MRScarruthers: 22 March 2010

i was peering over a cliff in big sur that was held up by a scaffolding. Andy came around the corner with a lunch sack in his hand wearing a flannel shirt i've known him to wear. I was surprised-- he wasn't has fat as i though he would be. There were Mexican day laborers standing with him on the path. They laughed, knowing i was spying on him. He looked around right and left, joking, trying to fibgure out what they were laughing at. I continued to peer over the edge, lying flat on my belly. he finally looked up and we both laughed a comfortable familiar laugh. i climbed down or he climbed up, maybe both. When we were finally face to face I asked him why i hadn't been able to get in touch with him for so long. it had been two weeks. he replied that he had relapsed. It was so bad that he had to go to the hospital. "it was really bad. They had to crack me," he said. I was confused about what that meant. He unvuttoned his shirt and revealed a long scar down the front of his chest, almost healed, but still gross raised pink scar tissue. I understood- they had to open him up completely from the front. Saw him in half basically-- to cure him from the inside out. He was better now though and was headed to work. We parted ways and I ended up at my parents' house -- the one we used to live in in Romeoville. I was helping my mom with something, my parents weren't fighting. I asked my mom why i had no memories of the last two days-- I was trying really hard to remember and there was nothing. She was evasive and i feared I had started using heroin. I was panicky, angry and sad with myself. As i struggled to remember, she reminded me of my heart condition. I had a memory of Aidan in the garage with a flashlight. My mom said that he had accidentally shined a light into my eyes and it had triggered cardiac arrest. I had to go to the hospital where they had to resuscitate me. I brought my chin in close to my neck and peered into my blouse. I could see on my chest the exact same scar Andy had on his, healed to the same point.

P Sturgess: 16 March 2010

I don't remember the circumstances leading up to it but I was at an old Asian man's giant complex in the hills somewhere. I had friends with me, none of whom I knew in real life. He wanted to execute me but was going to do so at a specific time. I remember quickly & furtively Facebooking 'call 911' from my phone. No one responded. I remember K posting something after me and wondering why she didn't notice. Eventually I slipped away, I think with a friend, into the building's basement complex. We rode a steel elevator down. It was a giant underground warehouse of some kind with a ton of large, polished electronic equipment. We slipped past some workers welding something. I lost my companion and started running. I found a bunch of discarded alluminum storage cabinets and slipped into one. At some point I came out. My friends and a couple dozen of the complex's staff came running towards me at different directions. One of my friends tossed me a small, lightweight rifle in-between a bb gun and a real gun. I started picking off attackers. We escaped through a back exit, the sun was out. We ran up a hill adjacent to the complex. On the other side was a sharp drop and the ocean. There it was a tiny cove. There was a manmade bench/shelf carved out of the hill at about water level to stand on. A waterfall cascaded from the opposite side. A girl in the party jumped in. She felt something tickle her. She exclaimed that they were jellfish. Hundreds of tiny, harmless jellyfish. We all undressed and got in. Glowing fingernail sized jellyfish surrounded me. I could feel them stick and brush against me. Their light radiated out of the water. Eventually we got out. Climbing the hill again we saw that a small mob of people were rushing from the complex, obviously to apprehend us/me. My friends fled one way and I went back to the water. Somehow I ended up at a water park, like Sea World. The cove may or may not have been a part of it. I remember having to avoid swimming in the park tanks but in some places I had to swim through natural pools of water. I kept my phone in my mouth to keep it relatively dry. I walked around the cove and ducked backstage. A man and a woman were fixing props. I was still being pursued. I ran down a stairwell and was at another cove, this one part of the actual ocean, more grimy than idyllic. The small bit I stood at was narrow and the shores were man made. It was the edge of a seaside town. In the middle of the stretch I stood at was a small hut floating on a platform. I swam to it. It was empty. I hopped on floating colored foam from the hut to the shore, then slipped into town, safe from death.

there were also dolphins somewhere. I was afraid to swim with them because of the orcas and I didn't want to get eaten.

Auntie Grizzelda: 03 Feb 2010

I was eating dinner with my family in the dining room of my parent's house (you know, the one that only exists in your dreams.) My father was sitting across the table from me, and my Auntie was sitting next to me, telling me stories about the house that she'd grown up in, and my older relatives, most of whom are dead. I thought, "Wait, I thought Auntie was dead." and I looked over at my father who was staring at me like I was talking to myself. He said, "Is there someone sitting at the end of the table, Em?" and I tentatively replied, "Aunt....ie....?" and he said, incredulously, "Would AUNTIE like some more wine??" I looked at the untouched table setting next to me. She was gone, and I couldn't remember any of her stories, but it didn't matter, cause I'd made them up. I felt crazy.

MRScarruthers : 14 February 2010

to my delight, i accidentally discovered my telekinetic powers. at first i practiced in secret moving small things-- a scrap of flannel cloth, a tie and other pieces of fabric. i was surprised that i could make the fabric scraps move in circles like a dog chasing its own tail or an oroborous. i wasn't sure if i should show anyone, but decided to surprise my sister, keturah, and seth with my new skill. instead of telling them, i just started making objects move near each of them-- all i had to do was look at the object and think about how i wanted it to move and it would happen. they were impressed and brought professor cool to me. it was important to them that i show him. almost showing off now, i demonstrated my skill. he was unimpressed and put an object in front of me-- a pentagonal cylinder, open on both ends, wooden on the outside, orange on the inside, heavily lacquered. "now move this," he said. i tried as hard as i could, but it wouldn't budge.

ADAM: 26 January 2010

I was living with my parents but not in the town I'm from. I think because carol anne, keturah and I watched the babysitters club movie it was (although I've never been) more of a New England setting. none of the people who are in my life with the exception of my parents were there. I had just finished writing and recording lyrics for a song I was working on and I even edited and mixed the whole thing which took some time. showed it to some people, fixed things, etc. then some strange, cult newcomers appeared in our town, lots of them actually and they all seemed to know each other and what was going on but it was still a mystery to most of the people of the town. I first noticed something bizarre when a little girl I had seen about town was talking with this strangers, and I too was noticed so one of them came up to me and explained to me that the little girl was special and so was I, and that there were others too. then something crazy happened. a fire broke out in someone's house. this someone was very important where we were, I think the mayor of our town and unfortunately him and his family did not survive the flames. but the fire didn't go out. instead the thick black smoke kept billowing out of the house that was at the very center of town. the sky became completely black with smoke. I was at my house with a few friends and some of the cult members that had befriended some of my friends. it was 9 a.m but looked like it was night still. someone made a comment like "man I wonder if we're ever going to see sunlight again" just then the sun started bursting through the smoke but in doing so made one of the most vivid and surreal visuals I'd ever seen, the smoke actually came down to ground level and since schools were closed due to smoke all the children in the town were outside chasing it. it was then that things started getting extremely bizarre, a man came up to me and asked if I'd ever been to this scenic spot in our town and although I might have lived there for a long time I'd never been to this particular place. but he started talking to me about celestial things I truly didn't understand but he said I would soon. in fact when I started questioning my friends, they said the same thing, that I would understand soon but at this time couldn't tell me anything I get back home and my parents are no where to be found but there are a lot of people just milling around my house, one of the girls asks me to come with her and when I walk into another room there's a girl who appears to be sexually possessed or something in my parents bed and the other girl takes me into a room and asks me a few questions while she gets all these weird medical supplies out. she tells me that I'm special and that this procedure must happen. the procedure, which the results are not yet important, consisted of a few shots, which made me very nauseated and then to watch one of two movies. one was a made up movie I'd never seen but in my dream really wanted to, it was some horror movie like the original changeling or something, and the other was some shit movie, kind of like to additionally screen us to make sure we were "the chosen" people or not. after the movie ended and I returned to the rest of the house, everyone seemed really proud of me like I did something amazing but I still had no idea what was going on. so they explained a little bit to me. we had been selected to produce a certain chemical that only myself, a few friends those strangers, and that little girl from the beginning of my dream, could produce and then we were to pay this company that did all these experiments a monthly fee to get rid of it. obviously I was instantly confused about how someone could do that, it seemed to me like if they needed this chemical so badly why would I not sell it to them, instead of paying to get rid of it. my friends replied that it didn't work like that and soon the newcomers would explain but not yet. meanwhile everything around me seemed different, like more hellish and gothic than I had remembered our town being. we were hanging out in my house when a computer monitor with surveillance cameras kept flashing to different parts of town and we were throwing a birthday party for the little girl. everyone else seemed occupied and so I was trying to entertain the child and got a balloon down from the ceiling that had gotten away from her. she thanked me and said. "were getting married!" and I said "aw you and I?" and she answered yes and closed her eyes and went out to kiss me. so innocently I kissed her. the second that I did that, the surveillance screen flashes to all these different parts of town with all these different dead bodies and a second ago they were just going about their normal business. It hit me that I had had just killed everyone that had been chosen by breaking one of the rules the newcomers had given us, which was basically not to be romantically involved with any of the chosen ones and even though I was just humoring the little girl by kissing her, it triggered something in our body which literally shut our body's system down everyone around me started falling to the ground, I felt it coming on to me too, I looked at my friends and told them that I finally understood why they had such power over us. I tried to survive, I tried to stay awake but my eyes rolled back into my head as I fell. I died in my dream and woke up in cold sweat.

P. Sturgess: 24 January 2010

I was having trouble falling asleep. Eventually I drifted off and immediately started dreaming. The image was of a woman pregnant with my child, her shirt pulled up over her belly. I couldn't see her face but her stomach was painted. I suddenly realized that I no longer loved this woman and could never do so again; I could never love someone who'd paint their pregnant stomach. I woke up immediately panicked that I was having a baby with someone who now disgusted me. I drifted off to sleep again and immediately had a dream where I fell down a flight of stairs. There was no context, just me falling. I awoke instantly with my body jerking, contorting and generally physically reacting as if it had just actually fallen. It was 3AM; the adrenaline rush was so intense falling back asleep was impossible. I watched old Japanese gangster movies until I had to leave for work at 7.

MRScarruthers: 16 January 2010

I was starting at a new school and everyone’s eyes were on me.  This time, though, I was going to do it right. I had all the right clothes, a new car (pastel pink boxy convertible), and the perfect haircut (short sort of asymmetrical bob).  Everyone wore similar clothes- skewed /mangled catholic school uniforms. Everyone was rich and it seemed like it was the 80s.  The school’s architecture was like a mall. Everything was pastel apricot, pink and turquoise.  The cafeteria was fashionably but dimly lit with neon signs. The ceilings were low but inviting and it was arranged more like a food court than a cafeteria. The tables that filled the space were round and white- seating about 5 kids.

I became very popular at the new school, but I worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up my grades because I had so many extra curricular activities—mostly driving around in other kid’s cars. Each day more and more of my peers asked me to sit with them at lunch. They all vied for my attention in the halls and in the classrooms, too.

The new semester began and I was leaning my new schedule while still learning my way around the school. I was starting music class this semester. I walked into the classroom and of course everyone was asking me to sit with them. As I considered what to do, I investigated some displays of historical musical instruments at the back of the classroom. There were a few metal objects laid out on small pieces of black burlap. I touched each of the items curiously and without thinking, wrapped my hand around one of the small objects and snuck it into my pocket. I turned back to my peers and Adam (he had a “hey hey we’re the monkeys haircut) beckoned to me to come sit with him and his friends. I skipped over and sat with them.

After school Adam came over to my house (similar to the mansion in the dream with the movie family). I remembered the little metal thing I had stolen from the classroom. I pulled it from my pocket and held it in the palm of my hand. It was a metal rectangular box with a hunter green patina. Three golden rods with different textures protruded from various faces of the box.  One rod was a little bit thicker than the others and had a tiny hole at one end. Its texture was like little hatch marks—but bulging like when meat is bound with a net. I lifted this side to my mouth, resting the hole on my lips. This was a different kind of instrument. It didn’t make any noise itself. As soon as my lips made contact with it, my body began to make music. Barely audible to anyone near me, it filled my body with the most beautiful music in the history of time.

When Adam saw what it was, he got really mad at me and told me I had to return it as soon as possible. The next day I returned the instrument to its rightful place on the burlap.

That same day I took two other miniature instruments that just turned out to be fancy hat pins.

A few days later, our music teacher was giving a lecture about historical instruments as all of us students lounged in the sort of foggy classroom. Beams of light were streaming in through the windows and we were leaning back casually in our chairs wearing geometric pastel outfits. “Aren’t we lucky,” she said “to have this small collection of powerful instruments??” She gestured to the display at the back of the classroom. “No one else in the world has instruments like these!” She started towards the display, but stopped short, gasping. The entire class erupted into a commotion—the green box instrument was missing! Adam looked over at me, pointing, and said “she has it! She took it!” 

My eyes filled to the brim with tears and water gushed from my eyes down my face without blinking. I couldn’t begin to explain that, yes, I had stolen the instrument but I had returned it. As I cried I thought about what a terrible thing it was that no one  would ever be able to experience the sensation of playing that mysterious instrument. I wept and wept.  In the cafeteria, no one would sit with me.

P.Sturgess 13 January 2010

Me and my old friend Eroca went to some backpacking trail. There were other hikers present, sparsely, and the trail was wide and flat. There was some evidence of archeological work, or at least a sense of this work being done. There was an air of the fantastic, also gloom. We walked past rivers, plains, etc. and found ourselves at a small cave. There was the sense of no one else having really been there before or, at least, a sense of the cave being lost to modern society. It was extremely shallow, more of a nook than an actual cave, and a sense of Lovecraftian dread and mystery pervaded, as if it were an altar to some lost, inhuman, magical society.

I don't remember what else we found in there, I believe some artifacts and markings. What I recall we interacted with in particular was a small, green pool, from which we took a sample.

At this point my memory of the dream skips.

I'm at a huge, dark, ornate mansion. I'm there with many people for some event, a wedding maybe. There is a sense that the mansion is somewhere remote and that everyone's visit is an extended one. It's perpetually dark outside, again there is a sense of some distant evil.

I don't remember much, but at some point I sneak around the mansion and run into an old girlfriend lurking in a doorway. She pulls me into the doorway and starts kissing me, then pulls me into the room. The room is messy & lived in. A rack of nice suits sits by the door. I ask her whose room this is, she says she doesn't know and that it doesn't matter because they're not there. We end up on a shag rug to the side of the bed and roll around kissing, groping, etc. Just as we're about to fuck I hear multiple sets of feet approach the door. I stop and approach it, looking through a crack in the hinge. I see two sets of eyes looking at me.

They indicate their presence, we probably cover ourselves, then I open the door. They are led by an intimidating man with slick, shoulder length almost-black hair which curls outward slightly. Behind him is a taller man, slender but muscular, almost albino. Behind them is a woman with east asian features and long red-black hair. They're all dressed a little gothy but seem slightly out of time. I get the sense that they're about to perform some kind of dark rite, are in a hurry and looking for something they'd left there or needed from there.

They enter the room, ask who we are & indicate that we're in the blond man's room. We explain ourselves. They don't seem particularly angry or concerned. We mostly want them to go so we can continue screwing.

For some reason a small fishtank is in the room in which I'd apparently put the sample of green, algae filled water from earlier. It has multiplied to fill the tank. The leader, the dark haired man looks surprised and wants him and the others to drink some. They do. It obviously has some power and psychoactive effects, the leader explains that he can't feel 'it' strongly from the tank water itself but can from the algae sediment. There is the sense of there being some great power if enough of it is consumed.

They leave to go find a container to transfer the algae to or something. The woman raves about the sensation as she leaves.

There's a sense of these people being some great evil and that I ought not to let them take all the algae water so I pick up an empty bottle of Jameson's we'd apparently consumed earlier and fill it from the tank. I hope they don't discover the declined water level.

Eventually they return for the water, the rest of the dream is a blur. I remember trying to hide from the black-haired man with my bottle, I remember sneaking around the mansion, I remember making out more, I sort of remember us actually managing to fuck in the room, I remember going back to the trail and then perhaps waking up.

MRScarruthers: 12 January 2010

No dreams, but woke up with Bobby Beausoleil's name stuck in my head.

P.Sturgess: 14 January 2010

Dreamt I was scooting through a more wooded, hilly approximation of GG Park on an office chair along a paved path with a girl I'd never met. We ended up scooting across the ocean with helicopters chasing up to an island then across to a town and came to rest in front of a F. L. Wright-esque apartment building. A man parked alongside the sidewalk we were on & accidentally left his car in neutral; while his back was turned it rolled into the building. Not crashed: rolled in through an open door. The man walked away never realizing this had happened. Me and the girl went inside and looked for it amongst the various rooms and corridors, interacting with various tenants. Eventually I ended up with a young man and we entered the apartment of a guy who had a platform 30ft in the air on which he practiced martial arts with large blades and spears. My male companion didn't take him seriously and decided to spar with him unarmed. Meanwhile I looked out of the room's large plate-glass windows at the sea. A Monterey Cyprus was in the foreground.

That's all I remember.

There might have also been a cat and a record store somewhere.

b.peters: 28 December 2009

we were at an outdoor music festival event at a remote campsite. the campsite was next to a stream and sandwiched between a marsh and a steep hill/cliff/mountain, and a lot of the kids were splashing around in the stream. it was impossible to stay completely dry as the ground was muddy, and everyone was fairly rambunctious. erin was sitting at a picnic table with an asian american princess type - expensive stiletto boots, push-up bra, lots of jewelry, etc. he was largely ignoring everyone and just whispering to his companion. when he got up to pee, she turned to me, stuck out her hand for a handshake, and said "hi, i'm amanda." i wanted to play it cool, shake her hand and be civil, but instead i started clawing at her cleavage like a rabid animal. i was so embarrassed; i ran away. then i saw the men's room. i went inside to find erin. i had to wait until he left the stall, meanwhile, lots of dudes were coming and going and looking at me weird. one of them was in a suit, for some reason. erin finally came out and i apologized profusely. he didn't seem concerned at all for amanda, and was just like "oh, it's okay, don't worry about it." eventually he asked me why i had gotten so upset. i recounted the series of disappointments, broken deadlines, broken dates - both personal and work-related, and his seeming inability to communicate exactly what type of parameters applied to our hanging out. he seemed completely incapable of understanding this, but jarred that his actions would have any kind of consequences. it was time for the big game. i was playing soccer again in some kind of championship. i was similar to the character hayley in stick it - i was out of practice, but still had some kind of innate ability. it was so hard, and since i hadn't been practicing with my teammates regularly, it was very difficult to communicate with them and dumb things kept happening, like two of us charging the same player or two of us sprinting at a renegade ball at the same time. finally, though, things started coming together. i surprised myself by kicking a beautifully arching ball across the other team's defense that our forwards easily sprinted to. later, i dribbled all the way from center field to the goal, and kicked the ball past the goalie. it hit the net but the force of the kick and the spin forced the ball to move between the net and center-rear supporting bar of the goal. it finally came to rest in the opposite corner. the motion was beautiful.

b.peters: 26 December 2009

i was working on a project with Skye and we were at a party in Portrero Hill that was somehow related to our project. Skye was wearing full smokey-eye make-up and pulled me aside to tell me, among other things, that he was planning to fuck marcella, explaining that he hadn't slept with a woman in a long time and wanted to be sure of his sexual identity. i couldn't stop looking at his amazing eye make-up and wondered what kind of mascara he was wearing. "is marcella in on this plan?" i stammered. "oh, yeah, she's totally cool with it," skye replied. i said "okay, cool," and headed to the bar. i was already a little bit drunk but ordered another drink and sat down next to lee. a boy who looks like the boy who looks like andy and lives at the jerrold house started talking to lee. eventually he asked something along the lines of "what's up with that girl and alex, and how do i date her?" lee gave a long-winded reply, including references to my venomous soul, and the boy left. during lee's unflattering monologue, i stared straight ahead, scowling and drinking. when the boy left i faced lee, gave him an earful, and then threw the contents of my glass all over his face and chest. lee was covered in thinly sliced pickles. i left the party, feeling drunk and silly. i was nearly killed when i crossed the street without waiting for light to change. i knew i was in for it, i braced myself for a crushing blow, but the driver must have seen me and slowed, because the bumper only gently tapped me. i was incredibly embarrassed, and went in to a corner store for a snack. haribo was now making the most amazing grapefruit candy. it was gummi's of the individual tear-drop-shaped juice sacks of a grapefruit. the bag was large, but slender and mostly clear so you could see the amazing gummi grapefruit juice sacks, which were, for some reason, purple. i drunk wandered around the corner store for a while and more than once the staff tailed me like i was a shoplifter, but i just drunk-smiled at them and kept walking. finally i left the store and found abandoned baby zoo animals in the street. they were ill or maybe just dehydrated - i could tell by the way they were having trouble keeping their heads erect. there were two tigers, a lion, a spotted jaguar, an orangutan, and a koala. despite being different species, they were all exactly the same size. i gathered them up and took them to my jet. as we were taking off from cesar chavez, i realized i had forgotten the two tigers. i was really sad, but i knew i couldn't ask the pilot to turn around since we had just become airborne. when i got back from my trip, carol anne was cleaning out the closet. uzi started hissing at something in the closet and i was worried that there was a baby zoo animal in our home, but there was just a new black-and-white kitten hiding in the corner of the closet. no one knew how it got there.

m: 25 December 2009

this show was called "Big Boyd's Tiki Trouble Pad". lots of guests. Richard 'Iceman' Kuklinski in full yelow green giant disco elf outfit, Ed Kemper and his Dartboard that nagged him, and Smitty who wore crushed beer cans in his shoes with a paper wart on his face carrying his guitar. Smitty had a song about hitch hiking that was cut short by an attack on his cowboy boots. in the background gallery of regulars were: Sexy Sixty and Susan Seventies- the ever arguing twins (quoting explicit murders to top each other in attempts to win arguements), Pele-who knew volcanos could be so seductive? or have perky tits? Myna Bird Hindley-white crow girl in super styled 60s blonde wig, Straight Mantisatans-a group of logical omnivorous guest eating insects on odd 2 wheeled jagged contraptions of horror, one had a built in guillotine, another some hanging gallows. Smitty was attacked by them. Talking Tiki Toilets The Process and The Order- one a laundry machine, the other a laundry folder device constantly spouting rhetoric that ended in laundry talk. Owlister Katley-an owl cat with a pyramid hat and robe. Gehirnschadel Gigglekriegers-a group of black and red hungry skulls Bathmatphomet-flat Bhaphomet shag carpet Ruthie N Asia-a talking map of Asia clustered over with needles and medical waste Shegypt-Black Mamba/Cobra Hybrid curled around intricate evil Egyptian gods. there was an lp cover of the band Totenkluster that came to life with this awesome krautrock sound, followed by a blurb on next week's guest: the dug up corpse of Lux Interior. Boyd mostly sat around in bed and let these characters do all the fighting while he lounged around. there was intro music and outro music by a group of whirring machines. lots of 70s style chromakey stuff too. the dream went on and on. i found some of the singles he borrowed in his collection of 7"s which i'm not sure if i got back or not...

Alistair Cookie: 23 December 2009

i was in a really big field out behind the movie theater in north champaign. the sky was pink like the gums of a dog, and i felt like staring at it. then it was kind of like that scene in vertigo, because i saw a plane overhead. it did some loops in the air for what must have been only boredom on behalf of the pilot, and knew i had to get out of my car and watch this. i sensed something crazy was about to happen. and then, the plane lost control, and tailspinned down to the earth, landing on the only tree on the horizon. the tree burst into flames, and the plane was incinerated against the pink sky. and the exhaust of the plane was so full of gas, that it set fire too. so there were these neon loops in the sky that were on fire. i realized it was pointless to call 911.

MRScarruthers:17 December 2009

we were living in europe. or new york. i called casy on the telephone to hang out on thanksgiving eve. he was busy, so i met matthew and his girlfriend at the bar instead. the bar was in the basement of an dorm apartment building. the ceilings were really low and the light was bright. the floors were hardwood laminate and there were brilliant blue fish tanks everywhere. some of the walls were actually just huge fish tanks full of beautiful exotic fish and bubbles. crawling along the floor, i realized that this is was the dorm where casy lived. i snaked along the hallway floor to his room and discovered that he was there. i wasn't mad that he'd lied. i knew i didn't have any right or reason to be upset. i stood up and he invited me in. we sat around watching fish and bubbles with matthew.

the next day, casy and erin came over to our house for thanksgiving dinner with their grandma. the house was realy cozy like a log cabin with a fire and cushions everywhere. i didn't want to eat anything because i was nervous that i was gaining weight. their grandma gave me a reese's big cup. "fuck it," i thought. "it's only thanksgiving once a year, i can starve myself tomorrow." i bit into it and it was a sort of peanut butter and caramel cobbler inside. the caramel oozed out their grandma started telling us about when the boys were young and lived in a different part of europe-- oh my the trouble they got into! she took out a digital slide projecting device to show us the evidence. all of the images were supposed to be of the boys and the sculptures that populated the sprawling gothic castle-estate where they grew up with their grand parents. but all the images were skewed so that we could only see the bits of concrete paths and ground, which was muddy and mess. every once in a while, their grandma adjusted the projector so that it displayed some hidden part of the image and an arm or leg of the boy would become visible.

I woke up with this song stuck in my head

P.Sturgess: 17 December 2009

So we were in some slick, desereted chain restaurant that opened into a mall or something. It was evening, there were no other people around. We were sitting at one of those tall, round tables on barstools. You wanted to show me a video from a cel. It was us & Elise sitting at a similar table, same time of day, in dif outfits. We were stretching and eating the tentacles of a small baby octopus & smiling & laughing at the camera. Facing it, necks craned so we could all get into the shot. Then you wanted to show me an older video. Same scene, dif table, sunlight was out. Elise wasn't in it. Keturah had her brown hair, long but not that long yet. Instead of eating an octopus we were doing the same with twizzlers. We all looked very happy. again. It made me sentimental. In the dream

I woke up with Lou Miami's To Sir With Love in my head, probably unrelated.

b.peters: 04 December 2009

we were all in this little cafe for a noise/sound show. there was a handsome, mid-thirties man in a wheelchair. i kept finding myself making eyes at him, even though i was a little freaked/intimidated/disturbed to have to face my own mortality by his mobility status. it was clear that he had some kind of a degenerative disorder, like MS, but he was having a good time with his friends, drinking beer and doing bumps. his cocaine vial even matched mine. it was time for the show to start. to my surprise, it was the handsome wheelchair man who was performing. using his computer with two mice - the same two mice i use at work - he was creating a music concrete concerto. the original piano recording he was using as source material was one he had recorded earlier, before his body had betrayed him. i was completely smitten and thought, "i've finally found my husband, and he is going to die soon." he began using two water glasses to sometimes add percussion and sometimes just to add another textured layer of sound. it was admittedly a little cheesy at times, but overall it worked nicely. peter's friend ian was drunk and started yelling "what is this guy doing? why would anyone want to go out like that?" then an entire class of very young children came in to the cafe to do christmas carols. they were screaming, their noses were running, it was a jarring, unpleasant interruption to the concerto. their teacher was wearing the most amazing cotton floral jumper/overall thing. it was tight on the calves, but saggy in the crotch and thighs. it looked both vintage and totally runway now. she corralled the children and was lining them up to leave and continue on their caroling. she said something i assumed was a warning about traffic and street safety, but it was so grammatically incorrect all i could understand was something along the lines of "trying not to get hurt."

Victor Von Doom: 03 December 2009

I was in the tenderloin area rushing to meet with Marcella. I had a book with me that I though she might like that was called "Dol Morte" It was a vintage hardcover, with a penrose tile weave, and the words DOL MORTE gold guilded on the cover. the binding was unthreading, and the pages were thick and creme colored. The book was inside a specially crafted card board box that opened like a fancy box of chocolates. I remember skimming the pages - most of it was in French on one page and the preceding page was in Old English translation. I guess it was a collection of essays by some famous 19th century writer. Some of the pages had monographs of still photos - mostly medical studies on corpses, skeletal schematics, etc. I kept thinking - I don't want Marcella to hold this book. I guess I just wanted to show her that I had it. On the way I lit a cigarette and some mechanics saw me and they laughed that I "obviously" didn't pack my cigarettes before I opened them, as tobacco was spilling out the end. I frantically tried to conceal that I was packing the single cigarette on my wrist so I could bring it to my lips and show them there was not spilling of tobacco happening. Of course I just ended up bending and tearing my cigarette. The bent over with laughter, and I hurried on. Marcella was talking to a drunk person sitting on the street curb. In her hand was a copy of "Dol Morte". No fancy box, but definitely the book. I was disappointed. She already had it. Her book was much more worn, and it had no binding - just a web of threads with beads of old glue. She saw me and said, "Look at this amazing book I found!" I hid my fancy box behind me and looked amazed at Marcella's copy. We looked at the photographs inside which were few and far between. Marcella started speaking in French. I didn't understand her so I told her I had to go and meet with Nightmare City at some show. I got to the show with my fancy box, and sat in a row of empty theater seats that were randomly placed in the lobby of the music venue. A black and white cat sat in the seat next to me and just stared. I tried to pet it, but its stare was so intense I figured it was best to just ignore it. Except everytime I turned to look at it - it was still staring at me. then it would stare at the frayed edge of the fancy box, that had the same card cover penrose tiling weaving on it as the book cover. The strings had come loose at the corner and were dangling and that cat wanted to play with it. I got really stressed out and decided to just go home with my book. The cat followed me and I got scared and had to dart in alleyways. It wanted the book and I was too far from home. I woke up.

Auntie Grizelda: 30 November 2009

t the content team (plus CA) and I left work at 5pm and got on a 200 dollar flight to Jamaica. We slept in a red themed bunk cabin on the plane (like in old trains) and woke up for landing. It was 3pm in Jamaica and Lizzy was waiting for us at the airport. We went straight to the beach where we spread out on chaise lounges and soaked up the last sun of the day. Noah and Phil took off with their porn star friend, Annie Cruz, and Opara, Carol Anne, Lizzy and I went to this restaurant for dinner. I'd apparently been to Jamaica many many times, because I knew the menu at this place really well, as did Lizzy, and we ordered amazing food (and just the right amount so we weren't stuffed). After dinner we went to this tree house club where it was hot and humid and we all had perfect bodies and messy hairdos and we danced in this small tree-house room to the most soothing reggae music while drinking delightful rummy tropical drinks and being just the right amount of drunk and stoned. When we started to get tired around 4 am, we headed back to the airport. I got through security with the feeling that I was forgetting something, and I thought it was my passport, but I had it in my purse, so it wasn't that. By the time I got on the plane my worry was almost gone, I'd decided it didn't matter because I was already on my way. We slept the whole way back in a similar cabin that was blue themed instead of red, and got back to California at 9:30am. We woke up, brushed our teeth and changed outfits, and went directly to work. I'd forgotten to put a license together and Mike was mad, but I didn't really care because I'd partied in Jamaica all night with Lizzy. The team and I decided that we should do that every night, or at least a few times a week. We began to strategize how we could get the company to pay for our tickets...

MRScarruthers: 26 November 2009

Keturah and I were watching a movie in my room. Sort of combination of OC and Stiggs and Royal Tennenbaums, it featured an odd, quirky family who lived in a cluttered mansion on a hill in a desert, The mansion was always shot from directly below--the exterior was a series of balconies and huge peach flat walls-- it had that sun bleached look that homes in the desert seem to always have. It thought that the oldest son was a total babe.

Suddenly l was in the movie. I crept through the set of the mansion, through the winding hallways, past the twins' room, surprised at how cramped and small the house was in relation to my memory of it from the outside. Though there were huge ballrooms, indoor pools and cascading stairwells, the kids all had to share tiny rooms. I started to understand that though I was on the set of a movie, the actors were only mildly acting--they were really a family of odd and quirky actors and this movie was a not-so-fictionalized account of their very interesting lives. I met the eldest son--it was love at first sight. We rambled through the house hand in hand and sneaking into rooms to kiss. Every time we snuck into a room, one of his 5 siblings would walk in, but since this family was so open about everything, we never felt weird or awkward. We simply bounded to the next room through the tiny corridors. "Why don't you be in the movie, too?" he asked. I understood that this meant that his family wanted to see if I could really be part of their family.

The scene was set on the cascading staircase the led to the beautiful indoor pool. It was a sort of 1950s musical number with huge feathers, fans, and sequined synchronized swimmer outfits. This scene was important because it was the scene where the family would find out if my character was a triple threat or not. The girl twin (about age 9) kept giving me bitchy glances that meant she knew I probably wasn't a good enough actress, singer or dancer and that meant I wasn't good enough for her brother. We started to shoot. I fumbled through the routine and my deficiency was exposed to all. "Seeeeee???!!!" said the girl twin. "I told you all from the start that I wasn't a good actress!" I cried. Distraught, I fled to Europe.

When I exited the airport in Europe, he was already there waiting for me in a limousine. He said it didn't matter that I wasn't a good actress, but that he couldn't be away from the sun like this. We went back to the mansion in the desert where his family was racing razor scooters. I bragged about being really good at racing. I raced the boy twin and won but just kept going. I finally stopped scooting at the top of the hill where there was a billboard overlooking the street where the mansion was. I started to tag the billboard. Another brother joined me at the billboard. "Do you really like him?" he asked. "Yea, I love him." "Then why are you up here? Go to him."

I sped back to the mansion and joined him in the room he shared with the brother I had just spoken with. His bed was pushed against the entrance to the room which had no door. The blankets on the bed were cheap, navy blue airplane blankets. We were making out, everything was perfect, there were no more misunderstandings. His dad walked by the door and I got sort of embarrassed and jumped out of the bed. His dad laughed jovially and I understood that I was accepted into the strange family. Grateful to finally belong, I got back in the bed and we got ready to watch a movie--whatever one was already in my TV's VCR. It turned out to be Buckaroo Banzai. "I was in this movie," he said as he turned to me. "See--that's me."

b.peters: 19 November 2009

it was time to face the music and go back to the south. i had bought my ticket; the flight was soon. i was in the car with my mom; she was driving along ocean beach, but it was completely unlike ocean beach. the sky was clear, it was sunny and warm, there was no fog or wind, and the sand was white and clean. i was trying to explain to her why i loved it here so much, why i felt it was so important to stay. the conversation was getting heated. we were yelling. i was starting to cry. "But i'm trying to DO something here! i'm trying to make something happen for myself!" i tried to tell her. we were no longer in the car and were now exploring ocean beach. in the median of the highway, there was a sculpture that was a perfect replica of one of those cushy family vans from the 80s with the extra loft space inside and the chrome ladder to the roof up the outside of the back door. the sculpture was actually a playground and there were stairs leading to and away from it along the hilly median. i walked up the stairs to an apartment building and rang the bell. the apartment was huge and seemed like something that should be in a fake-nice beach community in miami. the door opened to an atrium with a massive domed skylight. beneath the skylight was a huge chandelier. the open space was rimmed by interior balconies that led to everyone's private rooms. it was beautiful, but also stale, like the set of some discarded season of the Real World. i didn't really know the kids that lived there. they were all mid-30s and working in broadcasting. they were very excited because their new assignment had something to do with porn. despite the huge atrium, all of their rooms were tiny and bland. i had all of my bags with me and explained that i was just waiting for my flight. they were very hospitable. i sat on the floor near an over-stuffed but hard white sofa making chit-chat. they knew some of my roommates and they knew gabby, who they said absolutely loved me, which i found hard to believe. eventually i was left with a blonde boy roommate while everyone else went to get ready. we talked and flirted a little, but he just seemed so old, and like he was fighting it with his immaculately disheveled gelled and tousled hair and black motorcycle jacket. everyone was finally ready and they brought me with them to eat in walnut creek. the restaurant had a lot of outdoor seating set up like some kind of island tiki bar. we found a table and then went directly to the bar to order drinks.

i was back on the beach with carol anne and alex. we were walking barefoot, and were very concerned about crabs. there were tracks, there were holes for their little sandy houses, but we didn't see any crabs. then we started to see giant outlines of their bodies just below the sand. they were not moving. we stepped carefully around them, wondering what was going on, though we all knew from the sinking sick feeling that all of the crabs on the beach had died all at once. something was very wrong. still, it was a beautiful day and people were flying kites. carol anne said "well at least you won't have to bake bread at like 10pm when your flight gets in, so at least you don't have to try to stay awake on the plane and play DS."

i was back at the apartment with all the roommates. one thing led to another and i ended up fucking all of the male roommates one-by-one on the hard, white sofa directly beneath the chandelier. it wasn't like an orgy or gang bang. more like i was left alone with one of them while everyone else was fixing drinks in the kitchen and then we would fuck. the fucking was incredible with volcanic spurts of cum hitting the chandelier that was at least 15 feet above us.

i was finally in louisiana. i was at a church whose foyer had been turned in to some kind of a christmas shop. in addition to ornaments and nativity scenes and wreaths and shit, there a giant bin of jalapenos in brine. i was trying to help a man find the perfectly sized pepper and was swimming around in the bin. all of the peppers i found were too big and while i was swimming around in the brine other people took all of the peppers, so there were none left for the man.

was in the car with jordan and carol anne. i don't know if we were all drunk or if carol anne was antagonizing jordan, but there was a weird, tense feeling in the car and jordan was driving aggressively and speeding. we had left the interstate with the nighttime views of the chemical plants and oil refineries all lit up like some bizarre underwater city, and were now barreling along twisting, turning country roads lined with skinny pine trees. we were all sitting in the front seat and i was sandwiched between jordan and carol anne. i was a little frightened by the way jordan was driving and realized that my fate rested entirely with these two people who may or may not be fighting. i closed my eyes and waited for it to be over.

we got to the two-story cabin that was down a gravel drive. jordan seemed bored and restless and i was confused as to why he was even there, especially since i was completely sexually satiated. carol anne and i were behaving like old people, sitting in rocking chairs with throws on our laps watching television in one of the upstairs rooms. catherine and amy came over and jordan started flirting with them. catherine was not having any of it. i was tired and i just didn't care. eventually jordan offered them a ride home and they accepted. it was finally quiet and i read my horoscope. it told me not to tell my friends i was applying for a new job because the aspects in my chart were way more phenomenal than anyone else's. in fact, the aspects in my chart were so powerful that i would feel the exact moment that i should apply for a new job and the outcome would be favorable.

when i woke up this song was stuck in my head.

Auntie Grizelda: 18 November 2009

i'm in my parent's house in the back room and there is a balcony. i look out the window and these cats are climbing on a picnic table. They get spooked and scatter and a lyger shows up. the lyger is also part elephant, but only a little. it jumps over the picnic table towards the door to the balcony and says, "I'm trying to fly this rainbow kite." I decide to help him. thinking that since it's a windy day it will be easy. he points to the balloon boy balloon in the sky and says 'i have to catch this rainbow kit on this balloon because it's launch me and then i can fly over the cornfields." He holds the kite and I have the spindle. I run through the field next to the cornfield that he wants to launch over. he keeps trying to let it go too soon because he's not far enough away from me. i try to explain that i'm trying to get really far away from him while running. it finally works and the kite flies up, wraps twice in a perfect circle around the balloon. instead, it launches me into the air, and i'm like, "fuck, this is supposed to be the lyger!" at about 10 feet off the ground, i'm screaming at the lyger to get the stick from me so that he can be launched in the next big gust of wind. i'm suspended so that my feet barely touch the ground, being dragged by the kite-balloon. since he's a lyger, and he's bounding towards me and he just chomps onto the bow on the back of my dress, swings his arms around, grabs ahold of the stick, i ball up underneath him and he launches over me into the sky above the cornfield.

Mr. Victor von Doom, esq.: 18 November 2009

Red Dot Film

I walked down the rickety wooden stairs in my parents farmhouse which was built like in the early 1900's or something. The walls are made of quarried rough square blocks and the height of the space is about 6-7feet. The basement is flooded and there are wooden boards that are supposed to act as a walkway - but the water is so high they just kind of float on the surface. In the basement it seems there is a drive-in movie theater. The basement is crowded with a number of cars (probably about 30). This doesn't make sense because the space of the basement can't be more then 12 feet by 12 feet. The cars almost look as if they were tossed in the basement - some are squeezed almost sideways between each other. In each car are couples making out - men and women mostly - very tame 1950s environment. On horseback are a number of drag queens trying to get their horses to jump over some of the cars to monitor the goings-on. Some of the drag queens are on horses that are trapped between cars. Those drag queens kind of let out a "Rawwwr" wail with their heads tilted way back like they are some sort of mad untamed warrior. The drag queens that are able to get their horses around the cluster of cars remind me of Christopher Walkins in Sleepy Hollow. They kind of scream "Heeeyaw" to their horses and then kind of stare at the couples in the car and scream "Raaawr". The couples do not notice this. They also do not notice the film playing on the giant movie screen which is a giant red dot that just blinks. A drag queen, not on horseback, walks over to me and tries to engage me in conversation, but I am not having any of it. I just watch the red blinking dot. I wake up way too early.

MRScarruthers: 16 November 2009

I had just finished moving into the house. We went to hang out at the Jerrold house and Harry and Sarah invited us to move in. We said yes without hesitation. I saw the room I was supposed to move into and it was the living room of the trailer my dad lived in when i was in college. It was carpeted, everything was brown, the window looked out onto a landscape painting river/forest scene-- the same one as in the 'canada' dream. though the room was horrid, the light that shone in the window made everything glow. it felt like it could be comfortable, but never ideal, and never really right. "is this really what you want? is this really what we should do?" i asked keturah. 'yeah, it's a good strategy,' she replied. i reminded her that we have a studio at the old house to think about. turning to our new housemates, she inquired into studio space for us. They said that there would be no way to free up any space for us. I continued to stare out the window-- the light soft in my eyes. We had to use public transportation to move. The ride on the T back to the old house took hours. Back in the house, I lamented the loss of the studio, the space. Even though the room had the beautiful window, i still preferred my windowless room in the current house. Resigning myself to my fate, i packed some stuff, put on my cellophane tranny-stripper heels and went to catch the bart. we took the secret bart route which took us directly across the mission/potrero to bayview. 'you know that only took 5 minutes' we observed, 'i guess it can't be that bad.' when we got in the house, it was the 8th grade graduation dance. everyone was wearing embarrassing ruffly satin dresses with huge puff sleeves. I wanted to dance, but no one else wanted to. We stood in a circle in the corner. I danced, everyone else shifted around awkwardly.

b.peters: 15 November 2009

we were walking home drunk from a party or a bar. there was a large group of people also walking drunk and headed in the same direction. we kept falling in and out of step with the other group of people, sometimes joining their conversations or singing their songs with them. we got to our door, which was exactly like the entrance to NOMA gallery, and both we and the other group of people entered the building. we realized there must be a party in our house. we went upstairs, using the stairs while they rode the elevator. our house was arranged slightly differently. there was more space in the kitchen and we had high traffic carpeting. everyone was hanging out, extremely casual boho style. people lounging on mattresses on the floor and having conversations. we decided to clean up the kitchen a bit, in case we wanted to make food later. we loaded the dishwasher and my parents appeared, helping us clean. my dad started sweeping the carpet. he was sweeping right next to people lounging on mattresses and i got embarrassed. i tried to explain that dirty high traffic carpet would not bother my friends, but he kept sweeping anyway. then i noticed that, in addition to all of the adult cats in the house, there were kitten versions of them running around. there were lots of teeny-tiny damien kittens all rolley-polley on the floor. they were the tiniest gray balls of fluff! in the morning, we all got on a bus and went to marin, like it was summer camp or something.

MRScarruthers: 14 November 2009

The house was next door in the furniture store. The division between 1st and 2nd floor had been removed so that it was one huge room. All of our bedrooms skirted along the windows on the 2nd floor.They were constructed like tree houses, separated only by curtains, platforms created by resting planks on ledges to fill the gaps across open spaces. My bedroom occupied the rounded corner right at 18th and mission. I could see that it was night outside through the huge windows and the stars and moon shone in brightly, reflecting and refracting through the space as though tiny crystals were suspended throughout. David was at the house and was acting awkward. I invited him up the ladder to my unstable loft. We closed the curtains around the platform-- matresses, bedding and pillows, really, no other furniture-- and fucked. i was stunned at how thin his boy body was. though platform threatened to fall out from under us i was preoccupied by the fact that this wasn't supposed to be happening. i could see everyone hanging out downstairs through gaps in the curtains. i left him in my bed and joined the others. amberlie insisted that the photoshoot begin now. we dressed in baroque-y ornate dresses. the photoshoot would have five movements, one model per movement, each including rats. the rats came out and amberlie told me and keturah that we would have to separate the skin and fur from the muscles and skeleton. we were reluctant, she was insistent. my perspective changed when she demonstrated how to separate-- now i was watching her through a plexiglas table as though i was lying on the floor. she grabbed a rat, pushed her thumbs into its little body and peeled it like a pumelo.

MRScarruthers: 13 November 2009

I was lying on my belly on a brown shag rug that was quickly becoming spiky brown astroturf reaching for something under the white sofa. The rug was scratching me as I stretched as far as i could and grasped my phone.I looked through my sent messages and saw that I had texted casy and was embarrassed. there was a message from Andy that read, "I was gonna get sick." I could feel that heavy weight sinking in my chest.

P.Sturgess: From like a month ago:

I was outside my childhood window with my father. I couldn't see the old willow that used to be there. In its place was another tree which grew out of the ground then curved back into it then out again. It had minimal foliage and few branches; it was mostly a craggy gray. My father said, "no, the willow is still there", and it was, just displaced and to the side a few feet from where it originally stood. In the waking world my cat Grey and my cat Minou are buried underneath this willow.

P. Sturgess: 4 November 2009

me an KC piled into a van with a bunch of artists to go on a retreat in the woods, but we were actually staying at someone's house. In the dream, in the van, I was so obviously baked and drunk it was awkward. We arrived and I woke up.

b.peters: 4 November 2009

i was hiding out or something. it seemed transient, but also of the earth. like, tarp tents in the middle of nowhere next to ramshackle barns and deteriorating remains of farmhouses. but sometimes the tarp tents were in a forgotten corner of the 19th st. bart station. and sometimes it seemed like our house was nothing but a tarp tent city. there was a little momma cat hanging around one of the barns/farmhouses. i think uzi impregnated her. the momma cat was a cute petite calico and she gave birth to a litter of kitties that looked like manx versions of uzi. the whole process of pregnancy & birth & nursing and all that stuff tired the momma cat out and she was sleeping all the time. because she was always sleeping she got all mildewed. it was really, really gross, a living, breathing, furry thing all covered in mildew. i was trying to clean it off of her, but it was hard because there was nothing that would kill the mildew without harming the cat. it was starting to grow on top of her eyes and mouth. my mom was helping me to clear it away from her face. it was something we had to do constantly to keep the mildew in check. because of the strange, ever-changing living circumstances, i was extremely worried about the cat getting lost in the tarp tent city or farmhouse remains and the mildew asphyxiating her. in the midst of this, when the tarp tents were in the bart station, i was running around with petra doing things that seemed sneaky or illegal. breaking into offices and stealing files to solve mysteries, drinking constantly, running from officials, etc. but, in all of this, i don't remember solving any important mysteries, just finding out that petra's real name is pamela. also while we were hiding out from the authorities after breaking in to an office, which, although inside of the bart station, was not affiliated with bart, we ended up making out. petra felt that i was using my tongue too much at the beginnings and ends of the kissing and that i needed to sort-of violently jam it around in the very middle of the kissing. i really wanted to please, and obligingly engaged her constructive criticism. i might have been a little stoned or something because, try as i might, i still wasn't doing it right, or, at least, not to petra's satisfaction. then, i think, my mom walked in us.

oh, yeah, when i woke up this song was stuck in my head.

b.peters: 2 November 2009

it was so completely epic, i can only remember bits and snippets. i had discovered the entire structure surrounding and enabling wishes. the wish structure, if you will. it was an association of individuals, as well as a physical space - a kind-of labyrinthine temple. i was wandering around for quite a while in this temple, meeting people, doing things. a lot of things happened here, but i don't really remember. in the last room was a friend of mine, but someone i didn't recognize. one of those dream persons who reminds you of someone or who is simultaneously someone and not someone. anyway, this guy had done an amazing tetris-style job of arranging the bodies of attractive young men in such a way that all kinds of sexual pleasure could be achieved by all simultaneously. it was a strange thing to happen in on because the guys seemed inert or unconscious or drugged or something. but it also didn't seem as sinister as rape or something, more like they had all done a shit-ton of some kind of sedating hallucinogen. also, there was an implication that these guys were initiates in to the wish structure organization, and that obliging one of my friend's fantasies was part of the process of joining the organization. he invited me to join in, but i didn't really understand how that was going to work out. then i looked down and realized i was naked and had a semi-hard-on already.

MRScarruthers: 31 October 2009

i was in london in our old apartment on yerbury road with my mom and sister. we left the apartment and walked to meet keturah and alex and the grocery store. it was the kroger in bourbonnais (it looks like it's from the 80s-- the kind with huge rounded fonts repeating in a brown and red gradients from ceiling to floor to indicate where the dairy, meats, produce, and fish are located). we shopped, filling the cart to the brim with cellophane-wrapped meats and spiky leafy greens. we rounded a corner, the cart difficult to push now, and there was a cagey structure that rose all the way to the ceiling-- the kind they used to house cheap 12" inflatable balls in in the supermarkets of my childhood. this one was filled with glow-worm toys and they were alive, but frozen. i picked one out and held it close to my body. i could feel the surface flesh thawing. i looked at the flesh and it was translucent, slightly mushy, but crunchy/hard underneath. there were small veins. the flesh glowed like it was lit all the time. it was too cold, so to protect my self, i wrapped the glow-worm baby in two plastic bags: one for the upper portion, the other for the lower, but not fastened in any way. i called aidan to ask him if it was okay for me to adopt it. he said no. suddenly, we were in the park around the corner from the house on yerbury road, but it was actually phoenix park in dublin. with my mother and sister, i balanced on a short brick wall that lined a huge grassy slope. the sun was shining down brightly. the grass was intensely green. i had to squint my eyes. i had the glow worm baby still hugged close to my body as i walked up and down the length of the brick wall. i continued to talk to my father on the cell phone. out of the corner of my eye i saw three or four indian kids aged 17-24. they were all dressed as nerds with pocket protectors and glasses. they also wore members only type jackets. they were projecting their thoughts-- they wanted the glow-worm-baby, we were unfit parents. i checked the little creature- it was thawing out more, but still cold. the indian kids seemed to become menacing and i made a run for it. i ran through the park back to the grocery store and they followed. as i ran, the lower bag started to slip off of the glow-worm, running became a difficult task. i ran up and down the aisles in an attempt to evade them, but they always followed closely. i considered hiding the baby in a meat freezer. then, i turned another corner and suddenly the supermarket was hilly inside. i recognized this as my chance to escape the guys chasing me and hastened up the slope with the still frozen glow-worm-baby.

Auntie Grizelda: 19 October 2009

A nicer one....

So! I'm in magic school. I'm sitting next to Carol Anne, and we're getting our tests back from the teacher. She's telling everyone how disappointed she is in our marks, I see CA's test says "37" on it. Someone sitting on the other side of me has a 22. I'm worried, as magic school was sort of my last hope, and poor marks could get me expelled. The teacher throws my test in front of me and it says 109. I look up at her and she gives me a sort of shrugged off nice job look. I have no idea how I got this grade, because I really didn't know what I was doing at all, and I'm totally embarrassed because I don't want anyone else to feel bad about their marks so I flip my first page over and start looking at the second page and the bonus questions trying to figure out how I could have possibly achieved such a high score. The headmaster comes in. He's like a cross between Dumbledore and Jaffar, but, you know, eeeeeevil. He talks to the teacher in a hushed voice and she looks over at me and continues talking to him. He stands by the door and she asks me to grab my things and take my test to his office. I go to his office and he (super Jaffar-like) says my test is very impressive, but that it's impossible for me to have done so well. In fact, he says, at least half of the test was made up of trick questions, which of course, in magic school, are questions that change their answer based on your answer. I don't want him to think that I don't deserve the grade, though, so I start defending my score by reading the test and my answers and pretending that I actually know this off the top of my head. He skeptically looks at me, and says that I'm "dismissed." I walk out of his office and run into Dave Parker (lead singer of Company Car and my hero...) and he's like HEY! and drags me into this closet/dungeon looking bathroom? The door is rickety and made of thin wood, the walls are stone, and there's a mirror and a sink on my left and a toilet straight back. I'm guessing he has drugs? and that's why he wants to talk to me in the bathroom? But no. This room is about as big as the closet of shame (is that what it's called?) here in our office. And Dave Parker, my hero, wants to hang out in there and talk. I have headphones around my shoulders and a song comes on that's loud enough for us to hear. He's like, oh, is that the new Modest Mouse song? and I'm like, no, it's Phil's new band but you're totally right, it sounds exactly like them! We have a moment where we're looking at each other and I'm embarrassed because he's 1. so cool, and 2. so married. And he's like, "I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time, I really think we have so much in common and I'd like to hang out more. Becky (his wife) is amazing, and I love her, I just want to talk and maybe play music?" I, of course, am elated, but trying to play it cool...so I'm like, that sounds fun, what are you doing during 7th period? (realizing of course, that this is a "during school" friendship, since he's so married and all.) We decide to hang out at 7th period. I walk out of the closet/bathroom and he runs up behind me and hugs my head. I'm very excited that he wants to be my BFF. So then I walk out to the main lobby and strap on a snowboard, skid my way outside and start cruising down the hill. There are a lot of people there, and Jared (my ex) comes up from behind me and is like, you chose this run? and I'm like, well, I've been down all the other ones, how bad could it be? and he shrugs and says he'll be behind me to pick up my pieces. I'm like "fuck you" until I look ahead and it's like 15 jumps across this slope. I look at him and I'm like, how do I avoid jumping??? and he very cockily says, "right through there, but watch out for the deep powder." which right as he says it I slam into and am over my head in snow. There's no way for me to get out and I feel like I'm drowning until he grabs my hand and yanks me out telling me to roll on my side through this little bit and then I'm on a safer slope. I totally resent this. I'm like, fuck you, just because I thought I was drowning in snow does NOT mean that I need your help or advice or friendship. But he just has this knowing, almost condescending look on his face, like I'm being a baby and I need to get over myself while he has it all together. I start to get all pissed off but then I remember that Dave Parker is my new best friend and I got a 109 on my test. I'm pretty sure that's when one of my cats jumped on my face and I woke up excited to hang out with Dave Parker, my new imaginary best friend.

MRScarruthers: Around the time of the Canada dream 2009

Cath and I rode our unicorn banana-seat bikes down a few streets in Romeoville to a familiar, but secret trailhead behind a ranch house. Up a dirt road and over a hill was another dimension or world of some sort.  Here it was a watery night world. We had been here many times—all of the kids knew where it was, sort of but you couldn’t always find it. Ancient weeping willows grew up out of the still water below, functioning as islands. The kids had built deck like platforms in some of the trees and rope swings had been hung to facilitate travel between the trees.  Though the willows were thick and full, cascading down from the sky to the horizon, the stars still twinkled beneath the boughs, glistening on the still water. 

We moved gracefully from tree to tree like elves or fairies—really we were just children. Some kids had built secret treehouses out of glass further in than I had ventured before. I raced back to tell my sister, and it was clear that she already knew about these constructions. I left her and visited the largest glass house. This one was round, and the moon shone in. It was a kind of hotel and the proprietor was a sandy blonde long hairboy who argued with me for a long time. He insisted that I couldn’t stay at this house because I wasn’t supposed to know about these structures. I tried to get my way by just sleeping on the floor. It was extremely uncomfortable. I had never stayed out over night before and I worried that my parents would find the other dimension as our bikes were at the trailhead.

MRScarruthers: 18 October 2009

Keturah and I were accepted into an artist residency program and had to leave straight away from the studio.  Keturah said that she had to stop at her house to take care of some stuff. I wasn’t surprised, but asked her to hurry because I felt anxious. When we got there, she started feeding the cats and putzing around in her room and taking forever. I knew that the residency was expecting us to start making work right away—they had commissioned a piece from us.  To stave off my anxiety, I went to look at the room that I was going to move into and think about what color I might like to paint it. When I arrived, the room was already half-heartedly painted a very dark red. Amberlie was in the room. “What do you think of this set up?” she asked.  I looked around and it was a mess. She was building some bookshelves from a kit—pieces were still in cardboard boxes and Styrofoam beads clung to the floor.  She was having a hard time putting the shelves together and asked for help, I was reluctant as my anxiety grew. “I think Keturah can help you.” I worried about the residency once more as I left the room to find Keturah. I turned around and she was already there helping Amberlie.  I started to get upset that she was helping Amberlie when she knew we had to get to the residency ASAP. As they worked, I grew more an more impatient and finally left to check in with the residency.  It turned out that the residency was at my office. In the office, Ray walked effortlessly  by with a huge reception desk in tow.  Modern, L-shaped, it was made from a medium wood with a black countertop.  He explained that Bonnie and Jen would be by for massages just like the old days. Now, though, instead of massage chairs, they would be massaging us two at a time on this L-shaped desk; of course, they would put towels down.  Feeling redundant and useless, I went back to Keturah’s.  There, they were putting the finishing touches on Amberlie’s bookcases. Keturah pulled a thin sheet of styrafoam from one of the cardboard boxes and painted it gold. The shelving units were black and gold towering monstrosities like something out of a Beetlegeuse.  Though they were clearly constructed from the cardboard and strofoam packaging (I recognized and poked the piece that Keturah had just painted, which was now part of the shelf), I had a sneaking suspicion that Keturah had just given Amberlie her bookshelves from her own room.  She said she was ready to go to the residency, and I followed her to her room to collect some bags.  I was right—her old shelves had been replaced with plain, gray Ikea book cases. There was nothing on the shelves. She asked me what I thought and though I didn’t like it and knew what had transpired, I replied, after some consideration of how to negotiate the situation, “I think it could work.”  However, I didn’t mean it at all—I was just trying to get her to leave because we were so late already and had so much work to do. As we left her room, Josh came in through the front door. He was tired of waiting for us; he had come to collect us wearing a very ugly sweater. Keturah, Josh and I discussed the sculpture we would make as we sailed to the residency over calm, but enormous, rolling waves on the modern L-shaped desk.

MRScarruthers: 15 October 2009

I found all the items ive lost while drunk over the course of the last year—most importantly the red and blue plaid ruffle shirt and my studio book from summer/fall 2008. 

My mother mowed the lawn as I looked down from some kind of elevated platform/deck behind their house in the country.  She was wearing crocs and the riding lawnmower was caught in the grass, which was as tall as me. A path was cleared behind her.  Looking down from the platform, I tried to tell her that the reason she was stuck was the water that was draining under the grass—the ground was soggy and the wheels were stuck in the mud.  It wasn’t true though; she was stuck because the grass was so long that it was getting tangled in the blades and wheels of the mower.

Also, my mother was a docent in an art museum.

p.sturgess: 13 October 2009

Me and I don't know who were at this weird bar / mexican restaurant owned by my uncle. He was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt. Patrons ate at the bar. Everything was made out of dark wood but the place was well-lit. There were neon signs here and there repping booze brands, etc. It was a long narrow room; the bar was "L"-shaped. To the left, along the foot of the "L" they had wooden racks displaying all the veggies: ears of corn, tomatoes, peppers, etc.

Two women worked with my uncle. After a chat about alcohol someone ordered a drink from a big frozen margarita dispenser. I thought my uncle told the patron that it was non-alcoholic but he must have been telling them something else; one employee grabbed a male customer (a gangly, scruffy sort of ugly guy) and the other woman grabbed a couple of pretty ladies.

The scene shifted the next room, the first bartender woman pulled her shirt up over her pair of giant breasts then yanked the man's pants down. They made out of a bit then she turned him around, pulled his pants down then bent him over. She undressed revealing a giant, erect cock and aggressively stabbed at his asshole. It didn't go in at first and ended up stabbing him in the testicles. She tried again in the same violent, stabbing, thrusting motion and penetrated him. It looked painful. No lube, no easing into it.

Meanwhile the other employee was fucking around with the two girls... but on the floor and without the violent overtones, more pleasurable and consensual seeming then painful.

Everyone finished. The guy looked kind of shocked and blindsided and in pain but everyone else was happy. I think my uncle was actually saying that the bartenders had dicks not that the margarita was non-alcoholic.

MRScarruthers: 13 October 2009

Keturah, Alex and I were trying and failing to text Skye that we were probably going to move out of the studio. Each time we sent the message, we got the return message: "error, message not sent." It turned out that the messages were going to an ancient mummy. The picure i had attached to the mummy's profile in my phone was of the mummy against a psychedlic tile backgoround. It was an animated gif of a kenneth anger or something. When we arrived that the studio,Skye was already there.The four of us sat somberly around a table made of two saw horses and a board working meticulously on small sculptures made from twine and feathers. i continued trying to text him even though were were all in the same room. Finally the message went through. Skye told us it was okay and that he understood why we had to leave, but it was clear that he was lying. Since we had been putting off telliing him, he now only had a few days to find new studio mates or else get kicked out of the space. We continued our work and skye looked around, shifty-eyed. Suddenly our other studio mate,Tabitha, burst in the door. She sat down next to Skye. Though she was clearly upset, she continued to help us with the work. We all sat around nervously, watching her eyes well up with tears over an over again. She never cried- just kept holding back tears. She was extremely disappointed that we were leaving without giving them enough notice. It was clear to her that they were toing to lose the studio, and she had no where to put her stuff and no where to do her work.

Auntie Grizzelda: 12 October 2009

I was Angelina Jolie. I didn't know I was pregnant, it seemed really sudden, but there was clearly a child in my stomach. I was in a 70's style house, sunken living room, wood paneling, orange shag carpet. It smelled like this room may have flooded several times, like mold and wet dog. There were no couches or chairs, but 2 or 3 round end tables in corners of the room. I was very confused about being pregnant. There was a gun on one of the end tables and I picked it up and tried to stash it in the back of my dress, but it wouldn't stay, and it scared me to have it close to my body (in my brain, guns just always go off) so I looked for a place to hide it, being out in the open it could be used against me. There was a kitchen above the living room and I put the gun in a cupboard with plates and hanging mugs. I already felt that I was going to be in trouble when the owner came back to claim it. I went back to the living room (which had a large mirror on one wall) and looked at myself for a while. I tried to figure out how pregnant I was and then it (the kid) moved in my stomach and I could see the shape of its foot on my skin, and decided I must be about 4 months. But I was totally freaked out because I could see the leg as well as the foot, as though my skin were just a membrane, and now I had these baby appendages popping out of me uncontrollably, I didn't know how to protect it except to hold it in with my arms, and pin the feet back with my ribs. I was now also concerned about my vital organs. I decided to go to the store and find a more supportive outfit. As I was leaving the house, Brad (you know, Pitt) pulls up wearing a fedora and a pair of aviators. He's got 4 dudes with him, and I am afraid of them (probably because they want to hurt me and I've hidden their gun...) Brad's like, "Where you going, Baby?" and I say to buy better suited maternity clothes and show him that the baby is doing crazy things to my stomach. He orders 2 of his dudes to go with me and I assure him that it's fine, I'll be right back. As I'm walking down the lane towards the strip mall this van drives up and the guy in the back asks me nicely to get into the car. I oblige, both because I'm scared of Brad and his people and because I didn't want him to take me by force. I get in the van and there are doctors, and a different, less scary Brad in the passengers seat. The doctors say that the baby is upside-down, and needs to be cut out of my stomach. I am quietly confused about all this, but they show me posters and charts and all sorts of medical stuff. I assure them that the kid's feet are pinned back behind my ribs. They assure me that I am wrong, and nice Brad says, "Baby, it's ok, listen to them, Baby, Baby--they're doctors. They know what they're talking about, Baby." I'm getting really sick of all the "Baby"-ing. I take all the blankets and sheets and wrap them around my stomach and jump out of the van. I slam my head on the road and wake up.

M: 12 October 2009

some bits and pieces:

-through a house. owl embedded on a wall. closets filled with clothes. arranged in a certain order. clothes like a jc penney 70s catalogue
-an uncle, whom in reality has disappeared, shows up at my house while i'm bathing with bf. proceeds to turn on the light, open shower and tickle our chests. meanwhile a double of the uncle passes through the hallway.
-i can fly, am in a night gown, follow something i am in love with through the very long chimney and fly above the city.
-after leaving the beach with a friend we go to a store he owns where he has a little bird in a cage. the store is filled w/ brazilian swimsuits. the bird had chicks. another friend shows and clumsily drops one of the chicks.

MRScarruthers: 12 October 2009

I was dropped off at the airport. I was going on a trip with two bags- a vintage red samsonite carry-on shoulder bag and another black shoulder bag I packed with my clothes (the same bags I’m using for my trip today).  I rushed through the security check—took off my shoes and pushed my bags into the x-ray machine. As I walked through the metal detector, I realized how hungry I was. I grabbed my red bag and went to the terminal to find food. None of it was right. I was getting that angry-food-smashing feeling.  I settled for something a friend handed me—it was like one tiny crumble of dried papaya or something: definitely not satisfying.  As the flight was about to being boarding, I realized that I hadn’t checked the black bag and it was now missing. I frantically ran back through the terminal. At the security check, they pointed me in the direction I needed to go to find my bag.  En route I stopped at a vending machine – the kind with the little window and the food sort of rolls by on a conveyor belt). I felt angry at the food, but still jammed my money in the machine. Out came a pack of those gross little donuts (the kind that’s covered in gross chocolate). I shoved them in my mouth one by one and chewed with intent—I was really mad at the donuts. My favorite part was breaking through the outer chocolate layer. At this point, both of my bags were missing. Through a huge glass window I could see my destination. I walked over and was somehow on the other side of the glass.  Outside in the bright sunshine, I saw conveyor belts transporting hundreds of abandoned suitcases, dumping them ultimately at the end of the line to form scattered luggage mountains.

I had to get in line. I was the first one there, but was cut in line by a girl with glasses and dark curly hair.  She got on the walkie talkie and said that her luggage was lost. She gave them her name and her social security number. As she was telling them her social security number, I thought, “What a stupid bitch. Giving out information like that so willy nilly!” My anger was now directed at her.  The end of the line asked her to repeat the number, to which she replied, “I don’t have to tell you the number again. It’s just like Inspector Gadget—you know: A detective with two legs and two arms who works for four Japanese nuns?”  She continued to argue with them and three older women from New York joined the line, sneakily trying to cut in front of me.  They were discussing how surprised they were that Robin turned out to be so much like Batman. To me this  seemed obvious. “But you know, it’s just like Batman to have a black haired partner—what with being blonde and everything,” one of them observed. 

 Annoyed, I abandoned the line and went in search of my bags. I climbed to the top of a luggage mountain and found my bag there. I was surprised that the bag had become ragged in the short time I was separated from it. Across the yard, I saw my other bag, though it was transformed into a different bag entirely.  I couldn’t believe how easy it was to find my bags in the heaps.   Examining my red bag, I discovered that it wasn’t a bag at all anymore. Instead, it had become a well worn, vintage, red leather bomber jacket. You could turn it inside out and it became a flannel blanket.  The yard supervisor  (now next to me on top of the pile) explained that the reason my bags had ended up out here was because the jacket-blanket had opened up on the conveyor belt and the blanket was actually huge inside.  it  billowed up like a parachute, disrupting the orderly operation of the airport.

b.peters: 11 October 2009

I was lying in bed in my room, which was some kind of an amalgamation of my current room, Carol Anne’s room, our studio and the guest room at my grandmother’s old house. Skye called and asked if Heather was staying with me. I told him no, and he told me about how when she was staying with him she got a call to work the catwalk and had to cut and bleach her hair and spent a lot of her time practicing her walk. In the middle of his story, Larry Rinder came into my room and stood just inside the doorway massaging his chest with a Hitachi Magic Wand. I got really, really distracted and stopped talking to Skye even though the phone was still on and he was still telling me about Heather. I didn’t know who’s Magic Wand Larry Rinder was using and I really hoped it wasn’t mine. Larry Rinder made some chit chat with me and I was trying not to get too distracted by the Magic Wand and was also trying not to make the awful face at him and his use of the Magic Wand. Then he told me about a video piece he had recently seen involving a barefoot gay hippie in bell-bottoms. Larry Rinder really didn’t like the bell-bottoms or the bare feet. He explained that the man’s feet were like his own and lifted up his foot to show me. Hairs were growing out of the bottom.

MRScarruthers: 10 October 2009

stupid fragments

1. Keturah and I were trying to explain to Alex that he would never understand how we write because he doesn't understand how we hold our pens. We went through several detailed demonstrations of how strangely we hold our pens and what kind of permanent finger damage we have done to our hands because of the specific way we must hold the pens in order to create the desired effect.

2. discovered that Andy was in an accidental, but seriously committed relationship with a girl he met in rehab. We were hanging out in his myspace picture.

3. Keturah, Alex, Skye and I attended a lecture with a powerpoint slide show that described the efforts of the new WPA government program. We were resentful that were were not invited to participate, though it was clearly an application process. The slides had neon borders and were primarily image-based with white, sans serif, giant single-letter text superimposed: "W" "P" "A"

4. I was taking pictures of groups of people i didn't know but who were my friends. I was using Myle's gray walgreens camera, wondering the whole time if the images would turn out. I wanted to get the film developed and hurried to finish the roll. When I got the the store, it was wrong. I was confused--I thought I had gone to Walgreens, but in its place stood a Target. Myles assured me that there was plenty of time to see if the film turned out.

b.peters: 08 October 2009

there was some event that i was journeying to, dressed like a total goth weirdo. long dark robe/cape/coat thing, a giant bag on my back and one of those 80s cylindrical duffel bags with both a shoulder strap and two handles. i also had an umbrella contraption on my head. the shoulder strap on the duffel bag was too long and the bag kept getting tangled up in my feet. as a solution to the problem, i balanced the duffel bag on top of my giant backpack so that i was just a giant tower of crap all the way up to the bizarre head umbrella contraption. i finally got to my destination, which seemed to be a high school montage, like the opening sequence of 16 candles. during this montage, my goth get-up disappeared and all of my friends appeared. suddenly we were all wearing bathing suits. apparently the actual event i was journeying to was a giant party in some kind-of fantastical paradise. there was a huge house, but it was kind-of in the middle of a finely manicured Nature. there was a giant lake, woods, and i think a playground. my entire extended family was there, and it was hard to tell which contingent was more rambunctious - my family getting all hopped up on mate, arguing about South American soccer and going crazy with the cookout or my friends and friends of friends - one of whom was taking surrealist nude photos with horse parts on the playground. the meal was ready, and in typical fashion my family was turning the serving of the food into an event in and of itself. i think they sang a song in spanish while carrying the plate of asado to the table. my uncle jason had a portable PA system strapped to his body and was narrating everything in real time. we were marching with the food to where most of my friends were sitting and then jason announced that he wanted them to make speeches over the portable PA. suddenly, i just knew that he was going to ask Sarah to pray before we ate. "shit, shit, shit!," i thought and starting running ahead, tripping over tree roots and falling into the mud, getting up and running faster. i could only imagine an outcome in which all parties were offended.

MRScarruthers:07 October 2009

As I read from the book, it simultaneously became part of my real, live, lived experience. We were at school again. Young children specifically 2nd grade but appearing as adults here. In the field with the geodesic dome and the jungle gym made of recycled tires (the one from Fairview Elementary), I practiced my Irish dancing. Sean as a girl came to me to let me know that he could see what I was doing-- I was faking. But he could help me. I said, "I just can't get my hops high enough, especially when it's followed directly by another move." I demonstrated how well I could hop in a circle over and over and over. From the book, I could see that next up I had to move into a hop-two-three. As soon as i did, I fumbled. Sean-girl said, "you just have to keep going, push through it and you'll get it." The text of the book was superimposed on top of a view of myself frustratedly attempting to hop-two-three. The text wrote out all the steps as though counting and keeping time, "Hop hop back hop back two three four". I repeated the words over and over, but still couldn't quite get the hop back two three fours. "It's my shoes," i cried. "They dont' fit right, it's just that there's too many steps." I took off my shoes and showed them how well i could hop, lifting my knee higher than necessary, scrambling to not be so embarrassed. Reading on, I discovered my sister in another part of the field-- it was like finding her through a telescope. I went to meet her. She was in a shack with only three walls and a dirt floor. I still didn't have any shoes on. The shack looked like those basements of undergrad parties. There was a faucet. She put on a tape she was really excited about. She said, "this is really unusual, Aidan gave it to me." When she pressed play, a strange melodic version of "About a Girl" started to play-- all harmonizing and smooth like some kind of Beach Boys Nirvana or something. Sean-girl's words echoed in my head. "you just have to keep going..." Together with my sister, I practiced a light jig, dancing roughly in a circle. I was better than her but there was an unknown consequence for this. Keturah arrived to practice dancing, too. She showed me the tattoo on her arm, worn away in places because of practice. I looked at the tattoo on my arm-- it was Keturah's heart + banner tattoo, not an anchor. I touched it and it was scratched and scuffed, erased but scabby. Cath and Keturah said, "it's just what happens."

b.peters:05 October 2009

so last night i dreamed that i was at my parent's house in new hampshire and i guess dinkins and i were still dating or something because i woke up next to him on a futon in a guest room. you were staying there too and we all had to get up and go to work. i got up and showed you how to get to the 24th st bart, which was a two-level transfer station. then i went back to the house and got back in bed with dinkins and tried to get him to bone me. he didn't want to because he would be late to work, but then i guess he gave in. the room was suddenly set up like the entrance to your office was during the office move. there was a sofa pushed awkwardly against a wall and that glass coffee table was taken apart and stashed near it. dinkins was lying on the sofa and the glass from the coffee table had been put on a surface off-center so that some of the glass was over the edge and about two inches above dinkins on the sofa. he thought this was really funny, but i was incredibly annoyed. i moved the glass and continued on my boning mission, which was eventually completed, although maybe not completely successfully because i don't remember having a fun time. then i went with dinkins to catch the bart for work, but we stopped for burritos on the way. dinkins was worried about being late or was in a mood or something and neglected to tell them that the burritos were to go, so they weren't wrapped in foil and we had to carry them around the mission falling apart and dripping all over us. near the bart station i found some salsa, cilantro, onions, & radishes like some derelict salsa bar. there was also a roll of foil. i was really excited about being able to wrap the burrito in foil, but a little worried about using abandoned foil from the 24th st bart.

MRScarruthers:27 September 2009

I was at my parents' house and we were folding the laundry and watching TV. Inside, thehouse was the trailer my dad lived in when my parents were divorced but with more windows- big windows that looked out on the wilderness that surrounded the house. As i folded the warm laundry, my attention was divided between the television and the view through the window and my parents sort of playfully bickering with one another. All that was left in the laundry pile were neck ties. The ties were in two parts, the knot permanent. I turned to Aidan and said, "I don't know how to fold these." He looked at me like I was mental for asking him but promptly replied, "look you just button the two sides together like this." As we buttoned the neck ties, I worried about the clothes wrinkling. We looked out the window and it looked like a 19th century landscape painting, with yellow light streaming down through the trees. There were red and orange leaves on the ground and someone said,"It's practically Canada outside-- what with all the trees and the still lakes."

b.peters:24 September 2009

there was some event involving the Jurassic Park ride. I think you, Sarah, & Erin had gotten comped tix so you guys were going to the actual event, but there was a free pre-party that virtually everyone was at. it was a lot of really, really exuberant but wholesome fun. my sister and nieces were there and there wasn't any tension between their presence and the somewhat drunk party shenanigans. the pre-party ended and you guys were whisked away to the actual event and Marcella, Skye, Alex and I wandered out in to the perfectly warm, but not stifling, humidity of a pleasant LA evening of green lawns and palm trees. we wandered around until we found a very odd skyscraper with a line of middle-aged office types outside. the building had something that was a cross between a light well and atrium in the center with stairs winding around it. the office types were in a line all the way up the stairs and were also gathered in the open hallways of each floor that opened in to the stairwell. they were holding hankies and crying. Marcella, Skye, & Alex were saying snarky things about them and their lot in life, which I felt was unfair and inappropriate because we had come into and were exploring their office building uninvited. We finally made it to the top of the stairs and stopped in the penthouse office there. The CEO or President or something was making a speech over the intercom about how the business had failed and had to close. We listened for a while and then I started arguing with them about how the failure was not of the individual employees, but of the business neglecting to find a niche market. I then argued that they should re-open the business and sell larger sizes of women's fashion shoes. One of the female executive assistants told me this was a terrible idea and i then pointed out that she wore a size 8 and therefore could not understand the demand for cute shoes in larger sizes. I made a power point presentation projected from my phone about girls interested in some form of fashion who also wore larger show sizes. some of the people featured were Hayden and Paris Hilton.

b.peters:23 September 2009

so, last night i dreamed that i lived in that green chip board house, but it was weird inside. white carpet, gross. i lived at the very top, and basically had a little apartment to myself with my own bathroom and generously-sized room. all of my roommates were out, and while i was running errands or something i ran in to jordan who wanted to hang out. he and his friend were going to come over to the giant empty house and we were going to play video games or something. i was really nervous about the whole thing because we were going to be playing alex's wii and i wasn't sure what was appropriate or what i wanted out of the situation, but i was excited that a boy was paying attention to me. i figured i need back-up, so i called you to come over, but the phone connected to both you and my mom and i had to tell my mom i'd call her back. by the time i got off the phone with my mom and was able to have a real conversation with you, a guy named andrew ( another andrew) had called you and you really wanted to hang out with him. i was disappointed, that you couldn't hang out but realized that making you hang out to save me from an awkward situation was selfish and uncool. but then somehow alex showed up and so it was like me, jordan, his anonymous friend and alex hanging out in my room with white carpet.

then i dreamed something about an event we were holding at my old house/my grandmother's old house (they were next-door). ellen black was there, but she had cut her hair into something that was not quite a mary-lou retton look and not quite a pixie cut, either, but it was cute. the whole thing was very awkward, but a success. there were horses. and it turned out that ellen black lived across the street.

then i dreamed that i was at some event with nyeema. before i could stop myself i was blurting out a plan to make a movie with all of the white people in black face and all of the black people in white face. then i looked at nyeema and i realized that idea wasn't funny at all. her 10yr old daughter was with her and i was overcome with regret and shame. what if she didn't even know what black face was? what if she was able to grow up without always having to reference that legacy of racism? what had i done? i spent the majority of the rest of the dream apologizing to nyeema, explaining that i had thought that it was funny, but clearly there is something wrong with me. nyeema quickly got bored of this and started going through my books and putting price tags on them. i asked her what was going on with the books and she explained that she was going to send them to sam lopes to sell for fundraising. then i realized that the whole series of events - the black face thing, the books - was an exact replica of a bad sitcom, movie or play i had seen very recently, but i couldn't remember the title.

MRScarruthers:20 September 2009

I was driving in my truck with my dad to my house .It was late at night. As we drove down 24th St gang warfare broke loose-- bullets ricocheted everywhere and we had to duck for safety. Nearing my house we decided that we better not go in; it was too dangerous. Instead, we headed for Potrero Hill (calling it Bernal for some reason). With the gunfire behind us, we exchanged the truck for a huge farm vehicle. We were calling it a combine, but it was actually one of those things that harvests the crop and spits it out the back all chopped up. As we coninued up the hill, we discovered the remnants of gang warfare that had happened earlier in the day. The streets were strewn with dead bodies, they looked like dark lumps on the ground in the darkness. I was driving and as I weaved the combine between the bodies, I worried that they would get sucked up into the blades and spat out the back in a bloody pulp.

MRScarruthers:: 18 September 2009

i was starting college. my dad and my sister were helping me move into my new dorm. we got everything moved in and decided to go to the cafeteria for lunch. the cafeteria was a pizza parlor with a south african priest working the counter. we ordered our pizza slices and he told us that we had a choice between two sets of condiments, but no way could we have all of the items (dorm meal plan). the first option was a regular salt and pepper. the second option was two small glass cubes- one filled with crushed red pepper the other filled with garlic salt. we were really confused and i looked at them on the low table for a long time trying to decide.during this time, the priest fell in love with my sister. i was talking to my dad saying that we needed to go asap. i was trying to pick my nose discreetly. we left and the priest started chasing us through the dorm. for safety, we decided to move my dorm room before the priest found us. my sister was being extremely despondent and not helping us as we frantically moved the furniture (made entirely from big foam blocks) into the frieght elevator. we got everything into the frieght elevator and pulled my sister in just in time to close the gate as the priest found us. we got all the furniture set up in a new room. as we relaxed, fish showed up and said, hey there's going to be a party later. the party was a welcome home party for amy sampson. it occured to me that i should get some heroin. i went down to the pizza parlor and they handed me a paper straw wrapper filled with a row of tiny pellets of heroin. i was surprised that heroin came packaged lik sixlets candy. i twisted the straw wrapper open and closed and wondered if anyone would notice if one was just gone-- of course they would, everyone knows how many sixlets are in a packet. we were at the party- the lights were pink and red, the walls were draped in excessive lengths of beautiful gauze and all the furniture was geometric-- looked very rigid, but smooshy when you sat on it. we were in an auditorium. amy sampson was back. she brought with her a huge bag full of her old stuff for us to look through and take what we wanted. i was ready to do the heroin. fish got mad/sad at me and asked my sister if she did heroin. "no" she replied. "that only leaves carol anne and andy then i guess," sighed fish. "wait," i protested, "i've only ever done it once or twice." there was a flashback in my dream to andy shooting me up once-- a distant sort of memory. keturah came by with an armload of great new stuff. suddenly i became jealous/upset that i had been wasting time at what was apparently a really fun party fiddling with the straw wrapper with drug pellets. i put them down in the bean bag chair i was sitting in. there wasn't that much stuff left in the pile of free stuff. the best thing i could find was a kind of crunchy sticky cardigan in a knit flower pattern. it was dusty orange rose. liz came over and said, "you can't take that one. it's a mistake that that one is here. it's one of my favorites." keturah told me that alex had already tried to take that cardigan and liz said the exact same thing. i sighed and put it back. i didn't really like it anyway, but i didn't want to be told what to do. when i got back to the little alcove where the clothes pile was before, it was suddenly full of gigantic pieces of fruit. like, at the smallest were basket ball sized pieces of cherries, strawberries, bananas. it was all real fruit and they were to be used for the decorations above the dance floor. liz's boyfriend kevin took the giant piece of banana from my hands and asked me if i was going to help or what. we rejoined the party (which was clearly liz's party by now) and i looked up at the decorations. wires came down from the ceiling onto which we were to poke the fruit pieces. we all worked together to make a fruit salad chandelier.

b.peters:: 14 September 2009

my mom took me shopping for a bearskin cape. There were a lot of them at the discount outlets so it took some time to find the perfect one. Also there were lots of decoy women's fashion boots which were actually giant safes that you were supposed to fill with your valuables and then stash in the back of your closet. While we were shopping, Amberlie took my dead dog (quite alive in the dream, though) for a walk. When we finally got home, it was clear that my family was now living in Earthereal, the bakery I worked at in Shreveport. They had built a loft over the kitchen, and when I came downstairs in the morning, the kitchen and dining room were filled with bags of dirty linens - the linen-cleaning people hadn't picked up that week because of an unpaid bill.

MRScarruthers:14 September 2009

it was my birthday and there was going to be a party at my parents' house. my parents lived in san francisco in this multi-layered sort of house. it was set into the slope of a hill with a garage ant the bottom and climbing up the hill, it was made from modernist style glass boxes, each connected by paths and stairwells. it was kind of a confusing layout, but my room was at the very top. during the preparations, i found out that my mother was terminally ill. she went down to the basement/garage at the foot of the mountain and layed down in this beautiful sleigh bed with a mosquito net veil thing over it. at some point it became clear that she was dead, but though i was stricken with grief, i continued with my plans for the party. i hugged my sister and tried to telll her for a long time about how sad i was, that not only did my parents get divorced on my birthday, but now one of them goes and dies on my birthday, too. i couldn't find the right words to describe the sadness. we left her in the sleigh bed, closed the garage door and went back upstairs.

then i woke up the first time

when i went back to sleep, the dream continued. the party was in full swing, and people were asking my why i wasn't having a good time. my response was always, "oh no no i am having a good time are you having a good time?" i went up to my room at the top of the hill and watched the party from above. it was a beautiful party with candles everywhere. there were a lot of people at the party, but most of the people didn't seem to know me anyway. when i went back in to mingle, i ran into aaron. i said hi and thought to myself, "just leave it alone." and i did. i went to hang out at some other part of the party. everyone decided that they were just going to stay over in the courtyard of the house instead of go home. my dad said that this would be okay and we rummaged around for blankets and sleeping bags. there was a fight and my dad made some people leave. i was worried that i would be embarrassed by this, but everyone else was like, 'yea way to go.' i decided i would sleep in the courtyard with everyone else. the courtyard was structured similarly to the house-- lots of different levels with steps and paths connecting them, and populated by a lot of big yet shallow pools of water. water could flow between each of the pools-- there were waterfalls and fountains to move the water around. i was getting my sleeping bag (the one i have/love with the orange stripes on the sides) together in a shabby sort of corner that didn't seem to belong to the rest of the house. i abandoned for a moment to check on everyone and make sure people were comfortable. it seemed to be a warm night, i sat down on a wooden lounge chair and looked at the sky. the constellations all became very clear and glowed intensely in the sky. i could see the big dipper (it looked like a tea kettle) and a few other constellations that looked more like glowing illustrations in the sky. i was surprised because i usually can't identify constellations at all.

at this time, i noticed the water levels rising in the pools. the water was nearly reaching my feet. i didn't want my white shoes to get wet, and i thought the water would be too cold so i inched my foot away from the creeping water. aaron appeared and i wanted to tell him about the constellations. making sure that he was looking at the sky i got distracted and the water inched over my foot. it was warm like the pool was heated. i was startled and aaron said let's go swimming. i got in the pool with him and we were swimming under water for a while. i opened my eyes and everything was so clear. i could even see the constellations above through the water. we were swimming like hand in hand like dolphins or something. aaron said he had to get something from outside of the water. i stayed in the water. i thought to myself, i better remind him not to dive back in, because it's only 4 feet deep. at the exact moment i thought this, who dives in the pool head first? i was still underwater and felt a crash. soon, blood was everywhere in the water. there were other people in the pool trying to help me get him back out of the water but he seemed really heavy like a rock or something. he was still alive, but like paralyzed and crying underwater. when i finally got him out of the water, i could see that his spine was sticking out of the back of his neck and poking out of his back, too. and like, there was blood everywhere and there was that same sadness i couldn't articulate before sort of vibrating through my body.

b.peters:8 September 2009

i biked to a shanty-town from the 1800s in the middle of SF where deer were being killed rather unethically. they were shot, but not killed, and placed in giant wooden bins. other deer were cannibalizing the still-living, but shot deer. One of the deer in the bin was a giant, black buck who was bisected at the abdomen. he was cannibalizing other deer, too. I went to the local eatery for some fried fish and on my appetizer or bread plate or what have you was a decapitated doe head so fresh it was looking at me and it's eyes and mouth were twitching...i still ate the fish - cod; they were out of catfish.

Alistair Cookie:13 August 2009

last night i had a dream we drove your truck to new york and i woke up with this song in my head