don't judge, just write

this my pre-blogging motto. not to worry that my dreams of late seem to be about the end of the world and my thoughts of late seem to be about what a drawn out failure it feels my life has become. don't judge, just write.

we had already made the trip once. there were two levels: first, and already pretty high up, a town [much like Banos in Ecuador, that great little place under the rumbling -now blown again-volcano] and then higher still a vista over the clouds that stretched to the curve of the earth. just spectacular. [is this my travel envy appearing again as nearanddears draw cirlces around desirable spots in Nepal??]. Anyway, we'd had such a good time at that first town- - dancing, lining the streets, singing [much as was our Ecuadorian New Years]- that when my cousin Ecky was visiting we wanted to show him - to live that experience all over again though I knew there was no going back, really.

And so we climbed and wound up the first pass, looking down onto these first modest clouds. [lately i've been dreaming a lot about huge hills - as in my other days unrecorded dream of taking a joy ride in serbia, down, down, down, a windy road then super-steeply down until it dead-ended into dirt and there was no way to get back out. A surprising number of people lived there and weren't likely to leave. it was actually fairly nice place to live if you could accept life as a peasant]. (Sacramento?)

Anyway, back to this one. Maybe not much to it. I made just a little comment as we rounded a curve, something casual like "isn't that a pretty waterfall?" but was actually,"isn't that a mushroom cloud?" There was one, no two, and i felt a little proud for seeing them first. Within seconds there were more and more and at the same time the water (seems we were also near the meditteranean) was instantly FILLED with white jet skis and black jet skis - tens of thousands of them heading right towards eachother and insane speeds. We knew and were right that indiscriminate slaughter was what was next for us. It was and the dream degenerated into a fully impressionistic treatment of the subject. Not gory, per se, but all implied: fast, red, gruesome and extensive. Was this happening to the whole world at once or just the eastern Meditteranean?

When later I was picking through the rubble I saw that my mother had been pinned under a huge fallen bookcase. It was bad - her arm was back over her shoulder and had been extended to about eight feet in length by the impact. She was still breathing but I didn' t know what to do. It had happened, there it was, and no way was I strong enough to free her. I looked around and saw that others in my family were alive. My brother and cousin had stayed hidden behind a stack of large canvases in an arts supply store.
(kinda sweet that we're all trying to find cover in arts and literature to mixed effect -....but at least we've gone undetected.
maybe it's good to not have a very successful career after all).

i dunno. there was more. but i think once again i've woken up a little dumb. i wish it wasn't quite so loud here. i seem to be woken every day at fiveish by some sheet-metal gobbling truck. i hope to have a good day today but already i feel i need to dip back into sleep and try to save my family or find out if the end of the world is finished at least try to get to the top of the mountain. i'm not sure what the options are at the moment.


addendum. i did drift back enough to recall another section of a dream in which a particularly gifted student of mine was saying my name a few times over and said not to worry: ALL my students didn't hate me....

okay. i'll work with what i've got.
time to get a litte me-sized tree....