Friday, April 11th, 2008

Monday, July 24th, 2006

I dreamed I learned an intricate card game from my cousin Kenneth, but I can only remember vague details. The game involves an extremely complex and detailed point system, as it revolves around conceptual theories of human existences”pitting biblical against scientific explanations of how life began. The Old Testament's Adam, for instance could represent the Jack of Hearts, the heart symbolizing the apple as one example, but the characters represented on each card are capable of changing at any given point in the game depending on the numerical circumstances set into play. So while the Jack of Hearts could be Adam, it could also represent Adonis, Greek God of Love, or the popular chivalrous character Don Quixote or perhaps even a more contemporary figure such as Albert Einstein, who was renown for having numerous women admirers. Numbers and the order of the numbers as the cards are played is key, because there is no such thing as a good hand. It simply depends on the cards laid down prior to by you and your opponent who, may not be your opponent at all, but your ally, depending on the string of cards played, the sum of the numbers and the equations and / or icons they represent. Certain sets of numbers laid out in a row denote laws of physics, others evolution, still others mythological and finally biblical. There are also multi-sided dice involved that serve to calculate equations in concordance with the cards. Some dice represent science, while other dice are rolled to determine the outcome of spiritual quests. There is more, so much more, I can't remember. But I'll sit here with a deck of cards, some dice and a bottle of wine, and by God, I'll figure it out.  

Thursday, March 9th, 2006
A sprawling European resort in the South of France, perhaps the Riviera. Befriending members of the mafia who are eating at an outdoor cafe. Jovial, fat, Italian men. Later, with some people on a couch–few familiar faces. Distant, past friendships or maybe not. Perhaps Lance, from Decline of the West. A stripper offers to dance. I decline and hold out my hand to keep her away as she is approaching me. She stumbles forward and vomits into my lap. Shot glasses adorn her breasts. The distant friends laugh. Lance laughs. I think of punching them in their faces, but decide to wait. After all, I have friends in the mafia. The bathroom is uni-sex and the toilet seats are all broken or missing. The stripper pulls back a curtain and steps into a shower there.

In the bow of a speeding boat, rocketing through shallow, muddy water down an extremely narrow channel. Several times I am almost flung overboard. But I trust the captain. Another boat meets us head on in the channel. As we rapidly slow down, chocolate water floods over the bow into my lap. The water will make it difficult to hang on once we speed up again, as it slips between my hand and the rail of the boat. I mentally note this and worry. Perhaps I should alert the Captain. There’s a Mandarin Chinese man, very distiguished looking in the other boat. He has a well groomed beard and he’s dressed in a silk white robe with red oriental letters and designs. He’s holding a white box. It says something in fuzzy red letters. I read it. The message makes perfect sense to me. I make a mental note to remember it later. But I know I won’t.

And I don’t.