Lying across a seat at the back of a bus, I'm getting head from a small nondescript woman. Wherever we're going it's cross country. I sit up and look around and realize the bus is full of people. Behind me is Cian Nugent and a fat hirsute man dressed only in a pair of purple mesh underwear. This is never going to work.

--------------------

Behind Grandma's house near Lover's Point. Someone else is there, maybe Aaron Sheppard. The houses in the neighborhood are larger and more spaced out than I remember. Less trees. In the back yard there is a small cottage that is missing an entire wall so that you can walk right into it. Inside is a lounge chair, a cheap rug and decorations, a shelf full of cosmetics and an old stereo. Fixed income pleasures. The floor is littered with flashy garbage and CDs out of their cases. I can tell that she's just been painting her toenails (blue) although she is nowhere to be seen.

I start to wander away down the side yard to find a place to pee and decide to do it on the wall of the neighbors house. Looking at the wide expanse of tongue and groove boards (the side of the house that faces the water) I realize that it doesn't have any windows, except one that is small and opaque. Suddenly aunt Helen emerges from this house holding an acoustic guitar and announces herself by strumming it once loudly - a strangely mutated Sonny Sharrock-style interval. I look at her hands and she is fretting with one finger pointed down over the top of the neck like John Fahey does at the climax of "Wine And Roses." She smiles at us.

Now I'm behind the house on Crocker and a seemingly endless throng of cross country runners - all Scandinavian girls, tanned and muscular with numbers pinned on their chests - begins streaming around the side of the house and fills up the back yard, totally overwhelming me. As one runs past me I notice that there is a look of determined agony on her face. I open the back door and maybe thirty or so of them flow into the house. I run amongst them up to the front to let them out again. I can see thru the window that the rest of them (what seems like hundreds of girls) are heading back towards the street via the opposite side yard. I need to coordinate with my mother as to how we can get these women to flow right. It's like herding sardines.

"Walls of flesh..." Why not rivers?

Coming back from the mountains and we stop near Toro Park. An affluent neighborhood in the part of California known as The Pastures of Heaven. Peter Hustead is there walking around with the relaxed, self-important air of a Kennedy and somehow I just know that he's murdered the women in his family. Or was it my mom and sister? Intense midday heat.

--------------------

In a New Mexican grocery store with Rachel and we see Jamie walking quickly thru the aisles. Shouldn't she be in the bakery? Before we know it she's at our register and is ringing us up. I try to talk to her and be friendly but she keeps her eyes downcast and interacting is difficult because of a strange partition that is between us. Her blonde hair is immaculate.

Next Rachel and I are in another part of town, going into a restaurant that looks as if it was once was an ancient Hacienda. High vaulted ceilings like the Royal Hawaiian but in a traditional stucco color instead of salmon. I walk up to the counter and ask for a piece of foil so I can wrap up the last bit of a burrito that I'm carrying around in my left hand. The girls working there are adorable but become fuzzy and soft-focused the longer I look at them. The effect is like looking at a tenth-generation video tape. Pornography. One of them hands me a thin piece of butcher paper.

Then I walk into a large banquet hall and thru a door that is supposed to lead to the bathrooms. Inside is a series of hallways and strangely laid out empty rooms. A labyrinth. Making my way deeper into the building I'm not aware of the sensation of having to go to the bathroom but I start to shit myself. As it falls from the inside of my pant leg I realize that Joe Hanrahan is there behind me and he starts laughing maniacally as if to say, "now the tables are turned!" I start to run away but I can hear the echoing laughter everywhere I go. As it reaches an even higher register of hysteria I vault over an indoor balcony and drop slowly thru the air, landing in a dried up fountain. Joe shouts after me, "are you all right?" I'm surprised that I wasn't hurt in the fall but I don't respond. There is barely any light on this lower level and it feels like being in a tiny canyon. This building must go on forever.

Stirring...

Now back asleep I see Eliot at a table. He starts to talk about his pessimistic views on life and doing so with a sense of authority that is characteristically flimsy. Drunk again.

--------------------

Eating a salad in which there are the cut up pieces of an Armani silk tie.

At Antero's place on Asilomar Boulevard just accross from the Gober's. Not a place per se - we're just standing on the side of the road. Who's we? Andy Herndon and I, of course. The light is just beyond crepuscular and there is a restlessness in the air like a storm is going to come in off the water. There are more tall trees, the way it was when I was a child before the pitch canker thinned things out. Antero is going to perform a ritual for me - something profoundly significant and powerful. I'm excited and can't wait to get started but first I have to go back to my parents' house and get some seemingly arbitrary items for him to use.

Back around the corner at my parents' place I try to explain to my father what I need and, although he doesn't say anything, I can feel his skepticism. He's not cynical, it's just that he doesn't connect with these ideas.

Suddenly the ritual begins. Antero is seated at a table surrounded by five or six autistic children - similar to the way that Ray used to set up his class. There is some kind of pedal device underneath the table that he uses to lift up the children's feet and create a sense of levitation. The problem is that it's clearly visible under the table. A curtain or long tablecloth seems necessary for this kind of legerdepied. The kids don't seem to notice though. He sits accross from Naim who, as usual, is as restless as a little monkey. Antero begins intoning in a loud musical voice. A forgotten angelic language. Grinning sardonically. My demon father.

--------------------

Patrick recently explained to me that origin of the military salute was a symbolic shielding of yourself from another's magnificence. Aaron's dream - as the men in hazmat suits saluted him they said: "Buffer. Buffer."

A rowdy party with the boys from CBK. I've invented a game that is somewhat like water polo but isn't limited to the pool, uses a heavy silver puck and is much more violent. The rules are loose and team loyalty crumbles instantaneously whenever an opportunity presents itself for the individual to score a point for himself. After it's over someone else tries to take credit for creating the game and we start to argue. I retrieve the puck from the water only to realize that it's made out of glass and has embossed letters on it that have been worn down to the point of illegibility. Like the bottom of an old bottle but thicker. An artifact.

--------------------

A second cross hanging from the doorknob.

Andy Herndon, Aaron Sheppard and I are at the periphery of a group of Japanese kindergarteners sitting in the aisles of a closed grocery store in the middle of the night. Andy is crawling around on all fours, looking for something and Aaron is eating a bag of peanut M&Ms, which have the same distinct smell as always. A sense of having to stay low to the ground.

Then there is the feeling that the children are on the verge of anarchy, insurrection. They're rocking back and forth like autistics. A young woman (teacher?) walks among the group, her hands overflowing with pharmaceuticals - white pills and tabs of LSD - which the kids gobble up rapaciously.

Then I'm back at Forest Grove Elementary. Sitting in my father's lap up on the third level field, he's reading to me from Burrough's The Wild Boys. He says to me, "I'm worried that you aren't going to survive because you aren't straight." I'm worried about getting to one of the book's pornographic passages. People watching from inside the greenbelt.

--------------------

Walking on Lighthouse Avenue we pass one another but then are in a car together - she's driving. She pretends to pull over a couple times as if we've reached our destination. I'm puzzled but then we get to her house and go inside. It's trashed as usual and when we look at each other she immediately takes off her pants but then disappears. I go over to look at the pictures on the wall to see if they're the same ones as before. On the bookcase is a framed photo of an awful dysmorphic face that I once knew at Ingham. Key la. They have the same name.

I take a step back and fall onto her bed and there she is under the blankets. She's ready for me. This is a terrible idea.

Cruising out of the 17 Mile Drive gate I see him walking the same direction on the shoulder near the forest. Emaciated with ragged, wavy red hair and haunted eyes. We look at each other for a brief instant and something inexpressibly sad passes between us but I keep going at the same pace.

--------------------

I put on loud music and start to do the dishes without knowing there is a couple asleep in the same room. They're up now and I'm apologetically charming them with my wit.

--------------------

She's standing in my room wearing only a teal bra and panty set. She no longer has any tattoos but that doesn't strike me as remarkable. We are naked in bed now, kissing. I have a bright idea - let's get in my parents bed. There isn't much room with the four of us. I try and get them to leave. 'Vacation' is the word that comes to mind. This isn't going to work.

We head back to my room but she disappears on the way across the hall. When I get there the area around my bed has been walled-in with sheet rock and trim. There's even white paint over a knock-down finish. No apparent way to get in but as I walk around the enclosure a panel in the front gives way and I enter through it.

She is lying in bed on her side, cradled in her own arms - her body painted entirely white and red with heavy black accents around the eyes. She looks at me and smiles. Black magic. Orgone. I wonder if the paint is going to rub off on me or the sheets.

--------------------

Three point turn with my sister. Parking. In a grand hall. Masha floats up to me in a group of dancers and says, "what are you doing here? I have a new boyfriend!" The image of the lower half of a huge mannequin whose hips are at eye level.

--------------------

Peter J hands me a small circular corn chip. A communion wafer. I put it in my mouth and smile sideways at him in a way trying to express my amor fati.

--------------------

A family of skinny young raccoons. Huge municipal buildings.

--------------------

Showering in the lower living room. I open the door that is now walled up and a black cat runs in. I spray it with water but this just pisses it off and it runs hissing at my feet. I adjust the temperature so it's colder and spray it again. It runs outside and I slam the door.

--------------------

1984 torture scene. Stations of the cross.

--------------------

Hanging out with Rachel in PG.

Julian Cope is on the line (although his voice is faint) and he's telling me about the new book. I ask him if he received the copy of Night In The Triangle and the other things I sent him. Nope, he's puzzled - going to write more about Paths of Ignition. Damn it! We start trying to resolve the confusion about his mailing address but his voice becomes more and more garbled and is lost in the clatter of preparation for dinner.

--------------------

At large on east side of the lake. It's a mild, coastal day and I'm listlessly cruising on Lakeshore. Although I can't remember doing it, I know that I have just murdered Barbara Streisand.

We had been lovers in another city. The image of a long sharp knife. After it was done I decided that I needed to go too and took some kind of over-the-counter, euthanasiac preparation. Just like they do in Neon City or Shakespeare. Later her son found me clinically dead in one of the opulent rooms and I could see him squinting at the package to understand the instructions for administering the antidote. I'm not sure why, but he made the call for my resurrection.

I don't know what's happened since then or how I got here but it's clear that I've been absolved. Looking at the crenelated skyline I can feel the world's anticipation for something that I have to give. On the verge of total celebrity. A wonderful sense of protection and enclosure within the black steel of my vehicle.

A concept kitchen suspended above a vaguely familiar landscape. Los Angeles?

"Are we just gonna let those rags burn up?"

"Yes."

--------------------

Strolling around a penny arcade in the wilderness. Every booth is a shooting range with heavy caliber guns that need to be propped up.

Hitler's buzz saw.

The sound of tearing paper.

I walk up to one and get ready to shoot. As I sight down the barrel I see a little placard with the brand name: Azazel. Nothing happens when I squeeze the trigger. It dawns on me that none of these guns work. They're all dysfunctional, ersatz.

A ways down Professor Clemens has a stall with a big weapon on a mount. He's taken some clips away from this young riot girl and he's chastising her like she was a baby, telling her to leave. For some reason I find this hilarious.

We're on date. She wants me to see her new place and when we get there it's a platform that's cantilevered high above a forest canopy. It seems dangerous but she's unconcerned, even when we try to move a table and my foot rips through the leather floor. Two people come visit us: one, a foreigner and the other, a psychopath. We can't understand either of them.

When they leave we lie down in the blankets and hold hands.

--------------------

580 is all backed up. We're still on the date and then suddenly in a small plane that takes off at an incredible speed. It's hard to control but nonetheless we soar gracefully. Sudden huge losses of altitude amongst the skyscrapers and bridges and other structures in the sky that I've never seen before. We're not afraid but perhaps that's because it feels synthetic. Love in a flight simulator.

--------------------

I'm alone on Grizzly Peak in my old place, although maybe it's a deserted restaurant too. The architechture is confounding but it's pleasant and dim inside. Looking out the window it's a breezy, blue day and I'm struck by the amount of activitity on the water. Strange craft moving out near the bridge and peninsula and also shapes in the hazy part of the sky near the horizon.

I run to my car to get my binoculars. Back inside, it starts to feel like a conflation of the Berkeley Hills and the Cloud City cabin in Big Sur and at that moment a platform with two cars facing each other on it (bumper to bumper) floats in front of the window. They look like Indy 500 cars, covered in ads that I can't make out. On top of them stands a man who is calmly riding the entire contraption. I get the sense that it is powered by hot air although there is no balloon. They quickly float up over the roof and out of view. I think to myself, "they've got a lot of nerve flying experimental craft like that over my house."

Going outside to follow them I see that the cars have left the platform and are floating individually about fifty feet up. The one closest to me is red and there is a woman in the driver's seat who is struggling to control it. I can see fire somewhere in the undercarriage.

Back inside, I realize that we are right on the water. Jack London's Square. My place has again transformed - this time into a snack bar and there are huge tinted curtain windows. The ferry comes in next door and I want to try and catch it. Ready to leave I reach for a soft serve ice cream cone only to find it's made of rubber. The kid behind the counter get's me a real one that comes in an unrecognizable package. Taking it and my binoculars I head for the door with a longing to get out on the water.

Fleet week. It's a lovely day with just a little less gravity than usual. Feels something like Harold Budd's Real Dream of Sails.

We're at the beach and dad has caught this lizard, something like an alligator lizard whose size increases until it is eventually the size of a cayman and then even bigger. The thing is that he caught it somewhere else and brought it to the beach. Now it's crawling around on the rocks and piles of seaweed and I'm afraid it's going to die. He catches it again and holds it up to me repeatedly with a self conscious expression on his face. Show and tell.

A tall, attractive woman has arranged to have her husband murdered. We cross London Bridge and on the other side I realize that it is actually my wife who is going to die. I am carrying a large cluster of multicolored helium balloons and looking up I realize that several have escaped and are rising skyward.

Night. Dad and I are sitting at the top of a stone bluff in Yosemite. We're looking down on a Ku Klux Klan meeting in a small valley with a few men maneuvering around in the dark, perhaps trying to ignite a cross. I realize that Dad and I are also dressed in Klan robes but without the hoods. I have an overripe persimmon in my hand and I throw it down at one of the Klansmen below. Dad calmly scolds me, saying something like, "come on Matthew, you don't have to pick on those poor, ignorant bastards. They have their own problems to deal with."

Then I'm alone and I find myself scaling the sheer cliff that was behind us. I'm incredibly high up now and the handholds are nearly impossible to get. At an impasse actually - my arms and legs spread out wide to grip the small ledges. All of a sudden I am surrounded by a bright, shimmering light and a sense of paralyzed ecstasy. The stone explodes, shattering into dust and I feel two strong arms embrace and carry me up to the summit. I'm laid down safely on the ground, my robes covered in stone dust. Again the image of of a strong male torso, like an amputated Hellenic sculpture in marble.

First thing that dawns on me then is that I'm in Big Sur and I have to play a show for Britt. My amp is there (the Super Reverb) but where's everything else? Wandering around I come upon Paz. She's 20 years younger and she starts to flirt with me.

Running a marathon with Rachel near Hopkins Marine Station. Five more miles to go and I dust her. Moving along by myself now at a good clip. I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying this.

--------------------

I'm at the beach with another woman and we're climbing on huge pieces of granite. At one point she walks up to me and puts her open hands on my torso and slowly slides them downward. I wonder what that's going to lead to but instead we end up climbing around more. I get to the top of a large stone peak and realize that behind it on the ocean's side, protruding straight up out of the water is a huge, elongated crab's claw. Maybe forty feet long. I suspect that it is attached to an entire living creature beneath the surface, one whose enormity is terrifying to realize. Zoomorphic Chthulu. Given my position, it could have snatched me at any moment.

Perhaps it was the wind or the breaking of the waves but something caused the claw to waffle a little and that made it seem fake, like it was made out of foam rubber. Now the peak is perpendicular to how it stood before and I'm hanging from it, struggling to get back up. The woman stands above me, encouraging me and trying to help. I don't need her. An enormous physical effort accompanied by the image of a muscular torso in full flex. I never quite make it up but I'm left with a feeling of optimism.

--------------------

The sound of church bells through the open window. Sunlight, parrots screeching.

Everyone is dressed in multicolored robes and genuflecting or crawling towards something at the far end of Scott Partch's old room. I think it's a shrine (or something else he's created) and except for it the walls have none of the decorations we all loved so much. Olana comes up from behind me and says, "it's idolatry!" but she doesn't pronounce it right, has the syllables all mixed up.

I'm thinking, "Ok. So what?"

--------------------

Virginia has her office in a house in Pebble Beach. We've just finished a session and she is working with some kind of punch card system. She says, "oh, I used to be a tutor as well." Wandering out into the forest I find myself in a large hall or ballroom. It is dim, lined with dark wood, and luxuriously decorated. Perhaps it's a gentleman's club. Across the table sits Larry in an immaculate white tuxedo. He tells me that he comes here for therapy and I get the feeling it isn't doing much for him although he is thinner. As he stands up I notice that he has a corduroy sport coat that doesn't match his ensemble. Then Jered walks up behind me and gets me in a kind of gentle camel clutch but, instead of being under my chin, his fingers are clasped over my face. They smell like snot.

Now we're up on our feet and everyone is moving toward the walls. A brass band is making their entrance. I can't really see them but I get the sense that they are tactical in their approach, attacking the room like Urban Sax. It feels like a ceremony.

--------------------

Standing at the edge of a pool in my parents' back yard. It's the middle of the night. Looking into the dirty water I see the contours of a female body amongst the garbage and debris. She's on all fours at the bottom and suddenly her eyes open and we're looking at each other. An orgasm of fear.

A small tent city. We've all taken LSD. I  Patrick tells me that Matt took some of this batch and on it he realized that the world was made up of tiny spheres. It's kicking in and everything feels wrong. I have the suspicion that I have to play a set in a little while but I have no idea where my gear is.

Stepping outside I see Shimeko lying on the ground at my feet and she's been dosed too. She looks up at me and says, "everything feels so fake." At that instant, out near the horizon, we see a huge, fluffy owl floating in place and flapping its wings mechanically.

Dad and I are thrifting in the country. An array of debris spread across a hillside. Finished with the lower level we begin to climb upwards past a corrugated metal house and I point at it and tell him that's where Keigan lives. The next structure is a large, free-standing wooden cabinet and that's where Willie Nelson from Nepenthe lives. It doesn't look like there is enough room to fit a chair in there so I guess she must sleep standing up.

We get to the area with the goods and suddenly we're back inside. I can tell that Dad wants to go soon but I'm excited about all of the outlandish stuff they have in there and ask him for five minutes. I look at a table full of carved African statuettes. A black woman next to me admires the one that I've picked up and I tell her that she can have it. She's there with her husband - mustachioed with a ball cap.

I start to scan the book cases and find a copy of Nostrilia. The last twenty pages have been mutilated but I'll get it any way. I look for the quote:

"Dog-derived girls who smelled of sex all the time."

Jeff has a crazy, lopsided A-line haircut. My dad is furious that we borrowed the van. He's strutting along in a pair of white, flowing Hollywood waist pants and that's it. I wonder why he and mom would need a van at all.

--------------------

A girl asks me why I have such crooked teeth. I don't think they're that bad and I'm surprised she noticed.

A small, indoor amphitheater shaped space used for sleeping. It's dark. Taking my place among the blankets I realize that I'm lying between two strangers. They start to stir and I hope that I can get to sleep unnoticed. I think they are squatter punk types and I start to worry about lice.

--------------------

In a huge movie theater with multiple screens. It had been renovated at some point and one of them is defunct. We are way in the back - Mom, Audrey and I. Also there are some other people with us who feel like they're part of the clan. Down the aisle, to the right of us, is a fat Persian man and his date, an insignificant woman. He asks me to come over and sit in the seat next to him. Then it's just the two of us and he starts to ask about my mother. Says that I should introduce them... maybe he can satisfy her. I get up and swing one of my shoes (a loafer) at his face, coming inches from his nose. I consider having another swipe but go back to my seat where I find Maryann sitting next to me. We clasp hands on her lap and it reminds me of the way I sat with aunt Helen in the parish hall the day of my grandmother's funeral.

Twilight. I'm in an overgrown Civil War era graveyard looking for esoteric markings on the headstones. Walking up to one of them I strain to make out the inscription until suddenly it becomes clear that it's a large swastika. Loud and clear, vaguely luminous. Then a man who looks like an old, gray Walt Whitman (but thinner and less robust) approaches from the forest and stands in front of me. He's wearing an old fashioned hat and clothes. I try to look into his eyes but I can't find them - his orbits are pools of shadow. He is expressionless and I'm worried he thinks I'm a Nazi.

Suddenly I'm back at the cabin but some of the walls have been removed to create a more open-plan space. It's dark inside and filled with unfamiliar people. There are thousands of empty beer cans on the floor, counters and every other surface and thousands more to drink. Entire cases. Fizzing. Liminal. I wonder where the guys are but I'm reluctant to go outside and look. Something dangerous is happening out there. I think they may be shooting guns. Moving amongst the crowd I come upon Eddie Vedder, drink in hand. He's shorter than I thought and worried about being recognized. He wordlessly dismisses me and slips away into the darkness.

Then Scott Partch comes up to my side and puts a hand to my ear. I can't see him but I recognize his voice. He asks: "Remember that baby we buried last time we were up here?"

What? All I can come up with is a childhood memory of burying my little orange cat in the garden. She was wrapped in her favorite afghan.

I shake my head and can feel his breath on my ear when he says:

"We dug it back up."

Madonna is missing. A search party in mountains. Wholesome Christian kids. I fall off a cliff but manage to grasp some cypress branches on the way down. Suspended over space but with a titillated, confident feeling.

--------------------

Following two men down a steep slope toward the lake at Pinecrest. Below, the lake is drained but not frozen over the way you can expect it to be this time of year. It's warm out and pleasant but I get the feeling that the world, or at least this part of it, is decadent - on the verge of rotting. Looking around I try to orient myself by finding the store and I point out where Alex's cabin is.

The guys easily negotiate down a sheer rock surface and make it to the water's edge. When it's my turn I realize that it's nearly impossible to make it down without falling. There are just a couple little hand holds and it's the kind of move that requires real rock climbing technique. Somehow I do it and find myself in a place I didn't expect. Leaving a house? Taking a look at the men I realize that they're both around 40, slightly worse for wear and tear but dressed like teenagers. We rush to a little creek and grab on to a zipline and away we go at terrific speed. The problem is that it's so close to the ground and we have to dodge the people who are in its path. Then I'm alone and it's no longer a smooth ride. I start to waffle violently. Bailing out, I find myself in a dining hall packed full of campers. Trying to move around, walking on the tables. One guy won't get out of my way. Pushes his chair up against me. I move suddenly and over he goes onto the floor.

Outside now. Walking up a hill I see Clay Payton sitting down with a cigarette. He's waiting for something. When he sees me he asks how I liked his friend in the dining hall.

With Patrick and Fishbeck outside a party and we can't get in because someone inside keeps throwing full bottles of beer at us as we try to approach the door. They break and fizz, spinning like fireworks. Fine, we'll just hang out on the porch. At some point we do get inside and it's almost pitch dark in there.  Everyone is laying around on the floor amongst the broken glass and puddles of beer. Incapacitated. This is the other side of the Bacchanal.

Starting in medias res with some idea of what came before. Travel of some kind, perhaps a tour. I'm trying to pass through a security check point behind a house in the country, close to where we flipped the Volvo. In spite of the long line I get to the front quickly and the official standing next to the scanner is dressed in an antiquated police uniform. He looks at me and, although it's still daytime, shines his flashlight in my face point blank and says, "oh, you're under arrest." He says this with a vague sense of surprise, as though he never expected to catch me. I get the idea that there was an all points bulletin. He starts to walk away and I follow him.

He leads me away to a holding cell in a building further down the dirt road. It feels like Nicasio. Inside I'm left with a guard and he explains to me that I am wanted for murder. He doesn't say who and for some reason I keep picturing Jim Sullivan though I have no recollection of killing him. As he speaks to me I lose all sense of the room we are in and I begin to experience a rapid fire series of images. I ask him if I can have a copy of the book that I've been reading and he says, "we're going to put you down in a hole and you'll get nothing. What makes you think you have the right to a book?" I get the impression that it will be a life sentence with no trial and the corresponding image is that of an old rusted out truck whose tires have sunk into the earth. Between the rubber and the dirt is a cold, dark interstitial space where they will keep me. A total suspension of human rights. Intense grief. I'm weeping profusely.

Someone else comes in from outside and my awareness returns to the room. The guard frantically gestures at something on the table in front of me. I look down and there is a pair of handcuffs but of an unfamiliar, incomprehensible design and I can tell he wants me to put them on. Not sure how to do that but apparently I was supposed to be wearing them the whole time. I'm unsure if this was lenience or negligence on his part. In spite of the awful feelings of oppression and helplessness there is never any overt force on the part of the police.

At first I think the new person is another cop but once I get a look at him I realize it's a prisoner who has come in voluntarily. He is a giant swaddled in baggy white cloth and looking at him makes me think of junkies, retardation, filth, sepsis, Lazarus. He sits down with us at the table and I can see that he is covered in scars where he has picked away his own skin and has large, white keratinized growths on the backs of his hands where he has bitten himself compulsively. His face doesn't have the alienated blankness that typifies autism. Rather there is something sensitive and sincere about his expression. Although he never speaks I can tell he is a cockney. We sit across from each other and I wait for him to do something, to attack someone. Either me or himself.

Woke up with an overwhelming sense of relief.

Some remote dirt road near Sebastopol. Riding four deep in Alex Rinehart's P-1800: him, Kaila, Raina and I. We stop, a destination or a road block. A non-descript group approching the car. Police men. Now it's just Kaila and I in the car and she starts freaking out. She wants to escape. I try to tell her that we're fine. Not doing anything wrong. Even though she isn't in the driver's seat she manages to step hard on the gas and it sends the car up onto a steep shoulder and it flips over. As this happens, I'm surprised that it doesn't hurt at all.

Trapped. The enclosure starts feeling smaller than before, like a poorly designed space capsule or a tandem coffin. I'm considering which window to break. Thinking about the price of vintage auto glass. Suddenly I'm being sucked out of the car and find myself standing on the wet grass outside. Amongst a crowd of passive onlookers, we look down at the vehicle and marvel at how I was able to fit through such a small space. A little slot beneath the rear window. I feel proud, self-possessed, healthy. I wonder how she's going to get out.

Amongst a group of people (the CBK gang?) looking down at the coastline from Jake's place at Nepenthe. Someone points out a couple of leathery bodies on the shore and speculates that they were murdered. I say they could have come over in the debris from Fukushima. Images of the ocean saturated with trash. Sounding into clear water. Dark blue.

--------------------

I enter a vitamin shop in an indoor mall with an ambitious list of things to buy, including a tee shirt. Looking around I realize that I don't have enough money for anything but one bottle of my men's once-a-day. Walking away it inexplicably starts to drizzle inside the mall and I realize that I bought the wrong thing - something for the prostate. I go back to exchange it. The woman inside is not amused, doesn't want to take it back. Jesus, how banal.

Sleeping out of doors. A festival of some kind. As ususal I'm supposed to play but where is my gear? Everything is soiled, squalid and confusing. Heaped bedclothes in a clearing. Dusk or the kind of diffuse, snowy luminescence that Jake mentioned at Pinecrest last week. Open air structural coverings similar to Pacific Islanders' huts but modern in style.

Some girl makes a remarks to me about what nice fingers I have and then F walks up from behind. Oh God, I don't want to hear it from him again.

Then I find myself in my old room in the attic. A-frame, claustrophobic and full of familiar people but without any of the adolescent posters that I used to have up. It is very dim. I push to the back and when I get there something happens that upsets me. Not sure what. I turn around abruptly and try to leave. At the door to the stair is Andrew Jenkins with some other guys. He starts to joke with me and I don't take it well. I start to trash the place, a full-bore tantrum.

Outside now, crying hysterically. Everyone is watching me and it feels almost like a performance. A bearded psychiatric doctor in a white coat approaches with a clipboard and starts to pinch my face. Some kind of treatment.

I realize that the stairs to the attic room are gone and that it's door actually opens directly onto the front garden where I'm standing. Scott Smitherman comes out and and explains that I just tore Matt Buckelder's hat and that I need to go home and fix it on my sewing machine. I try to tell him that I don't have a sewing machine, much less do I know how to use one. I say I'll just buy a new hat for him but this is unsatisfactory. Back inside negotiating, I want to talk directly to Matt. I look down and there is Becky Smitherman curled up on my couch. She is young again but still wearing glasses and she looks beautiful.

Smoke hanging in the air against rugged hillsides. Big Sur, Laurel Canyon, or the summit of The Grapevine.

Next, I'm waiting around at the SF apartment. Picking something up? I go thru a stack of records in the living room but in a perfunctory way and nothing jumps out at me as being especially important. I'm tempted to look in the bedroom (does he still have that Les Paul?) but I don't.

After a while the room is full of half-familiar people and I realize that I am naked. As I gather up my clothes off the floor I make up some excuse as to why I prefer to wait undressed.

Suddenly, I'm in class. A special ed room but I'm a student there. I'm late and all of the students are already seated. When I find my seat I have difficulty taking it because it's legs sink into the floor of white gravel. I fall over backwards. The solution that comes to me is to assemble one of the wheelchairs that are lying in pieces to one side of the room. As I struggle with its complex, elliptical parts I notice that big Daniel Zuniga is there. Stoic as ever but none of his compulsive headbanging. He sits still in a wheelchair with a partial cage restraint, wearing an orange sweatsuit decorated with fine golden sigils.

I'm dressed in a coverall pica suit and arm splints. Sensations of physical smallness. Running away I shout: "I don't belong here! I went to UC Berkeley!"

Field stripping two weapons in a strange house. First a lightweight nine millimeter pistol and it takes a while to tell if it's loaded or not. It isn't. Admiring the glistening double helix in the barrel. Spacing out, almost falling asleep for a moment.

Then a strange telescoping automatic. A voice calls out from the other room to explain that it has some pieces missing. It sure does - an entire side of the housing is gone and I can see the interior mechanism. It seems insubstantial and cheaply constructed. Who is it in the other room? Male? Female? I get the impression that they are taking a shower.

Hypnogogia: Jack London's Square bathed in otherworldly light. More of a feeling than anything else.

Walking on a gray beach somewhere on the West Coast. I never thought of Ben Brown as a beachcomber but there he is strolling along, unkempt in a corduroy jacket. The sand is littered with broken clam shells. Looking closer I see that some of them are intact but when I go for them they burrow away deeper into the sand. On my knees, digging with my hands I start to worry about injuring my fingers.

I get one and pry it open with my Case knife only to realize that it's actually an oyster and that the meat has been covered in sand. Looking around I can tell that everyone expects me to eat it. I put it in my mouth and try to convey to them that it tastes good. They are doubtful.