in a movie theatre i see myself onscreen in a black dress, undulating underwater. i see don then, in the same place, walking with his crutches, slightly distressed.

the film has been run as the precursor to the feature movie. i am completely surprised by it, and disconcerted. i don’t like the film, but apparently when it was made i signed a standard release allowing the theatre manager to play it.

Dreamer’s Dictionary
~ movies ~ the omen depends on whether or not you enjoyed what you saw. if you did, the augury is one of pleasant social times ahead. but if you were depressed, displeased or disgusted, you are being warned against being deluded by a dishonest avowal of love or cheated by an insincere declaration of friendship.
~ black ~ bubble, bubble, toil and trouble will be yours if you dreamed of anything black, unless you saw it at a funeral, in which case it predicts success, especially in love affairs.
~ dress ~ to dream of having or seeing an attractive new dress augurs some immanent social satisfaction. an embroidered dress signifies casual sexual pleasures.

My Interpretation:
- it’s a statement about my attitude toward don. his condition is something i signed on for before being born, perhaps, or at a soul level; a prerequisite, an appetizer, a forerunner, something essential to the feature movie of my life. the black dress is my attitude toward him-- that he is both a pain and a pleasure -- and i may wish he didn’t have c.p. but it is an unalterable condition of our lives, that i agreed to
- both of us underwater says something about our emotional states. we have similar states? feel things the same? that it’s a spiritual lesson for both of us?

why would i have a dream like that; i already thought that is the case, am aware of my attitude and feelings about this fact of our lives. is the dream simply reflecting that? or is it working something out; is my subconcious trying to make me aware of something else? or prophecying something?

dreams. i love ’em. but don’t usually see clearly what they mean till months later.

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barney and i went for a walk down a gravel road and then cut across the stubblefield to come back home. we talked about technology. it started with him wishing there was such a thing as a light sabre, like in the star wars movies, and i said someday there probably will be, that technology is advancing quickly.

100 years ago, a woman and child walking down the road did not even imagine silver jets ripping through the sky and going around the world. they could not realistically conceive of cars that go 200 miles per hour, or telephones and radio and TVs and computers that communicate from one side of the planet to the other in mere seconds. an astronaut walking on the moon wouldn’t even be a science fiction character in the minds of our earlier mother and child. And only 100 years from now, there will probably be a society right here where we live, living with inventions that right now we cannot even imagine.

“like flying around with jet packs, with no pollution?” he said.

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two scientists at the university of alberta have discovered a way to create electricity using water but not magnets, and apparently this is revolutionary and may mean that large amounts of water won’t be necessary to create electricity in future.

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Mom, Dad, Suzanne and Jodi arrived yesterday around noon. I had gotten the kitchen cleaned up and the floors swept, and was making banana muffins. They hadn’t eaten lunch, so I said I’d make some sandwiches as soon as I got the muffins into the oven.

“Oh, I don’t know if I want to wait that long, till your muffins are done,” Dad said.

“No, no, I mean I’ll make the sandwiches as soon as I get them out of the way here and into the oven.”

“Oh, okay.”

They sat at the table and chatted with me while I finished mixing the muffins and put them into tins. Mom held up a clear plastic bag and started digging in it, then said “Do you want this stuff now? Maybe I should wait till you’re finished there.”

“Yeah. No rush,” I said.

She went with Barney into the office/living room and pulled out a quilt she’s made for him. Then she pulled out a book and a pink thing, left the bag on a chair, and came to the kitchen table. She couldn’t wait.

“I brought you this,” holding up the pink thing. It was a pig, to add to my collection.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A recipe-card holder.” She showed me the clothespin inside.

(Barney says later to me, “You like pigs a lot.”
“I don’t!” I told him. “I mean, I like pigs okay, but not especially. Farmbeau started buying them for me because of something we used to say to each other -- that we were ‘pigs’ for each others’ love. And now we buy them for each other once in a while.”)

“And this,” Mom grinned. It was a book called Recipe for Raising Chickens. Barney has been reading it every chance he gets, since they left. He’s been reading it out loud, he’s been exclaiming in wonder, and I have been too. Who knew chickens were such interesting creatures?

We had a quick and easy lunch of open-faced canned-ham sandwiches, with garnishes of cottage cheese, dill pickles, and pickled beets. I went downstairs to the bar fridge to bring up low-alcohol beers for Mom and Dad and I. Dessert was chocolate-chip banana-bran muffins hot from the oven.

Barney brought a kitten from the barn loft to show Jodi, and she really liked that. She is not a very smiley little girl. She looks so serious all the time.

They had been here only about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, when Dad announced that they should get going. He took Jodi to the car; Suzanne followed; Mom stopped off at the bathroom. I told Barney to show Mom the basement before they came out, and walked Suzanne and Dad out to the driveway. They loaded themselves and the little one into the car, and Dad said impatiently toward the house “Come on, Grandma!”

It was as if they had an important appointment to go to, when all they would be doing was taking Suzanne and Jodi to Jill’s and then going to Grandma’s, themselves. It would simply be more sitting around, visiting, for the next few days.

Mom came out after a few minutes, got in the car, we said our seeyoulaters, Suzanne looked at me with an expression that said she felt funny leaving already, and away they went.

I thought yeah, dad, what *is* the big hurry, anyway? sheesh!

I mentioned that later when Farmbeau asked me if they’d gotten here, and he commented that Dad probably couldn’t stand to be here because he disapproves of Farmbeau somehow. I don’t think so; if that were the case, Dad would have found a way to tell me so by now. He is just that way. He can’t sit still unless there’s a TV in front of him. He hadn’t gotten that far at our house yet.

Farmbeau assumed my feelings were hurt, and I had to explain that I hadn’t been complaining. The visit had been short and sweet, and I would see Suzanne later. But it had been a particularly telling illustration of the ants in dad’s pants, so it stood out to me.

I feel kindof sorry for Dad, actually. That he has to be on the move all the time, feel like he’s going somewhere, and can’t seem to relax and just ‘be’ without a constant source of entertainment.

We are all like this in some ways. Farmbeau is like that with his work. He works and thinks about work, otherwise feels he is not doing what he ought. Me, I am addicted to thinking. I rarely still my mind.