THAT DAWN

I wake at 5 AM, pulse pounding; sweat and shiver simultaneously; hands and feet tingle. The experiment failed! I took a beta blocker last night--a drug blocking preventing adrenaline rushes. 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/adrenaline surges don't cause them--they're just a symptom. My discomfort cheers me up--it's such a clear negative result!

THAT DAY

Afternoon: therapy with Shelley. Explore an old nightmare figure calling himself the Ghostmaster, who's returned in new nightmares like Praise the Dancing Goons. He wants me to fight for respect. And if I don't, he says he'll beat me up. Is he causing these attacks? It's true I don't seek respect; I act like my dad--an ingratiating clown. 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. Limits growth!

Shelley suggests I dream about this proud side and challenge it--date, flirt, play! Indulge my anima Silky--she doesn't mind being seen as a fool.

THAT EVENING

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 expect them to have better taste (thanks, Mom).

I start Jonathan Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet. The LA art/music scene is glitzier and more pretentious than New York's. But love's the same: still hell.

THAT NIGHT...

I'm holding an illustrated tome with scrambled guts--I try a poem, turn the page to find the end is lost. Oh. The verse ramps onto the wall! Pages half a yard wide, horizontal, pinned heart-high. Dry-sumi style watercolors patchwork, roughly tile to form an epic pseudo-scroll by "the Ezra Pound of Comix" (no, really, the wall says so!) 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 freedom but temptation! 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 banished 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: echoes Paul Madonna's All Over Coffee, which I've been reading.
• Hockneyed: fuses "hackneyed" (clichéd) and artist David Hockney's 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 reads right to left but Americans shuffle right: 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: I've been reading Havelock Ellis's dream studies; the dream Hell-Hall stood out.
• Pride: I asked to meet this proud angry dream 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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