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Ferrygoat
Dreamed 2009/8/14 by Wayan; Dreamverse #48
For the ghost of Theodore Roethke and his Ode to a Spittoon
THAT DAY
My housemate begs me to help update a contract between his art-model guild and a local college. Takes two hours! Then the college rep who shot down the first draft emails him to say she'll now accept Draft One! Two hours for nothing.
Next, another housemate learns that her experimental quilt has made it into a major art book. "I can't find a photo of it. Do you have a high-end JPEG on your hard drive?" Well... somewhere. I find it at last. I can't email it, so I walk down with a copy. Her picture-folder got hidden way down in nested files, and she didn't know how to pull it back out! Inside, her pictures are in chaos. No wonder she can't find any! So I clean up her hard drive a while...
Then, upstairs: CRASH! In a third housemate's room, a picture fell off the wall. Lucky the glass didn't shatter. Why'd it fall? Strong wire, but the artist used eyelets too small for the weight; one ripped right out of the frame. "Can you fix it?" she asks. I try--restring it with light monofilament, but on bigger eyelets. Hang it, and it holds...
So goes the day. I like helping my friends, but--who'll help me do my art?
THAT NIGHT
I'm in San Francisco still, though
not on Bernal Hill, but some rococo
Victorian block. A man rolls by.
Rolls not walks--he's nearly eye to eye
with second-floor me, for Mister Glide
stands on silent trolleytop. On right
shoulder a pigeon snickers. He glares
back at the bird, yet will not shoo,
his hands as stonyfroze as diorite.
Pinhead iridescence stares
down the man; and mutely dares
"Knock me off!" But the standoff breaks:
Two ravens swoop, black arcs of squawk.
Boss Pigeon's suddenly got business on the moon.
And then, stage left, inching into perilous air
from a gingerbread home: the Levitating Bear.
To City wildlife, our street-traffic seems
like deadly rapids and canyon-streams.
So they cross on vines invisible as dreams,
hung cunningly at narrows overhead.
The bear highwires like a half-ton squirrel. Nope,
she's being towed, draped drowsily on rope--
well, sprawled atop a hairy little mat. No it's a very
squashed goat. The ferryman! And the ferry.
|
Bear-back, airsick possums hang on.
Hooves can't haul, so Goat tows the crew
across by gum. Not draped or laundry-pinned
to the rope: this goat is strung:
Goat gobbled rope and it slithered through
goat gut (better not snack just now)
and wormed out goat-butt; then somehow
clever unsqueamish raccoon paws
tied that reeking line across
our street-abyss. So the poor goat tries
to digest monofilament clear
in a slow peristaltic crawl through skies.
Need to return? He's got reverse gear.
Goats chew cud. Barfilament, yuck!
A strung-out, gut-knot, bear-sat,
eat-shit death-end job. Goat's fucked!
You have ambitions? Mine for sure
is not to be Ferrygoat tasting manure
as overbearing friends compact
me to a rug. It's time to act.
But please--feel free to help your friends;
you'll feel noble until your life ends
and your art somehow got no time:
that's the ferrygoat paradigm.
|
NOTES
- The ferrygoat was trapped between the ends of the line it had swallowed and excreted (and swallowed and...) No days off--just dung-flavored plastic, for life. The goat looked glum, so I can't claim I've seen a literal shit-eating grin. But too close for my taste.
- Riders big and small: the picture that fell showed a woman riding a whale (from the Maori legend of the Whale Rider).
- Near-invisible filament suspends a heavy bear: I rewired that heavy picture so mere monofilament "bears" it up.
- Bear: I've been sick--heavy, sleepy... need to hibernate? But puns here too. Bearing loads, too much to bear, overbearing?
- Goat: the dream never mentioned "scapegoat" but it's implied. I HAVE been helping my friends a lot lately--letting them interrupt my own creative work.
- Peristaltic: this great word means "propelled by squeezing" like toothpaste from a tube or food in a gut.
- ACTION 1: Write this up as a Dreamverse. Earlier tonight I false-woke and wrote a dream-poem. When I woke the page was blank, but I recalled having written. A prompt!
- ACTION 2: don't be a ferrygoat! Helping is nice, but get them off your back. It's tying your guts in a knot. Time to act.
LISTS AND LINKS:
Only in San Francisco -
more disturbing sights out my window:
Beep Tree,
Grave, and
Fetal Pause -
animal people -
bears -
cattle, goats, sheep -
climbing and
flying dreams -
food and
shit dreams -
weird dream careers -
workaholism -
assertiveness vs wimpiness -
slavery and freedom -
creativity and its needs -
Jenny Badger Sultan gets warned more gently she's become a doormat, in
Nibbling Fruit -
false waking and nested dreams -
dream puns -
poetry -
pure digital dream-art - the
Dreamverse Project - the next Dreamverse:
Things Wash Off
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