FIRST NIGHT

Halfway through the night's dreams, some friends ask "What've you been doing lately?" I list it all, and it sounds like a lot--too much! The most urgent project was a five-page article or story that I was a little past the deadline on. Still in time to be published, but it made me sweat...

I wake up, and start to write the dream of the five-page deadline in a strange notebook with many yellow pages with ledgerish divisions. The header says "Hospitality Exchange"--my housemate Lily's nonprofit. It must be surplus. It's useless: every page is already covered in scrawls. No room for my dreams!

Then my friend Xanthe phones. I talk with her from bed, my head on a pillow, still half asleep. She tells me a dream about a Tarot card, a Page of Wands or Page of Cups. But my mind wandered. Was it someone called Page? Or a book page. Or BEING paged...

I come back into focus when she asks me a question. About a Tarot dream I had? But I don't know, I had at least two recent Tarot dreams. One was about making a movie; my old dance-classmate Page was a crew member, or maybe an actress. I was the director or producer...

Or was the actress that woman known as THE Page? As opposed to The Knight, also famous, but not in the film...

And then I wake again to find all this was still a dream.

So many different kinds of pages!

• Struggle to write dreams = yesterday my friend Stanley asked me "Why d'ya talk like dreamwork's hard? Writin' dreams can't take that long." Yeah, when they're his short simple dreams! When they're mine, they can.
• Make a film with someone named Page = literal! I had quite a crush on a dance classmate, Page. She just wanted to be friends. So instead of dating her, I ended up starring in a short dance film she shot. Shivered in thin leotards on a San Francisco roof at night; skyscrapers and fog. Freezing for love! Sigh... I hadn't thought about Page in a long time. Haven't seen her in what, two years?

NEXT NIGHT

I'm writing an important dream in my journal, but I have no clean pages, so I resume writing in an old journal only half-filled, a journal from 3 years ago. Find a couple more such loops in time-sequence. No problem NOW, but in a decade, when I've forgotten, they may cause problems... I should tear out the entries from different years and get my pages in chronological sequence!

NEXT MORNING

• A dream-journal with full pages repeats last night's theme. Maybe they're prompting me to examine a dream from last year when I typed them? Now I've reverted to longhand. Will that cause trouble later, do I NEED these dreams typed and readable?
• 3 years ago: reference to Page again? Met her in a dance class not long after I moved to the City three years ago.

THREE DAYS LATER

Stanley says our dream group's meeting at Cafe Paradiso, in the Haight near the Red Vic. I'm feeling sick--allergic to something I ate yesterday. So I drive rather than bike. No parking at all--the Haight is gridlocked. Finally have to hike in from half a mile off, wishing I hadn't promised to come. Enter Cafe Paradiso for the first time, and...

Page greets me! Haven't seen her in years. She looks beautiful, delicate. We talk a bit. Dropped out of college, but she's still in art classes, and she's about to become assistant manager here. I had such a crush on her, and it all floods back now.

She can't quite remember my name.

I see some of the dream group in the back. I go to sit with duty, leaving unrequited love to serve the front tables.

But a few minutes later, Page comes over. She says "I think there's a phone call for you!" Paged by Page in a cafe where I've never been! Weird. Even though Page can't recall my name, just from what the caller said, she knew it had to be for me...

I wish I hadn't come. But it seems I was fated to...

I sit brooding. Tarot pages, being paged, book pages, Page the film nut, all mixed together... after the dream of time-loops, time-displacement, I wasn't surprised to see her. Just my usual precognition!

But I didn't expect she'd hurt me like that--not even recalling my name! No, SHE didn't hurt me like that. I hung around her KNOWING she wanted friendship, not sex. And I was timid enough to settle for that, for a while. And Page? She was comfortable with my discomfort. I danced my heart out, slaving unpaid on her film, for love...

When someone wants ME, do I use that, like Page did? Someone like... my friends, who I can take or leave? Yeah. Not as blatantly, but I do it too.

I think it's time to be clear about who and what I want, and quit substituting and settling for less. Because by doing that, I'm cheating others, not just myself.

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