THAT DAY

Writing class. Carter reads at last. He's acted superior through three months of others' stories. Posed as the expert, the man of the world.

His story? Two guys go off to Yosemite with Julie, an activist trust-fund kid. He calls her a spoiled heiress deserving to be used fucked & robbed. And they think she's a leech? They leech off her. They sound more like sexists than class warriors to me.

Go to an ashram and meditate, or hang in that burger joint? The two cynics yell "Burger!" They've mocked everyone else as bourgeois, but their own taste for burger is so extreme I wonder for a while if they're supposed to be parodies of hippie lowlifes. But if Carter's satirical, why are they dreary not funny?

In Q&A, Carter says "The story's real. I was there. Friends of mine." So both his life and art just imitate Kerouac--badly. Kerouac bummed, but he didn't leech. Carter's just a BEER POET. I must write to the core of this... I dislike Carter, yes, but why loathe him?

Fear. I think he'll call ME a Julie and MY dreamwork Julie-ism.

The worst wasn't his story. It was seeing the others approve. My classmates like him--Marianne, Joyce, Lisa. I've never felt further from them. How can I read my visions to people who live in Carter's burger world?

Well, Jan was very quiet--maybe felt as I did. And afterward, Dave says "Carter's heroes aren't open to new experiences, won't play with others, won't even leave others alone to create their own--they just mock and grab grab grab. Perfectly monotonous."

THAT NIGHT

I'm climbing a trail with two men. The High Country in Yosemite, I think. Reach the edge of a vast canyon. The far side is a beautiful meadow I'd like to see but that means descending into the canyon and up the far side. A side spur of the canyon is near us on the right; I look down, it's very steep. I hike on with these two men over a little rise; looking back to the right, I see the Clark Range. Red rock, white snow. Beautiful contrast.

I want to go there, but how to get down and across the canyon? Go back alone over the rise, and look down the green-grassy slope into the canyon. Can't see the whole slope, and go out farther. Still can't see--gets steeper. Farther till I'm on the brink of a cliff--beyond, it's a thousand-meter sheer or overhanging drop. The meadows on the valley floor are so far off they look creamy. To get down this way I'd have to jump! Go back up & join the two men.

They're geological surveyors taking core samples. Tell me "Below us is a thousand meters of granite, but there should be a crust of strange transition rock on top, under the subsoil, several inches thick." They put a glass cylinder into the ground.

Suddenly we're in a tent or pavilion of glass and black steel hiding our drilling. The cylinder comes up filled with a black glassy pebble-concretion... the bottom of the hole has still more... they say it's way thicker than they've ever seen, they can't even measure it with their equipment. I want them to go on, and ask why not just do another core in the hole they've already done? They do... still solid crust all the way; they can't fit the corer into the hole any further down. I dig the stuff out with my arm; the men make another hole and the other guy starts scooping too.. the holes are several meters apart and we can compare.

Another a few inches down, I reach wet clay: the transition at last? Wet, moldable clay. I pull out handfuls of it... and see something below it? I touch it and... it wiggles! Not a worm. It's warm.

It's a hand.

The other digger's hand and mine have met! Our tunnels meet... yet his and mine are several yards apart, and nearly a yard deep.

It can't be, but it is. Feel so confused and shocked, I wake.

2017 NOTE

Surely the most blatant lucidity-prompt I had in this decade. I knew it was impossible; I felt such shock. And still I didn't ask, wouldn't ask: "Is this a dream?" In hindsight, that much blindness seems willful.

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