Dreamways

In her essay “Ghost in the Dream” which appears in The New York Times Magazine (18 Feb 07, pg. 62) Dinah Lenney shares with readers disturbing aspects of the world of dreams. “The night after I learned my father was missing, my 4-year-old son, Jake had a nightmare. I didn’t know yet that my father had been robbed and stabbed, left to die on the banks of the Hudson by a couple of teenagers. It would be almost three days before his body was found in the rain, curled onto its side, covered in dirt and blood.”

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Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, William Hurt, this movie features interesting performances by Hurt and Bernal. The story of Elvis, a cipher, a young fellow just out of the military, who comes to see the father he’s never known, a glitzy, mega-church preacher. The preacher father treats the son coldly. The rest of the movie shows the son then decimating the preacher’s family and life. The viewer is never certain who the military son is, what he is thinking and feeling. One can come up with reasons for his actions, but the movie does not give much to support any conjecture.  read more »

This excellent, low-key movie, directed by Wim Wenders, written by Sam Shepard, starring Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange, is a look at the American Cowboy Myth. The cowboy seen as puer Eternus, the Eternal Adolescent. Movie star Howard literally rides off the set of a Western he’s shooting, baffled and disgusted with his life. He travels the West looking for home. He arrives in Butte, MT to connect with a love he abandoned some 20 + years ago, and discovers a son and a daughter he’d not known existed.
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This Swedish film is based on a novel by Jan Gillou.  The story is set in 1950’s Sweden. A high-school boy, Erik, travels through the underworld of domestic violence. His home is already a deep level of Hades. His oleagenous step-father regularly thrashes Erik‘s naked back with an archetypal switch-like object that looks to be a shoe horn. When this happens, mom goes to the piano annd plays, to drown out all the sounds of the cruelty being visited upon her son. The music is to also drown out her Silence of Collusion.

Erik becomes a Machine of Rage.  read more »

A wonderful DVD last night, Swimming Upstream, with Judy Davis and Geoffrey Rush. Set in 1950’s, 1960’s Australia. A blue collar family headed by Rush and Davis, with four sons, one daughter. The second-to-eldest son, Tony, is a very sensitive, artsy, non-violent kid, who Dad clearly and increasingly does not like, It turns out that Tony is a good backstroke swimmer. Dad starts training him and next youngest brother, John, as swimmers. But Dad always favors John, ignoring any and all of Tony’s successes.  read more »

Sleep Dream.  I’m in Capital Hill, the King Soopers area. I’m at the house of someone I don’t know. The Turkish woman with the gold tooth, the Whole Foods cashier is there. She makes me a bit nervous, she so needy. Suddenly I realize that I have to see a client soon. I don’t have time to change out of my blue jeans, I don’t have time to get my satchel. I don’t have time to walk to my appointment. The Turkish woman insists on driving me. I fear it will be a problem, and it is. She dawdles and dawdles.  read more »

This photo of man and infant dozing, an ad for today’s manufactured holiday, to me is an icon of the Father / Son relationship that I never had. Is this a real father with his son? Quite possibly, not. Perhaps the infant is not even a boychild. It matters not. My perception is Loving Father with Beloved Son. Such a simple act: a small person resting upon a large person’s chest, large person’s arms cradling the child. How hard can it be to do this, for either party?  read more »

Sleep Dream.  I am with Randolph. Now. He looks like I remember him, his hair thicker and darker, almost black. I’m not certain in the dream why we are together. Randolph acts as if we might be romantically involved, that HE thinks we are. He is very respectful, his actions measured. We are in a truck, like a rental truck, his. Going from Denver to the Springs. Is he moving?  read more »

Sleep Dream.  It is now. I don’t know where it is that I am, some roomy space. I’m with a man who is Armīns. Perhaps in his 40’s. But not looking like the 40-year old Armīns I’ve seen in fotos. I can’t now recollect his face. (I do constellate the gray haired, semi-bald fellow in last night’s porn DVD, Stud Farm, his round, furry body, his big cock, his making CONTACT with his partner.) It is like Armīns in another form and I are meeting as age equals. There is that certain timid, sparkling curiosity in his eyes. Why are we here, together?  read more »

Wednesday, late afternoon, at The Market. I’ve just finished walking my circuit of chores: post office, credit union, faxing at Home Dept. I enjoy the new locales and new routes that starting out from the loft affords me. It’s a gorgeous day: blue sky, gentle sunlight, a luxurious touch of coolth in the air. SF weather, such a perfect match for my body and temperament.  read more »