"every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. the same key opens the gates of hell." (from a Richard Feynman book).


•••• i'm just writing now, half asleep. not about the quote, though it relates entirely to the entry below this one and should be considered more. Feynman was relating it to scientific discovery but there is much to consider there, not just in terms of addiction, but so much else. but not yet as I am:

still in Mexico, or somewhere in South America. We were there to produce a reading a small town, like Patzcauaro or something, but I wanted to go over the hill behind it first and continue driving just to see what was there though I could see it was going to be high, dry, sage-brushy and not pretty. So much happened I can't sort it out.

First, I suppose, the building on our left. We were no longer driving but walking through town and I heard a rush of wings and I said "it's just like 'The Birds'" and the building shuddered with thousands of starlings flying up towards the top front of the building, but not out of it. (a kind of kept madness, it seemed. maybe not - but a lot of PRESSURE of life-force. not threatening, but indifferent and powerful, as nature essentially is. But here, trapped - but visible. Anyway, I'm not sure if we were going to see a movie or if that happened later (or earlier to make the later "Rambo and the faggots" comment a reference I picked up on. I think I had seen some kind of movie with an American killer dressed in pink. ... "The Godfather??")

Anyway, soon we, my mother and I (later S joins us for the movie and the travel), were escorted into the main office of someone important by a big Latin bruiser, loaded with guns and an tough, impassive face. He sits me before the desk of the leader, with minor pomp and respect, as if I was our leader and he'd been ordered to show respect that could in a second be replaced with a very different kind of treatment. The room is cluttered display of Mexican wealth and power: huge, upholstered leather chairs, a high mahogany desk and deep carpeting and metalwork and wood shutters. I can't remember what detail of it told me this guy was just a protector, a high-level, high volume killer, or much of our meeting with him, except that he had the same demeanor as the first guy, times ten. He said he 'appreciated what we were doing' in the next town over but that if anything went wrong (and it was implicit he would see to it that it would) - he would take of everything. One got the impression the bloodbath was his specialty and I could see it playing out in my head in the flat town below. "and the blood of the children ran in the streets like the blood of children." We were there as if we had the option to choose his services or not, but, of course, it was all just protocol and we were already the trigger for whatever was to happen in the little town down the road.

A big long bit, that I think went at the end of the dream, of choosing between heavy, heavy (mostly green, mostly velvet) dresses to wear and trying to keep them from dragging in the open sewer than ran and filled up the streets. I needed to swim, I recalled, to feel clean again, but the movie was starting again. S. walked with me. I tried not to look at the pictures on the wall that were all about death because (as in a posting earlier from that study done on violence) I recalled that if you see images of death before something else you are likely to be (or find yourself) in a much more violent situation. But the images were everywhere in the hallway, like stacked icons filling every inch of the wall. When I went in I knew it was on my mind.

On the floor in the aisles, (kind of like in the movie Brazil) were giant winding black ducts and I felt I had manifested them somehow from coming in with death on my mind. On the screen the movie had already started and there were all these swimming triatheletes or something in pepto-bismal pink racing suits. I was sitting in front of the dangerous leader and he tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Rambo and the faggots, eh?" He laughed loudly, and, the audience, reactively all laughed aloud too though they didn't even speak English.

Yes. Then I had to pee. and the part with the dresses, i think. And waking up to my Saturday.