Crabby is as crabby does.

I am in the busy, populated long house, on the top floor. Perhaps it is the attic because the only way to get up here is to climb a small series of concrete abutments on the balcony, using some wrought iron railings as handholds. I have been exploring but now that I’m done and ready to head back down, I find the way down is much tricksier than the way up. It’s terrifically awkward; the handholds are in the wrong places for facing this direction; and I can’t figure out a good way to turn around and climb down in the same direction I clumb up. I can just foresee (or forefeel) my body weight shifting precipitously and inertia taking me over the balcony railing. *sigh* Another fear-of-falling dream! Anyway, Roze shows up and I lament my predicament to her. "How does one get down from here?" I ask. She offers, "You could always knife down—sticking knife points in the concrete, like Mike does." Of course Mike does. I figure it out without knives and join her below. 

I’ve been thinking that I want to move all the friends I sing with into the long house with me. This iteration of the long house is in a new town, however—Phoenix, maybe? Someplace out west. The legality of vocal auditions as a condition for housing is unclear, but the idea of having the whole group (it is a significantly larger chorus than Bamburía) living in the same house is immensely appealing. And as always the long house is immense—plenty of room for everybody. I recall previous (dream) visits, including this last time when I actually got lost wandering the halls of the second and third floors, and the atrium in the interior of both. I am also concerned that Paul will not want to move here because huge house = huge cleaning.  

As we’re walking down the stairwell, Roze says we have to go take hot showers. Still thinking about moving singers in, I ask Roze how the third floor is (there are still some old residents still living here); she replies, “Crabby. Crabby crabby crabby!” Apparently this means there is a major lice infestation; thus the hot showers.  

Roze leaves me temporarily in the bookshop on the ground floor to wait for a thing to happen. I find a newspaper and read a news story (not just an obituary) about a Ginger Raney having died overnight; her son, hurriedly traveling from afar to see her before she died, was waylaid with car trouble and was helped by a benevolent stranger, but still did not reach his mother before her death. I am wondering whether this happened to Mike Raney. (I cannot at this point remember his mom’s name; when I awake I remember it is Doris.) I start crying in the shop about the story.  

Also, I am naked and I can't remember why. It's mostly ok; certainly nothing that would concern the bookshop employees and anyone who knows me; but the customers walking in from the street seem startled.  

There is an imperious and whiny patron at the register: “I wish to see the [blah blah] books! I don’t want to wait any longer!” He is actually standing behind the register counter, separated from the clerk by, and berating her through the shelves of, a tall bookcase. He is a white, middle-aged, mustachioed, privileged asshole who keeps whinging despite the fact that the clerk is busy helping other customer.  

A William Byrd pavanne is playing on the soundtrack.

I've forgotten my mantra.

A hazy recollection of going back “home” (though not really home—presumably a hotel) and hunting through my disastrously floorstrewn suitcase for warmer clothes. En route, I puzzle over whether the blazer or the light fall jacket goes the outside: the obvious choice is jacket outside, but the jacket is shorter and tighter than the blazer and will look silly. At some point I explain to an acquaintance that I’m not always this disorganized—my clothes are home are stowed in very orderly fashion, I swear!—but the explanation itself is a distraction from a topic about which I’m even more embarrassed than the unkempt drifts of underwear and T-shirts.

Later: my flight home lands and my family greet me. Dad looks young and hot. As I hug him hello, he asks immediately about tomorrow’s plans; I reply that we’ll discuss... “logistics” (it takes me as moment to find the word) presently. In the process of hugging Mom and Bob there is a discussion going on and I end up hugging Bob twice by mistake— but I make the second time look like “It was a helluva trip so I need another hug.”

We fly out again tomorrow, four of us, maybe for a concert in Europe, to the aforementioned logistics are about getting home, unpacking/repacking and getting back to the airport in the morning. It is possible that in the course of our story one of the four travelers morphs into Bob; or perhaps I am merely considering him as the best option for car travel between Philadelphia and home tonight.

Meanwhile, there’s a party. We haven’t left the airport but we are at somebody’s spacious and well-appointed home. The bartender may be been a flight attendant: he was definitely on the flight but also appears to be friends with nearly everyone at the party. He sets up and announces shrimp cocktail on the rectangular island bar. This is actually a single dish with 6 shrimp, but it’s just an overture: the gist is, when six people claim those shrimp, he will make them drinks and set out more foods. While I do not see Jeff Goldblum on the phone, this party is definitely shaded like the Hollywood party in Annie Hall.

Heading outside to the patio, there is some issue with the floor of the entryway—like a weak sport in the floor disguised by carpet with woeful inefficiency. Henry and Jay Niepoetter are here. (Is Henry one of the performers? Not clear.) Out by the pool, several folks, including Dad and me, appear to be out of cigarettes. A young and very popular friend who is almost certainly not Jude Law is handing some smokes out; Dad rejects one that has wet spots and NJL selects a dry one to give him. I am next on the dole, and I find myself unable to similarly reject a wet cigarette. Once I have lit it with difficulty and torn the filter off and wrangled the remainder into smokable shape, I mumble, “Dammit”. Dad says “What?” I explain about and show off the shambles of a cigarette. NJL offers—or Dad offers to get from NJL?—a dry one, but I decline. Because democracy! Cue Rudy Vallee: Dry cigarettes are un-American!

While this cigarette distribution and smoking is in process dad and NJL are talking about heritage and ethnicity. Dad claims “Native American heritage, which my mother (?!) makes”, to which NJL says, “Oh, I didn't realize she was dead.” Dad corrects himself: “Sorry, ‘made’.” I try to work out the semantics of the tenses re the hereditary passage of identity, but I give up.

Back to logistics: While I had postponed the discussion upon landing, the next several hours are quietly vexing me. We’re flying in the morning but there’s at least some boat travel implied. The four of us are sort of naturally, socially divided into two pairs, and the other two are known to be planning to bring aboard a massive and varied stash of recreational drugs. I contemplate whether I can safely bring along any cannabis.

Then, as usual, there is a cat whining at me.

Short stories from this morning

I am not exactly sure who this guy is, but he is a musician, a pianist, and he must have developed or contracted one of those Oliver Sachs-type neurological disorders because he has forgotten how to play boogie woogie. (Full disclosure: He doesn't actually use the term 'boogie woogie'; in truth, he has forgotten that most basic of proto-rock 'n' roll chord progressions, I-vi-ii-V, as in 'Heart and Soul'. I forget what he calls this progression, though.) Anyway, we are sitting in a restaurant and he is telling me the story of the night said chords fled his faculties, and how he struggled to recover, in the middle of playing a set with his band. His solution was ridiculously complicated: something about dropping red markers on the floor tiles to indicate to his band-mates which notes to stay away from in any given measure, so they didn't clash with what he was playing. In the midst of his explanation, at least one minor second relation occurs to me as verboten, and I agree with his method at least that far. (In retrospect, though, the whole thing is nonsense.)

Later, after boogie schmoogie guy has gone away, I am running the broader arc of his story through my mind, as if it were (and maybe it is) the plot of a movie. I am still in the restaurant—or club, the sort of place and maybe the place where the pianist suffered his sudden harmonic lacuna—sitting alone at a round 4-top table and stirring what is partly a cup of coffee and partly a bowl of soup. The chunks in the soup correspond to elements of the story I'm rehearsing in my mind. At the end of the story, the pianist breaks up with his girlfriend and it's a very 'get out yr hankies' cinematic sequence. Turns out, I am meeting the (now ex-) girlfriend for dinner, and what do you know, la voici. From the cheerfulness of her demeanor I surmise she has not yet heard that Boogie Boy has broken up with her. I am suddenly verklempt, and it seems imperative that I tell her that I love her. Maybe she gives me a look, because I immediately qualify that utterance—honestly, we really haven't known each other long enough to reasonably profess even platonic love, but I am in the moment. She ought to be assured somebody loves her. I guess I spring the bad news on her then, but the scene cuts early for some reason.

In a different, mutated thread, we are acquainted with the behind-the-counter workings of a family bakery. We are in a medieval village in the demesne of an oppressive and possibly psychotic king, and the latest news is that the king has decreed that all bakers must create loaves of bread that depict bears. Our protagonist family has been struggling to figure out how to do this, so far with no success. The regime is represented by obnoxious guardsmen on the street, always the same crusty pair, who loudly bellow the king's orders, seemingly non-stop. The story includes a lot of soap opera detail about the baker family and their interrelationships, but most of these are lost; the important thing is, the morning has come for all bakers to display their bear loaves and, hélas! our family has nothing to show for it. Rather, they have a loaf of bread with some vague lumps and mounds in a topography that is in no way suggestive of a bear or bears.

This story has been told before, I realize—it is familiar, almost a fable or household tale—but we are now seeing it from a new perspective. In this telling, the various bakers' bear-shaped loaves are loaded up on carts for presentation and paraded through the high street of the village. (There are, BTW, far, far too many such loaves to be representative of the bakerage of a small village—we're talking Macy's Parade in New York City with all the bakers in all five boroughs turning out to show they shit off.) Anyway, the products are amazing: loaf after loaf is spectacularly bear-presentative, some individual bears, menacingly mid-roar or in repose, others whole scenes with multiple bears hunting, bathing, frolicking. The crust are mostly glistening and rich golden brown, looking like egg-bathed brioche, gorgeously highlighting the detail of each offering. We see them all in motion on their carts, along with the king's men, who are inspecting the loaves for acceptability. We know that we will soon see the awful, inadequate loaf baked by our heroes and the suspense builds slowly as each magnificent bear loaf passes by. When the offending loaf shows up, however, the king's guard almost miss it: a moving obstacle—someone driving an ox, maybe—obscures it as it passes by. But they catch sight of it anyway: one guardsman says to another, in effect, "The fuck was that?" And we know our family is in for some heavy punitive shit, maybe dungeoning. But we switch stories again.

I am female. My sister (or "sister": think Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern) has sent me home from 'New Rochelle' to drop some stuff off. Typical for my dreams, my arms are ridiculously, elaborately laden and of course I have to fetch keys from my pocket. Once I get to the front porch, juggling all the packages I'm carrying, I realize that I have two keys for the apartment on me: my own set and a single, spare key that is destined for a house-guest. I think I'm supposed to find and deliver the spare, but for the time being I need to put stuff down in the apartment. It is a townhouse on a city street, but each such townhouse in this row have modest front porches, round and ballustered; some, like ours, have been subdivided, and two doors lead to separate apartments. My sister and I live upstairs, but I notice the downstairs door is ajar; so I put my parcels down on the porch (honestly? I let them tumble. Don't tell my sister.) and poke my head in to see who's about.

There are several family members and friends sitting in the front room: my cousins Michael and Jimmy are sitting on the couch just inside the door; my mom (I may be back to being male and myself at this point) and a couple other NPCs are sitting or standing throughout the room. Michael immediately asks me, 'How are things at New Paltz? Not New Paltz, I mean New Rochelle.' (Actually, I have no idea what followed the 'New' in either case... pretty sure it wasn't 'Paltz' and 'Rochelle'.) From here on out, everything anybody says is slightly off from what it should be, and somebody else corrects them: it becomes a game. I think somebody offers 'gin rummy tea' instead of gin seng. Jimmy isn't really Jimmy—he is (let us say) Greg Evigan, but he's still supposed to be my cousin in context—and he complains that somebody recently called him Gregory Peccary instead of Greg Evigan. Mom does most of the error-correcting. After a good chunk of this playful small talk, I take my packages and head upstairs.

There's a lot more where that came from, but this is all I remember.

Sonnet CLXXV: Come on ye[r] childhood heroes

I've never fathomed humans’ ravening need—

lampooned in Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick—

for superheroes. Yet I will concede:

that recent movie good guys make my dick

get up and tap dance serves sufficiently

as common ground. For instance, Charlie Cox,

who couldn't be more aptly named: can we

burn all Daredevil’s tops and set his box

in neoprene relief instead? And yo,

Luke Cage: 

why ruin all those jeans and hoodies

with bullet holes? Just leave ’em hanging, bro.

(The clothes, I mean, not Mr. Colter’s goodies.)

And how does Aquamomoa 

require

more than a Speedo? Wardrobe, I’m for hire.

[2018 September 5]