Friday, February 8, 2013

looking for allen ginsberg; driving into construction

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a cafe, like an old-style cafe where all the beat poets would hang out. But the cafe actually looked like the back kitchen of some restaurant. There was a long preparation table running through the middle of the room. One long side was elevated from the other side by about half a foot.

The room was full of people, all hanging around, sitting on the floors, leaning against the walls. The people were all, apparently, famous from around the beat era. I couldn't recognize any of them at all.

But somehow I knew that Allen Ginsberg was somewhere around here. I saw one young man with a kind of big, scraggly beard. I assumed that was Allen Ginsberg. But something about him wasn't quite right.

I walked along the back long wall. One young man sitting in something like a tall, narrow, doorless corridor looked like Allen Ginsberg when he was young: clean-shaven, with a square haircut, wearing a yellow or green button-up shirt. But something about the young man made me understand that the young man wasn't Allen Ginsberg.

I walked along a little ways more. There was a young man with kind of shaggy, blonde-brown hair. He wore thick-rimmed glasses, like Allen Ginsberg might wear. I had the feeling that this boy and I were attracted to each other, or dear to each other emotionally in some other way. But I didn't want to be attracted to the boy, and I didn't really want to get involved emotionally with anybody at the time.

Toward the left end of the kitchen was another young man who somehow reminded me of Allen Ginsberg. Suddenly I started to wonder whether I really knew anything about Ginsberg at all. If I knew anything about Ginsberg, or poetry in general, I'd probably have picked Ginsberg out of this crowd quite easily.

Dream #2

I was in a car driven by a young, thin woman, maybe Asian or Hispanic. The girl was maybe twenty years old. She wore a white tank-top with navy blue spaghetti straps and a pair of short, dark jean shorts. She had jaw-length, black, soft hair.

The girl had been driving me wherever I needed to go. We had first been driving through a commercial neighborhood, a wide road lined by shops. We drove up over some hill and then onto an exit road that led, via a closely-walled road, to a highway.

The highway curved up and around. We may have taken an exit ramp. I had a feeling that the ramp was under construction, but I didn't say anything to the girl. I thought that maybe the construction was done and that we could get through.

But now we came around the corner and saw two huge, yellow construction vehicles almost totally blocking the road. The vehicles were fronted by huge shovels. The girl almost drove into the backside of one of the shovels before stopping.

I think I imagined or had the idea that beyond the vehicles the road was all torn up, and that huge chunks of concrete would make the road impassable for cars. The girl turned around.

I was pretty sure I'd given the girl the idea of traveling along this road in the first place. I had only done so because I'd thought it would be a lot quicker. The girl was driving me wherever I needed to go because I didn't have a car. I didn't want to inconvenience her more by making her take a long drive for my sake. But now my attempt to take a shortcut ended in the girl maybe having to take an even longer drive.

I felt like a burden. So I told the girl that she could just loop around back to the commercial neighborhood and drop me off there. From there, I was pretty sure, I could find my way, maybe by bus, to wherever I needed to go.

We were back at the commercial area. The girl was upset at me for what I'd said. She asked me if I just didn't want her to drive me somewhere. She said she'd volunteered to drive me, so why didn't I just let her drive me? She said something like, "You just don't get it, do you?"

I got the feeling now that the girl liked me, that she was attracted to me, and that she wanted to drive me around so she could be near me. I felt kind of dumb for not having realized that earlier.

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