Dream Log: November 18, 2001

I had to go back to the army for several weeks. This was something like second part of the military training and I was already really fed up with it. It was very first night back to barracks when they woke us up 1:30AM or 2:30AM for no reason. We were sleeping on a floor and they told us put our pillows and blankets in a pile on the left hand side. I thought I'll just continue sleeping and I would walk out of the barracks in the morning. Ya basta!

But a fellow next to me wasn't satisfied and he thought the whole bunch would be punished because I didn't follow the orders. Under the pressure I removed the blanket without paying any attention and it was on the right hand side where I put it. The guy was pissed and he did everything for me.

Unfortunately sergeants walked in just at the very moment. I didn't give a shit because I would be gone tomorrow but I didn't want to spoil their fun telling what I was intending to do.
And some fun they had indeed! They took a torturing equipment that looked like a corkscrew and worked with the same principle but it didn't leave any physical marks in the body. First they use it to get some words out of my friend and it was done in no time. Then it was my turn and oh damn, it hurted like hell. I don't know what I was going to prove to anybody but I didn't say a shit. They wanted me "to understand" that "it's essential to follow the orders". They wanted me to reply that I understood but I never said so. They use the tool several times and in the end foam was coming out of mouth when I tried to told them that they're are suckers.

My teeth are all falling out again, having industriously wriggled themselves loose from my gum tissue like the buds of tiny, struggling plants searching for sunlight. As I'm staring at my own reflection in a cracked gas station bathroom mirror, I'm clenching my jaw shut to keep the faulty dental puzzle from crumbling out onto my tongue in a large, clattering heap, like a spilled bag of marbles. I stretch my lips back and forth over them, alternately revealing and hiding my desperate grimace.

I find myself first thinking that pouring a large amount of milk into my grated, shut mouth will somehow cement everything back into place, that the calcium will convince the long, slender roots of the molars to fondly and firmly embrace the gums once again. I look down at the sink; the faucet is the type with a spout like long, drooping, rusted nose, and it wears a four-budded metal knob atop itself like an antiquated hat. My doubtfulness of this being a spigot of milk keeps both my hands at my side, and I realize that there is no way to keep all my teeth together in my mouth, and eventually I will have to relax my jaw and let them all crumble out, and there's no way I can manipulate them all back into place with my tongue, and I can't leave the restroom with such a shamefully empty mouth...

I come to the understanding that I will never leave this shitty, filthy gas station bathroom; that I'll have to spit all my teeth out into the metal garbage can, and they'll ring out in a single staccato burst of noise and then I'll have to start over from scratch. Clutching my jowl tightly, still, I look back into the mirror and imagine myself in a year, living there, washing at the sink nightly and politely asking anyone who comes in if they have any teeth to spare. My voice is always is hollow and volumeless as I beg this question. In my hand, I see the meager collection I've amassed: a smallish, yellow nicotine-stained molar, a dull, flat front tooth with a metal bracket from a set of braces attached to it, and a long, bluish wolf fang with a string through it, given to me by a teenager who had worn it as a necklace.

We had finally found it. The huge, dark, wet, dirty basement where he operated. We had been searching for him for so long, and here for the first time we could finally see why we had worked so hard to find him. It was very dimly lit down here and full of huge mechanical machines, each one big enough to fill a large room, and all there for the same purpose. We spotted him, but he hadn't seen us. He was working one of the machines, the biggest one. It was a mass of oily gears and tangled pipes, with gigantic steam pistons working away slowly but determinedly. Toward the top there was a huge wooden chair to which all of the workings and pipes connected. Sitting strapped into the chair was a teenage girl who was obviously in so much agony she had to scream, but she had undergone so many hours, maybe even days, of torture she could barely manage a feeble moan. The machines workings kept on burrowing into her, and a loose joint in one of the pipes was spraying her blood all over the machine.

Still he continued, heaving away at the huge workings to inflict some other horror upon her before she died. We had found him, and now we knew why we had to stop him.

I'm visiting at my friend's parents' house. It's a large, very beautiful redwood structure with lots of stained glass and a large wrap around porch. There are many people around, and as our stay grows longer I realize that these people are related to my friend. Then I begin to notice the many rundown houses and trailers surrounding his parent's house. The property around the big house is full of little red-painted cabins, most with visqueen tacked on to repair broken windows and leaky roofs. There are also quite a few silver and turquoise trailers sitting in the middle of muddy yards containing old worn out cars. Children play everywhere with mangy dogs and somehow I know that the trailers and shacks are filled with people watching daytime tv, smoking generic cigarettes and drinking pepsi.

Now I'm at my parents' house, not the one they live in now, but the one they lived in in Lakeview, about 20 years ago. A lot of people are around, and it's winter. I can see Christmas lights wrapped around the poles on the back porch and long icecicles hang from the eaves. Suddenly I remember the hot tub on the back porch and decide that a soak in it would be perfect. The hottub is covered with debris...it obviously hasn't been used much lately. I find many sleeping bags and blankets piled on top of it, and recognize some of these as ones that I'd misplaced. I remove these and use them to make a walkway over the ice to the tub. When I lift the lid, I find the water inside the tub filled with fruit. There are some yellow cherries that I remember eating long ago and leaving here. There are cardboard boxes of plums from my grandma's garden. Remarkably, all of this fruit has been perfectly preserved inside the hot water. I clear it out and a lot of people begin to gather, watching me pull things from the tub. After the fruit, I start pulling out large pieces of fish, which are identified by one of the men standing there. The fish is well preserved as well and plans begin to be made to have it for dinner.

Ok...my interpretations.... large house...basically my dream house. My friend's parents are in town and they have a wonderful house like this. I'm not sure how the shacks surrounding it fit in. I'm not connected with the shacks, but somehow I know about them. I think maybe the shacks represent my insecurities about being deserving of having such a nice place, about belonging and fitting in with people like them. The shacks represent my fears that those shacks are the real me...that I don't belong in the big dream house. Also I'm reading Sailor Song by Ken Kesey and the red painted shacks are described there.

My parent's house in Lakeview in winter stands for my wedding to my first husband. The hot tub represents the joy in life that I had then, the fun I had. The blankets stand for things I've loved in the past that've brought me joy and comfort...and finding them again was a reassurance that those things can be found again. The yellow cherries and plums from my grandma's orchard are the simple pleasures..reminding me that those things are still there, and that to seek them out will make me happy. The fish....I dunno, except that fish figure prominently in the book I fell asleep reading.