I’M INVOLVED WITH A VIETNAMESE OR Thai kitchen – likely a restaurant – and we’re dealing with a huge bowl of soup. It’s festive, everybody’s happy, there’s a lot of golden color in the room, rather rustic with a late-afternoon feel.

Out in the dining area, they insist I eat it – press the bowl (blue and white, by the way) to my chest and face – but I’m leery, given my inability to handle hot spices, yet I don’t want to offend anyone, even if they are kinda daring me. Especially the younger owner right in front of me. What becomes clear is that I’m also facing a deadline, this is for a food page centerpiece, one I’m producing, and Flash is there, smiling, encouraging, and lifting his camera devilishly.

Despite the underlying tension of the difficulties of the newspaper side (a recurring theme for me), this is communal, upbeat, joyous.

 

I’M BAKING SPECIAL COOKIES at the rear of a large cafeteria when I notice they’re using child labor, and mistreating them. Child slaves. I say something to an obese Eastern European supervisor – gray, ugly hair – “Mind your own business,” she grunts. In front of a large pizza oven, a child stands, waiting. He smiles but the bottom edge of his white kitchen-staff busboy’s jacket starts to smoke. An ace-student screams, “Look! His coat!” and I rush up, grab him away yelling “Charlie!” He’s still smiling. I tell her to run for water, but she doesn’t. Only after a second order, she does but not fast enough. I grab the child and place his head under running cold water, a faucet over a big washtub basin, careful not to get water in his mouth or nose. Just as he starts gasping for air (he’d passed out), B.B. rushes up in her white Chinese suit and asks, with a combination of maternal instinct and reportorial business, “What’s the matter?”

 

COOKING (WITH MY GODDAUGHTER? not my wife, at least at the beginning) and I’m given a large onion to cube and add to our large stainless-steel skillet to saute. (In fact, I do not use onions – this is purely for others.) But it’s uncommonly large, bigger than a cabbage, in fact. So I make long slices (what emerges looks like a purple cabbage) but keep getting stuck when trying to figure out which way to go with the emerging slabs. I never even begin on the second half … is it that I keep awakening myself?

She had gone off on a tirade around dinnertime and hadn’t let up. I really do feel I can’t do anything around here, especially not “their” way. 

 

I’M PUT IN CHARGE OF A CHARITY PANCAKE breakfast. Never participated in one before, and I have no idea where things are or exactly who to contact or rely on. Still, I plunge blithely ahead. We’re very inefficient and very slow and soon it’s 11 a.m. and nothing has been served.

When I awoke, 5 a.m., not really disturbed by this variation of the unmet deadline. I had, though, enjoyed cooking two dinners the day before, in addition to some heavy editing of a novel was pressing to have up next week for release a week later.

 

NEXT, AT A RATHER FORMAL DINNER (the couple’s still rather in-heat), they move their forks and spoons and find, among packets of mint and the like, a condom neatly wrapped … and iced! Seems everyone gets these at their setting.

 

CUTTING AND CLEANING A LOT of chicken parts in stainless steel bowls in our kitchen. Lots of them.

NEW OWNER AT THE PAPER – a Marge Schott-type – comes through, demanding everything be tightened up, financially, especially. Tighter, more threatening, a real sense of being watched. No more slides or breaks.

Of course, this kills any sense of self-motivation or deep caring about one’s contribution to the enterprise. “They” are taking as much as they can, and likely a lot more, at a superficial level.

People are removing their personal effects from the plant – how symbolic! (I started to type “planet.”)

But what about the moldy fur coats?

 

RETURNING TO THE OFFICE, all of the chairs are gone. In use for a conference elsewhere. Yet we’re expected to work – productive output – as usual.

 

AM GOING TO WORK AGAIN as features editor/managing editor out in some steamboat town. Learning the ropes again, learned that (so-and-so) was the source of dissatisfaction leading to my termination before.

Adding, looking at alumni association announcements of big promotions, the photos of new administrators etc., the portraits, especially: that well-groomed confidence. I’ll never have that look, not again. Maybe I’ve passed too far over into the realm of ambiguity or out of the superficial or just feel no desire to be that politically involved, meaning the power trip.

 

THE DOCTOR MOVES OUT my bookshelf during a staff meeting while I’m flirting with a blonde new correspondent. How curious, considering his reputation and my standoffish reputation.

 

5 O’CLOCK SHADOW. She? Or Me?

 

“EVERYBODY’S WORKING their butt off.”

“Leave me a note anytime you’re out of the building.”

 

A CONSULTANT OBSERVES AND evaluates my work on Saturday or in the slot. “You’re doing too much. You should delegate more of these tasks. (Fill in the blank) once had this great insight on a day when he needed to get away in time for an evening meeting: every manager should plan to be out of the office by 4:30, to be able to pick up his or her spouse.

 

I SHUT THE CLOCK RADIO OFF and nearly oversleep work!

THIS MORNING I WAS A CHAMPIONSHIP swimmer. A symphony violinist. Not performing/competing, actually, but enjoying the status associated with each.

 

I’M BEING TOLD OF THIS ORCHESTRA that performs without written music. For that matter, without rehearsal, either. Essentially, the musicians keep playing until they find the right key, and take off from there.

 

A LITTLE LATER, I’M OFF, driving somewhere – maybe cross country – and my unseen companion is the same one who had told me about the ensemble. As we’re talking, we become aware of some unearthly music coming from the car radio. Here we are, perhaps in Kansas when this happens. It starts out as an array of strumming and plucking – guitars, mandolins, and the like. Maybe Balkan instruments, or Indonesian, it doesn’t matter. There’s something shimmering to it, and unformed, as bowed strings enter every which way. Eventually we realize they’re trying to follow the conductor’s singing – here’s the melody, now develop it (a woman conductor; the effect is like Pauline Moon with the children’s choir at church). Suddenly, there’s an up-swell of cellos in unison as the magic takes hold.

The previous night, the jazz host played a large selection Joe Zawinul and the Weather Report, with their simultaneous solo improvisations, start to finish in each piece, which likely influenced the dream.

 

IN AN ARTS CIRCLE, TURNS OUT to be a rehearsal, and I’m given a part in an upcoming show. Maybe it’s my age, but I’m having trouble learning my part, especially the big solo, like a tenor, maybe. First performance, I get through it fine, lots of support from the rest of the cast, including some kids. Second performance, ditto. Third performance, though, I blank totally and finally look down to the conductor in the pit, who starts mouthing my lines. I more or less mumble my way through, like I’ve never seen or heard them before except that it suffices. (The maestro goes from being a Harry Becket English type to George Emlen.) I hunker down for the next night, step up and nail it, reveling in my high B-flat.

Could this be more a reflection of my worries as a writer than about anything musical?

 

AT A CONCERT OF LUSH, LATE Romantic orchestral score and then, maybe listening on the radio. At finale, applause begins slowly, weakly, and I’m perplexed, considering the level of playing and the power of the piece. But then it gains intensity, with bravos and other cheers – and three barking dogs.

Seeing-eye dogs, the radio announcer informs us, don’t bark when seeing another seeing-eye dog or hear barking.

Yes, applause, with barking dogs.

IN THE KITCHEN, A GRAY DAY, she’s made some kind of decision, has the Question: “What are you going to do about it? It could be the answer of our marriage.”

Afternoon rainy and green; the soil, saturated.

Smiling at her, “I don’t know. Sounds like your problem. How do you want me to answer? It’s a no-win. Seems to me you’re full of … (One, two, three.) Besides, I have a date in an hour.”

& gave her a hug.

 

FOR SOME REASON, THE HOT WATER in our big bungalow was not working. We had to be somewhere in western Pennsylvania the next morning – a job, perhaps. “Oh, we can stop at the Holiday Inn on the way. Shower in one of the empty rooms.” Except we got started late, and entered a room shortly after 8. Turned out it wasn’t empty either, but was occupied by two single, very attractive young women. Hailey got her shower in; not sure about me. As I was dressing, one of the girls was taking a deep bath. The maids were circulating. I couldn’t find matching shoes, but we left anyway. At the doorway, Hailey was holding up some see-through panties, with a mischievous leer.

My, I could have steered this dream in a much richer direction, had I been more attentive … and less responsible. Turned Hailey into the procurer for my menage a trois. Oh, my.

WE’VE JUST PURCHASED an old house (this picks up on a much earlier dream, a white frame on Patterson Road) when she fills the bathtub for us, in a kind of seduction attempt … I resist, it overflows. I grab a fluffy lavender bath towel to mop up the mess before it drips through the ceiling below, … irritating those neighbors(!) As I grab the towel, I comment that it’s my current love. Still, she wants sex again “for old times’ sake.”

 

AS SOME TYPE OF ATTEMPTED reconciliation, we decide to take a cruise, on a parade of cruise ships that ply the Ohio River as a kind of amusement park/smorgasbord … something we’ve apparently done before and enjoyed. The fun is somehow in a ride – somehow akin to a roller coaster – that goes from ship to ship … that is, also akin to Kings Island … only this year, the big thrill is the gap between ships in which the “riders” fall to the water before being scooped up to the ship ahead. Only when I’m cast out, I manage to break my fall, float in ways resembling a parachutist, and land softly in the water. But rather than being scooped up, I remain there and am soon swimming down a street of amphibious cars and trucks. I wind up at her house and am even climbing around on the oven and sink when I realize the presence of a scholarly yogi who asks some pointed questions. Maybe I’ve been with other ashramites all along. Eventually, she arrives, miffed, with a sense of Scarface off in the background somewhere (driving away, it seems). I tell her she finally has what she’s wants, that I’m leaving for good, and I brush past her out the door. (Only later do I worry about the credit cards.)

Somehow, this picks up on an earlier dream – perhaps repeated – of an amusement park somehow like a zoo but filled with food stands. (Lobster in the Rough, expanded? The Deerfield Fair?) There, I also eventually find myself outside the fence, but also somehow freed.

At any rate, this was disturbing enough to wake me at 7 a.m.

Why her? I am feeling somewhat adrift these days. And financially inadequate, looking at plumbing and other household projects as well as the charter school’s shortfall and a desire for a vacation.

 WE’RE ON A TOUR BUS, coming down along the Northwest coast. The scenery is gorgeous, with the blazing orange light of late afternoon among swirling clouds. We cross a long bridge into America – the Columbia, I first think, though I can see little below or beyond – we come to a kind of Sturbridge Village of the Far West sort, debark briefly. I look up to see in the parting clouds a chevron of mountain peaks. I identify them, with Baker and Shuskin and the baby in front, but the clouds close over before you can view them, though you try.

Only days before, I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d want to travel.

 

SEVERAL TIMES IN THE NIGHT, I encountered Abraham Lincoln’s Best Friend. Maybe not completely, but at least close to it, probably from his New Salem days. A storekeeper of some sort, maybe a printer with the shop “out back,” at least the action appeared to be in the other room. He greeted me / us across a rough plank counter, had some Blacks working behind him. With impassioned, watery eyes kept trying to tell me / us about a meeting or gathering for later that night, but carefully, not to be overheard by spies. The general plight, fear in the air.

 

I’M OUT DRIVING ON SOME CURVING rural roads I once knew. Take a turn to the left. Somehow, I wind up returning to the Ashram for a visit. From the circle, Swami addresses me by my street name, obviously a rebuke, and then asks, “What are you doing here? Why did you come?” Obviously, there will be no satisfactory answer. I wind up leaving.

Since it’s a vacation, I stay overnight elsewhere. Find there’s a public evening performance on the street. It’s an Ashram presentation from the Mahabharata; Swami, seeing me, is quite upset, shoots darts. I get the picture, and leave – realize as I’m going she’s still entangled.

I’M DRAGGED TO AN INVESTMENT seminar in a rambling, modern one-story home. Maybe we’d received an invitation addressed to someone else. At any rate, went. Midway through the presentation, I realized the numbers didn’t add up and left but tripped on my way out. [Now in a different room, with sun: trying to gather up my goods spilled from my purple bag.] The pastor’s wife shows up, indicates she’s not happy with his participation in this scheme. The pastor, strangely resembling the black-belt master, appears and tries to argue me out of my reluctance to invest – turns on me, “How did you find out about this?” My last remaining items are under the head of a sleeping baby – a sick baby. I go to get a pillow so I can retrieve my remaining items. When I return, my bag has been stolen.

Don’t trust a pastor with investment schemes.

 

WE’RE OFF SOMEWHERE THAT vaguely resembles the historic manor overlooking the river one town over – there’s some development but the landscape’s mostly open with green fields. While strolling alone, I notice a dark Victorian house with Japanese touches and tell myself to bring my daughter back to see it herself. Then, as I approach a crossroads, I see an even more elaborate version, this one with a Queen Ann with a Buddha face occupying half of the second story, its mouth opening out on to a side porch. It’s a truly stunning residence. And then my daughter drives the blue Prius down the crossroad. I wave to her to look the other way, at the house, but she waves in return only at me and heads off to another destination. We’ll rendezvous later.

Another dream intervenes (now forgotten) but the next thing I remember is entering the cellar, which contains an upright stone monument of some note. John and Sarah Dawson are already there. She tells me his family knew the owners of the house and he once wrote a poem in honor of the stone, which he now recites. Not bad for a physicist, I think.

Somehow, we become locked in the cellar, along with another couple. There’s a door to the outside, but when we follow, it leads to hurricane fencing and concertina wire. We’re trapped?

Not quite. John knows some secret to get through, and it leads us to an outdoor dining room, one with white walls and black iron gates – the iron topped by a wiggle of white paint to indicate they were Catholic.

John explains the owners were Germans who lived most of their lives in Japan before retiring to this site, presumably with their children and grandchildren.

 

SOMEBODY’S EXPRESSING APPROVAL of my shoes, maybe even adding them to a Ten Best list. “But they’re cheap,” I counter, “I bought them at the Kittery outlets years ago.”
“Doesn’t matter,” comes the reply. “Look at that hand stitching and the fact they’re comfy.”