Dream Log: April 16, 2001

I was Billy the Kid, hiding out on a ranch with my posse. We knew Pat Garrett was looking for us, and we were crawling through the high grasses, trying not to be seen. But Garrett had his people with him. As my gang tried to surrender, Garrett would shoot them. No remorse. I finally stood up, aimed at him, fired--but was shot. I stood up to face him. He just laughed. I could feel the burning of the gunshot wound. I crawled onto the grass, looked up at the stars--there were so many of them...

Back in the city where I live a secondhand shop which doesn't exist in real life in the street that I dreamed it in, had been sold to a friend of mine. He had cleaned out all the junk except for a sweater made of cat fur. He had refused to get rid of it because cats were evil, so he told me to build a campfire and toast the sweater, then left.

Which I did, but first I pulled the fiberglass lining out of the sweater. It didn't burn up, but shrank to doll size. I felt compelled to eat it, but woke up instead...

Yesterday I read in pingouin's daylog that Joey Ramone had died. I went to bed not knowing if it were true or not, and that night I dreamed about the Ramones -- Johnny and Dee Dee, specifically. It was the early days when they had just formed the band and were living in poverty and obscurity amid the madness of the fledgling New York punk scene.

I dreamed that the pair shared an apartment just over a porn shop in which they both worked. The store, which was owned by a Chinese man, was a dive, and their apartment was a dump. They were constantly stoned on pot or glue, or both which made their attempts to help customers hilarious. They went to heroin-fueled punk parties in the apartment above theirs, but there were two poles they could slide down to the porn shop on (just like firemen, or Batman and Robin) if they had to get back there in a hurry.

Sex, Drugs and Histrionics

• In a small group of rooms, all dark wood and bed-like shelves. I catch glimpses of sexual activity in the shadows while I talk with a girl who reminds me of an old bisexual friend.

• With Allen and Nicole, we are running on a black-sand beach just after sunset, trying to evade pursuers. We duck into a rocky inlet, climb over the wet boulders and hide in the shadows beneath the cliff. We train our gun sights on the stretch of sand we just crossed, waiting for the enemy to appear. My breath fogs whitely in front of my face.

• I'm visiting my friend Lianna after a long time apart. We've gotten really stoned and are now sprawled on the couch, making intellectual conversation. After a while, I get up for a minute to retrieve something from her room and feel a little strange while moving about. When I'm back on the couch, I tell her that my "histrionics" took me from my mind world into my body world. We talk about psychedelic drugs and as she talks I remind myself that I want to tell her about my last shroom trip. She tells me that she just bought a new glass pipe and has been smoking more pot than ever recently. She laughs something that I don't catch but I think I hear the word "valium". I tell her it's good to see her and we embrace in a hug for a long time.

• I see the cover of a book and a narrative voice explains it. It has an evil looking painting of a face on the front: half-man half-leopard. The voice tells me that this is Gora's (?) occult classic. The first half of the book is Gora's biography (as I see moving images of women working on a military base during World War II, and a fold-out aerial photograph of the entire base). The second half is Gora's esoteric masterpiece.