SOME SCATTERED SAMPLINGS FROM RECENT days, by way of a catch-up:
• Fitness is progressing well. I have been hitting the gym an average of six days out of seven for a few weeks now. Having gotten this habit in tune, I still need to improve my dinner habits, but further results will pay off such diligence. Besides, I'm nearing a week of free-range grazing; I have about one month before the Vegas trip, where experience tells me I will gorge lustily. I want to go there in good shape, so if I slack off on exercise there, I won't have much catching up to do upon my return. Wynn Las Vegas is rumored to have a grand spa and gym, but . . . well, it is Wynn Las Vegas. Temptation comes with the territory.
• I had weird dreams or nightmares all week. Ordinarily I'd record them upon awakening and share them here. Not this time; they're best forgotten. The nightmares disrupted my sleep patterns. The non-nightmare dreams featured an unusually large number of people I know and one I don't: Vice President Dick Cheney. I don't have enough to deal with that I gotta be haunted by that fuck in my one legit, unassailable refuge?
• I feel like I'm done at work. The artist is not going to follow his job to Central City. When he leaves, I will be alone out of the fine crew I met upon starting there. My few interactions with my new Central City coworkers (can you call them "coworkers" if they're not in the same office?) have been positive, and I'm told my aid will be crucial in managing the transition and division of labor among that bunch. But while writing a guide to how I hunt for and write up stories for two of my columns, even though this was going to help me lighten my workload and plan ahead on the tasks I retain, I felt like I was giving away some of my reasons for being there. And in the back of my head I still imagine they'll keep me as long as it takes for the Central City group to be working, then hire my replacement out there. My best hope is to revise my resume, take what I can by way of connections, skills, and money, and brace for the next eventuality. At minimum, working with an entirely remote workgroup may be good training for freelancing, into which I've been looking lately (with aid and encouragement from the excellent Amy. How an inexperienced freelance editor and writer like myself would find work in what all rational observers are calling a recession, though, is a non-rhetorical question. And that's not even addressing the healthcare question.
• To my surprise, being single has been upsetting me these past several weeks, for the first time in years. The ratio of days when I don't care about living solo, to those when I do, has dropped from 75:1 to about 3:1. These are not odds that this gambler enjoys seeing rise on this Kentucky Derby Day.
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Checking Into the Nostalgia Suite at Caesars
THIS DREAM WAS AN ODD ONE:
I was in Atlantic City, at Caesars, late at night. I knew it was either the second or third leg of the Triple Crown earlier that day, which I hadn't imagined would result in a huge crowd, but it had. Even in the early morning, the casino and front desk were seething with well-dressed couples and groups.
It actually looked more like the sort of crowd that shows up for a big boxing match at the MGM Grand in Vegas: expensive suits on the men and even pricier but far skimpier outfits on the women; happy clusters of drunk LA gamblers weaving along, laughing at some in-joke; or VIPs trailing entourages or following burly private security goons. I'd no idea the Preakness or the Belmont Stakes could generate such a turnout at an AC casino. They do have race books, but they're nowhere near as plush as the full-scale sportsbooks on the Vegas Strip. My guess was that — as with Funny Cide or Smarty Jones — one horse had crushed the first two races and had been poised to win the whole damn thing. And judging from the happy crowd, he had sealed the deal.
I would've been at Caesars for the poker, not the ponies, but I got the feeling that I hadn't played yet. I must've headed down to AC on a hunch, based on the potential for a massive influx of fish due to the race. I'd brought my usual backpack of gear: a couple of books, gum, toothbrush and paste, contact-lens drops, some healthful snacks, journal and pens, spare potables, and a fresh T-shirt. (These trips tend to be daylong affairs.) I was heading toward the front desk to ask, perhaps vainly, if they had any rooms for the night . . . if not there, then at a sister Harrah's property.
I asked a female clerk that very question, sliding my Harrah's card across the desk. She frowned in concentration and skepticism, saying, "I don't know, this weekend. . . " while she typed. I watched people cross the marble lobby floor (which the real Caesars AC may or may not have; I don't recall) toward a hundred different destinatons, until I heard the clerk say, "Okay, I found you a room, you're all set!" She returned my Harrah's card on top of a printed register sheet, along with a pen.
Somehow, my Harrah's account had been linked, in the manner of Amazon's 1-Click option, to a credit card, and I was booked in before I had the chance to decide whether I wanted it or not. What the hell, I figured, it'll just be tougher to get a place to sleep later. I signed the form and accepted a door card. It was then that I recalled that I hadn't packed a new set of contacts or, uncharacteristically, my glasses. I figured I would have to make do by rehydrating with eye drops.
Unlike a lot of dreams in which I am in a large, multilevel building, I didn't spend hours wandering through Caesars's endless bowels. I have indeed had such a casino-based no-escape dream, in 1995 shortly after my first-ever trip to a gambling palace, in which I hiked through just about every public and staff-only section of some AC casino before escaping to the Boardwalk. Then a midget stole my jackpot check after the one and only Felix screwed up countersigning it three times. This time, though I headed directly to my room, high up in the property judging by the view from the window.
The room still needed to be cleaned up from the last guest: unmade bed, brimming trashcans, glasses and bottles on the dresser, and so forth. I figured I could always call down to expedite the makeup process. First I wanted to see the view. In this version of Caesars, a wing of the hotel extended onto the pier that, in the real world, stretches out from the property over the beach and Atlantic, and now supports a New Jersey branch of the Vegas Forum Shops. My room faced north, and from this high room I had a commanding nighttime view of the hotel-casinos glittering up the Boardwalk.
I then began to notice that the hotel room fittings really didn't look like the stock, mass-purchased furniture you usually find in these places. The king-size bed was topped (or, in this case, strewn) with the sort of comforter and sheets you might have at home, not the usual bulletproof bed cover purchased 20 years ago and maybe laundered annually. The furniture was more unique in design, too.
When I walked past the bathroom into the rest of the suite, I easily could have been entering someone's den. It was definitely more like someone's home, rather than a hotel room. The furniture looked about 30 years old and seemed to have been chosen by someone with tastes formed considerably before that. The feeling that I was in the home of a person my parents' age was underscored by the collectibles arrayed on wooden racks on the northern wall. (Which, like all the walls in this room, was wood paneled, not wallpapered.) Scores of small glass and porcelain figurines, knickknacks, and souvenirs occupied the entire wall on dark-wood shelving, all free of dust.
It was while scrutinizing this startling, noncontextual collection that I woke up. For explaining that last twist, I got nothin'.
I was in Atlantic City, at Caesars, late at night. I knew it was either the second or third leg of the Triple Crown earlier that day, which I hadn't imagined would result in a huge crowd, but it had. Even in the early morning, the casino and front desk were seething with well-dressed couples and groups.
It actually looked more like the sort of crowd that shows up for a big boxing match at the MGM Grand in Vegas: expensive suits on the men and even pricier but far skimpier outfits on the women; happy clusters of drunk LA gamblers weaving along, laughing at some in-joke; or VIPs trailing entourages or following burly private security goons. I'd no idea the Preakness or the Belmont Stakes could generate such a turnout at an AC casino. They do have race books, but they're nowhere near as plush as the full-scale sportsbooks on the Vegas Strip. My guess was that — as with Funny Cide or Smarty Jones — one horse had crushed the first two races and had been poised to win the whole damn thing. And judging from the happy crowd, he had sealed the deal.
I would've been at Caesars for the poker, not the ponies, but I got the feeling that I hadn't played yet. I must've headed down to AC on a hunch, based on the potential for a massive influx of fish due to the race. I'd brought my usual backpack of gear: a couple of books, gum, toothbrush and paste, contact-lens drops, some healthful snacks, journal and pens, spare potables, and a fresh T-shirt. (These trips tend to be daylong affairs.) I was heading toward the front desk to ask, perhaps vainly, if they had any rooms for the night . . . if not there, then at a sister Harrah's property.
I asked a female clerk that very question, sliding my Harrah's card across the desk. She frowned in concentration and skepticism, saying, "I don't know, this weekend. . . " while she typed. I watched people cross the marble lobby floor (which the real Caesars AC may or may not have; I don't recall) toward a hundred different destinatons, until I heard the clerk say, "Okay, I found you a room, you're all set!" She returned my Harrah's card on top of a printed register sheet, along with a pen.
Somehow, my Harrah's account had been linked, in the manner of Amazon's 1-Click option, to a credit card, and I was booked in before I had the chance to decide whether I wanted it or not. What the hell, I figured, it'll just be tougher to get a place to sleep later. I signed the form and accepted a door card. It was then that I recalled that I hadn't packed a new set of contacts or, uncharacteristically, my glasses. I figured I would have to make do by rehydrating with eye drops.
Unlike a lot of dreams in which I am in a large, multilevel building, I didn't spend hours wandering through Caesars's endless bowels. I have indeed had such a casino-based no-escape dream, in 1995 shortly after my first-ever trip to a gambling palace, in which I hiked through just about every public and staff-only section of some AC casino before escaping to the Boardwalk. Then a midget stole my jackpot check after the one and only Felix screwed up countersigning it three times. This time, though I headed directly to my room, high up in the property judging by the view from the window.
The room still needed to be cleaned up from the last guest: unmade bed, brimming trashcans, glasses and bottles on the dresser, and so forth. I figured I could always call down to expedite the makeup process. First I wanted to see the view. In this version of Caesars, a wing of the hotel extended onto the pier that, in the real world, stretches out from the property over the beach and Atlantic, and now supports a New Jersey branch of the Vegas Forum Shops. My room faced north, and from this high room I had a commanding nighttime view of the hotel-casinos glittering up the Boardwalk.
I then began to notice that the hotel room fittings really didn't look like the stock, mass-purchased furniture you usually find in these places. The king-size bed was topped (or, in this case, strewn) with the sort of comforter and sheets you might have at home, not the usual bulletproof bed cover purchased 20 years ago and maybe laundered annually. The furniture was more unique in design, too.
When I walked past the bathroom into the rest of the suite, I easily could have been entering someone's den. It was definitely more like someone's home, rather than a hotel room. The furniture looked about 30 years old and seemed to have been chosen by someone with tastes formed considerably before that. The feeling that I was in the home of a person my parents' age was underscored by the collectibles arrayed on wooden racks on the northern wall. (Which, like all the walls in this room, was wood paneled, not wallpapered.) Scores of small glass and porcelain figurines, knickknacks, and souvenirs occupied the entire wall on dark-wood shelving, all free of dust.
It was while scrutinizing this startling, noncontextual collection that I woke up. For explaining that last twist, I got nothin'.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
William S. Burroughs: The Junky, They Called Him
I GO THROUGH PHASES in which I crawl into one author's books, just burrow through them to the exclusion of all else. Usual culprits include the works of Henry Rollins, Hunter S. Thompson, and the man who died 10 years ago today, William S. Burroughs. Ever since then, I occasionally need to hear a polyglot babble echoing through the shadowed sinuses of Tangier, feel the baleful gaze of Doctor Benway as he leers across an incriminating file on his desk, or walk the windy avenues of Manhattan in search of a junk connection, aching — vicariously, I assure you — to satiate the Algebra of Need.
Burroughs initially denied his destiny as a writer, despite some fitful early efforts and the insistence of Jack Kerouac. Sliding through life as (among other things) an exterminator, dope peddler, lush roller, and gentleman farmer of marijuana, Burrough's fate eventually caught up with him in the form of a deadly game of William Tell with his speed-freak wife, Joan Vollmer. An "Ugly Spirit" descended upon Burroughs, as he described it, and the only way to be free of it was to "write [my] way out."
Even before confronting the Ugly Spirit, he had been crafting his wryly comical routines for years with his experiences, and verbally, with his early associates and future Beat legends, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Once he began writing in earnest, out poured his experiences with the needle into Junky. From the furtive silence of a repressed era, his homosexual longings found light in Queer, even if the book itself could not be published for decades. And from the post-Hiroshima reality of the Nazi control system being overthrown in favor of East–West national security paranoia and literary censorship, from the dawning age of faceless computers and the advertising shuck replacing the old carny con, from Burroughs's flirtations with medical school, psychiatry, and extermination of sinister arthropods in countless Chicago tenements, rose his signature literary nightmare, Naked Lunch.
I love Burroughs's prose because it seems to have infinite space within it. Neuromancer, American Tabloid, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas evoke this feeing in me . . . a desire to crawl into the book and explore, with the sense that I will indeed find something around the corners. This is odd in the case of Burroughs's' work, as Junky is a spare, direct narrative, and Naked Lunch seems to take place only occasionally in our familiar world. He frames his work with just enough supports, so that the shocking or humorous images in the rooms he has built have all the more impact. And you want to look in the attic once he has done so. But always, the end of the book or story boots you out the door.
When Burroughs himself exited, as all of must, it has been written that many were surprised he was still alive. Yet there he was, back in the genteel Midwest he had spent so long eliminating from his system, with his paintings and guns and the words still flowing. In his old age, Burroughs took on an androgynous beauty, only falling fully into the male category when he spoke in his sly, croaking drawl, by turns wising up the marks with his hard-won wisdom and admitting his foolishness in a world where nobody, ultimately, beats the Mark Inside. I had a dream several months ago in which I was in his house in Lawrence, Kansas, sitting beside him on a couch while he read from his diary. His voice and manner were so comfortable that I closed my eyes and rested my head on his ancient shoulder. Don't worry, the next scene in the dream didn't involve a session with the original Steely Dan. I just let his words carry me into one of those infinite spaces of his.
I have Naked Lunch in my workbag for tomorrow. I may just take it to bed as my nighttime reading, and if I wake up with white hair or a centipede body, so be it. I'll ring up Doc Benway for instructions.
Burroughs initially denied his destiny as a writer, despite some fitful early efforts and the insistence of Jack Kerouac. Sliding through life as (among other things) an exterminator, dope peddler, lush roller, and gentleman farmer of marijuana, Burrough's fate eventually caught up with him in the form of a deadly game of William Tell with his speed-freak wife, Joan Vollmer. An "Ugly Spirit" descended upon Burroughs, as he described it, and the only way to be free of it was to "write [my] way out."
Even before confronting the Ugly Spirit, he had been crafting his wryly comical routines for years with his experiences, and verbally, with his early associates and future Beat legends, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Once he began writing in earnest, out poured his experiences with the needle into Junky. From the furtive silence of a repressed era, his homosexual longings found light in Queer, even if the book itself could not be published for decades. And from the post-Hiroshima reality of the Nazi control system being overthrown in favor of East–West national security paranoia and literary censorship, from the dawning age of faceless computers and the advertising shuck replacing the old carny con, from Burroughs's flirtations with medical school, psychiatry, and extermination of sinister arthropods in countless Chicago tenements, rose his signature literary nightmare, Naked Lunch.
I love Burroughs's prose because it seems to have infinite space within it. Neuromancer, American Tabloid, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas evoke this feeing in me . . . a desire to crawl into the book and explore, with the sense that I will indeed find something around the corners. This is odd in the case of Burroughs's' work, as Junky is a spare, direct narrative, and Naked Lunch seems to take place only occasionally in our familiar world. He frames his work with just enough supports, so that the shocking or humorous images in the rooms he has built have all the more impact. And you want to look in the attic once he has done so. But always, the end of the book or story boots you out the door.
When Burroughs himself exited, as all of must, it has been written that many were surprised he was still alive. Yet there he was, back in the genteel Midwest he had spent so long eliminating from his system, with his paintings and guns and the words still flowing. In his old age, Burroughs took on an androgynous beauty, only falling fully into the male category when he spoke in his sly, croaking drawl, by turns wising up the marks with his hard-won wisdom and admitting his foolishness in a world where nobody, ultimately, beats the Mark Inside. I had a dream several months ago in which I was in his house in Lawrence, Kansas, sitting beside him on a couch while he read from his diary. His voice and manner were so comfortable that I closed my eyes and rested my head on his ancient shoulder. Don't worry, the next scene in the dream didn't involve a session with the original Steely Dan. I just let his words carry me into one of those infinite spaces of his.
I have Naked Lunch in my workbag for tomorrow. I may just take it to bed as my nighttime reading, and if I wake up with white hair or a centipede body, so be it. I'll ring up Doc Benway for instructions.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
These Dreams Began When I Closed My Eyes
I DON'T NORMALLY REMEMBER many of my dreams. Last night was different. This is how the film festival went, with my interpretation/footnotes in italics.
1. I am walking along a NYC street in daylight, probably Chelsea or the Village in Manhattan, on my way to the weekly poker game (which is held in Bergen County, so this was odd). It is held in a nondescript basement store front, so I walk down a short flight of stairs and open the curtain-covered door. About half of the regular players are sitting around the two tables in the store, including the host and, to my surprise, my buddy Len. We greet each other happily and ask what brings us to this game.
Len mentions that there is also a no-limit hold'em tournament in progress in the store next door, but that it seems tough, because "the players look like pros." I wasn't aware there was another game so close by, so I walk over to take a peek. Sure enough, there's a tourney in progress: four full tables (so it must've been early in the game), no talking, just the sounds of cards and chips being shuffled. I assume that Len took this silence for professionalism, rather than there being any actual TV pros present, and I go back to the first store and share my skepticism.
I also notice that the regular host has disappeared. Nobody knows where he went. A couple more players show up over the next several minutes and ask where he is too. By the time we have enough for a single full table, the players are restless, so I tell them, "The hell with this, I'll get it rolling." Amid grunts of assent, the guys and Len gather around one of the tables. A player begins selecting cards from A through 9 for the seat draw, and I retrieve the cash box and begin cutting out stacks of chips, $100 worth each.
Len is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We saw each other at Jen and Steve's wedding recently, and he mentioned playing poker with family members. The host and players were both from my regular, real-life Thursday game, which due to job-hunting, I haven't played in for a few weeks. I was also contemplating going to Foxwoods yesterday afternoon and trawling in the fishy waters of shite players through the afternoon and evening, but I decided against it.
I used to host the regular game, until Danny, one of my players, volunteered his finished basement; now I act as occasional backup. Even at his place, I helped run the game for several months by selling chips and running cashout at the end of the night. As for the location, one of the former regulars in the game, a hustler type of guy who always seemed to have watches or iPods to sell, mentioned he was trying to start an illicit game in a disused storefront somewhere in Hudson County. Also, my walk to and from my former workplace in Chelsea led along a street with just these sorts of basement-level shops. So the game and tourney in the dream were literally and legally "underground."
2. I am in the bedroom of my present apartment, but it is located in the Bronx, at least 4 stories up, My friend Leanne is my next-door neighbor. I am looking out my window, and spot her looking out of hers. She is holding a camera, and says she has one more shot on the roll before she can get it developed. I volunteer myself as a subject. I try to strike a pose in which I am nonchalant, gazing into the distance in a sort of James Dean/Jack Kerouac casual way. For some reason I even imagine she's shooting me with black-and-white film. She takes the picture, but she seems displeased with it because of the awkward twisting to get the shot while hanging out thew window, and she withdraws back into her apartment.
While getting myself posed, I noticed that a bookseller on the ground floor had set up his wares outside, so now I look down to see what he has for sale. Paperbacks mostly, old ones . . . nonfiction texts from the 1960s and early 1970s, and pulps from the golden age of the medium. The spines indicate these books have been read repeatedly. One of them looks like a book I own. I want a better look, but I'm nervous about leaning too far out the window.
From my recent trips to the Bronx and Queens, city apartment dwelling has been on my mind. Leanne is another longtime friend who I saw at the wedding two weeks ago. Doubtless I saw her taking pictures when she wasn't serving in the capacity of bridesmaid. Also, she circulated a note last night about Memorial Day doings at her house. As regards my pose and the monochrome nature of the film, I probably had in mind some of the shots in the magnificent book The Birth of the Beat Generation. I can tell you that living over a used bookstore is as much a waking dream of mine as a sleeping one, and whenever I pass such displays in the city, I always dig in. Old nonfiction paperbacks that were probably someone's textbooks intrigue me; I page through to dig the highlighting or marginalia. I've also been thinking about old pulp novels, in particular Chip Kidd's use of Thomas Allen's sculptures on the reprints of three old James Ellroy novels, and the long lost B&M Avenue Victor Hugo bookstore on Newbury Street in Boston, a frequent cash-sink during my college years. And of course you can usually find a wealth of Beat lit in any decent used bookstore.
3. I am in the front yard of my childhood home in Jersey. This is some time ago, because a birch tree that in real life succumbed to fungus is growing in good health next to the patio. I hear the cheep cheep of small birds coming from the tree, but I also hear barking! In the main crotch of the tree there is a very large nest. A voiceover, in the style of a nature special, informs me that a mother bird has captured a puppy to feed to her young. The mother bird returns at this point — a raptor resembling a giant, angry crow — and I realize it's standing on a struggling black furry mound, presumably the puppy.
I am not letting some shitty bird tear up a puppy and feed it to its young. I retrieve a .22 rifle from just inside the house and plink at the bird until it flies off. (I do hit it directly a couple of times, but the bullets don't drop it.) I then climb up to the nest. The puppy is a black Labrador retriever, unharmed and feisty, and he is snapping at four big black birds in the bottom of the nest. I lift the puppy by the scruff of its neck and set him down on the lawn, hoping he won't run into the street. Still angry at the bird, I then invert the nest and dump the four chicks onto the lawn. They continue cheep cheeping, but are too young to fly away. The voiceover says, as the puppy notices them, "Then the puppy expresses an instinct even deeper than the mother's need to feed her young: revenge." The dog tries to bite them, but they have big yellow beaks and nip back, at which he jumps back in surprise. I decide to even the battle up and stomp once on each chick. The dream ends with the pup chomping one of the chicks — still alive but subdued — and shaking his head wildly.
I do miss the birches that used to stand on my parents' property. My childhood dog was a black Labrador/beagle mix, and I have loved the pure strains of both breeds since. I am a longtime nature-show viewer, and one of my most hated moments in these shows is when a baby animal gets snapped up by some predator, such as the skua eating penguin eggs or sea turtles getting snapped up by prick shorebirds. Perhaps the urban legend of an owl or hawk grabbing a person's poodle before their horrified eyes also played into the setup for this dream. Either way, I make no apologies for stomping on baby birds that might grow up to steal some kid's puppy. Insert stock nature-special line here about man being the world's worst predator.
The rifle is one that my parents retrieved from my maternal uncle's condo in Parkchester after he was murdered. They wrapped it in a couple of pink towels with rubber bands, then drove it and an amber-plastic box of .22 shells back to New Jersey. It stood behind the door to the dining room for a week or so, still swathed absurdly in pink, while my parents tried to figure out how to get rid of it. They eventually took the rifle and ammo to the cops and let them dispose of it. For most of my life, I have had dreams in which the [weapon] I use to kill or repel [adversary] does not work. Look that up in your Interpretation of Dreams.
4. I am in the bedroom of an apartment, presumably mine, but the layout and my possessions are all different. Not sure where it's located. I live next door to a woman I have not seen in real life in many years. My door is open, and I can see into her apartment, where she is weighing herself. Dissatisfied with the read on the first scale, she tries a second. This also fails to please. (She is fully dressed, which can't help the reading.)
"Do you want to try mine? You could average the three of them," I offer, half serious.
She looks at me for a second, then rushes past to try my scale. I discreetly peek at the LED: 206. Completely inaccurate; the woman probably doesn't weigh more than 155 in the altogether. This seems to please her anyway, and she walks over to me and thanks me. What weight she carries is very nicely distributed. "So, do you invite people in to weigh themselves every day?"
"Maybe I just wanted a pretty girl in my apartment."
She laughs and steps within my reach, fixing my gaze. "Are you being facetious?"
"Nope."
She puts her arms around me and kisses me deeply. I return it like I was waiting for it. Evidently I've known this woman longer than just the 2 minutes that have passed thus far in the dream . . . which, annoyingly, cuts off about ten seconds after this.
I am tempted to say I was living in a college dorm. The halls were painted cinderblock and uncarpeted. In many of the dorms I've seen, one could open a door and see straight across into your neighbor's cell. This seemed more like a suite of rooms, one that uncharacteristically had a second entrance in the bedroom. Giggity. I do weigh myself each morning, and I had discussed my loss of a pound this week with M. the previous evening, so weight loss was on my mind before I hit the hay.
As for the woman . . . the Internet and Google being what they are, I will leave her ID blank. She was quite curvaceous, had a sweet smile and gorgeous face, and she appreciated my sense of humor. I look fondly on the short time I knew her. As for me, such rêves de l'amour are extremely uncommon for me, a surprise considering I haven't been in a relationship since the Clinton Administration.
1. I am walking along a NYC street in daylight, probably Chelsea or the Village in Manhattan, on my way to the weekly poker game (which is held in Bergen County, so this was odd). It is held in a nondescript basement store front, so I walk down a short flight of stairs and open the curtain-covered door. About half of the regular players are sitting around the two tables in the store, including the host and, to my surprise, my buddy Len. We greet each other happily and ask what brings us to this game.
Len mentions that there is also a no-limit hold'em tournament in progress in the store next door, but that it seems tough, because "the players look like pros." I wasn't aware there was another game so close by, so I walk over to take a peek. Sure enough, there's a tourney in progress: four full tables (so it must've been early in the game), no talking, just the sounds of cards and chips being shuffled. I assume that Len took this silence for professionalism, rather than there being any actual TV pros present, and I go back to the first store and share my skepticism.
I also notice that the regular host has disappeared. Nobody knows where he went. A couple more players show up over the next several minutes and ask where he is too. By the time we have enough for a single full table, the players are restless, so I tell them, "The hell with this, I'll get it rolling." Amid grunts of assent, the guys and Len gather around one of the tables. A player begins selecting cards from A through 9 for the seat draw, and I retrieve the cash box and begin cutting out stacks of chips, $100 worth each.
Len is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We saw each other at Jen and Steve's wedding recently, and he mentioned playing poker with family members. The host and players were both from my regular, real-life Thursday game, which due to job-hunting, I haven't played in for a few weeks. I was also contemplating going to Foxwoods yesterday afternoon and trawling in the fishy waters of shite players through the afternoon and evening, but I decided against it.
I used to host the regular game, until Danny, one of my players, volunteered his finished basement; now I act as occasional backup. Even at his place, I helped run the game for several months by selling chips and running cashout at the end of the night. As for the location, one of the former regulars in the game, a hustler type of guy who always seemed to have watches or iPods to sell, mentioned he was trying to start an illicit game in a disused storefront somewhere in Hudson County. Also, my walk to and from my former workplace in Chelsea led along a street with just these sorts of basement-level shops. So the game and tourney in the dream were literally and legally "underground."
2. I am in the bedroom of my present apartment, but it is located in the Bronx, at least 4 stories up, My friend Leanne is my next-door neighbor. I am looking out my window, and spot her looking out of hers. She is holding a camera, and says she has one more shot on the roll before she can get it developed. I volunteer myself as a subject. I try to strike a pose in which I am nonchalant, gazing into the distance in a sort of James Dean/Jack Kerouac casual way. For some reason I even imagine she's shooting me with black-and-white film. She takes the picture, but she seems displeased with it because of the awkward twisting to get the shot while hanging out thew window, and she withdraws back into her apartment.
While getting myself posed, I noticed that a bookseller on the ground floor had set up his wares outside, so now I look down to see what he has for sale. Paperbacks mostly, old ones . . . nonfiction texts from the 1960s and early 1970s, and pulps from the golden age of the medium. The spines indicate these books have been read repeatedly. One of them looks like a book I own. I want a better look, but I'm nervous about leaning too far out the window.
From my recent trips to the Bronx and Queens, city apartment dwelling has been on my mind. Leanne is another longtime friend who I saw at the wedding two weeks ago. Doubtless I saw her taking pictures when she wasn't serving in the capacity of bridesmaid. Also, she circulated a note last night about Memorial Day doings at her house. As regards my pose and the monochrome nature of the film, I probably had in mind some of the shots in the magnificent book The Birth of the Beat Generation. I can tell you that living over a used bookstore is as much a waking dream of mine as a sleeping one, and whenever I pass such displays in the city, I always dig in. Old nonfiction paperbacks that were probably someone's textbooks intrigue me; I page through to dig the highlighting or marginalia. I've also been thinking about old pulp novels, in particular Chip Kidd's use of Thomas Allen's sculptures on the reprints of three old James Ellroy novels, and the long lost B&M Avenue Victor Hugo bookstore on Newbury Street in Boston, a frequent cash-sink during my college years. And of course you can usually find a wealth of Beat lit in any decent used bookstore.
3. I am in the front yard of my childhood home in Jersey. This is some time ago, because a birch tree that in real life succumbed to fungus is growing in good health next to the patio. I hear the cheep cheep of small birds coming from the tree, but I also hear barking! In the main crotch of the tree there is a very large nest. A voiceover, in the style of a nature special, informs me that a mother bird has captured a puppy to feed to her young. The mother bird returns at this point — a raptor resembling a giant, angry crow — and I realize it's standing on a struggling black furry mound, presumably the puppy.
I am not letting some shitty bird tear up a puppy and feed it to its young. I retrieve a .22 rifle from just inside the house and plink at the bird until it flies off. (I do hit it directly a couple of times, but the bullets don't drop it.) I then climb up to the nest. The puppy is a black Labrador retriever, unharmed and feisty, and he is snapping at four big black birds in the bottom of the nest. I lift the puppy by the scruff of its neck and set him down on the lawn, hoping he won't run into the street. Still angry at the bird, I then invert the nest and dump the four chicks onto the lawn. They continue cheep cheeping, but are too young to fly away. The voiceover says, as the puppy notices them, "Then the puppy expresses an instinct even deeper than the mother's need to feed her young: revenge." The dog tries to bite them, but they have big yellow beaks and nip back, at which he jumps back in surprise. I decide to even the battle up and stomp once on each chick. The dream ends with the pup chomping one of the chicks — still alive but subdued — and shaking his head wildly.
I do miss the birches that used to stand on my parents' property. My childhood dog was a black Labrador/beagle mix, and I have loved the pure strains of both breeds since. I am a longtime nature-show viewer, and one of my most hated moments in these shows is when a baby animal gets snapped up by some predator, such as the skua eating penguin eggs or sea turtles getting snapped up by prick shorebirds. Perhaps the urban legend of an owl or hawk grabbing a person's poodle before their horrified eyes also played into the setup for this dream. Either way, I make no apologies for stomping on baby birds that might grow up to steal some kid's puppy. Insert stock nature-special line here about man being the world's worst predator.
The rifle is one that my parents retrieved from my maternal uncle's condo in Parkchester after he was murdered. They wrapped it in a couple of pink towels with rubber bands, then drove it and an amber-plastic box of .22 shells back to New Jersey. It stood behind the door to the dining room for a week or so, still swathed absurdly in pink, while my parents tried to figure out how to get rid of it. They eventually took the rifle and ammo to the cops and let them dispose of it. For most of my life, I have had dreams in which the [weapon] I use to kill or repel [adversary] does not work. Look that up in your Interpretation of Dreams.
4. I am in the bedroom of an apartment, presumably mine, but the layout and my possessions are all different. Not sure where it's located. I live next door to a woman I have not seen in real life in many years. My door is open, and I can see into her apartment, where she is weighing herself. Dissatisfied with the read on the first scale, she tries a second. This also fails to please. (She is fully dressed, which can't help the reading.)
"Do you want to try mine? You could average the three of them," I offer, half serious.
She looks at me for a second, then rushes past to try my scale. I discreetly peek at the LED: 206. Completely inaccurate; the woman probably doesn't weigh more than 155 in the altogether. This seems to please her anyway, and she walks over to me and thanks me. What weight she carries is very nicely distributed. "So, do you invite people in to weigh themselves every day?"
"Maybe I just wanted a pretty girl in my apartment."
She laughs and steps within my reach, fixing my gaze. "Are you being facetious?"
"Nope."
She puts her arms around me and kisses me deeply. I return it like I was waiting for it. Evidently I've known this woman longer than just the 2 minutes that have passed thus far in the dream . . . which, annoyingly, cuts off about ten seconds after this.
I am tempted to say I was living in a college dorm. The halls were painted cinderblock and uncarpeted. In many of the dorms I've seen, one could open a door and see straight across into your neighbor's cell. This seemed more like a suite of rooms, one that uncharacteristically had a second entrance in the bedroom. Giggity. I do weigh myself each morning, and I had discussed my loss of a pound this week with M. the previous evening, so weight loss was on my mind before I hit the hay.
As for the woman . . . the Internet and Google being what they are, I will leave her ID blank. She was quite curvaceous, had a sweet smile and gorgeous face, and she appreciated my sense of humor. I look fondly on the short time I knew her. As for me, such rêves de l'amour are extremely uncommon for me, a surprise considering I haven't been in a relationship since the Clinton Administration.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Thank You, Run Again!
I HAD A WEIRD-ASS dream last night. Like the last couple of dreams I had (or at least those I recall in the morning), it took place at work. Similarities end there.
To set the scene: My office occupies one quarter of a floor of a block-sized Depression-era office building. It is possible to circumnavigate the office via a hall formed by the outer walls of the space and the borders of the cube honeycomb that fills the inside. The overhead look is that of a racetrack. In my dream, this was literal.
Many of the employees in our information-technology department are from India. They comprise a very small, if hardworking and talented, percentage of the total headcount. In my dream, however, fully a third of the company was Indian.
And they were running.
I came into the dream, as I usually do, in the middle of the plot. Every Indian employee in the company was running around the racetrack-like outer pathway of our office. Workers of both sexes and all ages were there, in Western business dress as well as Subcontinental garb, pacing just short of a sprint in a tight formation. I actually had to get out of their way as they barreled down the hall, and I stood on a desk at the edge of the cube farm as they passed, laughing and panting, their ID tags bouncing and flying at the ends of their lanyards.
I was evidently late to the show, because they made one more half-revolution around the office and then slowed down to a jog, and then to an exhausted, smiling halt. They spoke excitedly among themselves, and some of them were talking on cellphones to our other offices, confirming that the Indian employees there, too, had done the same thing. This made me try to remember whether this might have been an Indian or Hindu holiday, but I didn't have a copy of the Indian holiday list (which in real life we do have; we have outsourcing contracts and there's almost no correspondence between our holiday schedule and theirs). They eventually dispersed to their desks in small groups, still happy and chatting about the run.
So what the hell is up with that? Am I concerned that our Indian employees will run rings around us? Those folks in our office are in no danger of taking my job; we're in different departments. I did find a stapled PowerPoint printout in one of our conference rooms that detailed the capabilities of a Bangalore-based typesetting firm. My immediate boss said this didn't pose a threat to the newsletter crew, though, or at least as far as she had heard. Compared to some of the slackers in the other parts of my department, and especially in the department in which I started in this company, the Indian IT guys and women bust their asses. I never see them lingering except over their lunch, which they tend to bring from home (mmmm, curry).
Who knows. Perhaps I was using the original source of the juggernaut in a very literal sense. In a more Quagmire-esque vein, perhaps it's just a desire on my part to see one particular female Indian employee, who is proportioned with a generosity I have only ever seen in Nature one other time (Ratatosk, Fyrefly: think RV in Colorado), running with pulchritudinous gusto. But she didn't appear in the dream. And depressingly, my dreams tend not to be so explicitly lowbrow.
So that's my puzzle for the next few days. The broader question of why I am dreaming of friggin' work so often surely could be solved with a couple of 4-day autumn weekends. I have to say, that prescription's looking mighty tasty.
To set the scene: My office occupies one quarter of a floor of a block-sized Depression-era office building. It is possible to circumnavigate the office via a hall formed by the outer walls of the space and the borders of the cube honeycomb that fills the inside. The overhead look is that of a racetrack. In my dream, this was literal.
Many of the employees in our information-technology department are from India. They comprise a very small, if hardworking and talented, percentage of the total headcount. In my dream, however, fully a third of the company was Indian.
And they were running.
I came into the dream, as I usually do, in the middle of the plot. Every Indian employee in the company was running around the racetrack-like outer pathway of our office. Workers of both sexes and all ages were there, in Western business dress as well as Subcontinental garb, pacing just short of a sprint in a tight formation. I actually had to get out of their way as they barreled down the hall, and I stood on a desk at the edge of the cube farm as they passed, laughing and panting, their ID tags bouncing and flying at the ends of their lanyards.
I was evidently late to the show, because they made one more half-revolution around the office and then slowed down to a jog, and then to an exhausted, smiling halt. They spoke excitedly among themselves, and some of them were talking on cellphones to our other offices, confirming that the Indian employees there, too, had done the same thing. This made me try to remember whether this might have been an Indian or Hindu holiday, but I didn't have a copy of the Indian holiday list (which in real life we do have; we have outsourcing contracts and there's almost no correspondence between our holiday schedule and theirs). They eventually dispersed to their desks in small groups, still happy and chatting about the run.
So what the hell is up with that? Am I concerned that our Indian employees will run rings around us? Those folks in our office are in no danger of taking my job; we're in different departments. I did find a stapled PowerPoint printout in one of our conference rooms that detailed the capabilities of a Bangalore-based typesetting firm. My immediate boss said this didn't pose a threat to the newsletter crew, though, or at least as far as she had heard. Compared to some of the slackers in the other parts of my department, and especially in the department in which I started in this company, the Indian IT guys and women bust their asses. I never see them lingering except over their lunch, which they tend to bring from home (mmmm, curry).
Who knows. Perhaps I was using the original source of the juggernaut in a very literal sense. In a more Quagmire-esque vein, perhaps it's just a desire on my part to see one particular female Indian employee, who is proportioned with a generosity I have only ever seen in Nature one other time (Ratatosk, Fyrefly: think RV in Colorado), running with pulchritudinous gusto. But she didn't appear in the dream. And depressingly, my dreams tend not to be so explicitly lowbrow.
So that's my puzzle for the next few days. The broader question of why I am dreaming of friggin' work so often surely could be solved with a couple of 4-day autumn weekends. I have to say, that prescription's looking mighty tasty.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Terrifying Dream Thankfully Proven False
LAST NIGHT, I HAD one of those terrible, realistic dreams that makes you want to get out of bed and verify empirically its unreal nature. In it, my apartment was robbed.
In the dream, I woke up in the early morning, as if to go to the gym, only to find the door detached from its hinges, splintered wood hanging from the frame. I had that sinking feeling you get when you realize you have left some desperately needed item hundreds of miles behind you or accidentally on a train . . . the sensation of your stomach taking an express elevator to the earth's core. I looked outside between the broken door and the frame, and noticed my neighbor's door was likewise displaced, though the hinges had been crudely duct-taped as if to keep the door standing and vaguely blocking the portal.
I swept through the apartment to discover what had been stolen. In my first pass, I couldn't figure what was gone. It seemed to be the same jumble of books, plants, furniture, and . . . the computer and the TV were gone. The TV I didn't care too much about. Losing the computer, with emails and PDFs containing financial information and passwords, was crippling. The panic got worse.
It was at this point that a slight thread of unreality began to appear. I wondered how I could have slept through my door being kicked or slammed off of its hinges. Even if a thief had picked the lock, the hinges have always issued a pronounced squeak when put into operation. I deliberately left them noisy just for that reason. But the dream did begin with me emerging from my bedroom. Perhaps I had heard something in the dream, but within it, had integrated the noise into another dream, the way an alarm clock sometimes begins as a wristwatch alarm or a microwave, only to shift into the real-world stimulus. (I hate this.)
I pulled my door out of the way to check out my neighbor's situation. Again, the dream further departed from reality (though I was still keyed up about the theft). My apartment complex now resembled a dorm that I have seen in previous dreams. I have dreamed about being back at college, living in a dorm somewhat similar to those in which I lived in the waking world. In this spectral dorm, though, students lived three to four per single room, each one stuffing his or her bed, desk, and stuff into a pinched third or quarter of the stark cinderblock cell. Instead of the carpeted floor and the wallpapered hall of my apartment complex, it was the cheap paint and linoleum of dorm ambience.
All the way down the all, each door had been broken from its hinges and was resting against its frame, either tentatively affixed by silver duct tape by the landlord or shoved aside by its residents. I peeked into a few rooms, and sure enough, they were the dorm-style rooms I had seen in previous dreams. I began to wonder how old I was — college age or 36? — but my fellow residents all seemed in their late teens/early twenties. Most of the kids seemed dazed or angry about the mass theft that had swept the building. It seemed like the crooks had been very selective, taking only electronics small enough to tote away.
I woke up abruptly. It was close to my alarm time, so I turned it off and looked around the place. The computer and television were both in their place. The door was still double-locked and properly suspended on its hinges. I calmed down, returned to my bed, set the alarm forward another half hour, and fell asleep with no further nocturnal interactions with the criminal element on the Astral Plane.
In the dream, I woke up in the early morning, as if to go to the gym, only to find the door detached from its hinges, splintered wood hanging from the frame. I had that sinking feeling you get when you realize you have left some desperately needed item hundreds of miles behind you or accidentally on a train . . . the sensation of your stomach taking an express elevator to the earth's core. I looked outside between the broken door and the frame, and noticed my neighbor's door was likewise displaced, though the hinges had been crudely duct-taped as if to keep the door standing and vaguely blocking the portal.
I swept through the apartment to discover what had been stolen. In my first pass, I couldn't figure what was gone. It seemed to be the same jumble of books, plants, furniture, and . . . the computer and the TV were gone. The TV I didn't care too much about. Losing the computer, with emails and PDFs containing financial information and passwords, was crippling. The panic got worse.
It was at this point that a slight thread of unreality began to appear. I wondered how I could have slept through my door being kicked or slammed off of its hinges. Even if a thief had picked the lock, the hinges have always issued a pronounced squeak when put into operation. I deliberately left them noisy just for that reason. But the dream did begin with me emerging from my bedroom. Perhaps I had heard something in the dream, but within it, had integrated the noise into another dream, the way an alarm clock sometimes begins as a wristwatch alarm or a microwave, only to shift into the real-world stimulus. (I hate this.)
I pulled my door out of the way to check out my neighbor's situation. Again, the dream further departed from reality (though I was still keyed up about the theft). My apartment complex now resembled a dorm that I have seen in previous dreams. I have dreamed about being back at college, living in a dorm somewhat similar to those in which I lived in the waking world. In this spectral dorm, though, students lived three to four per single room, each one stuffing his or her bed, desk, and stuff into a pinched third or quarter of the stark cinderblock cell. Instead of the carpeted floor and the wallpapered hall of my apartment complex, it was the cheap paint and linoleum of dorm ambience.
All the way down the all, each door had been broken from its hinges and was resting against its frame, either tentatively affixed by silver duct tape by the landlord or shoved aside by its residents. I peeked into a few rooms, and sure enough, they were the dorm-style rooms I had seen in previous dreams. I began to wonder how old I was — college age or 36? — but my fellow residents all seemed in their late teens/early twenties. Most of the kids seemed dazed or angry about the mass theft that had swept the building. It seemed like the crooks had been very selective, taking only electronics small enough to tote away.
I woke up abruptly. It was close to my alarm time, so I turned it off and looked around the place. The computer and television were both in their place. The door was still double-locked and properly suspended on its hinges. I calmed down, returned to my bed, set the alarm forward another half hour, and fell asleep with no further nocturnal interactions with the criminal element on the Astral Plane.
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