feel concerned, forced into it somehow. Am full of grave doubts, justifiably, of course.

 

Later, the Assemblies of God or some such are encouraging me to run with them. I forget the details, only the feeling of being desirable and yet a bit leery.

Once, I drop in on an Assemblies, intending just on a brief pre-Meeting worship. Instead, to my side, what I notice is my car’s up on a lift, getting a free inspection and oil change. I’m somewhat peeved, then wonder how they got into it to drive it etc. See, in time, they have a kind of universal key. In gratitude, I stay for the whole service.

Martha Stuart is in a flying pickup (battered old red/white/green Chevy) dive-bombing it seems straight toward us. “Don’t worry, she knows what she’s doing.”

Sure ‘nuff, she pulls it out into a smooth landing.

Waiting for lunch, the roll call. Standing in line, by work task or whatever, in fields or a garden near the dining hall.

 

Am rolling hard-boiled eggs – then shooting them with a cue stick to the opposite end of a billiard table. After striking a number of regular pool balls, I shoot an egg that cracks open, oozing yolk on the green fabric.

With a woman (maybe twenty, long brown hair, a red sweater) again in the sun, playful, morning, but she must go off perhaps to be executed that same day, shot dead.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew it would cast a curse over us. We wouldn’t be able to do anything without thinking of that. I just wanted us to be US.”

So later she’s acquitted or pardoned.

 

Apartment complex in the woods, kissing with a married friend and her sister-in-law, both staying at my place.

Later, I return home, the door’s wide open (how obviously symbolic these can be!), and everything’s gone, especially my computer.

Well, there were all of those years between the divorce and a second marriage.

Meeting a dark-haired girl at an Orthodox affair, there’s mutual attraction in our conversation, and soon I’m at her house, or more accurately, her parents’. Her mother rather encourages our interaction, and soon we’re dating or some such, despite the age difference. I make clear the limits in our relationship, but the companionship is enjoyable. At least she’s getting out into circulation.

Second part, leaving a church event, I’m swept away into a car with her family. Crushed into the back seat with her mother on my right, a brother on my left and another, facing me, in front. She’s to my far left. At one point, the driver, presumably her father, shifts from driving forward to extended reverse – and then quite fast – leaving the streets for rolling meadows and the like. It’s all exhilarating, we’re laughing wildly, happily – so this is a warm family and I’m part of it.

Somehow, it’s all back in my high-school years.

 

Marrying one of several sisters, but don’t know until the ceremony which one. Am pleased, though: attractive, tender, smart. Hardest part is going to be telling my parents, after the fact. Especially since we haven’t known each other long or well.

How old are you in your dreams?

I’m having trouble with my cell phone, an online functioning or access problem, Google maybe. Our son-in-law offers to help, works with it, patiently, for ages … tells me something about encryption. It’s somehow comforting, even if he does hand it back to me with a shrug. Don’t know if he’s fixed it or not.

In real life, it’s usually my wife or elder daughter who sets me straight on high-tech.

Looking down a wooded, snowy slope to a narrow, deep river – a steady stream/parade of sharks, tuna – big fish, almost minke size, all swimming in one direction silently, presumably upstream. Why? And why do I presume that? Me, watching – going off to get the kid, too.

Happy feeling … awe and mystery.

 

Revisiting an earlier dream site, I’m viewing whales from land as they frolic in the harbor beneath us.

I’ve since relocated to a small town where whales are, in fact, seen from the land. Just not many or often.

 

Later, my dreams returning to Ohio: Yellow Springs/Glen Helen (which now requires admission – imagine, trying to pay an admission fee in or even for a dream). Here the once-golden goddess becomes quite agitated and defensive when I mention my familiarity with whales.

Why is she even there?

Trying to drive up a very steep hill, something of a sparse residential area, solid, old white-frame houses … Can’t get all the way up, so back around to a well-lighted stand-alone bookstore – old-fashioned drugstore feeling.

The kid (suddenly she’s been with me all along) sees a friend and the friend’s mother, who takes us under wing – and off around another corner (now like old suburban blocks in Needham) – altogether, a good feeling, even when we don’t make it straight up the street (no argument from the youngster, who just shrugs it off humorously).

Still later, I raise my voice to my boss, who comes back with a curt – and decisive – firing. Instead of being defensive, I say simply, “OK.” Got a home, supportive family. They’ll take care of me. I can concentrate on my real work.

I have to meet a Quaker representative – AFSC or FCNL or some such – at the airport. Not actually an airport, but more the sense of waiting and greeting. A sunny, springtime morning, a little before 8 a.m. She {maybe an elderly he, the two overlap} is to make a presentation before a public-school crowd. We’re running late, which becomes a problem because I have to get a second Public Friend and am caught in transporting the two. Am supposed to get the second at 10, but the first is still at the lectern.

I greeted the first using “thee,” then realized she had no idea what was happening, so I added: “I guess it’s been a while since thee’s been addressed in Plain Speech.”

 

We’re at some kind of barbecue. A social setting, quite possibly extending from our Smoking Garden. I keep trying to put something on my plate – a sampling of this, a portion of that – but things keep spilling to the ground. Maybe I even miss my plate altogether. You’re trying to offer me something extra special you made, but even it fails to reach my mouth. But instead of being angry, you’re quite sympathetic and understanding, as if you know I’m sick or getting there.