THAT DAY

Wake 5 AM, pulse pounding; I sweat and shiver simultaneously; hands and feet tingle. The experiment failed! I took a beta blocker last night--a drug blocking epinephrine (adrenaline). My doctor wanted to see if it'd stop these predawn attacks. Nope! Just a bit less heart-racing. So whatever my night sweats are, epinephrine doesn't cause them--it's just one symptom. Multiple systems are going wild. Why?

After lunch: therapy with Shelley. Explore an old nightmare figure calling himself the Ghostmaster, who's returned in new nightmares like Praise the Dancing Goons. His agenda: he wants me to fight for respect. And if I don't obey he says he'll beat me up. Is he causing these attacks? It's true I don't seek respect. My social style's more like my dad--ingratiating, comic. But even if I hide my pride, it still won't let me risk rejection or act like a fool--I stick to my zones of competence. Safe and boring! Shelley suggests I dream about this proud side. And challenge it--date, flirt, play! Feed my anima Silky--she doesn't mind being seen as a fool.

Evening: finish Liz Tuccillo's comic novel How To Be Single, on New York women hungry for half-decent guys. I find men so unattractive it's a revelation for me. Suspect I'm blind to women who like me--I just don't expect it. Next, start Jonathan Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet. The LA art/music scene has more glitz and pretentiousness than San Francisco's. But love's the same: still hell.

THAT NIGHT

I'm holding an illustrated tome whose guts are gnarled--I try a poem, turn the page to find the end is lost. Oh. The book spills onto the wall! Horizontal pages half a yard wide are wall-pinned. Dry-sumi style watercolors patchwork, roughly tile to form an epic pseudo-scroll by "the Ezra Pound of Comix" (no, really, it says so on the wall!) And hey, it's a fine museum sobriquet for this Hockneyed thief of Buddhist lore (who I don't respect much more than I ever did that Confucian bore: the Ezra Pound of Pound.) The painting shows The Hell Cafe. You read old Asian style, right to left. But in this show the mostly Western viewers clockwise flow. Relentless rightward throng! I'm squinched, jostled along, forced round. And so...	First the Pit yawns. Ruby licks     of flame illume; Then a tonguelike chute drops bound     mummy-bodies down. Then the kitchens. Hell-chefs carve     off the tasty bits of live     sinners into stew. Then the cliff-cafe. Panoramic view!     Down the shimmer-red Abyss.     The hottest place in town is this. Then closer-ups of diners' haunted eyes,     as they slowly realize     they dine on the diners in line before. Then the fore-terraces of Hell Cafe     where most diners haven't yet     tasted who their appetizers are. Then endless files of trendish souls     dressed to filed teeth. Wait for a turn     in the new Scene To Be Seen. Then all pales to haze--dim stone     staircases rise, til upper right     blues with hints of unfire light.
Impressive enough, even reversed. But hell is not my thing. Oh, sure I get it--souls or no, our bodies end up diced entrees in the Dog-eat-Dog Cafe. We end. Death happens. Profound, undeniable--if unsubtle. Pounded in. But my ass-backward Western view seems a plausible parable too: If you have the guts to buck all trend, you too can walk right out of cannibal hell.	For nothing keeps a hungry soul from leaving but inclination! Daylight's a far dim beacon, but glimmers blue, in sight. Buddha had it almost right! No demon guards keep the damned in line save hunger to belong--not dine. And the sin of pride, that bugaboo that blasphemed Lucifer to hell, can paradoxically shoo you up to the light as well. How? Just proudly, coldly go against the cellphoned, hellbound flow.

• Watercolor cartoons of cafes and panoramas: All Over Coffee, an artbook by Paul Madonna I've been looking at.
• Hockneyed: pun fusing "hackneyed" (clichéd) and artist David Hockney, who does big portraits made of grids of Polaroids.
• "The Ezra Pound of Comix": I saw a film of Ezra Pound reading. He seemed very Confucian, a patriarch demanding unquestioned deference from wife, kids, interviewers. Quite like this dream-figure haunting me, the Ghostmaster.
• Scroll read backwards, left to right: a dream joke about manga vs western comix. I've been reading translated manga laid out Japanese style, right to left. Disorienting at first. Of course, in the Bush Decade everyone's been shoved relentlessly right by a crowd of culturally clueless Americans...
• Lines, restaurant, trendiness: dating hell in New York (How To Be Single) and Los Angeles (You Don't Love Me Yet)
• Cannibal hell-cafe: told my friend Cory of Havelock Ellis's dream theories; and my example was the dream Hell-Hall!
• Pride: I asked to dream of this proud angry nightmare figure. Instead he shows why he's needed: to fight trends, defy crowds, escape social hell.
• ACTION: Go the wrong way. It leads to freedom.
• This is Dreamverse #62 of The Dreamverse Project. Every week, a dream-poem!

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