Posts Tagged ‘Dreams’

While trying to get a ticket for the Burningman festival, I get caught up in a phone scam. I meet a couple who walk in with me at the gate and the ticket they sold me is fake. Security throws me out, and a man sympathizes, handing me money which includes English pound coins.

I decide to wander to the 6pm side of the city. I see R and J at a poorly secured border. I walk over the shabby fencing and walk to an area that looks like a Middle Eastern souk (market). I see dark-skinned soldiers with long clubs and machine guns. I look over a wall and see an art installation that is a flock of huge, edible pink flamingos. I walk by New Orleans style bars and Munich style beer halls. A strange steam punk contraption appears over another wall. I go closer and look for Bishop Joey.

Wandering more alleys, the path narrows and crowds with revelers. I come out to another Burningman entrance! Outside the festival (again), I watch busloads of uniformed American soldiers exit with fanfare and enter the event for free with crowds cheering and applauding.

I wander to the 9pm side of the city. Over there, I see the LA skyline looming over crisscrossing freeway overpasses. This side of Burningman is empty. Several citizens walk by talking about the rumor that nasty winds blew down Larry Harvey’s statue of the man.

I walk back to 6pm and step over the shoddy fencing again. My phone rings. Answering, I have an elderly woman plead with me to stop calling her. I tell he I am not calling her, but we both discover that someone from the ticket scam is using my number.

Jan. 10, 2012 (Marin Co.)

My car breaks down in a poor section joust outside the loop of Southwest Athens, GA. I look at a map to try to figure out where I am going. I see my destination in the Northwest part of the loop. The map calls it “Gay District.” As I stand by my car in the slush, seeing my breath from the cold, local folks ask if they can help. As I begin to ask if they can figure out how to get me a tow truck, I think of AK and wonder if my friends in the NW of the loop are worried about me.

Jan. 9, 2012 (Marin Co.)

Dream: Simian Hands (pt. 1)

Author: Russell

MG and I are in a house with other people. There are dirty dishes in the downstairs sink that need to be put in the dishwasher. After a meal, I wander off, realizing that I should have stayed to help MG. I go back to the kitchen. She cannot find detergent, so I look among bottles of poisons and chemicals. MG finds out where the detergent is, so we load up the dishwasher.

……

A female character from the Walking Dead goes to a back bungalow to relax and clean. Several men stand in the woods that surround the front of the bungalow. One man mumbles something and another man with long hair and glasses grumbles “You’d know better if you read more Anarchist texts!” The other guy leaves. As the long-haired man walks away, he hears a scream coming from the woman in the bungalow.

The long-haired guy pulls a gun out from the back of his pants and heads to the bungalow. Up in the trees, a simian hand holds a basketball and then drops it. Dozens more monkey hands drop basketballs on the long-haired man.

Inside the bungalow the woman continues to sweep while two other people have an intense conversation in another room.

10/29/2011

Dream: Animals and a Radio

Author: Russell

(Simian Hands pt. 2)

A woman hears voices in the woods behind her and turns around to see a seething mass of monkeys and animals. Horrified she clutches her broom and backs through a large sliding door into a room. She tries to find protection against the wall. The animals are not paying attention to her. They look at the radio where sounds from a serial drama play out. A small ox and a chimpanzee break out of the crows and run towards the radio.

10/29/2011

Envisioned amazing images of rocks and chunks of metal cubes dropping into deep, beautiful canyons.

……..

I go camping with a friends, so I cut out a bottle-pieced shape of fabric. Another group of people are coming to camp with us and their tent sites are easily marked in a neat line down a patch of land. I put a zoot suit on just before they arrive. They see the suit and love it. I feel embarrassed for not knowing how to speak Spanish. A large woman in the group smiles at me. An Asian woman in the group has a small dog. “I must shit rat-sized poop!” Without saying goodbye, I take a bike home to cut out another fabric vial.

10/31/2011

Dream: Beached Whales

Author: Russell

I am on retreat and taking performance workshops. I sleep in a building that sits by a rocky beach along a large body of water. A fence runs along the beach and marks the retreat’s property. I can still see a beautiful beachscape on my walk to the workshops.

In the practice space, we end the session with a bit of physical improv. I sit on the floor and sip an imaginary bowl of soup. I eventually make loud sipping noises. We take a break for lunch and I sit on a picnic table while an older black woman makes a group of us laugh.

Walking back to my room along the fence, I look over to the amazing view while I set my bag down. Behind a large object that is on the beach, I see a whale tail breach the water. I get excited and run back to my bag to get my camera. I frame the shot, focus the camera, and notice the details of the scene.

Sharks are in a frenzy, eating the flailing whale. The object in front of this grisly scene is a beached whale. I drop the camera from my view and look down the rocky shore’s horizon. I see beached whales fading into the sunny haze. I look out into the water and see ships. They seem to be trying to avert the whale catastrophe.

Someone on the beach walks up to me and opens a section of the fence. An old, skinny man thanks the person and goes out to the beach where the whales are located. He is a scientist and did not have any other way to get onto the beach. I go over to him and ask him some questions, but I do not go near the animals.

As I watch the emergency unfold, I realize that I am at this retreat for a while longer. I wonder what the smell of rotting whale flesh is like, and if it will be strong.

May, 18, 2011