dream_city kerry there is a city that i visit in my dreams. i find myself there occasionally, wandering its streets, patronizing its businesses, partaking in dream dramas and tragedies and comedies in the houses and alleyways and on its long grass lawn. there is a giant mall that is half-abandoned, where i have window-shopped, shoplifted, found myself with an armful of clothes and no money, and forgotten where i parked my car. there is a train that leads to the airport and i've nearly missed a flight or two. a roadside restaurant, maybe you could call it a deli or a diner, always empty. the grass in the cemetery is long and yellow and dry, and the headstones are crooked like old teeth. jackie and i had coffee in a cafe, in a building made of pink quartz. i had an espresso. there were zines in spanish. another night i found myself in an abandoned chapel. i haven't been back since i found, or thought i found, danny. he was sitting on some stone steps facing away from me, wearing a thin white t-shirt and i thought, ah he is alive after all. but it wasn't him. i want to go back again, to this place i have built over the years. there is always something new but i have come to know it, it is my domain, though i don't know how exactly to get there. 210905 ... kerry i've been homesick for my dream city for months now. i was there last night but only briefly. i think i went to the library, and i remember the thick green grass, but with every moment--even in sleep--a little of it fades. it was drizzling, that nasty half-assed rain that i don't miss about oregon. i was near the city limits, but nowhere i recognized. it was so much concrete, so much sprawl. i had lou and he was wearing his bright orange winter coat, but somehow he got away from me and i was frantic. no matter how loud i called his name or how fast i ran people glanced at me and then away like they had no idea what fear looks like. finally i saw him across the street, very tiny, and when i called his name again he came to a full stop, ears up. i waved and called and he came sprinting towards me, cars be damned, and then he was in my arms soaked not black and tan but brown and white, but it was him, it felt the same to hold him. i clutched him to my chest like i did the only other time he was lost, in point breeze. it was unfortunate, too bad i spent my dream that way, when i could have been doing other things. i could have been in the tunnels. i could have walked by the houses. after waking, trying so hard to gather any crumbs, i could still see images in the corner of my mind's eye. i turned on the kitchen light and was blinded and all that was left evaporated. i have to have a refuge, a place of my own to run and hide even if it's in my sleep. though the dream city is not always happy, not always pretty, it is mine. without it i feel lost and unmoored, but also chained to a world i never chose to inhabit in the first place. 211024 ... kerry i had no idea the dream city is so close to the coast. it was windy and overcast and the dark water nearly reached the houses. we walked on the pebbled beach. i hadn’t seen her for a long time. i knew she’d been in australia and thailand for several years and i asked her if she liked to surf. sometimes, sure. her hair was ropy with salt water. she was wearing a shiny black wetsuit. i told her i’m not great in the water. i’ve never had to hide in my city; it has always been mine. i am the mayor. it lives in my dreams. but this time i had done something wrong—something not really wrong but legally wrong. i don’t know what but i do remember thinking how unjust it was, hiding in dark corners, darting across the street to crouch in the shadows, breathing as shallowly as possible. i wrote it all down before i left, but i lost the paper when i woke up. gradually it began to disintegrate like dry old leaves. 211126 ... kerry it's been humid. 220105 ... kerry welcome back, they say. we've made some changes since you were last here. things haven't been going really well financially, so we've instituted a pay-what-you-will policy. but many pay nothing, and that's okay. there is a little box on a stand, like a mailbox, with a slot on the top. i put my hands in my pockets. they're full of dust. i get the sense that no one cares. all are welcome, and there's no surveillance. it's so dark, always night here lately. there are people i never thought i'd meet, and it feels like a holiday. like everyone's checked their coat at the door and it's time to celebrate. i don't know what. maybe just being alive? i grab her elbow. there's a place you should see, i say. not everyone 'gets' it, but maybe you will. down a spiral staircase, underground, into neon pink and orange and red flickering lights like a rave. the walls are soft, some kind of fabric, like the walls in a skating rink. i was here last night but it still feels new. on the walls and ceiling are almond-shaped third eyes painted in white, simple as cave paintings. and we are walking into what i guess you'd call an "experience"--kind of like a gallery, an installation, a cave, but nothing you can see. it can only be felt. someone else created it. when we come back up the stairs we breathe air again. i don't know if she feels what i feel, but i want everyone to know it--it is something worth sharing. back to the slick wet streets. back to dream-normalcy. 220929 ... kerry finally. it took about a year to get back, but it's still here. there is a shallow bowl-shaped grassy place that looks a lot like the quad at the college where i wound up. (i applied half-assedly. i just needed to get away from where i was. i'd go to any school that would accept me.) there was that same single-story white building, very small but with ionic columns to i suppose give it some respectability. but i knew behind the french doors and the columns and the intricate brickwork of the patio that it was just a pool house. and i was still not welcome there. we had come back together after nearly two decades and we pretended nothing had changed though we barely recognized each other. i was hungry so we went to a kind of cafeteria that had no walls. i loaded my plate with limp broccoli and some kind of fruit and then found myself in front of an enormous case of pastries. i walked back and forth along the case, comparing squares of cornbread and cinnamon rolls and muffins and decadent dark slices with icing dripping down the sides and i chose an apple turnover. one of two left. and she told me it was a bad idea, that it looked old. the woman working at the cafeteria was wearing an apron and her hair was pulled into a tight bun on top of her head, and she was offended. she said that apple turnover was just fine. and then someone else working there said get rid of those, they're three months old! i didn't end up eating anything at all. i wasn't hungry anymore. lately all my dreams involve someone rejecting me. i don't write them down because i don't want to remember the details; the feeling is still plenty strong. visceral. i felt like i was sitting on the edge of the city limits, like i was banned from the place i'd created in my sleep but had somehow sneaked back in and was waiting for someone to notice. 230925 what's it to you? who go blather from