October 16, 2004

  • These killer headaches (hanging out with the pyracanthas at the club thurs) cause the most bizarre dreams.   Last night I had a nightmare that the parochial school I attended on the peninsula is situated on an ancient military base made up of several clay step pyramids.   The central play yard, where we youngsters once viewed the solar eclipse through a slice of cobalt blue glass, was situated in the vicinity of a pyramidal apex, the upper classrooms over the outer walls.   The structures looked smooth from the air, though, and blended into the surrounding ochre earth like large square welts.  They always build schools over places of archaeological significance, in case they want to redig later, the dream whispered.   How exciting for the nuns, I thought, to hold the keys to some awesome underground secret.   Even in the Beaver Cleaver United States, we have our catacombs......It was dry, hot, sizzling, only these hostile diamond fortresses nestled in their shallow valley, the bare land, and the empty summer sky.  In the future I was an intern at Stanford.  I saw the Stanford teaching hospital superimposed in the south.  From my walnut formica desk at the plexiglass window, I surveyed the industrial gray land like a prince in his tower.  But in the distant past was something terrible.  I was led down a steeply descending corridor into the deepest depths of the pyramid.   Chained to the wall and left alone.   Only a narrow shaft of light defined the square chamber, from a small aperture seemingly a mile above.   It looked to be the end of the day, when the sun washed over the dizzying tomblike walls, illuminating them like burnished copper.   There were no windows, no air, no water, no food, no comfort.   After some time the walls appeared to recede, and I was rooted to a vast glowing terra cotta plateau which was the top of the pyramid.   As I slowly suffocated to death, I was hit with the hard reality of this lonely, treacherous existence, perhaps for the first time in my earthly sojourn:   Never do that again!!!


    No, Sir!  And give thanks for this humble glass of water, and this garage sale bedroom lamp.