Eyes Wide Shut

[Roshan]

Dream

I was in sunny central LA with John M. and other old friends from the downtown scene and we were talking about going to events and performing. I said I wanted to move there and open an art gallery with John but it was hard to live in LA because I don't drive. Then there were more people, some I didn't know, and then people came from Erica's group too and they were obnoxious but I prevailed. Then I typed them and some others and I told this guy I was sitting with about the system and I said they were all 9s and they all wanted to be aggressive without being accountable but then I sat with them and invited him over, I think now we were on a rooftop with a pool, but he said he had to go to work and I said I think if I lived in LA I'd be working the night shift too (but the sun was still shining brightly). Then things warmed up with the people from Erica's group and everybody was getting along and I was being acknowledged as an expert; someone else said they're all 9's, and I said no, Sarah H. (from downtown) is a 4w5 (which she is), and they were surprised and I said that's what 4s are like, they're mournful and they seem like they're about to not exist, and you should see the beautiful art work she does and remember how she used to sing? I also insisted I still thought Rala was a counterpassion 9, which confused people. Then I was talking to my close grade school friend Barbara S. who I contacted when I joined facebook and said Skinny Minnie, you look great, and she did not answer me; then a few years later I saw she died of cancer. She had been so 'fat and jolly'. I said you know we never typed you. I don't know if you're a 9or a 1 (very clear 9w8). She laughed and we determined she was 9 'with 8 all the way in 8' and 2 or 3 fixed, then I settled on 2 but said I don't know if your head is 6 or 7 (irl 6w7). Then I realized she might be the storied 278 tritype I just never seem to meet, which Syliva called Live Free or Die. Then I woke up at just before 4 pm.

[Roshan]

I was on a small houseboat at night in the ocean. There were other people in it, I think my family, but I was on the deck outside. A huge fish, between a shark and a whale but shiny like a whale, kept ramming the boat to topple it. Then the boat was safe but I wasn't; the fish wanted to eat me. It had a huge open mouth and big teeth and it kept coming for me. I knew I wasn't strong enough to fight the fish, but I was smart enough to get it at the right angle and fold it over on itself, multiple times, like a stack of paper, and then squeeze it, squeeze all the the breath, the life out of it. While I did this I was praying that it wouldn't suffer too much.

Then there was an Indian yogi in orange robes that enveloped the scenario. He told me something like he was the master of the realms beyond and I was the master of this realm and that. I wanted to be the master of the realms beyond but it was also understood that there was a third station which was only this realm and was something like hell and very undesirable.

After that I was back where I grew up, in junior high or high school, and maybe also at college, and a lot of things happened with a lot of different people that I can't remember, including people in reality insignificant to me like Bonnie Zabel; there were all kinds of conversations. I can't remember what they were about specifically but they had to do with how I related to and navigated the different social groups in the neighborhood and toward the end I was in the front row of an auditorium speaking to a 'friend' (?) next to me and a couple of seats down was Jane Rishin, who started saying important things about what happened to me, but I couldn't hear her because of the other person. So I had to ask the other person to wait and I went to Jane Rishin, who seemed to know more than I did and explained things to me.

[Roshan]

I met two very pretty young women, we were in a taxi in my old neighborhood and one of them was very interested in me and was telling me about her life and asking me a lot of questions. She told me she lived about two miles from the high school, which we were passing by and I told her I lived around a mile away.

Then I think we were around where she lived which was a rich town and then we I were in a large terminal, I think an airline terminal, very big, very nice and clean, and it turned out she had a lot of problems. She was sick, it turned out she needed to drink alchohol therapeutically once or maybe twice a day and she was having withdrawal symptoms. There was something about a threatening group of violent young ghetto men. Then she went to the terminal bathroom and while I was waiting for her I started singing Harry Chapin's 'Taxi'' and I was singing it perfectly, from beginning to end, realizing this was the song I wanted to learn to play on guitar and then take it out and accompany myself and go to different open mics and clubs and work on it like people worked on comedy routines, meaning to get the delivery of every line right. She came back in time for me to sing the ending. I expected her to be more impressed than she was because I knew I was singing very well. She wasn't uninterested though; she asked me about it.

Then I woke up thinking it was the morning but it's not.

[Roshan]

I had looked into Harry Chapin maybe a year or so ago and was surprised he was a 3. But in junior high school I very excitedly told my best friend Jocelyn's mother all the lyrics to The Cat's In The Cradle and what they meant. I really liked this poetic story telling with (for me then) deep meaning. Cat's In The Cradle and Taxi are his two biggest hits, they were very very popular back then, and the taxi is driving in San Francisco, which is where the other 3 does his work with the homeless. It's also where I went to the IEA conference and to see Damien, the poet, and where he died, and it's on the California coast so I'm quite sure all those things plus Jz, the sick young woman, were in there.

In the dream I didn't sing the falsetto part of Taxi; I just sang Chapin's regular part. And I couldn't have told you offhand all the words of that section. I know the rest like the back of my hand but those are largely unintelligible to me. But I have always understood the LAST two lines of that section AND I have found out the lyrics when I looked into him, I just didn't offhand remember them all. These are them:

Baby's so high that she's skying
Yes she's flying, afraid to fall
I'll tell you why baby's crying
Cause she's dying, aren't we all

[Roshan]

Oh, another thing,

I saw Anke last week after not being in touch for 25 years and last night we confirmed we'll see each other again on Thursday before she goes back. Through the too many miles and the too little smiles, I still remember you...

I never really left leaving Germany in 1997.

[Roshan]

And also oc 'she was gonna be an actress'.

And there was an issue yesterday with a twenty dollar bill. I selected cash back at the supermarket but forgot to take it and I went back there and they were holding it for me, which was somewhat surprising.

[Vincent]

"Cat's in the cradle" is one of those songs that always comes back to haunt me.
I discovered the Ugly Kid Joe cover when i was 16 or 17 and at the time i tried to learn to play it on guitar. Pretty sure i posted a link to it on Enneatude back then, Probably one of the first things i did there actually.

And tonight... Lucile turned out to be pretty hard to put to sleep because she was crying a lot. And the reason baby was crying a lot is because one day she is going to die and she won't see Mum and Dad anymore.

Yup, definitely something going on between you two.

[Roshan]

I get a job teaching at Baruch College at 6 pm at night 20 hours a week. I'm still living on 36th Street. I accept another job also with many hours that starts around 7:30 also midtown not realizing there's no travel time in between. I realize I'll have to leave the first job a little early and get to the second a little late and I think I can get away with it. Jake Clark got me the job at Baruch but before I start it I see him on an 'island' in the middle of an avenue maybe Third, there are around twenty people there, mostly gay men. Jake is with a group of people in the back and he says something friendly snarky to me and I say something back, but after the first sentence he just ignores me completely so I challenge this. I harangue and indict him about it. Many of the people stand in a line in front and there's one gay man who's very sympathetic to all this, we hug and bond, and he convinces the others in the line about my cause, but it doesn't make a dent in Jake and his close group and he just rolls his eyes and makes fun of me and leaves.

To go to work I go to the East River and walk under a bridge there briefly, it's boggy and marshy and I think it feels like times I used to explore; I'm a little late for work. It seems the dream is indecisive, I lose this job and then the dream changes and I have this job. I have to go to the office of the English Department, which is at the end of a hall, quickly to find out where my mailbox is and get my mail even though class has officially started, but fortunately the class is right above the office so I'll get there more or less on time. The classroom seems like it's somewhat upholstered and VIctorian; I teach the class and comment on this. The head of the department comes in and Jake Clark is mentioned. Earlier, when Jake was treating me badly someone asked if I wanted them to call Jack Waters but I said no. I was trying to hide all this from him.

[Roshan]

I'm in a play. I'm my own age, maybe even a bit older, I'm a bit thinner than I've been lately and a bit more 'British genteel' and withdrawn. I don't remember what play or what part I had but it's a 'serious, experimental play', the place and the play have the feel of The Kitchen or Worster Street in the early 90s. The director, an Andre Gregory-ish NeFi creative-ish type, and I have fallen in love, we two cutting dashing figures tall, thin and serious wearing all black, him dressed like Steve Jobs, me long black dress like the one I bought at Kenzo's in Soho. He directs the play. We stay apart from each other but we're in love being circumspect. I'm not rehearsing in the dream, I"m watching and waiting, and I get an idea for the end of the play. When a character says a certain line, the three young women who are now offstage should come in dressed comically from the Roaring 20s and say two funny rhyming lines (about the stock crash and investing). I think the play should be less serious there. I start telling people all about this ending and I'm going to suggest it to the director.

The director is married and his wife comes. People are leaving little by little and I overhear him telling her he's going home with her and I start to leave, very upset but he catches up with me. There has also been an issue with his children, it's like I had to pass a test with his wife and kids. There were I think three girls, the oldest about eleven. Somehow in the end we're reconciled and it's understood his wife and famiy accept our relationship and he starts asking me what I do outside of acting, I tell him I like to go to the sewers. He's very interested. Then the watching I is surprised that that didn't turn him off and wonders what I (not the dream I) would tell him irl.

At some point around two-thirds through this long dream there was a line-up with me and the other women in the play to see who was fat and who had the best body. One by one people were disqualified and I was one of the last left standing.

[Roshan]

I went to a political demonstration in Kansas City by bus. There was a group of younger people at the station going and I was fitting in with them but I wound up not taking the same bus.I had also brought certain objects for rioting which I then didn't show them because I saw they were peaceful and it wasn't going to be that kind of demonstration. The bus I took had very few people in it.