Apocalypse Dream

...

I am in a tall building wearing a dress I just gave away. I have some things at a table in a corner. Hurriedly I run up some stairs to the bathroom leaving my things. In the bathroom a motherly woman, wearing the same shade of Maroon as me stops me and gives me a long warm reassuring hug.

I am aware that time is running out. It is the familiar song that has just come on. At the end of this song I must be out of this building. I rush downstairs and over to the corner where I grab my things. I hurry out the emergency exit and am making my way down the stairs when the song ends.

I see an echo of light coming from outside and hear the first explosion. I make it to the exit at the bottom of the stairs and continue to hurry outside. I walk across the lawn away from the building. Across the water, over the bay I see each tall building get hit and start to burn. Behind me the building is hit again, and this time is completely destroyed. I walk down to the water's edge, near a parking lot.

I think that if I had a car I would get in it and desperately drive somewhere, but it wouldn't be necessary--it's not like I would be going somewhere, there's nowhere to go. It would just be a relief to be going fast like these other panicked drivers.

I walk past some people in white t-shirts (it's turning to night) who either haven't figured it out yet, or they just don't care. Then I begin to follow a path along the water's edge hoping to get a better view of the destroyed city. I am aware of this all as playing out as it has before. I pass a couple hobo's who seem to have known this would happen. One of them raises a pineapple at me in salute.

I don't think of anyone. I just wonder where I will go, and I wonder what value the things I saved have now that the system they are a part of doesn't exist.

...

In the capital and the forest

I was driving around Washington DC in a bus at night, with my sister and Cassie. The bus driver was one of my professors, and we were supposed to go on a date after he finished his route. It became very late, and I had to decide whether to stay overnight with him in DC or to take the last train back to Baltimore with the girls. First I decided that I would stay, and then I changed my mind and decided to return home. As soon as I knew that I was going to leave, the spell was broken and I had no idea why I had been tempted to spend time with my professor in the first place.

Then I was driving with David through a redwood forest, along the edge of a mountain. We pulled over next to a very long, steep dirt road leading down into the trees. David got out of the car, walked over to the road, sat down, pushed himself off and slid down through the trees so fast that he was quickly out of view. I followed, thinking as I sped down how difficult it would be to climb back up later. At the bottom of the road was a narrow beach, and I slid right past a fat black seal into the water. We were in a small, sunny cove, with a high stone wall about fifty feet out that prevented us from seeing the ocean beyond.

Gangster

I was on the upper west side of Manhattan, driving a futon with David and one of my painting students. David was driving, but I took over to parallel park in between two car-sized bowls of oatmeal. After trying and failing to park, I got out of the futon and my student got into the driver's seat. I asked her, and then told her, to let me drive, since it was my futon. She was offended by this and got out and and walked away. David and I left her and went into a big, old house, where we found my sister and another friend in the attic. We all rolled our own joints out of dollar bills and sat smoking them sprawled out on the attic floor.