Porter Goss, Traitor or Hero? Doors. Wooden Space Program. Birds.

Marco McClean

From:	Marco McClean
Subject:	Porter Goss, Traitor or Hero? Doors. Wooden Space Program. Birds.
Date:	Wed, 19 Jan 2005 03:26:58 -0800

My dreams from Monday night, Tuesday morning, 2005-01-17,
01-18:
First dream. We're refugees who have split up to walk
cross-country on mountain roads through a depopulated America.
Darkness shows us up as sky-high vertical shafts of light to
life-sucking creatures in the rocks and sky.
The good guy --or bad guy, depending on how things work
out-- is Porter Goss (no relation to the Bush Administration
stooge). (This dream-Porter-Goss character is like a cross
between Hugh Jackman and John Travolta in the movie
/Swordfish/-- he's good and bad, ruthless and sensitive.) He
negotiates somehow with the creatures to give my little group
time to do our trick, which is to lay out a yellow extension
cord on the asphalt and turn on a blazing-bright trouble lamp,
the wrong kind of light for the creatures; it will confuse
them so they can't see our life-lights.
The creatures are not stupid, so why don't they figure
this out and pull the cord away before we turn the light on?
The next part of the trick is, if Porter Goss has sold us
out, I'll send him through the rail and off a cliff in an
abandoned car so the creatures will chase away after him.
While he waits to be judged he stands next to a sleeping
toddler; apparently he has a backup trick too-- but for us or
them?

Next dream. My (dead) stepbrother Craig (Mickey) and I are
in a cabin in rain-soaked wilderness. In a refrigerated dairy
case whose door won't close all the way I find a suit jacket
and put it over my head to go out and get firewood from a shed
on the next hill.
The woodshed has less and less integrity the longer I stay
in it. First I see things being dripped on, then I see the sky
through the rotted roof, then there's no roof, then the walls
are a funky fence, then there's nothing but scattered wet wood
and some stamped-metal wind-up toys in wet boxes.
My friend Mark is the caretaker/manager/landlord of the
cabin; when I show him the cabin's screen door has been bent
inward so it's useless he says, "Nah-no. The screen door goes
the other ord-wippy door." He means it's supposed to be like
that, broken. Well, he's the landlord.
Under the sink counter a metal cabinet holds drinking
glasses. This door sticks closed and requires to be widgied
open every time you want a glass.

Next dream. My mountain community has a space program and
we've built a roomy rocketship and a
/When-Worlds-Collide/-style launching ramp all out of
rough-cut wood. A little boy and I will go first. I say,
"Let's go in the front." We climb uphill through the cabin
--the ship is on the ramp-- to the front bench-seat. I fit a
T-shaped metal control bar into a slot in the transmission
hump on the floor. We go back to sit against the back wall
during acceleration. The little boy's hopping around, bored
and excited. I say, "You wanta get your back against the
wall."
As we roll up the endless ramp at about twenty
miles-per-hour I use wireless keypad buttons to adjust the
ship's nose to stay on track. The buttons only jam us leftward
ten degrees off-center or rightward ten degrees off-center-- I
want a /center/ button.
All this is just taxiing to the launch point, where we
stop. Tuffer from the old Community School directs about fifty
others to manhandle a stiff self-standing painted canvas
curtain into place as a backdrop for the photograph of this
historical event. A loudspeaker crackles and someone says,
"Fourteen seconds. Three. Two. One." Artist Matt Leach comes
in and turns a skate key in the ignition switch in the wooden
floor. I say, "Good job, Matt."
The ship lurches forward. The little boy who insisted on
standing and moving around now falls-- the cabin's back wall
slams into him, breaking his arm. Even so, he wrestles with a
French clown who, as /he/ wrestles, says how tired he is to be
bossed around by the bossy boy. The ship stops again.
Everything is quiet. Matt says, "Shhh! Cops!" Teachers lead
dozens of children from downstairs in the ship. I see that
we're parked in a wooden hangar that covers us and the ramp.
We've used the ramp as a monorail track to another terminal.
The test flight is over.
As we all get out through the bottom in the back a woman
teacher says something funny about how babies are made and all
the children giggle. I say with a straight face, "My wife and
I weren't apprised of that, and consequently we have no
children." General merriment.
On a dirt playground in a mountain clearing I see Pepper,
the dog I had when I was little. It's really coming apart. I
say to visitors, "That dog is about two hundred years old. It
does one trick." The dog falls on its side; that's the trick.
I say, "Notice how the organs are coming out." (The dog is
split up the middle by drying and decay; the tubes and lumps
of its internal parts, dried black, push out of the ribs and
the stiff, cracked flesh.

Vignette. I'm playing with Juanita's pet birds. They're
bigger than in real life and their sizes are reversed so the
crimson rosella is the smaller of the two.

Next dream. Mendocino actress Jill Taylor, a little-girl
version of herself and I are on a long wooden stairway down a
dead-dry dirt and rock ski hill. The little Jill wants me to
teach her to fly; I'd like to, but grownup Jill insists on
learning too. It's much harder for adults to learn and she'll
really hold us back, but I try. We skip down the stairs-- hop,
step-step, hop, step, skip -- hop, step-step, hop, step, skip
-- etc. We get all the way to the covered-brige-like bottom
of the stairway without ever taking off, even a little.
On another hill I'm by myself. As I climb, a man shoots a
gun from a car coming up behind me. The car turns around and
goes the other way. In a kind of Montessori school at the top
I show kids a play I make up on the spot that involves
popsicle sticks, felt, bottles of milk glue, etc. as puppet
characters moving and flying around by my telekinesis.
In an open-sided tent in another school for slightly older
kids farther along the hill I watch a group of kids hammer big
sloppy art projects out of an inexhaustible supply of copper
sheets. /They could make airframes out of those copper sheets,
but only if they want to fly./ I put on a demo, flying around
the tent and across the lawn to where Ar-Dee from the Whale
School and a lot of other adults and kids are dressed in
ballet clothes, practicing ballet. Ar-Dee is delighted that
I'm out flying around, but she's the only one who likes it, so
she stifles being happy.
I fly into a classroom. The severe young teacher here
refuses to even see and acknowledge that I'm flying. She goes
on with what she's doing and imposes her will on the children
so they keep their heads down.
Back in the copperworking tent I interest one little boy
in learning to fly. He's really good at it right off the bat,
and he's enthusiastic about going out and zooming around. I
say, "And you've gotta be really careful. A power line or
something can come along and /whap/, that's /it/." The severe
teacher comes and says lovingly/witheringly to the boy, "What
about your project?" in the way that Nurse Ratched says to
Billy Bibbit in /One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest/, "What will
your mother say?"
I take over for the boy; I say, "My project is flying.
I'll do the other later." She has no right to interfere.

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