Earlier dreams, magical, mystical, fade slowly into a dull shopping dream. I'm at a crowded sale of kitchenware. I stashed a few items up at the cashier, so at least I'm not holding a lot as I stand in line.

I watch a videotape showing the cooking techniques of the local natives, the Ohlone--black and white footage before the 1906 quake in San Francisco, at a slummy settlement near Cow Hollow I think, by the shore of the laundry lagoon, where the city's clothes were washed. Today it's the swan lake, around the Palace of Fine Arts dome.

Two Ohlone women are in the doorways of wood-and-brush huts, preparing food and joking together. They're very dark, thin, and naked. I remember how cruelly the Gold Rush settlers treated the Ohlone: as animals with no rights at all.

By 19th Century standards of beauty--all those plump white women--these Ohlone were probably seen as ugly. How standards change! Today they're beautiful--not just that their bodies are sexy, and in superb shape, but also how expressive their bodies are--even without a sound track, you can follow their conversation through all its moods. I suspect that's one result of not being muffled in restrictive clothes as Gold Rush whites were. You accept your whole body, so you talk with your whole body.

And how happy they look! Poor, exploited, looked down on, but still there, laughing it off. I recall an old woman of the tribe that used to live where Silicon Valley is now, saying their language was built so humor and happiness bubbled up naturally. In Costanoan languages, being sour took work.

Sigh! Wish I were there with those two women instead of this modern crowd. I look up from the video, and eye the endless line. Do I really want to wait around for the privilege of buying a thermometer or an egg timer? Just white people's toys. I prefer free time.

Suddenly I picture those two hungry, poor, naked, despised women looking at this mob desperately waiting to buy... lettuce spinners.

In my soul I hear faint laughter. And pull out of line and leave.

MORNING-AFTER NOTE

Yesterday I went to Rainbow Food Co-op and found I was agonizing over the price of a few vegetables, wanting the very best deal. Lines were long, so I also agonized over which ten things to limit myself to, so I could go in the express line. Suddenly I saw this as silly--the real cost for me is the time & effort of a trip to the store as a whole. So I shopped for a lot of stuff I was putting off, and when I went up to the cashier, the long line had melted away like magic--no wait at all!

ACTION: Quit nickel-and-diming yourself to death. American economania is boring, boring, boring.

ETHNOGRAPHIC NOTE

Real Costanoans in the Gold Rush would likely have a labret (three tattooed stripes on your chin); but in my dream, these two didn't. Skinnier than most Native Californians today, too. I'm not sure why these dream-discrepancies; certainly not ignorance; I grew up in Northern California and met Costanoans. These two were lively but so skinny, like they'd just survived a famine. Maybe that was the point; emphasizing they weren't poor, but robbed. Their land was rich. California had the densest population in Precolumbian America, north of Mexico. The whites stole it all, but their loot never made them happy.

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