Dream Log: January 9, 2000

I'm naked. I'm sitting on a short wall, Village Idiot-like, at the far end of a mall parking lot in Florida. It's raining. An elephant three times the size of any that I had seen in Kenya strolls by with a boy on its back. The boy waves to me.

An older-model white Mercedes pulls up several yards away on my right and stops. It has Mississippi plates and is sheltering three blonde females. A few moments later a door opens and a clown egresses. He stumbles a bit; the women wave joyously and drive off.

I hate clowns. He is still stumbling. I don't know what the hell these women did to him or how much he drank or what the situation was but I hate clowns and I jump off the wall and run around the Sears on the corner to the other side.

There are people. I'm still naked, and somewhat nervous. I go into the mall and look for underwear. Why, I don't know, but I have one of my credit cards with me. I look and look through this section, STILL NAKED, just taking my time. I never find anything I like.

As I left a public bathroom, I saw some people coming in. They were talking about submitting to failure, and how that is exactly what the person in charge wants. The capitulation and procrastination were self fulfilling prophecies.

Some how finding god could save me from all of this. As I left the bathroom, I overheard their conversation, and I wanted to tell them how right they were, and ask them how to subvert this possibility. Then the phone rang, and it was a friend of mine who wanted some help installing his scsi cd burner. Oh well. I helped him out.

i was dragging a huge container (think like oil barrel, only much larger) through a vast institutional food-service kitchen, with a rather science-fictiony/Alpha Complex/THX 1138 feel to it. it didn't bother me that many of my co-workers weren't exactly human, it didn't seem to bother me that i didn't know where i was going or what was in the container or why i was there. it was very tedious.

Two women were packing an old VW Beetle for a picnic. The older of the two women was either the young-looking mother of the other, or a wise older sister; I had no idea who these people were, but felt like a member - literally or non-literally - of the family.

I helped out with the packing, though I was tired for lack of sleep; I was sitting in the front passenger seat kibitzing during part of the loading of the picnic goods. I had no intention of going with them (too tired!) but stayed in the car anyway, moving to the rear right seat. The "mother" takes my place in the passenger seat, still carrying the conversation in her take-charge manner, as she has throughout. The younger woman will drive. Despite having loaded up the Beetle, there was still a bag in the driveway, alongside a surfboard (or canoe?) bearing other stuff; I point this out, but we don't stop to pack the items. Maybe they were left out there for some non-picnic purpose?

So, we're off. We head down the gently winding non-steep hill, and join the traffic on the expressway, which has been newly-paved and is missing the familiar striped markings; I wonder if the younger woman is having trouble navigating the unmarked road, but then my mind drifts to Everything; I wonder if I'll have the time later to post the lyrics to Elvis' "Red Shoes".

During a lull (stop light? pit stop?), talk turns to hockey; I mention that the Predators have done quite well in their 1 1/2 years of existence, and that hiring David Poile was a great move - apparently one of the two women was complaining about the team. During this lull, there's a switch: the "mother" takes over the driving, the younger moves to the back seat with me. Apparently she's tired too; she lays down in the seat, as much as one can in a Beetle, and rests her head on my left thigh. She holds on to my left arm.

We're off again, headed for the picnic site (or somewhere). My right hand rests on her sweater; I can feel, through the sweater, some sort of birth mark indentation on her skin, 2-3" below her collarbone, and about 1/3" in diameter.