THAT DAY

My housemate begs me to help update a contract between his art-model guild and a local college. Takes two hours! Then the college rep who shot down the first draft emails him to say she'll now accept Draft One! Two hours for nothing.

Next, another housemate learns that her experimental quilt has made it into a major art book. "I can't find a photo of it. Do you have a high-end JPEG on your hard drive?" Well... somewhere. I find it at last. I can't email it, so I walk down with a copy. Her picture-folder got hidden way down in nested files, and she didn't know how to pull it back out! Inside, her pictures are in chaos. No wonder she can't find any! So I clean up her hard drive a while...

Then, upstairs: CRASH! In a third housemate's room, a picture fell off the wall. Lucky the glass didn't shatter. Why'd it fall? Strong wire, but the artist used eyelets too small for the weight; one ripped right out of the frame. "Can you fix it?" she asks. I try--restring it with light monofilament, but on bigger eyelets. Hang it, and it holds...

So goes the day. I like helping my friends, but--who'll help me do my art?

THAT NIGHT

I'm in San Francisco still, though not on Bernal Hill, but some rococo Victorian block. A man rolls by. Rolls not walks--he's nearly eye to eye with second-floor me, for Mister Glide stands on silent trolleytop. On right shoulder a pigeon snickers. He glares back at the bird, yet will not shoo, his hands as stonyfroze as diorite. Pinhead iridescence stares down the man; and mutely dares "Knock me off!" But the standoff breaks: Two ravens swoop, black arcs of squawk. Boss Pigeon's suddenly got business on the moon. And then, stage left, inching into perilous air from a gingerbread home: the Levitating Bear. To City wildlife, our street-traffic seems like deadly rapids and canyon-streams. So they cross on vines invisible as dreams, hung cunningly at narrows overhead. The bear highwires like a half-ton squirrel. Nope, she's being towed, draped drowsily on rope-- well, sprawled atop a hairy little mat. No it's a very squashed goat. The ferryman! And the ferry.

Bear-back, airsick possums hang on. Hooves can't haul, so Goat tows the crew across by gum. Not draped or laundry-pinned to the rope: this goat is strung: Goat gobbled rope and it slithered through goat gut (better not snack just now) and wormed out goat-butt; then somehow clever unsqueamish raccoon paws tied that reeking line across our street-abyss. So the poor goat tries to digest monofilament clear in a slow peristaltic crawl through skies. Need to return? He's got reverse gear. Goats chew cud. Barfilament, yuck! A strung-out, gut-knot, bear-sat, eat-shit death-end job. Goat's fucked! You have ambitions? Mine for sure is not to be Ferrygoat tasting manure as overbearing friends compact me to a rug. It's time to act. But please--feel free to help your friends; you'll feel noble until your life ends and your art somehow got no time: that's the ferrygoat paradigm.

• The ferrygoat was trapped between the ends of the line it had swallowed and excreted (and swallowed and...) No days off--just dung-flavored plastic, for life. The goat looked glum, so I can't claim I've seen a literal shit-eating grin. But too close for my taste.
• Riders big and small: the picture that fell showed a woman riding a whale (from the Maori legend of the Whale Rider).
• Near-invisible filament suspends a heavy bear: I rewired that heavy picture so mere monofilament "bears" it up.
• Bear: I've been sick--heavy, sleepy... need to hibernate? But puns here too. Bearing loads, too much to bear, overbearing?
• Goat: the dream never mentioned "scapegoat" but it's implied. I HAVE been helping my friends a lot lately--letting them interrupt my own creative work.
• Peristaltic: this great word means "propelled by squeezing" like toothpaste from a tube or food in a gut.
• ACTION 1: Write this up as a Dreamverse. Earlier tonight I false-woke and wrote a dream-poem. When I woke the page was blank, but I recalled having written. A prompt!
• ACTION 2: don't be a ferrygoat! Helping is nice, but get them off your back. It's tying your guts in a knot. Time to act.

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