July 15
*I’m standing near a river bank in a city… the river is held back with a sea wall… it is a long drop down to the water. The stones of the river wall are gray. I see a crime… some random men in business suits are standing at intervals along the river bank talking or looking around… a shot is fired and it pierces through their heads down the line of people. I can hear a voice saying that time runs backwards for these crimes… they are being placed in our time line by some kind of… entity? I hear him explaining that as time moves forward, the crimes become less advanced… the mystery of this will be solved in 30 years, when the killing actually begin.
* @5:17 a.m.
I’m driving a car through the streets of a foreign country. I need to get to the other end of town quickly, and avoid other people. I’ve turned off the main road and am now driving through what appears to be a river bed, I’m either still in a car and the water is not deep, or I’m now in a boat. The water I see is dark brown with churned mud… the river runs through the center of the city and there are several bridges to cross the river. It is not very wide (perhaps the width of 3 or 4 car lanes) but people do not want to touch the water directly. Each bridge has archways… when I look down the river I see at least 5 bridges before the river curves. There are vines growing on one of the bridges, I see them hanging down on the other side of the archway. People are hanging on to the railings of the bridges and dangling over, trying to swing to the other side of the river. Some are poised on ledges of the archways ready to jump on passing cars. Driving through here is like running a gauntlet, I need to get through here without anyone getting a ride on my car. Rather than go under the last couple archways, I turn sharply to the left and go up and around the left-most support post of the bridge, avoiding the men who are on the ledge of the bridge, and I come to a stop around the other side of the post.
I’m walking through the streets now, I am in China. I have two companions… both girls… one is Chinese one is Black. We are trying to blend in to the crowd, just passing through to get to our destination. I hear footsteps behind us… three men are following us now. We pick up our pace, walking faster through the crowd… there is an open air market down an alley we pass by, and duck into a doorway. I hear the black girl – who appears to be our leader or mentor – say “use the dime… the dime!” I don’t have it… the other girl has it… I’m picturing something small and round that you bite down on to make it sharp, and use it as a blade against an attacker. The girl doesn’t get it out in time… I hear scuffles behind me and the sounds of a fight. I can’t see who is attacking me, he comes up from behind. I try to twist around but he has taken my left arm and bent it up behind my back, pulling hard I feel my shoulder start to give. I hear the sounds of broken glass, I’m struggling to break free, causing my attacker to lose his balance a bit my knees come down hard on the pavement. I feel the gravel and some broken glass shards break the skin… pressing into my knee. I reach wildly back with my right hand and find his face… my nails feel very long and strong against his skin – my hand lands just at the bridge of his nose. I hear a voice in my head “go for the eyes” and I press my fingers hard, digging the nails into anything soft. I hear him scream and I push harder… the sensations change from the soft skin of the eyelid to the wet texture of his eye ball. Digging harder, I feel tension and then a sudden *pop!*… I don’t look, but I know both from the feel and the sound that I’ve pushed his left eye out of the socket and it is hanging by a vein. He stumbles back, releasing me and I run… my companions are running as well.
I am in the lead, I steer our group to a safe place… a restaurant run by my family. We slow to a walk as we make our way through one dining room and into the next. Our goal is to blend in, but I hear conversations all over the restaurant stop and I turn to look at the girls I’m with… they are both wearing what looks to me like peach colored satin dresses… short sleeved, somewhat fitted. While they look fully clothed, I also know that these are technically undergarments to be worn under traditional dresses that they seem to have lost in the battle… people are staring because they are clearly under dressed. One patron stands and pulls the table cloth off his table, draping it over the Chinese girl. We continue our walk swiftly into a side dining room that is not being used and the doors are slid shut behind us.
I look out the window, the glass is obscured by long sheer curtains… they are black to prevent people from seeing into the room, but the light outside makes it possible to see out. The windows look to an interior courtyard of the building… it is a garden area… filled with an incredible amount of beautiful plants and a waterfall is somewhere in the corner (I can hear it, I cannot see it) There is a young Chinese girl with an instructor learning to fence. I watch for a while as I wait for our teacher to arrive.
The teacher comes in, discussing what went wrong with our encounter and begins to talk about our next lessons. We are to work with bows and arrows. I have a bow in my hand, but I am not holding it properly. The instructor has the black girl demonstrate… she holds her bow (which looks as though it is made from a rough tree branch… the bark from the tree is still on it) and she skillfully reaches around the instructor and pulls the bow string tight. The instructor is standing with her back to the girl, encircled in her arms (as if the student were showing the teacher how to work the bow) The teacher is pressing down on either side of the bow as if she were tuning an instrument.
*@7:00 a.m.
I’m standing at what looks like the end of my parent’s driveway… S is here, I see Middle Sister (MS) loading stuff in the back of a car. I was thinking I had a message for her that I’d sent to my mom, I look at S and say “had I known I’d see MS I would have just brought it directly to her.”
S, my parents and I are now heading towards our building. We live in an apartment, my parents are here to visit. As we walk away from the garage I hit a button to close the door… but there are two doors and as one closes, the other opens. I hit the button again to close the doors, and I see MS has another remote she is using from her car. I tell her to stop pushing the buttons so I can close both doors at the same time. I hit the button and watch as both doors begin to close, then they stop and the one on the right opens. There is a car driving through… it looks like one of those drive through oil change places… and I laugh. That’s why the doors kept changing, I forgot that other people use this garage besides just us… it belongs to the whole complex.
We enter the building and walk to the elevator. As we enter I notice there is a puddle of piss in the corner (far left as you walk into the elevator) My parents notice it too and my mom wrinkles her nose at it. I have a razor scooter I’m riding, so I position myself at the back of the elevator and angle my scooter out so nobody steps in the puddle. I’m trying to pretend I don’t notice it so my parents won’t mention it. The elevator rises a few floors and the doors open. Most everyone gets out and I stick my head out the door and say “Umm… this isn’t our floor.” My parents and S walk back inside the elevator, along with a woman wearing high heels. I can’t get my scooter back in place fast enough, and the woman in heels steps right in the piss. I’m looking out the back of the elevator, which is glass on one side, and I wonder… who peed in the elevator? Were they coming out of the bar? Could they not wait until they got back to their apartment? How did they do this without being seen… since the elevator is glass on this side?
The doors open again and we exit the elevator – it looks a bit like a parking garage still, but to the left there is a new tile floor and a series of round tables with low chairs. There is a fireplace facade on one wall. I’m commenting to S how they have really spruced up this part of the garage to make it look like a nice bar. I ride my scooter through the bar, weaving between tables, until I get to the stairwell. I realize that we’ve gotten off on the wrong floor… we’re on the 8th floor and we should have taken the elevator up to the 9th. I’m a bit embarrassed… my parents must think we are idiots getting off the elevator on the wrong floor. We should know where we live… but the exterior looked the same as our floor when we got off. As we approach the stairwell I see that it is covered in protective plastic… as if under construction or the plastic is there to protect the railing from damage during moving. The stairwell is blocked… there is a meat packing plant… or possibly a restaurant receiving a large delivery of meat… on the floor above and the stairwell is completely blocked by massive flats of raw meat. There are several people in long white coats wearing hair nets attempting to maneuver flats of meat (each measuring @ 6 or 7 feet long… 4 feet wide, stacked very high with sides of beef, ribs, stacks of steaks, etc…) The stairs are split… you enter on the left, go up a half flight, turn 90 degrees and go up another half flight to get to our landing. We can get halfway up the stairs, but from the landing on up the stairs are completely blocked by a few of these flats of meat stacked on top of each other. Someone from the bottom of the stairs yells up to the people working on the top floor to move faster… there are people waiting to get upstairs. I wonder if we shouldn’t go back and try taking the elevator up the last floor so we can get in without having to wait.
We take the elevator up to our floor (floor 9) and are walking through the same bar-looking area, but on our floor it looks more like cheap cafeteria seating… long tables and mismatched cafeteria style chairs in 70’s colors (burnt orange/browns) I’m wondering what my parents must think, that the floor we live on is the crappier looking one.
The dream shifts slightly…
I’m standing outside the apartment building… it is located near a busy harbor. I see a couple going out to enjoy the water… they are vacationing?… the man looks like Barack Obama… he is riding a wave runner and is able to jump over waves, turning 180 degrees before landing smoothly on the surface of the water again. His wife is with an instructor learning how to work the wave runner… she gets it going, but the engine bogs down for some reason… she stays on the top to steer, and the instructor has to climb into the water and kick, pushing the wave runner back to shore. I see large freighters behind where they are riding.
I turn to go inside my building. I’m depressed for some reason. As I walk towards the building (it is brick… the corner of the building has large bright windows all the way up) I look at the corner and see the little convenient store… that’s where I go to pick up things that I’ve forgotten at the regular grocery store. I look up and see that there is actually a mini-store on each floor of the building, all up the same corner. I curse at myself… all this time I’ve been taking a really slow elevator all the way down to the bottom floor when I could have just walked down the hall. I’m angry at someone… it’s a sunny day and the apartment building is across the street from a park which boarders the harbor. I’m chewing on something (paper towels? it’s not food, and I wonder why I think it’s a good idea to chew on it) I walk into the building… I have a couple of items I’ve purchased and I’m walking back to my apartment with them. I pause at the doorway between the convenient store and the inside of the building… there are hair clips here. I don’t need one, I have plenty… but I have the urge to steal one. I’m upset about something else, and taking things from this store makes me feel better. I grab a hair clip (plastic, long… made of the same stuff a banana clip would be, but it is shaped like a long narrow bird beak… you’d use it if you had long hair… twist the hair up on the back of your head and run the clip down the center, down the length of your head, to hold the twist in place) As I slip out the door I hear a woman’s voice yelling in a heavy accent (Greek?) She saw me take the hair clip. She knows I’ve been taking things here and there but has never managed to catch up to me. I slip through the elevator doors and up to my floor, exiting the elevator using it’s back doors I only have to step a few feet to get to the door of my apartment.
My apartment is one room, very cluttered… a queen sized bed takes up most of the space. I have a dog… small brown (chihuahua?) who jumps up on the bed to greet me. I drop my purchases and stolen items on the bed… still upset. I pull the current hair clip out of my hair and go to twist my hair up (my hair reaches to my waistline) and put the new clip in. I don’t even know why I took it. The woman from the store has caught up to me this time, and bursts in. She demands money for the stuff that I stole. I’m in tears now, explaining that it’s not like I wanted to steal anything… I just didn’t want to have to stand in line… I was too upset about something… I just didn’t want to stand in line. I can feel the warmth of the tears streaming down my face. The woman isn’t yelling anymore, but demands $20.00 to cover the stuff I took. I pull cash out of my wallet… a series of $5.00 bills… I hand her a pile which she counts out to $25.00 and hands me back $5.00. I look at her, surprised she isn’t taking it all… but she says fair is fair, she just needs the $20.00 for the stuff I took.
