DREAM WRITING

rock face

Trip to town for a periodic doctor visit, had blood pressure read, interesting talk about blood. I like to arrive a few minutes early and have to wait some. Today I took glasses and a book, thinking I was prepared to sit for fifteen or so minutes in a room of chairs lined around the walls. Right behind me came somebody who wanted to talk. We talked about donkeys. He had a donkey and a horse. We had a good visit like people who knew each other. He was called to his appointment. A woman walked in I slightly knew about ten years ago. We had a good visit talking until I was called to my appointment. In the next room I was weighed, aghast at what I saw and not caring at once, Answer a few questions. Went prepared to pay and wasn't asked to pay. Told by doctor to buy a blood pressure mechanism and keep track of it at home. Evidently, this is a new recommendation from AMA, that people read their blood pressure at home. He said in a doctor's office one's blood pressure is unnaturally high. I told him every time I return from a trip to Sparta, I collapse in bed and sleep for awhile. It is such a pattern that I plan for nap time after a trip to town. Maybe it runs my blood pressure up to drive there and back. Maybe it's the psychic energy of so many people in town. I like driving less and less. Next stop, drugstore. I was glad to see they had blood pressure devices with digital push-button reading. The kind with a dial to read on the needle's descent I'm no good at. I've never been able to figure it out. I've tried it so many times I don't ever want to try it again. Frustrating. The digital numbers are the key. The thing cost twice as much as the old style, but I was willing to pay three times as much or four. 

rock monster

I was so anxious to return home, I forgot to go to the grocery store for carrots and the hardware store for sweet grain. If I wake early in the morning, I may run to the grocery store before carrot time. I don't see myself doing that, but for the donkeys I would. After the nap, I took grain out to Jack and Jenny a bit later than usual. They saw me and Jack came running and braying. I stumbled on a stick and took a quick step to catch balance. The gesture, merely a change of rhythm in my walking. Jack turned quick as a polo pony and started to run away. It was like he drifted the turn. I said, "Donkey Jack," he drifted a turn again and ran to me for the grain. Jenny was walking behind. She saw me pour the grain for Jack and she started running. I poured it in her place. Jack came over to see. Jenny snorted, ears back, diving at him with her forehead. Jack's chin over the top of the fence, he followed me back to his pile of grain. I made a gesture like I was pouring the grain and he went to eating. Jack is a bit out of sorts recently. He's wanting to be frisky with Jenny, but she's pregnant and doesn't care to mess around. I saw her give him a good thrashing with her back knees earlier in the day. He stood firm and took it like a tree. I see him with his dinger hanging down fairly often recently. Jack is psyched, ready to go and Jenny is having none of it. He's been absent minded recently, explaining him leaving his grain to go after Jenny's. I always put hers down first, she's so demanding. I wondered if feeding Jack first fried his circuits, rattled a habit pattern. 

rock monster and raven head

Back in the house. Recalling a dream I woke from just before writing the post of two days ago, Patterns Of Chance. I'd been in town and had a nap upon return at six. Slept til twelve and had one of the most curious dreams of my life. I was writing. Wrote one sentence at a time from the first one onward, pausing between sentences like usual. I sat in this seat, fingers on keyboard, monitor showing the sentences and paragraphs. In the dream, I knew what I was writing and what I was thinking. From time to time, I'd read over something I'd written and think, this is it, this is pure surrealist writing. It went all over the place, from one sentence to the next, sometimes making sense subconsciously and sometimes no sense at all. I allowed it not to make sense. I said it has its own sense that I don't need to understand. Every sentence, I wrote a word at a time, concerned about it making sense and not. Having a good time. Though it didn't always make sense outside myself, it made clear sense in the writing. In the dream I was enchanted to be writing pure surrealism inside a dream, knowing while writing it was a dream. I knew the whole time I was writing in a dream, let it flow and watched to see where it would go. Two and a third paragraphs into it, I woke up. Coming out of the dream, I thought: Oh no! I haven't finished. I wanted to see where it goes. I wanted to run it through the printer. I knew I'd forget what was written if I woke. Too late. Wide awake, I remembered the theme and some of the sentences for a few seconds and it was gone. I regretted seeing it go away, wanting to see what I wrote in a dream. 

rock monster and raven head again

The dream seems to fall in line with the dreams that interact with awake awareness by something missing from its place, or something in a place by surprise it would not be. Two weeks ago, I bought an impulse toy in the grocery store for Vada. It was some kind of stretch plastic, a line maybe ten inches long with a hand at either end. It stuck to things, it stretched, was pliable as a rubber band. It seemed like something Vada would like. I never saw it again after bringing groceries into the house. I have searched for it until I gave up looking. Sunday, on the way out the door to see the race, I paused a moment regretting I couldn't find the thing. One place I had not looked. Where I was standing, I put my hand down between the reading chair's cushion and armrest. There it was, quietly waiting to be found. Great relief, something to give Vada. I do like grandpas do, always bring something for babydoll. Having a child friend in this time of the life is ideal. She's so fresh and alert, so one with her feelings, so inventive and uninhibited, I see in her my ideal human being, a pre-school child. Her spirit has not yet been trampled by experience. She lives in a world of people who love her and want to help her learn to live in this world. I'd been at the house an hour or more watching the race. We had been stretching the toy. She'd wrap it around her fingers and wrist several times. She looked at me, her eyes had the same look she looks at her mother with, round, smiling big, and said, "Are you glad to see me?" I said, "Yes I am glad to see you." It tickled her. She cracked me up, made me laugh and she laughed. We went on pulling the toy as far as it would stretch.    

rocks talking

photos by tj worthington

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