Dream Log: June 11, 2001

My mother saw someone down in the distance, dressed in purple. A girl? At first she thought it was C, then she said oh it's a priest.

I had a few things in my pocket, including a very small hedgehog. I held them out on my palm, and worried about the hedgehog. Was it still alive? Only just? Had it been in my pocket too long? I wanted to throw it out onto a lush grassy area to give it a chance to recover, but all around was only that sand, and eventually I tossed it down the sand slope hoping it would find some welcoming marram grass or something to graze in.

There was a jumble sale, a my scribbled notes from early this morning seem to say "green cave" or "green canoe", a number of stalls. There was a kind of New Age fair feel to it, pagan women selling geodes: I rememember the variety of geodes. I warned them to be careful, to keep an eye on their stock.

President Chávez was a woman in a long presidential palace. I can remember her face, and the long corridors, but not what happened there. Something to do with coverage of a coup d'etat, perhaps. I left her and we went to a car, two girls (age twelve or so?) and me. They comforted each other in the back seat.

Shakespeare was bidding for a copy of a parchment. The scribe had said £5 to someone, who thought that was a bit steep, but Shakespeare was delighted and said £6, £10, a hundred pounds, "with my head as a watermark!" -- It was fine parchment in the shape of a three-dimensional moulded head.

My hair was sticking up strangely. My mother and sister commented on it, said I should do something about it. I snapped at them and made my poor sister cry.

• I'm walking through a strange forest. It's strange because of its location, on the tidal plain right next to the ocean. The forest floor is all wet sand, repeatedly moistened by incoming waves. But out of this tumultuous soil come immense Redwood trees, rising straight up into dark canopy. Others are with me on this trip, including my girlfriend, Genery. We pass the delapidated ruins of a small cabin, its right angles now askew, its Redwood boards now wet and rotting. At last we reach a spot where the waves don't constantly refresh the ground. There I sit and out of the woods comes a woman yogi. To me, she appears as a female version of Paramahansa Yogananda. She gives me some words of wisdom about love, partnership, and the spiritual life. When she leaves, I discuss the thoughts with Genery. I immediately see the beauty and clear virtue of the yogi's advice but Genery seems to disagree with some of the points, especially those about the importance of an individual's spiritual path outside the context of a relationship.

I've been waking up consistently at 3:17 am for six or seven months now. Some witchy friend says this is because something is going to happen. I'm not sure.

A good thing about this is I'm remembering dreams now more than I ever have in adulthood.

My feet still hurt today after this one:

As usual, I was in a hurry to get somewhere; it was crowded -- some kind of festival or street fair is happening downtown. I need to find my children to take them somewhere by a deadline; or get somewhere to pick up my children but I can't find the way.

I am crushed and buffetted by the revellers.

Though my first goal is to meet my deadline, I am inexplicably impelled by another need: the length of my toenails is unacceptable, and will somehow doom an unspecified future enterprise.

I sit on a curb in a spot cleared by an ebb in the crowd and remove my Pumas. On my keychain is a new toenail clippers. No one in the crowd finds my behavior strange.

The toenails themselves are an easy job, and I am soon finished. My feet have though, taken on other strange features: in place of callouses, each of my feet has grown a tough chromed plastic flange. All around the edges of each foot is this shiny matter, which of course must be carefully removed. I clip, and trim larger and larger (now practically bite-sized) chunks of flange material. My tool is failing me. Its crescent-shaped blades make an incredible scalloped mess of my hitherto smooth-edged feet. Vainly I keep snipping, trying to even things out.

This is not painful, since the chrome flange is extraneous build-up -- like callouses. But my anxiety grows due to my tardiness and the shoddy job of chrome trimming. I now notice that the edges of each of my feet has the look of a cross-sectioned strawberry toaster pastry, with frosting. In fact, instead of feet -- now that the chrome is gone -- I have oversided Pop Tarts, bitten into crude, three-toed, scalloped-edged cartoon feet. I can't get my Pumas back on.

I'm not sure if I ever kept the engagement I was supposed to keep with my kids.