Having Come Unstuck in Time While Singing Gospel Karaoke, I Clean Up After Piglets and Battle Nazis

11-20-2003

Not much remembered from this dream, except singing: I'm singing with some other people in a gospel choir. I take a solo, and feel amateurish as I sing the notes around the notes of my song. The other people seem to think I'm doing okay, though. Perhaps it's gospel karaoke, and it's the trying that counts.

11-21-2003

Debbie and I are packing to get ready to go to Seattle. [In waking life, we really were going today.] We're discussing the pros and cons of where to stay. At David and Cathy's? With friends? I suggest to Deb that we rent a motel room. The estate (i.e. Isabel's) will pay for it. I turn to the real estate agent who is advising us, to see if the idea will work. I start to explain it; the realtor is distracted by someone else, and shouts a bit of conversation across the room. I start again; the realtor wanders away. I follow him, and tell him that I really want him to pay attention. Once again I explain my idea about the motel room. At that moment, the television over the bar starts showing an episode of The Simpsons, and the realtor is once again distracted.

11-22-2003

(1) Walking through a parking garage or something that gets lots of traffic coming through. There are crosswalks across the broad roadways. I have to wait for traffic lights to change before I cross.

(2) There's a parade, and it features farm produce and livestock. Here's a float with lots and lots of live, young pigs. Although they are scarcely more than piglets, they are already quite fat. I follow the float along. I think about taking one of the pigs away for myself. That would be stealing; but it would be very easy.

One of the smaller piglets is sealed into a fine plastic mesh bag, like something in which onions or potatoes would be sold. I pick up the piglet in its bag, and play with it some; it squeals and squirms. I could very easily take it away.... But I decide against it. I place the piglet in its bag back in its place in the display among the other pigs. As I'm doing so, the piglet coughs and vomits. At first I think that none of the vomit splashed me; but I get a cloth to wipe it up from the display; and as I as I am wiping it up I notice a few drops on my sleeve and a large splash of pig vomit on my trouser leg. I wipe these up as well, but there remains a dark, wet spot on my trousers.

(3) I travel some distance to find a comics store to buy a present for my friend Kimberly. At the end of a cul-de-sac, far from the center of town, I find "Spiderman Comics", lit up in lurid blue and red neon lights.

I go inside and begin to look at a graphic novel about a band comprised of young British rock musicians who think that the band Yes is the be-all and end-all of music. An opening splash page of the book shows the four of them, at four different concerts by Yes, being blown away by something about the music: one goes for Rick Wakeman's keyboard playing; another for Steve Howe's guitar work; and so on.

I hear Yes's music in my own mind, and my dream segues from me reading the graphic novel to its story line, and I'm fleeing the scene of some minor crime in an urban setting.

One of my companions is crippled, having difficulty walking. In a sequence I do not now remember, he shows himself to be quite untrustworthy. I talk about this to a friend on the telephone. The friend tells me, "You trusted him? I could have warned you! Elise won't have anything to do with him because of the things he did when she first met him."

Still liking my untrustworthy, crippled friend, I want to talk to Elise about it. I go looking in a mall for her storefront where she sells her jewelry.

11-25-2003

My father is dormant (but not dead), lying inside something that partakes of both a sarcophagus and a suit of armor. Suspended on a light chain around his neck, like a pendant, is a Ring of Power. When I know how to wield it myself, I will be a force to be reckoned with among my foes.

Numbering among those foes is a group of neo-Nazi skinheads, organized into a secret society. They know that my father and I possess the secret of wielding great power, but they have no clue about the details. In particular, they wouldn't recognize the ring as being its source unless someone told them.

Their plan is to kidnap my father and have him reveal the secret. (He is catatonic, and cannot reveal it, but they do not know this yet.)

Our own plans are to take part in a parade, to ride on a float whose passengers are clowns. I arrive with my inert father to the parade via balloon, and we descend to the float where we are to ride. My father is in his armor, and I am wearing a clown suit, with greasepaint and fright wig.

As the balloon descends, I watch as the Nazis, also disguised as clowns, climb onto the float and throw the legitimate passengers over the side into the crowd. I realize what is going on just as the balloon lands on the float. There is no time to rescue the Ring; and I know that if I am captured along with my father, the Nazis will be able to learn from me the secret of the Ring. I must escape, leaving my father and the Ring in the Nazi's hands. In the melee that ensues when the balloon touches down, I leap over the side and escape into the crowd.

The Nazis have my comatose father and the Ring, but they do not know the Ring for what it is. What they do have is the knowledge of the Ring's power: should they find out that the Ring is the thing they seek, they will be able to wield it. I know the Ring for what it is, but I do not know how to use it. Now I must rescue my father and recover the Ring. My best shot at doing this is to pose as a Nazi sympathizer and try to infiltrate the group. By doing so, I may be able to learn the secret of the Ring and be able to use it myself.

In the background is a doubt. Am I just posing as a Nazi, or am I joining them in earnest? Isn't there a risk that they will learn my half of the Ring's secret, and they will then use it for their evil purposes? And by "infiltrating" am I not proving that I am myself willing to further their evil purposes in pursuit of the Ring's power for myself?

There is a hotel in a bad part of town which is a front for the Nazi's organization. The basement of the hotel connects with the catacombs beneath the city, where the Nazis meet and conduct their nefarious schemes.

My friend Avedon and I go to check into a room in this hotel. While I am filling out forms at the front desk (and the front desk clerk is covertly checking me out for Nazi sympathies, and I am equally covertly indicating that I have them), a Nazi stormtrooper disguised as a bellhop takes Avedon back to our room. After a while she returns to the lobby, and we talk once I'm finished at the front desk. The stormtrooper attempted to molest her once they were alone in the hotel room. He didn't anticipate that Avedon was skilled in martial arts, however, and she quickly dispatched him. This poses a dilemma: will the stormtrooper tell what happened (this would jeopardize our mission) or will he be too ashamed to admit to other Nazis that a woman got the best of him?

We agree that Avedon should remain in the room to face any consequences on her own, and I should proceed with my mission. I descend into the basement and make my way into the catacombs, looking for the meeting that the desk clerk had hinted I should join.

While wandering in the catacombs the dream segues back to the scene at the parade. The capture of the float recapitulates – one of the clowns ejected from the float falls under its wheels and is killed. Do I want to even pretend that I am on the Nazis' side?

11-26-2003

In a cardroom or casino, I'm eager to get a high-stakes game going. The management calls down a game, and I sit down with one opponent. We agree to start playing in hopes that more players will show up and the game gets going well.

It's a stud game (high-low split stud, probably). In the very first hand I'm dealt, split fours with a six kicker. I come out raising, and my opponent calls me down. I bet every round and wind up taking a substantial pot with fours full of sixes. My opponent is suddenly much less interested in playing head-up with me, and leaves the game. The game has broken after just one hand. I'm disappointed, although the stakes were high enough that winning that one hand has given my bankroll a shot in the arm.

I talk some to the floorman about my skills at high-low split stud: that I'm pretty good but not great; that I'm good enough to have beat the must-move tables at that 50-100 game I played at this year's WSOP, how I really am somewhat predictable and by-the-book.

I change the chips I won into cash, and count my stake. It turns out that some of my $100 bills are improperly printed, with one side being faded. I wonder if the cage will exchange these for better looking bills before I leave.

11-27-2003

I've gotten unstuck in time. I have lost track of where and when I am. I have lived, or will live, for a long, long time; traveling, or will travel, to planets of other stars; helping to establish colonies there. The memory of my whole long life, from its beginning to its end, is with me, like Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and at any given moment I have difficulty knowing where and when it is along my worldline. The burden of my memory weighs heavily on me.

I find myself in a time that [in the waking world as I write this] is very close to now; but I am unsure of precisely when. Accompanying me is David Bratman's younger brother Kevin. He also has traveled, or will travel, to the stars; he also is unstuck in time. We talk about the many times and places where the skeins of our lives intersect, and share some of what happens to each of us between them. It seems that the span of my life is rather longer and larger than Kevin's.

At a table whose top surface is a map of Iraq and surrounding countries, a man is sitting. He is evidently explaining and justifying United States' actions and positions in the region. My doubt of when I am poses a difficulty for me: I don't want to reveal my status as a time-tripper or my knowledge of the future; but talking with him may inadvertently do so. I settle on asking him about recent developments, letting him talk about facts. A key question in my mind is whether the assassination of an important leader has taken place yet or not. From his answers to my questions, it becomes clear that it has not yet happened. And now I have a much better handle on when I am.

At a party, in a living-room filled with people, I can contain myself no longer; the burden of future memory becomes too much for me. "I am a traveler between the stars!" I say. "I am three hundred years old. Kevin here is seventy-nine. He evidently spent much more of his travels much closer to lightspeed than I." (These ages are our ages at our deaths, not at the moment, but the memories of our whole lives make us feel these ages all the time.) In an impassioned monologue, I tell it all: my life on Earth, my travel to the stars, my tribulations in various colonies, my death alone, many light-years away, thousands of years of Earth-time in the future.

Later, still time-tripping, I find myself in the balcony of a theater where students are about to mount a production of one of Shakespeare's plays, a comedy. The balcony is crowded, but, looking over the edge I observe that the main floor is almost empty. I contemplate whether it is reasonable to move downstairs to get a better seat before the performance begins.