Dog Herding, Driving the Fifteen, Found Jewelry, Melted LP & Tahini Dressing

March 25-April 25

I go camping by myself. I hike out across a bridge. There are school children singing gospel songs. I hike on the edge of the water. When I turn back, I cannot remember where I put my stuff and all the backyards where I pitched my tent look the same. I find a ranger station to go ask for help, but they’re busy on the phone. Some note about how there’s a tiger that’s gotten loose and is chasing its way around the park, though I shouldn’t be worried about it. “Compared to other parks, this park is just like Europe,” the ranger said in a nice way.

Brad’s doing some trick with some cards. Moving his hands around and spinning them a little. He’s just been at the border with these wolf-dog things that belong to us. He has some super-scammer plot about herding them. I end up driving them back and forth between two points. One in America, one in Canada. I don’t quite understand the plan.
Maybe my father is also involved? We speak about how much he wants to leave wherever we are and move to Canada. I keep thinking that I never want to go, I don’t want to move at all. He said a border guard offered him a cigarette. When he decline he said the guy said “I never seen a dog herder who doesn’t smoke.” Now he lights a cigarette. What a trickster.

Nick and Evan Barr are wrestling outside of some cottage that my friends have bought in the woods somewhere. Trent and Eana and Katie and some other couple are living there. My parents own it though, but they’re only there off and on. Everyone’s joking around, throwing leaves. Evan picks up my brother and pretends to slam-dunk him on top of this little shed and I give him shit for it. My brother picks me up then and does the same thing. We go way up in the sky, but he makes sure I don’t land on the shed, but on the ground where it’s softer. Isn’t he a nice guy.

Katie and Trent are talking about marriage. About how when you get married, you have to have your own system, not like other people’s systems. Trent has been wearing roller skates throughout the whole dream.

Making small talk with some man. I had to ask twice, “where did you go to school?” “UC Irvine.” “Oh. You told me that already, sorry.” I think Bradley’s there, in the place where Evan and Nick were throwing. He gave me a pair of shoes and I really wanted to like them. They almost looked like the black shoes I have from Target. But then I looked at them again and they transformed into meshy-Nike looking basketball shoes and I didn’t really like them. But I wanted to. That’s maybe what’s important.

In the CESTA kitchen, eavesdropping on Chris and George, talking about the Rolling Stones. But really it’s not the CESTA kitchen, it’s some school cafeteria store where I’m microwaving some pizza and a muffin. Maybe on ASU campus. I hear Chris and George talking. Just the inflection of their voices talking about rock and roll is so nice. I want to tell them I miss them. But part of me knows that it’s like some kind of mirage and if I interrupt them it won’t be true.

My mom and grandma are here to watch other people’s defenses…or maybe mine. Cynthia and Beckian are outside and we get in a discussion about why people are so bent on getting into Ph.d programs when they’ve just gotten MFAs. I get the feeling that Cynthia and Beckian know that I’ve just applied to all these programs but I’ve been rejected but they know whether or not I’ve gotten in and they aren’t telling me.

Yesterday I had a very strange memory of a sunburn/suntan. Tan lines. Tan lines from a tan I got while sleeping.

I have a multi-tiered, multi-layered belt which has synonyms for “razzzladazzin’” or “honky tonkin’” sewed or printed on it. Maybe it’s for sale on the internet. People are impressed. They like to take time to read it.

I had an interview to be a kindergarten teacher. I went to the school and hung out during nap/free time. Had to be in a play about a pirate ship. Realized it wasn’t the job for me. Went to some party/reunion thing. Rachel Malis was there she was in really good shape. Fernando was there but I didn’t want to talk to him. No one did. Almost didn’t see Rachel and Ari at first. It was good to see them. Worried at home about finding a job. Maybe at another elementary school. Even though I wasn’t qualified.

Josh Johnson lent me his car. Went driving around the student ghetto with Tess. It was like a holiday, the fourth of July or not. She wanted to stay at this party with these dumb redneck guys. She was in her swimsuit. I left her with the car and walked up the hill. I don’t know where, back to my parent’s house. I didn’t drink anything, either.

Kept trying to get myself to pee outside of the university. Some unknown architecture building in broad daylight. People were going by. I couldn’t do it. I kept saying “vent your frustration at the university with pee. Just let it go.”

Watching some art installation that Kelly from Portland made. It’s all these projections, like a birthday party? No. Projections of people inside the building. She was explaining it while wearing 14th-15th century Flemish painting style clothing. There was a soundtrack that went along with it. I didn’t quite understand it, but it looked really good. Drew was there too, talking about planning things. Kelly said how strange it was that we all look at things in a certain space, and that’s how we perceive art. Drew said “well, that’s what we’re good at naturally, looking at things in a space.”

Before this, I’d been hanging out with Allyson Boggess until the wee hours of the morning. Was hanging out also with my mom late at night. A merge. My mom had been trying to convince me to go drink with her at Asylum Lake in the middle of the night. It didn’t seem like a good idea. We smoked though, even though I told her I hadn’t been. I caved. Then I ended up spending hours opening and shutting the refrigerator making a sandwich for myself. It took forever. What annoying bullshit. Then I went to Allyson’s. She was giving me one of her cats. It had poop in its hair and I didn’t really want it, but I didn’t want to be rude. I put it in my coat and it made my coat smell shitty. I had to chase it around the house to get it in my car. Don’t ever get a cat, dude.

Another project that Kelly made, starring Jerome from CESTA. He’s sort of like almost Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Less gimmicky. Not more serious, but calm. About having only eight hours left to hoist the world back up after it fell down. There’s all these blow-up cloth things and felt scenery suspended in the air on strings. There’s a massive effort of people in the wings to tie it back up. Its done very well, very intricate. It actual raises up on strings a few feet at the end after they get this baloony world. World of balloons and rain drops fluttering the space up. Jerome was also in a project previous to this one. I was in it also.

Some summer institute. Anna H. was my roommate. Every morning we’d get up and make a meat juice smoothie. Whenever Robin starts talking we go and hyperventilate and stick our faces in the same corner and laugh about it. One morning she doesn’t show up. She sends a text message saying that was her last day but doesn’t explain why. I pee in my bed (in the dream, not in real life).

Getting dressed up in the basement with mom and Kate. Everything I try on is icky. It’s all old stuff that we’re throwing away. But there’s stuff I’ve gotten and never worn that doesn’t fit me like this weird old wedding dress that we put Beth Staples in. My mom wears a bunch of my old skirts and Kate laughs at how two of me can fit in most of them.

Trying to find Tabor. I’m driving but the road gets so bumpy that I decide to leave my car. I think I’m almost there. I walk and walk, I end up walking into a ski resort in New Zealand…in Germany or Austria. It’s snowing. It gets dark. I can’t find it.

I work at some summer program where every afternoon at five you get to swim with the baby seals. My dad shows up to pick me up and take me home. We find out that I didn’t get into the ph.d program.

My brother and I staying in some weird mansion. There’s pianos in it. Maybe it’s not a mansion, but a suburban house, which at this point, seems like a mansion. It’s snowy outside. Somebody rings the doorbell. I don’t recognize them so I hide behind the piano. My brother is like “whatever, I’ll answer it.” I say “what if they know we’re skipping school?” They bring by this contraption that looks like a swing set. You lay down in it. There’s two seats/swings. No one can really see you but then you press this button and it swings back up so you’re upright. You can kick or scare someone. We decided it would be good if we were hiding out in the backyard and someone/the sherrif was coming to get us. Cameron Lockwood’s around. He shows up.

My mother suggests that we make a video of my grandma and my dad eating chocolate cake that we bought for grandma’s birthday. The video will allow her to “re-eat” it over and over throughout the year at no cost.

A school tradition? Or not. Before the defense question section, the person is blindfolded and spun around.

My Dad and one of the cats can trade physical attributes/characteristics.

Some website where a woman had written stories based on people’s real family stories. Would show you the locations of where things happened. A series of “old west tales” about people living in cabins and long shoremen and crazy affairs and shit. They were like romance novels but you could look and see what inspiration came from what place. You could look at the mildewy beds! She was like a middle-aged, like a cat lady… She kept saying how uncomfortable the bed she slept on was. It was tiny and there were all these pillows on it. Then she said “then the long shoreman came by and time just flew in bed.” I was like “eeewww don’t tell me that!”

Watched a documentary about these crazy obese people who had giant stomachs. They would make their own bread and all this food and then eat it and throw it up. Waffles and butter. It was total disgusting but they were totally open about talking about it. It was mind boggling that they would make all this food and waste it.

Kate told me this story where she’d figured out some scam in Portland where she’d figured out years ago if you were stealing stuff and reselling it but making less than ten dollars an hour it wasn’t a crime. One time she found an ipod underneath a lamp in an army-navy surplus store. But it turned out it had belonged to the lady who ran the store, or her dead wife. Kate got caught. The dead wife had been a super-huge Great Gatsby fan, so Kate felt really bad and gave her a CD by band who had been influenced by that book. The woman listened to it and now they were kind of friends. Half way through this story, Kate morphed into her male equivalent who is someone unrelated to me. Sort of like Jack Black.

Some dress up show/play where everybody had (Berkeley was there). I had all these little kid clothes that I could barely squish into. Ladybug print pants and a neon sweatshirt, a life jacket, and a helmet. Super-neon ‘90s break dancer. Berk. was trying to put on these really girly clothes…nylons. Mark was there trying to help us. We were having trouble putting on these girl clothes. Some belonged to Lyndsay Reese. They were designed so weird and didn’t make sense. We were rolling around on the ground laughing. It was fun but I was embarrassed that I was having fun. MY part in the play went really well. Brittany was there. IT was outside a fountain. It was kind of improv. Everybody’s costumes were homemade beautiful ramshackly werid. Brittany was a chicken that turned into an alien part way through. It was really good.

My car died. So I had to get something so I could get back to Michigan. I just went to this gas station where I had a second job. It was next door to a car dealership where I bought the first thing I saw that was on sale because I just wanted to get the hell out. It was a motorcycle with a big wing-hoop on top. It had a special chute that it would take off from. It pretty much drove itself, just press a button. I didn’t understand how it worked, it was horribly ugly: a bright red new motorcycle with a sun bonnet deal on top. It was so bad. I couldn’t believe that I bought it.

Killing cockroaches. Getting really crazy into it. In the bathroom mirror staring in it my skin turns green and my eyes are flickery. Can’t help but feeling that they are crawling on me in my sleep.

Forced-awkward “get-casual” feeling party. Like Mark H.’s last night. Get drunk in my dream is worse than real life. Feeling so awkward.

Thrown in a semi-truck. Took a shit in a bathroom somewhere as –a walked in and –ar was leaving. They caught each other there. Mostly awkward for them, but maybe me a little bit too.

Baby doll collectibles. Phantom of the Opera water bottle and cheese grater all for dolls. What else? Supposedly vintage clothes that were so small it was inconceivable that they could have belonged to my father. My brother and I deciding we couldn’t sell any of it. My mom’s there practicing for some piano recital. I’m climbing back in the window. We’re all the ages we are now or older so it’s all just for a novelty effect. My dad’s planted these great plants outside. It’s really pretty. Nice old books with funny old covers from the ‘70s. Very ‘70s. I was practicing the piano for something too. We all started to promise at the end of the dream “no, we’ll never throw away anything ever again.”

april 5th

Dreaming of -ea-el again, again, again. Drunk and beautiful. We have sex and then he disappears.


Walking around a campus at night. Holding on to a book that is John Steinbeck, except trashier. It has some appeal. Maybe using it to impress people. I’m in the photo processing lab and there’s this new process for processing color that involves throwing these strips of film like their paint and Bill from Western is there and some of my other friends are in this class. I tell them I know how to do this! We can break in over spring break and make a bunch of prints. It’s really exciting. I see my mother and she’s mad that I haven’t put the book in my book bag, but all I can think is “at least I’m not smoking! At least I’m not smoking!” The girl I’m with is a mixture of Amanda and Tess.

In the morning before I hear all the noises right, it’s soft like an abstract painting.

Assorted strangers: Kalamazooians, people in a lobby waiting for something to start. Everyone has the look of “rescue me” on their faces. A lecture? Something about going up north. Cannot remember. Waiting for lectures. Awkward small talk spaces. Forgetting my sunglasses.

My family is up north. Ryan is supposed to be there with me. There is someone who has a silhouette vaguely like his but it is of a developmentally disabled adult. In the middle cabin, sleeping the first night, waiting for Ryan to show up. He drove up with us, and then went somewhere to get something. Maybe my grandparents are making him sleep in a separate cabin or something? It’s not like I wanted to sleep with him, sleep with him. I just wanted to hang out in the same place. In the morning I think that I see him, looking really cute from far away but then it turns into this lurching adult-child who just barges into my stuff and is not Ryan, not at all.
Having two dreams at once. Helping with Karrie Pollens’ wedding. Thinking about several abstract paintings I’d like to make. The best parts of the paintings are the names of the colors of the paint. I can’t remember them though.

Went to some photography conference/nature’s classroom something or other in Vegas. Brit was there. I overslept for the class we were going to be in together. It was confusing and terrible. No one was attractive. I just felt lonely in crowds.

Combination of melted vinyl from an LP and tahini sauce: tasted damn good. I’ve dreamt about it before.

Some store, a hardware/grocery store, like a little WalMart in the middle of nowhere. I was coming home from a dance class where I was sweaty and wearing tights. There was this man I didn’t know in a jacket and dark-rimmed eyeglasses. He did not have good hair. He had hair gel in his hair. On several occasions he would walk by me in the store and tap me on the shoulder. We would run into some back room and without speaking or having any eye contact, we would have sex. Then I would leave. He would always chase me until one time I saw him in the store and I tried to chase him. But then he wasn’t in the meeting place. Somehow it didn’t work like that.

Mini-museum of action figure cut-up world. Nick and Dylan circa 1994. Some other kind of dance with music collaged songs about apples/geniuses…all at this practice museum for something. Alone. But I’m not as I’m practicing.

from a gas station. From walgreens. Home, home with my family, working on something. Going to see Kate on a road trip when she lives in Canada.

Kalamazoo people who’ve never been out west, take them to Portland, go to K’s work…it was really busy with other crowds of people visiting. It was just like I’d never known him. For a long time. Some job somewhere making a haunted house outside in a backyard. I kept needing something from a chimney vent above an oven. I kept having to take my clothes off and climb into the vent. Kept worrying that Robin Pollens, or whoever’s kitchen it was, would get home and I’d be in trouble.

Went to the doctor. The office was outside, overlooking the street. Doctor was a woman who just started feeling me up all the time.

My mom could play guitar, and harmonica, and saw through a tree trunk at the same time.

I was walking around with Tom in a city that looked like Tucson, but a city we’d never been to before. He decided that it would be a good idea to throw a shoe through a very small window, prefaced by the phrase “I’m going to something stupid.” Then we went inside this place that was a shoe store/used something or other store. I only went in the entrance and was looking at the shoes, but he went all the way in. Seconds later came out yelling “go! go! the light came on!” Ran down the street and hid in a café where my friend Angela was working. Then in some dormitory. Having trouble with the soda machine. Somebody told me that it would work if you put Czech money in it. Luckily, I had a leftover Czech coin in my pocket. Put it in the machine and all the jewelry I’d ever lost started coming out the coin return.

A road called “The Fifteen.” Driving it one way at sun set can bring up certain memories and the other way, not. It was the end of a movie or poem or something, a driving scene, just figurines in the sun. Something secular, but the way it was described, religious.

The figurine from Paddle to the Sea. Floating in the lakes up north.

My parent’s basement: Pat Mahana’s explaininrg to my brother how way back in the day all those kids saw me as some second mother figure, doing embroidery and listening to records. Art projects and punk rock. Meanwhile, someone who maybe represents God or something is shuffling around trying to give me some cd that I’m not going to listen to and don’t really want. I think we’re wearing snowboarding boots ‘cause its cold out.

Birthday party for Karrie Pollens. Everybody’s super-normal. Having a fire, reminiscing. I decide to be socially anxious, go hide in her bedroom. I can’t get the toilet to flush. I go outside. Part of it looks like the Green Top and my old friends from Kalamazoo are there, drinking whiskey sours. Someone looks in the fireplace, picks up a dead cat. I feel guilty. Robin asks me where I’ve been and I can’t explain.

How to stop doing something that you’re doing. Something about bravery.

In Chicago, working. It feels comfortable, even though I don’t know anyone. Before that, at a ski area that’s turned to mud. As usual, I’m walking below the chair lift and I don’t have skis. There are people with skis riding above me. My grandfather had pushed me through some parking lot or something. He was pushing it, even though I was supposed to be taking care of him.

I lived somewhere with my brother. We had this chanty/tent in the middle of this big room we lived in. One of us had built it for ice fishing or some other purpose. We rebuilt it so that there were separate rooms. We had to take measurements so they could build more. It was nice, convenient. The one we had was covered in floral print fabric. Of course. There was some other scene where there was a family and I was in the family but its not the family I have now. The mom and dad were fighting about something and the mother had set out this elaborate feast of hamburgers, take-out from somewhere. One of the little girls had gotten their period for the first time so there was a party. There was an ex-somebody who showed up with a child who was in a tizzy because it was so expensive. And no one was eating it. She was giving this little girl all this rich people food. I might have been the little girl. No, I wasn’t, I don’t know what I was.

Watching girls sunbathe out of the top of this ugly brick building with no windows. They were on wire mattress frames. It looked like a more industrial detroitish version of phoenix. Had a job interview for some outdoor ed place but abruptly forgot about it while I was out walking around.

Had a harmonica. It wasn’t my harmonica. It was covered in some icky dust but I didn’t notice until my mouth was on it and my mouth was cleaning it off.

Raining in a park. Like the park on College before the whole foods. Trying to solve a mystery.

Bob Dylan comes to visit Kevin’s house. When he’s sleeping they decide to dress up like him to see him off. I get all embarrassed and tell them it’s a stupid idea. Drew says its not about how it makes HIM feel, it’s about how it makes US feel. Then I felt embarrassed for never thinking that way.

Started in texas only ten years ago. Displayed in a novel or short story about a couple. He’s looking for a house for them to live in, but realizes she’s not real or something.

Airport with mom and Kate, picking Nick up from somewhere. In a stairwell full of glass baubles. Having trouble getting something to eat. Hungry, but at the airport. I just get hot chocolate mix and eat it dry. Nick gets...? Mom wanted a gatorade but they didn’t have any, but it’s all ridiculous cause we’re eating these non-food foods. Somebody that Kate knew had died that morning and she’s all sad and we’re telling Grandma Shirley this later, but by then it’s funny.

Visitng JLowe, her friend ? They’re doing “secret” things together in the other room. I try to pack stuff up. I find a notebook bound together but only a centimeter wide. There’s writing in it. I ask JLowe what it is and she says it’s a diary. It just seems that someone’s diary would be so cramped and hard to write in.

Dreamt we had some soldier friend who died. Made some video for/about him for the funeral. It was narrated by -ana and it was incredibly, incredibly long because the editing was so bad. Three hours instead of five minutes. But since somebody died there’s nothing you can say about that. The best part is that as a tribute, cause the guy was good with kids, we had this big water balloon soccer fight with kids from the town. IT was really muddy, there were good scenes of playing in the mud.

British woman telling a story about how when she was younger, living somewhere in/on the water, her husband would rent a cabin for a day and then at night they would pretend that they’re friend had gotten in some sort of accident and they didn’t have enough money to make it home because it was storming, and then they’d get a free night without having to pay.

Christmas display…animals all electrocuted and fried before the show. I was in a play that involved remembering lines. We were from Kazoo School. Everyone would have to run across this field and then up this really slippery thing that was like the outside of a tube slide. I was having so much trouble climbing up the outside that I couldn’t remember my lines.

Exhibition hall in Phoenix with irrationally high ceilings: half of the floor is made of spinning escalators/people movers. There are horses and school children on trampolines and an audience and it’s a mess. I keep trying to go by the booth where the photographers are to steal film. They have blocks of hundreds of rolls of Ilford HP5 400 but I can’t get them. There are posters that don’t make sense: very large women with Burger King logos on them. Anna and I are there, and some school friends. She says “let’s play!” We start messing with all these strangers, making up new social norms/rules of interaction. Brian Diamond is there and he wins the game: he waxes his forehead by rubbing it on some sculpture and then rubs his forehead on somebody else’s forehead. This becomes a recurring custom. Soon everyone is rubbing foreheads.

Small problem including not feeling invincible all the time. Is there a time when you felt invincible? Do you still feel that? Where did it go?

How to make/ how to light yourself /on fire/ how to start a fire/ how to light a match. Hot cup of coffee in one hand, pick up the matchbook, hold the matches in your three fingers out arm back around coffee, hold the matches between your thumb and three fingers, open up the matchbook, light up, burn, drink your coffee somewhere else.

A couple got a divorce very early in their marriage. Their daughter gives a monologue about learning how to pee in some receptacle that she keeps inside of her pants. She’s been doing this ever since somebody stole her pants and she started using pants she found somewhere with a receptacle already inside of them. Somebody recognized them later and stole them back as she was wandering the countryside. In some clinic line or something. She talks about how she’s a female she has to go out of her way not to be considered a “dandy.” But she couldn’t be a dandy because she’s a girl. But she doesn’t think she looks like a girl anymore.