Dreaming of the Whirling Mechanism

The whirling mechanism is just a dream machine. Richard Isen who I used to carpool with claimed it was lucid dreaming, but how do you know it's not one of those stock dream sequence tricks, a dream within a dream, that this lucid dreaming isn't just a dream itself, or how do you know that you're darkest wish isn't to lose control of the storyline, willing submission, an afternoon matinee. Last night I dreamt I drank a corona well after midnight in the beer garden at the lonestar. It was empty except for me and three other strangers, no music, no conversation, just cigar and cigarette smoke curling in the flood light and a disco ball hanging motionless from the aluminum beam that sometimes holds a vinyl tent when it's raining. Then there was just me and the crazy guy, sitting in the corner, emphezema, a backpack. What was that, he asked, eventhough I had said nothing and it was otherwise completely silent. So I talked to the skittish stranger, kind of wild-eyed, maybe marginally paranoiac, wild gesticulations, and sometimes he'd jump off the bench and wave his arms to punctuate his statements. He'd written and performed a one-man play once at Bindelstiff, the title something like as seen from ten floors above the tenderloin. He said he'd recently rediscovered old 16mm footage he'd taken from way back in No Haven, Connecticut. And just then the motor in the refrigeration unit came on and I said it sounded like a projector. He jumped up and waved his hands in the air. His friend earlier that evening had shown him digital movies, candid footage he'd shot of him and some other friends and he said it was good. It was good, he liked to say, the way I think Lou Reed intoned It was alright, like not quite a revelation but certainly a comfort. And no matter how vaguely syntaxed and conveyed his utterances, somehow I knew what he meant. On the topic of the internet and blogs he wondered what privacy meant anymore. And I said somewhat unrelatedly how I never bought the alarmist idea that we live in a culture of constant surveillance, there's not enough manhours to mine through all that footage, I said. He said that was a refreshing thought and it put him at ease. Thanks, he said. We talked about how unimpressed we both were by Brokeback Mountain, agreed that there were more memorable short stories from Annie Proulx's Wyoming Stories. Fassbinder the sadistic and the prolific. V for Vendetta, go see it I said. I think he claimed he was 49, but looked more like 59. He's been reading Henry Miller and the autobiography of St. Theresa of Avilla, some kind of celibate sensualist mystic. Later I bought him an apple fritter at the donut shop, where they were fresh out of the vat at 2 am, still warm in our mouths. He said the chinese place next door, across from the Quaker meeting house, was really pretty good, always a big lunchtime crowd, the food always really fresh (I tried it the next day for lunch and it was pretty good--maybe he wasn't that crazy after all). He likes to walk around the city this time of night. His friends think he's raging against the dying of the light, trolling for catharsis in SOMA, but he just likes the empty quiet streets, maybe sometimes he'll find some interesting signage and take a picture with a disposable camera. I said that the city shows it's true self on quiet nights like this; It's a lonely town, I said and he agreed and said this city has been hard on him. So I walked with him for a few blocks, smoking and talking. He said there's amazing mosaic work in the hallways of the courthouse, I pointed out how the new federal building with it's gaping hole of a breeze way looked like a huge spy camera, too which he quipped that he'd been telling tourists that the assymetrical rooftop structure was a landing pad for space shuttles. I finally got to my building and said I was turning in. The dreamtime stranger extended his hand and I returned an unexpected hug and an even more unexpected kiss. Stay out of trouble I said, and it was the first untrue sentiment all evening. The whirling mechanism is just one of those beatnik dream machines, spinning lights, mirrors and fur, the hypnotic murmur of dappled, restless light, bars shutdown for the night and car lights weaving slowly homeward.