Dream Log

I am standing in a health food store, filled for some occasion by New College students -- Lea, Zachariah. Everybody European cheek-kissing. Wandering the aisles. A male in a hooded sweatshirt begins bordering the crowd, quiet. I somehow become aware that his plan is to leave the gathering for a while, then reappear, taking the group hostage, going on a shooting spree. Somehow he makes this obvious, somehow we all know, but no one moves to lift a finger. He leaves.

He returns, wrapped in cellophane, standing next to me. I consult a few guys who are leaving the party -- fraternity boys, not who I have any desire to spend my time with, except out of desperation. They live high up, high above the store, almost in the mountains, but they allow me to flee with them. We climb a tree-ladder, almost like the bamboo rungs that took me once to the roof of Pei. Then I go upstairs in their house, which is full of mahogany wooden paneling -- and the boys are gone. Only downstairs, the lumbering of wide grizzly bears, the same color as the mahogany. Rummaging in the fridge, on the kitchen counter.

Somehow I escape through the roof -- but there was no roof, only an opening. To a fenced area, where I can look down to see a procession of people leaving the store, in single file. Everyone was safe, but I don't think the killer was arrested. Lea was there. Then we are driving away, I am following he down a hill, but I can't drive. I am only keeping my car in the lane by leaping up intermittently and holding onto the traffic-lights until the car is re-aligned. But Lea turns on the highway and I know that I can't be carried by momentum in the same way there, so I tumble out the side door before the car hits the highway.

Suddenly I am barefoot and half-dressed on the side of the road, clamoring for help. A man in something like a UPS truck stops. He speaks English, but it is not my language. He doesn't understand, but takes me to the yard of a church, where an older blond woman with leathery skin and powder-blue eye make-up stands in the fading light. She tells me I am in trouble, that I had better stick my chest out and pull my stomach in for The Lord, "not sexually or anything, but, you know."