Flies and Pearls in Bodega Bay

I am in the middle of a large office complex.

I stand in the center of the office complex, a series of hallways going out in all directions, with escalators going up to higher floors.

The office complex has a high ceiling, similar to a multistory mall and, in front of me, is a large geodesic dome. There is fake greenery planted all around the dome.

People wearing business suits rush around the office complex. They look worried.

All of them have pinks slips of paper. They talk with each other about being laid off from work.

All of the businesses in this office park have gone under.

They talk about their jobs, their friends, and good times and bad times in the offices as they worked together.

Some hug each other and get teary-eyed.

I decide to walk down one of the hallways of the office complex.

The hallway, with doors of businesses on each side, opens up more as I walk along. It changes as I walk.

I am on the street of a small coastal town. It is similar to Bodgega Bay in the Hitchcock film, “The Birds”. I see small shops and a café. I smell the ocean breeze.

The local people in the streets talk about tourists that are coming. They talk about the factories closing in the town and the new shops and businesses that are opening to appeal to the tourists.

I see a small shop up ahead, a large wooden sign showing a fish hanging out over the sidewalk above the door. I walk inside.

There is a line of people, waiting patiently. I get in the back of the line.

There is a Latin man, the owner of the shop, sitting at a counter. He has dark skin, a moustache, and wears a white rumpled shirt and hat.

The people in the line talk to him about scheduling a fishing trip with him as a guide. He owns a boat.

It is my turn in the line.

"What do you want?" he asks.

"I'd like to learn how to make flies," I reply.

The man looks me up and down, glaring at me and playing with his moustache. He is annoyed and surprised.

"Do you know how boring that is?" he asks, "Are you sure you don't want to go fishing?"

"No, I want to learn how to make flies," I say.

"Have you ever been fishing?" he asks.

"A few times," I say. "It was okay."

"Are you sure you really want to learn how to make files? It's really boring," he says.

"Yes. I like doing things with my hands."

"It's really boring. What's the most boring thing you've ever done?"

I don’t have an answer.

The man thinks for a moment, looking at people in the line behind me.

"Sure, okay,” he says, smiling. “I'll teach you how to make flies. Come back in a couple of weeks and we'll get started."

I turn and walk away from the counter.

The people at the shop sit at wooden benches eating fancy French and Italian deserts.

There is an empty seat at one of the tables; I sit down.

The owner of the shop walks up behind me, sitting a dish and spoon on the table in front of me.

I look down at my dessert ­ it resembles vanilla ice cream, floating in a cloudy white liquid.

The owner examines the bowl.

"Excuse me," he says, "There's a pearl in yours. I'm terribly sorry."

He picks up the spoon and retrieves the pearl. He takes the pearl with him as he walks away.

I dig my spoon into the desert and it hits something hard.

I lift up my spoon and find a whole string of pearls hanging from it.

I am on the main street of the town. It is cold and getting dark. The town is deserted.

I walk along the streets. Everything looks run down and dilapidated.

I notice the shop I had visited earlier. The sign hangs askew, the wood weathered and the painted fish on it faded.

I open the squeaky door and walk inside. There is dust everywhere; tables and chairs are overturned.

I walk to the counter. There is a slip of paper there. I pick it up.

It reads, “He left his tantric ways and skipped town. There's nothing to see here. Keep moving. -- Matt Redbear".

Then I woke up.

Golden Gate Airport Filing Cabinet

I wake up in an apartment in San Francisco.

The place belongs to someone else. I am visiting the city for a few days. They are letting me stay there.

It is a beautiful apartment in an older building, warm and inviting, with big windows. There’s a wonderful view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I stretch and yawn. I move the white sheet to uncover myself. I get out of bed.

I walk around the room towards the window in my underwear. I look around, stretching and waking up, feeling the warm sun all over my body.

I hear someone else stirring in the room.

A drop-dead gorgeous man is in my bed. He leans back on a couple of pillows, naked, the white sheet pulled up to his waist. He stretches and yawns, the golden sun beaming off of his hard tanned body.

"Morning," he says. "It was nice."

I am taken aback. I don’t recognize him.

"We spent the night together?" I ask.

"Yes," he says. "But, don't worry. I'm just a figment of your imagination."

"Oh," I reply, somewhat confused.

I notice the man’s eyes as he looks at me. They are so blue and intense they almost glow.

“Your eyes are beautiful,” I say, “What kind of work do you do?”

The man tells me about his favorite ways of having sex ­ positions, locations, what he would do with my body.

“I really enjoyed last night,” he says, smiling.

He doesn’t mention what he does for a living.

“I’d better go take a shower,” I say.

I walk out of the apartment and into a hallway, making my way to a bathroom I know is up ahead. The wooden floors of the hallway creak as I walk; I feel the soft warm carpet running down the center of the hallway beneath my feet.

I open the door and go into the bathroom.

Two men are there, going about their morning. One is toweling off, just having taken a shower. Another stands at a mirror, shaving.

There is no eye contact between them and myself. It’s as if we share the same space, but they cannot see each other nor can they see me.

Things seem strange ­ I decide to skip the shower.

I exit the bathroom and walk back into the hallway. It has changed ­ it seems to go on for miles in the distance.

I decide to explore, to see what’s ahead in the distance. The apartment building hallway changes as I walk.

I am in the lobby of a large office building. There are people milling about, going in and out of a set of elevators in front of me. Some stand and talk with each other.

I wait there for a moment, still in my underwear, and watch them. They are dressed in suits and carry laptops and briefcases. They do not see me.

I continue walking through the lobby and enter a revolving door that leads outside.

I am on a long, narrow airport concourse with windows on either side.

Passengers rush about, going to and from their flights. Some carry or roll baggage. There are men and women, all ages. Some look like they are on vacation, others are dressed for business.

I am still just wearing my underwear. They do not notice me.

I look out the windows of the concourse. I recognize that I am in Los Angeles.

I continue walking and, up ahead, I see a film crew. They are shooting a scene with two men chasing another. They have guns. I step aside as they pass by.

I look through the windows. I want to go outside and enjoy the sun.

Suddenly, I am in a college, standing in an empty hallway. Everything is quiet and still.

There is a lecture hall ahead of me. I walk into it, feeling the cold institutional tiles beneath my feet, looking at the drab, somewhat dirty, beige concrete walls.

I walk into a tiered lecture hall. It is filled with old desks, all tightly packed.

I see a small wooden door, about three feet tall, on the far wall of the lecture hall near the podium.

I must get to the door.

I can barely walk because of the tightly packed desks.

I examine the desks. They are worn and covered with graffiti.

Each of the desks has a small rectangular wire frame on top for an index slip, similar to what one might see on a filing cabinet. Each frame contains a slip of paper.

My name is written on the slips of paper.

I finally make my way to the small wooden door near the podium.

I reach for the brass doorknob. I turn it and open the door.

Then I woke up.

Crowded Shower Box Toothpaste

I am taking a shower. It is morning and I have just gotten out of bed.

In the shower with me are moving boxes.

I have just moved in to an apartment and there isn’t space for everything ­ I had to put some of the boxes in the bathtub.

I get out of the shower and towel myself off, working my way around stacks of boxes around the bathroom.

I walk to the sink and take my toothbrush out of a small cup on the sink. I grab a tube and squeeze some toothpaste on the brush and put it into my mouth.

It tastes strange.

I look down and see that I am brushing my teeth with anchovy paste.

Then I woke up.

Pregnant Elongated Jodorowsky Bio-Pic

I am in the living room of a simply furnished, small suburban house.

There is someone in the room that I know. But they are not there in a physical form. I only hear their voice.

They invite me to look over their DVD collection.

I walk over to a corner of the room and there are shelves of DVD's sitting next to a large screen HDTV.

A highlight of the collection is a complete set consisting of what looked like fifty or sixty discs containing the complete Looney Tunes cartoons. I am amazed that someone actually released them and fondly recalled some of my favorites.

The person in the room asks if I knew that CBS was broadcasting a bio-pic TV movie about the life of director Alejandro Jodowrowsky.

I am surprised.

“Would you like to see it? It’s playing now,” the voice says.

“Yes, of course.”

The HDTV comes on. The movie is already in progress.

There is some kind of scene going on where Jodorowsky (played by his son, who is the lead in his film, Sante Sangre) is talking to another man. They are both dressed in 19th century clothing, sitting at a table in a saloon.

The scene shifts to Jodorowsky and his wife in their 19th century home.

They are having an argument -- Jodorowsky has been having an affair with another woman and his wife is upset.

The other woman comes into the room. It is the man Jodorowsky was sitting at the bar with in the previous scene.

The man, who has a beard, is dressed in 19th century women's clothes. His lips are painted red and he has eye shadow on.

The man is also very pregnant.

Jodorowsky and his wife keep arguing.

The “other woman” tries to get their attention. He/she falls to the floor and goes into labor, screaming hysterically and thrashing about. Jodorowsky leaves the room.

Jodorowsky, dressed in a dark suit and top hat, walks on a wooden sidewalk in a 19th century Western town. There is dirt in the street; horses and wagons pass by.

Everything in the frame is distorted, like a Salvador Dali painting come to life.

As Jodorowsky walks, his figure is stretched and elongated; some other people on the street appear normal, while others have enormous heads, feet, or hands. Some look like a beach ball and just roll along.

A horse, standing on its two hind legs, leans against a post, watching people go by with a toothpick in his mouth.

Wagons pass on the street with strange elongated or half-broken wheels that don't seem to affect their operation.

Jodorowsky passes a dead tree planted in the middle of the street. It begins sprouting leaves as he passes by.

A sign in front of a bank has an old style clock. It is melting.

As Jodorowsky walks along on the sidewalk, there are people on the other side of the street dressed in winter clothes, trying to walk in a snowstorm, while his side of the street is sunny.

A man throws a cigarette into some kind of sewage drain on the edge of the street. There's a giant explosion -- nobody flinches or even notices.

I sit there amazed by all of this, thinking that no one had before thought of using digital effects in this way. It’s a true surrealist film, brought to life in vivid high definition.

Suddenly, the picture fritzes out on the tv. It goes black.

There is a small bang and the tube cracks. Some smoke pours from the front of the tv. I hear a hissing sound.

I feel very disappointed.

"It appears that it exceeded the expected surrealist quotient of the current equipment,” the voice in the room says.

Then I woke up.

McDonald’s Chocolate Milkshake Opera

I sit in my car at a McDonald’s restaurant drive-thru.

A voice comes on the intercom.

“May I take your order,” the voice says.

“I’d like a chocolate shake.”

There is a short pause the intercom comes to life.

“Okay…drive around.”

I pull up to the drive-through window. I see a woman inside, making my milkshake.

She wears a nametag.

Her name is Carmen.

She opens the window of the drive-thru and hands me the shake.

“You’re eligible for a free CD,” she says.

“What kind?”

“It’s the opera ‘Carmen’,” she replies.

“Sure,” I say. “That would be fine.”

I drive my truck around to the front of the restaurant. I shut off the engine, grab my milkshake and get out of the truck.

I open the doors of the restaurant and go inside.

I sit down at a table and begin sipping my milkshake through the straw.

A UPS van drives up outside the restaurant. The driver gets out and walks inside with a package.

He comes to the table and hands me the package. As he walks away, I open it.

The envelope contains a CD of the opera ‘Carmen’.

A fancy certificate falls out of the envelope.

The certificate reads, “Order a hamburger from Bertha and get Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, absolutely free.”

I’m not in the mood for a hamburger.

Then I woke up.

Parking Space Tiger Gate

I am visiting some old friends from college -- my old roommate, Paul, and his wife Kim. We are sitting in the living room at their house, talking about old times and catching up with each other.

We decide to go out for dinner. We walk outside; it is late evening. I get in my truck and they get in their car.

I follow them to downtown High Point.

Paul and Kim have a sub-sub compact car that looks like something out of a 60's British film. Other cars pass on the street -- everyone else in High Point has one too.

The streets are about the width of an alleyway and it is very hilly, sort of like San Francisco. I find it difficult to navigate my truck on the narrow streets and fall behind them in traffic.

Finally, I reach the restaurant where we are meeting.

All the parking spaces are too small. I can’t find a place wide enough to park my truck. I drive around the block and double park, filling two parking meters with change.

When I enter the restaurant, Paul and Kim are already seated and have food.

I sit down and we talk some more.

Then, we are back in their living room.

“Why don’t you go outside and say hello to Buttons,” Paul says.

Buttons is a small dog Paul and Kim had many years ago.

I walk through the house and open the back door in the kitchen. I step outside. It is daylight.

The backyard behind their house is all fenced off, with the fence connected to the house so that Buttons can’t get out.

At the far edge of the yard, I notice that a gate is open.

There is a small cat there, rubbing against the gate and wanting to get in. I decide to close the gate to keep the cat out of the yard.

I walk over and shoo away the cat.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I tell her.

I close the gate and turn around, watching Buttons play with a small ball in the yard.

I hear a growl.

The cat is on the other side of the gate. It has transformed into a lynx.

Another open gate has appeared in front of me, making the fenced in area smaller, like a maze.

I shoo away the lynx.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I tell her.

I close the gate and turn around, watching Buttons play with the small ball.

It happens again. And again.

Each time, the beast turns into a larger member of the cat family. I tell the animal they shouldn’t be there and close the gate.

The fenced in area became smaller and smaller.

A beautiful large tiger appears.

“This is ridiculous,” I say to myself.

I reach out my hand, rubbing it against the tiger’s neck. I feel it’s soft fur and massive body against my fingers.

The tiger purrs and licks my hand.

I wake up.

I am in Goatboy's cabin, visiting him. His partner Lane is there.

We have all just gotten out of bed.

I turn to Lane, stretching and waking myself up.

“I think you’re influencing me to dream about cats,” I tell him.

Lane looks at me, puzzled.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

Then I woke up.

Black and White Village Ice Block Man

I am sitting next to my friend Gil in the middle of a large movie theater. We are the only people there.

A black and white film is playing on the screen. It looks similar to one that might be directed by Akira Kurosawa.

On the screen, peasant villagers work in a field. Men and women in tattered clothes till the soil or carry baskets.

A man approaches from the distance.

“Come here!” he yells, “They’ve found him!”

The man is speaking in Japanese and there are no subtitles, but we understand perfectly what he is saying.

The villagers drop their work and murmur to each other. They follow the man.

Music similar to the soundtrack of “Seven Samurai” plays.

There are men and women, old and young, following the man up the mountain. It is rocky and difficult to climb.

As they climb, the landscape becomes more sparse and rocky. They pass pine and cypress trees.

The man leads them to a flat stony clearing. There is snow on the ground and I can see breath coming from their mouths as they talk. From the clearing, I see the mountain jutting up far into the sky.

Three men are there with picks and shovels.

“Come help!” he says, “We have to get him out!”

The villagers watch as the men clear earth and snow from a mound. The mound contains a large block of ice. One of the men wipes the snow away from the top of it.

The villagers become excited, murmuring to each other, and gather around the unearthed object.

I see a shot from the perspective of the block of ice, looking up. The faces of the villagers are all around the frame. They look astonished.

I see an overhead shot of the block of ice. Encased within the ice is a man. The features are indistinct at first, but the camera moves closer.

I realize that the man enclosed in the ice is me.

Then I woke up.