My books and indeed my bed, probably threfore the whole contents of my bedroom, were in the garden, and my desk was in the drive. A tatty, rickety yellow formica-topped one, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. Someone had been using it last night after I'd been there: there was an ashtray on it with a couple of cigarettes in it. For some reason I felt I just had to leave those there.

It was a fresh, slightly wet morning. I had been working on inventing a good new language called Kirghiz, the only drawback of which was that I'd used the name of an existing language. I remembered (possibly from an earlier dream the same night) a number of other good words that I'd been playing with, any one of which could serve as the language name: Xawjiek, Xinzaib, something of that nature if I recall rightly.

I took down my five pages of writing on Kirghiz (I wish I could recall any of the detail: when I woke up after this I was very tempted to try it for real; fairly pointless if I had no idea of what felt so satisfying about it), and placed them on the desk. Unfortunately the surface was wet at the left, and I had to find somewhere to dry out the pages before continuing. This involved putting them out on the bedhead with books to hold them down. On one side were a couple of books on Old English, including a fragile dark green one which would break up if I moved it around too much. There was also a big brown paperback on, I forget what, possibly Maasai or something of that kind, or perhaps Kyrgyz itself, which had reminded me I was using the wrong name.

A small silver cat came along past me. At first I thought it was a siamese. I picked it up and it was happy to be cradled: it wasn't a siamese but had an extraordinarily tiny pointed head, like a kangaroo-rat, I thought.

I took it across to show my mother. My stepson was in the bushes and seemed interested, and I remembered he liked his own cat so I showed him the tiny-headed thing.

I was back at my elementary school, but I was not attending, as I was still my current age of 22. I was actually a character in a play.

We had been doing rehersals, and it was time for the actual event to take place. The play's producer was none other than my elementary school friend Kim. This play was her project, and meant a lot to her.

So there she sat towards the back of my elementary school's auditorium, her feet propped up on the chair in front of her, a notepad on her lap.

The auditorium fills with spectators, and the play begins. Don't ask me what it's about, because I don't remember. I do remember that we walk on stage left, say something to one of the actors standing there, and run to the other side of the stage flapping our arms and making weird, high-pitched noises. Once we reached the end of the stage on stage right, we'd walk offstage, walk back onstage at the back, and walk across back to stage right.

I guess I was tired. I walked out, said my thing to the dude, flapped my arms yelling "WOOLOOLOOLOOLOOLOOLOO", and as I reached the wings on the other side, I fell to the floor. And I fell asleep.

I fell asleep. In a dream. How weird.

It seems that when you fall asleep in a dream, you still see events unfold. So there I was, sleeping on stage while the other actors tried to continue. Eventually, I woke up and used my feet to pull myself offstage without getting up.

The other actors took their frustrations out on me. An oriental girl came up to me, fuming. "I missed part of my line. Should I have dropped and fell asleep?" and she stormed off. Most others just gave me hateful looks.

I went to the autorium director's office, and the director turned out to be Mark - the marketing guy from work. I told him what happened, and he thought it was slightly humorous. I asked if there was anything I could do to make up for it, and he told me it was okay, and to go home and get the CD that they forgot at my house. They needed a particular song for an upcoming scene, though the scene wasn't coming on for another two hours.

Mark: "The song is track 6"

Me: "Isn't that 'Please don't let everybody be mad at me'?"

Mark: "Yep, that's the one."

Me: "Seems strangely appropriate."

Mark: "[Laughs], nah. Don't worry about it."

Intermission hit, and I grabbed my backpack and started for the doors to exit the auditorium. I look across to the other side as I walk, and I see Kim in the audience, still with her feet up, scribbling notes into her pad. I walk over.

I say "Hi" in an apologetic way, and she turns to look at me. Her eyes are red from tears, and she doesn't say much.

"I have to go to my apartment to pick something up. Do you need anything?"

She quickly shakes her head 'no', and turns back to her notes. Her face holds the expression of disappointment and hurt. She begins writing again.

I turn back, and exit the school.

Just as I leave, I wonder why I need this backpack, but I decide to just leave it. I think back to Kim and how I've hurt her. It made me feel extremely bad to disappoint someone I have known for so long, and in turn, I felt pretty shitty.

I began my walk home. The scene was at 18:00 hours, so I looked at my watch. It says 16:01. I have plenty of time.

I come to a busy street that is also a downward hill. I start at the top and run quiclky down the hill, though my run isn't really running; It's more of an extraordinarily fast, forced walk. Towards the bottom of the hill, my shirt catches on a little hibachi-sized grill perched on top of a hot dog cart built into the front of a building. The grill starts to roll off the top of the cart, but I'm able to detach my shirt and push it back into position before it rolls off.

I finally arrive home, and it turns out to be my OLD home in New York - my apartment building. My Dad and his friend Phil are leaving the building, and I shout to them to say hi. We walk back into the building, and I tell them the story of what happened at the play. I remember saying "It's not like it was my fault!", as we reached the top of the staircase. Apparently, we were going to the roof. As we unscrewed the screw for the roof door, I asked Phil how he's doing. He replies positively, and I wake up.

Sometimes sleep on little sleep results in a night of no dreams. This night was not one of those nights.

Scene: church? I'm not religious, so some kind of gathering? I wish I could remember what exactly, but I felt my parents there. Ok, I remember a little of what was going on. There was a magician type guy, I think maybe it was Moby from the vague visuals in my head. But now I remember well what he was doing. He picked me to watch him do a bit, where a spot of color would appear on his skin, and slowly spread out, becoming a colored patch of skin, maybe covering half his face or a hand or whatever. It was facinating, as he became more colored, it became harder and harder to see the new spots appear -- I got on my knees to look closer, I had to look away, it was messing with my mind. Everyone else looked blankly at me, I understood why, the magician had been standing with his back to the semicircle of other people. (The colored patches might have come from this Maurey Povitch episode I saw earlier this week with disfigured kids on it, one of them had a birthmark covering half her face...)

I felt woozy, had to get out and have a smoke. (IRL, I haven't smoked in a week, not since the end of finals had me up to half a pack a day, which was awful and made stopping really easy. But in this dream, I wanted a smoke.) I had put one behind my ear, which made me nervous, I had to keep my parents from seeing it, but found another cigarette in my hand as I was covering up the other, it was wierd, by the time I got to the door (it was cold outside) I had what felt like half the pack of cigs in my mouth. Still, friends already outside offered me a smoke as I made it to the steps. (so this couldn't have been school, must have been Trilogy friends from the summer.) The offer felt nice, but I was embarrased by the huge number of cigarettes in my mouth, I turned away and made to take them out and toss them in the bushes, but my first go at it I only got half of each, as in the back half of each one was still in my mouth. Finally I got rid of them, and lit up the one from behind my ear. (Continuity in a dream?!)

This chick and two of her friends exited the building while was on the stoop, I owed her five cents. She asked me to pay her back, I held out a handful of change from my pocket and asked her to take what shwe wanted, "a dime or a nickel or whatever I don't care." One of them picked out a nickel, but the main chick was poking me with some kind of stick, I couldn't figure out what was going on, but finally when the three backed off, I looked down and saw her poking the burning end of the cigarette no longer in my hand or mouth. I felt violated, but she walked away.

And that was just one dream.

In another, I was in a government institution of some sort, where a live-action Æon Flux was filming. Suddenly, we saw another Æon jump in and make some commotion in that sort of outfit &Aelig;on always wore, and jump off. Everyone went after her, looking for the imposter. One of the other acresses tried to jump over a wall but screwed up with the wire work -- it was like a movie, but without the special effects hidden. They had to help her try again.

When the impostor was finally caught, it turned into this psychologist-drama thing, kind of like Law & Order, but with psychologists, of whom I was one. The other psychologist was very cute, this was like a TV show, everyone was that way, and I wanted her, so I was very attentive and tried very hard to understand what she was saying. She first asked my opinion, and I saind the imposter was an obsessed stalker. I realize now the imposter was a heavier, greener version of Æon, like the day-and-night versions of Princess Fiona (I just saw Shrek the other night).

I think there's something wrong with me.

I dreamed far too vividly of the man I’m trying to forget, and now I can’t wake up.

I asked him why he was kissing me now when so many times before he refused and he said he should have kissed me then. We made love in a strange and intense fashion that never actually involved making love. I swore he looked exactly how I’d dreamed he’d look without a shirt. (Which makes a certain amount of sense since this was a dream.) Lean and muscular and red and lightly haired. Beautiful. It’s always been a fascination of mine to see him that way. He told me he was a Nazi, but not of the Jew-hating kind and we made love some more. I wondered if that was why he kept his hair so short. He talked about his father. He kissed hard and rough and never opened his lips no matter how I tried to part mine.

In the last moments I made to lick the long tendon of his neck and in so doing found he had turned on his stomach and away from me. I told him again how lovely he was and he responded by storming on about how he was more than his looks and leaving for good.

I am flushed, seated across from him, a forkful of red beans and rice poised at my mouth, lips parted.

I am staring across the table at Satchmo. Memorizing his big dark grin, very full lower lip, hands dexterous rough and alive on the checkered cloth.

I am wearing a cinch-waist dress, red with tiny white dots. His electric presence is connecting them, these dress dots. This connection is buzzing me in pleasant ways. His full radiance is beamed straight on me and I feel like I have had just the right amount of wine.

I mention the music, stammer some praise. He stands and raises his horn, holds it like a lover. I am almost crying, certainly aching. It was a chance meeting. We could just as easily have missed this moment. He is older, married, always working. Plus he is black and it is not even socially acceptable for me to be here sharing a meal with him. Not in this time where all things are segregated, unless he could unzip his skin and step away from it. Even though he is the kindest genius to ever make a jazz noise.

Before he brings the horn to his lips he looks at me and smiles, not the big public grin in all the filmstrips, but a private, soulful taking in. His eyes are moist and brown, very hungry. He stands and cups his hand around my chin, tilting and peering and seeing all. He smells of marijuana and leather, and sweaty metal buttons. His skin is rough and deep and has evolved, like his callused lip to please his horn.

I know just what you need.”

He studies my eyes, then plays the notes. And he plays and he plays, the sounds rolling out in full bloom.

Silver ear.

Across time.

And soon the joint is jumpin’.

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