THAT DAY

I work hard on the World Dream Bank. Finish & add Genre Niches and Sorting Hat, Drunken Cat. Then I start on the poem & illustration for Spell Blurs Women too.

THAT EVENING

Read Stephen Pinker's Enlightenment Now. He methodically proves we've progressed more than we realize, though I think he can't clearly see progress's enemies. He argues Nietzsche was a nasty pre-Nazi and the root of postmoderns, anti-science critics, and neocons alike. Uhh... neocons? I'm skeptical. I kinda think they have good old American roots. "The South shall Rise Again!" Long before Nietzsche or Hitler, we had our own Nazis. We have for centuries. And rooting them out will take more than just fixing an academic error of overdoing postmodernism. Rich reactionaries want to undo the New Deal--and that requires undoing democracy too.

THAT NIGHT

I vist an elementary school--a boarding school I think. Brown uniforms. Lots of orphans. They all seem wary--but if they remember homelessness or orphanages I guess I can see why. They giggle and whisper as if they know something I don't.

The principal also teaches; a youngish woman, quite attractive. She called me in to advise. "If we made one change, what would it be?"

To me it's obvious. That big square pit, two-three meters deep, with a ladder down to the floor. A few beds down there. No one sleeps there now, but in the bad old days they put disobedient students in the pit. The ceiling's strange--a lightshaft rises ten meters or so. It's topped with gauze or mosquito net, but NOT any real rainproofing. It's the dry season so for now at least, just drizzle and fog-drips; but it has to be damp and cold in the pit even in summer, and awful in winter--cold wet moldy. Given the bad heating, poor diets and crappy medicine back then, potentially deadly.

So I say "Fill it in! It's an architectural death threat, a living reminder to the students that this was almost a prison; like keeping a gun pointed at them."

She objects "We don't have the money."

I say "You have over a hundred students. You have dirt. That pit is a few dozen cubic meters. Maybe ten wheelbarrows each. They can do it over the next week--and it'll empower them."

And it does. They cheer up as they dump clay in and dance on it. It'll need heavier tamping down before flooring can be laid on top and a skylight installed, but it'll add public space--and banish the whiff of prison.

Settle those old ghosts!

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Why an institution with a creepy history? Family history. One of my uncles had a breakdown & got put in Agnews, a huge state-run "hospital"--really a snakepit that used massive electroshock and heavy drugging to subdue inmates. The Oscar-winning film Frances is set there (warning: grim.) It wrecked my uncle's life, as it wrecked Frances Farmer's. As a small child, I saw the place; we visited my uncle there. He told me horror stories that made a deep impression.
• Fill in an unhealthy old pit with many small loads:
  1. Enlightenment Now? Pinker argues against revolutionary thrashing and for patient, incremental improvement. Maybe he's right.
  2. Our back bedroom is a dark pit. We're preparing to refloor it. Fear mold in the subfloor. Won't know till we tear out the allergenic carpet and look...
• Is the dream about workaholism? I did overwork on the World Dream Bank today. Doing one piece a day is my sustainable max, I think. Not two or three like this. Though... it's better to overdo art than subfloor demolition.

MONTHS LATER

We redid the back room. The renovation was hard work but (warned by the dream) I insisted we take our time. The room's lighter, feels better. Our housemate Cory feels healthier now. That old pit WAS affecting her health.

In 2018, this pit, our legacy of a monstrous past, was a bit mysterious; in 2021, with the Confederate flag raised in the Capitol and one party refusing to accept a clear mandate from voters, the pit is, I think, clear enough.

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