Dec 07 staying with a family

          I was staying with a family because I had either been kicked out or had felt forced to leave the house or family I had been living with. The house abutted another house, and one could easily walk into the neighbor’s house. She was away. I was spending time in the neighbor’s by myself. The room I was in was upstairs and had a TV in it. I started snooping around and realized I was looking for food in the cupboards, but I was wary, thinking that the woman might be home after all. I found a vodka bottle with a knife in the top of it. The bottle was excessively dusty and dirty, but it was a very fine brand.

           It was time to go, and I was trying to turn off the TV, but it wouldn’t turn off. I tried various buttons on the remote but it just wouldn’t turn off. A young girl from the family came in, and I asked her to turn it off, and she looked at me like I was the village idiot, took the remote and pressed the power button and it wouldn’t turn off. I noticed that the dark red rug was covered with Allie’s fur so I asked the girl if I should vacuum it up. She said no, the woman had dogs of her own, and the floor was always covered in fur.

          I woke up late and saw that the family was all up already, downstairs, eating breakfast. By the time I got up and down there, they were all done, and the food was all put away. I felt that it wouldn’t be right to fix my own breakfast this late, so I just skipped it, and planned to eat somewhere else that day. I had a lot of things to do, so I just went out. I had to drive down a steep snowy road, and as I went I kept slipping. I became a sort of hybrid with the pickup, and tried turning my feet to the side, as though I was skiing and coming to a stop. The pick up was too heavy, and it forced me to swerve even more. Slowly I made it down below the snow line, and found a place to park, off the road. I was planning to walk back up to get the things I needed for the day.

          A small sports car came across the road and drove up to a house atop a steep driveway. At the top the car’s rear wheels spun. A short, stocky, blond man got out and walked past me. He was a handyman, on his way to a job, and he was muttering, but I sensed that it was a regular state of discontent for him.

          There was something about one of the brothers in the family with whom I was staying.

 The element of being in another’s house could be because I’ve recently built a new house and moved into it. I’m aware of feeling happy because its my very own design, my own house and it turned out quite nicely, even though I ‘ve never designed a house before. There is also the element of not being a part of a family. Last night I found myself in a situation where I was among a group of people who have expressed disapproval of me in no uncertain terms. Grace M. said to me last night that I’d never done her wrong, so she didn’t have a problem with me (the fact that she felt it necessary to say so indicates the opposite). That may be the trigger for the dream element, but I also don’t really feel that I’m a part of my own family.          Looking for sustenance and not finding it. Sneaking around, on the edges of things, in places I don’t belong. Barely in control.           The girl is me before I became outcast. She’s my go-between.

Ecuador II

There was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman who was crying, and trying very hard not to. I knew she had a very good reason to cry, and wanted to tell her to just go ahead and cry. There was someone behind me, and that was whom she didn’t want to know she was crying.

          I was in a large, impoverished country, but I could also see it on a map. I was sort of hovering over it. I was with Chris L., and we were tasked with running electrical lines throughout the country, but we realized that the budget wasn’t big enough and that eventually we’d run out of money. We decided to prioritize, because if we just kept working until we ran out of money, the unfinished lines would just rot, and the money would be wasted. We decided to pick two or three cities that would benefit the most.

          We began to tour the country and visited two dusty towns on the southeast border with Africa. We thought they’d be good because of multiculturalism. These were places I’d been before, and as we traveled I recognized landmarks. The towns were more developed than they’d been last time, with colorful plastic facades on buildings and bright lights. Still, they were dusty and tired. I suggested that we consider Ecuador, a city in the center of the country. A woman with me was shocked that I’d suggest it, since it was such a shabby little town, far away from everything. But, I said, since it got roads it’s improved immensely: booming, colorful, bright! She suggested Uruguay or Paraguay; cities in the north and Northwest.

 I woke feeling very sad and dispirited. I connected that with the blonde, the me when I felt hurt, wronged, undefended and thus pulling my own self up by my bootstraps, bucking up, building that wall. In waking life I’m in one of the worst places for me: dependent on people who continue to fail me. In recent months there have been a number of dreams in South America, and in Ecuador in particular. I am very unfamiliar with South America, and Ecuador in particular. I think the location signifies the south- deeper, older emotions that are not or haven’t been intellectualized. It is a foreign place to me, and in the center. The equator. Ecuador. The image I had of looking at the map – hovering over the country – was of those disparate cities being stitched together by the electrical wires. I see the line with cross-hatches on it that signifies railroads on maps.  My inner landscape, being dusted off, resurrected, re-examined, modernized.  I think the cities on the southeast represent some of my oldest emotional landmarks, which have been addressed and aren’t urgent now. I associate Africa with things ancient, and the origin of mankind.