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yobabies, old lint herein's gradually getting rolled into the pockets of navelgazer over yonder. just sayin'.

of manatees and a book called _see_

there's a gathering down at a friend's family place in georgia or louisiana, a reunion of sort of generations of good girlfriends long parted organized around a marriage or some other event. there are myriad sweet and homely activities around about the house, both specifically preparing and also just for savoring. I go down to the swampy waterside with one of the older women and sit on the dock where we're visited by manatees who thrust their short elephant snout fingers up through the water to investigate us newcomers. then there are odd and comical ground foul running through the brush who have scattered-looking downy, sunset-colored plumage with bright orange stripes running down their breasts. I ask my companion what they are, and she says some ridiculous name that marks their derivation from both wombats and something else silly, nonsensically two land mammals, and that someone introduced them to the area from australia years ago.

back at the house we're exploring and trying to reproduce a whole host of arts and crafts produced by the women and girls of the family over years and years. there are tracings of some kind on old table and bed linens (ironed crisp) of vintage ad imagery. I'm dashing around with chalk and crayons, an electric iron, a stack of newspapers, and a crumbling tome with yellowed pages falling out, conducting experiments, partially on the sly out of fear of making mistakes and ruining something.

later on (possibly a separate dream altogether) I'm sitting outside beneath the arcing branches of an enormous ancient tree with thisbe and her husband and laurel and, for part of it, thisbe's mom, who has begun the slow and painful process of dying and is being handled carefully and cradled quietly with both arms and words-- and we're having a gentle conversation that feels very real about dying and childbirth and the parallels between the two. then the others are discussing and telling me about a beautiful book they've all read called see. I'm listening and marveling and overcome by gratitutde for these people and all the love surrounding me.

slipping house and found dress

I enter a house hanging on the edge of a cliff to rescue a tin box of letters and papers. the ocean has come up over the lip of the cliff and covered the grass where we were formerly sitting. an older man (our teacher? the descendant?) and I have taken off our shoes to go retrieve what's left. the old house is tippy, precarious, and our added weight causes it to shift alarmingly, so we step back across the old wood floor gingerly-- I find the letters, though they're somewhat scattered. mostly they seem to be innocuous and not much worth the effort of saving-- routine classmate valentines and such-- there's a good deal I may just throw away-- the at the bottom are a few pieces that seem more meaningful-- there's a sheaf with handwritten messages from all my friends, expressing concern and care over my dark mood, and then there's a folded-up piece of my own writing-- I stuff it all back into the box and resolve to review it later on outside the tipping, sliding house. my companion is still working on his own search, so I poke around a little and discover an old handbag belonging to the former tenant-- it hales from another era and seems to me to be redolent of history and character-- it's a large satchel type bag, and I'm imagining its owner, thinking how it's just the sort of bag a lady might use to carry a shawl in, and lo and behold, I reach inside and pull out a length of fabric-- which turns out instead to be a dress of deep blue and fascinating cut. the other guy has come over to see what I've found (there's the sense he has prior claim on the house's contents), and I hold up the dress to show him. I'm thinking I might be able to wear it, as the fabric is stretchy even though it at first appears quite narrow-waisted-- but he gives me a dismissive look, and I feel quite horrible suddenly, though I play it off and offer the dress to him, telling him it would make an intriguing piece of art hung on a wooden hander on the wall.

strangeness

my grandmother has died, and they're having a memorial coffee at her house-- when I get there with my fanily, the place is packed with people I do not know, and my family members quickly disappear into the crowds. my grief lies heavy on me, and I don't have the emotional resources to make sense of this scene-- I wander around for a time, trying to do my best, but the shock of it all quickly undoes me: the people are all incredibly fancy and highbrow and important, and it becomes swiftly evident what an important person my grandmother was in the eyes of the world-- and the familiar, warm person I loved so dearly is nowhere evident-- except in small familiar knick-knacks that others are pawing and taking as mementoes-- I lose it at this point and start searching for my family to I can get the hell out-- they drove me here, and I feel utterly dependent on them for escape-- every room I enter has more mucky-mucks standing around talking about my grandmother in an urbane world context I don't recognize and generlly being very smart and cool and alien to me-- I begin to see my grandmother's possessions and life and accomplishments in a new light, but I'm in no shape to process it-- I just want my family to get me out of here-- I start calling out to them, "mooooo-ooooom... daaaaa-aaaaaad!!", quickly realizing how ineffectual these names are but keeping at it, growing desperate and plaintive. the cool people, fortunately are unflapped by my display and continue their conversations without a ripple-- I go on and on, calling, searching, unable to find my family, until the place starts to clear out and I realize the only possibility is that they have left without me. I collapse into a chair, utterly abandoned, and after a bit take notice of the bright shiny folk I've collapsed among-- they're young and cleverly dressed and effortlessly at ease and clearly successful and wealthy and bright-- a shining lot-- dusty me has fallen among them for better or worse. as they rise to move along, they offer me a ride, and with mixed mortification and relief I accept-- we board a dreadful concept vehicle with stadium seating and no safety whatsoever and proceed through town-- we're moving through the locales I grew up among, and I make some small comment about a change and then a heartbeat later do a double- and then triple-take and gape in utter shock as I realize how the place has been transformed-- there are now elaborate undulating glass constructions, hotel megaliths, with multistorey water features lining the road-- when I'm able to speack again, I exclaim, "my god! it's like las vegas!" my companions all nod and say, "yes" and "actually, I heard a statistic the other day that the businesses here see more activity than vegas"-- and a cool, unhurried, unamazed discussion ensues. I don't begin to know where I am.

I'm back in my grandmother's house for something, moving through those turned-strange rooms, when I run into some of the guests staying there-- namely angelina jolie and her daughter and other members of her entourage-- angelina glides into the room, stark naked and with perfectly astonishing globe breasts, smiles sweetly at me and says hello. my jaw must be on the persian carpet, but I stammer something out by way of a greeting. I can't take my eyes off her, so I see how warm and honest and utterly unselfconscious she is, watch her interacting with her little daughter and am infatuated and entranced-- suddenly leaving is the farthest thing from my mind-- I just want to stay and stay and watch and absorb her goodness and ease-- the only thing that remains somewhat disconcerting is those crazy unearthly perfect breasts.

landscapes

rowing around on a dark lake with piney edges and dark, ragged, sudden dropoffs-- I am a passenger, two other women at the oars, and they drive the boat into a black cave-- I want them to stop, but they go further into the blackness-- we can hear others up ahead in the darkness, which makes it "okay", but I am not okay-- especially when the air fills with bats or even smaller whirring things all around my head-- I am panicking-- and finally we go back out.

I'm flyinging high above the landscape with a plane-- but somehow I've ended up on the outside, clinging to pillowy soft pieces on the side, watching lakes and trees pass beneath, wondering if there's any way I might survive a fall-- I keep slipping into a drowse and literally slipping, and I have to catch myself and pull back up-- but then the copilot notices me clinging there and climbs out and helps me back inside the craft.

there's a big fight between college students at the edge of a precipice, a rough chasm dropping a mile down into a glittering lake that looks modest from the height but I know is enormous and deep-- they're battling with long poles over some point of honor, and they fall over the edge in droves and fall forever, still engaged in conflict, a whole crowd of youth and potential falling so far, plummeting and disappearing without a sound into the water beneath, the lake's gleaming surface folding cleanly over all the signs of struggle. someone erects a plaque.

there's a woman living out in the desert, burrowed into a sandy hillside-- the white earth walls are full of the tunnels and activity of small creatures, but she's unbothered by it-- they keep to themselves, she goes about her business-- until some hooligans show up, a black-clad gang of them, drawn to the place-- they're spirits reanimated or reshaped into borrowed bodies by some dark force. one of them, a young woman, comes back to her after they leave to show her, tell her. the last shot is of the woman gazing out her round embedded window into the view-- someone sees her from far, far away.

the house on the floating island

we go to visit, my sister and I, the lady who lives in the old house on the floating island. the island rests on the water just about 30 feet offshore on lake superior and floats back and forth along the beach. there's little substance to the island itself, no stone to fasten a house's foundation to-- the lady's parents built the house many years previous when she was just a child-- like a gigantic doll's house, flimsy and romantic. there's a firepole and sweet porches-- one problem is that there's no staircase between the lower and upper floors, only a makeshift bookshelf she's contrived to climb for the purpose-- but it's loose and tricky. my sister insists that there once was a staircase and puzzles over the mystery, searches for it in vain. the woman in the house is blind and infirm, the house itself become a curiosity for tourists, hardly viable-- it seems it will crumble or tip and sink any day. we're negotiating for its sale to someone who wants such an ungainly elephant, but later I realize I want to keep it, fortify and restore it-- there's too much history there to forfeit it. nothing will grow in the little patch of garden, and I go out and start planting kernels of corn but stop when I realize I must first improve the soil and find better quality seed stock.

not belonging & grandfatherly advice

some people I ran into from my sketchy-cool neighborhood were going to some midnight show in an old theater building-- so I decided to venture out and go too since I knew people I knew would be there. it was a hipster scene, so I got all dressed up in my edgiest clothes-- tho I feared they were sadly out of date and low-quality and -rent. it was an enormous old space with industrial galvanized metal circular stairways between levels, and the place was packed with the uberhip, and I started to regret coming.

I also visited my conservative friends in their big suburban houses and left feeling like an alien.

I went to work at a new place in the front offices of something like a sam's club or costco-- and I was busy, but other people were overwhelmed, so I offered to help with checking food in in the back-- the guy said, remember, you have to touch it and look at it-- presumably to see if it was bad. i went to try to find the bathroom and discovered an entire employee lockerroom facility with a big pool and people swimming laps.

my grandfather picked me up and took me to visit my father-- we were driving on side roads-- he was driving so slowly it made me nervous, especially as we were coming up on a merge onto the highway-- it was clear though, so he cut over without a problem-- and seemed to keep going as if he wouldn't stop before he was in oncoming traffic lanes-- I said, stop! here!-- and he was already correcting, in the lane for the lefthand turn, I now remembered belatedly that we were supposed to take-- he took it, and I realized just how very long it had been since I had visited. I said something about this and how I wanted to more adventures, and he said, you should, it's good for you to go explore little islands.