THAT DAY

Our band, the Krelkins, is in Snoring Dog Studio for the first time in 3 months. So slow! Illnesses. Ross drums I Wanna Be and Dawn's Dream. Only get the drum tracks solid. But better than no progress!

My bandmates Mike & Nic are distraught. Their car was stolen--AGAIN--this time with Nic's purse in it, with rent money inside. Money orders, so they may be cancelable. But worrisome.

As we load the van to leave, exhausted, a sudden hard rain drenches us. Drag out wet tails home.

THAT EVENING

I FINALLY finish transcribing my dream-journal for 1983--Incredibly rich material, full of psychic and shamanic dreams, but slow work--scrawly, full of abbreviations and Chinese. Now I have just EIGHT MORE YEARS of indecipherable scribbles like the page at left to go through. So slow! Daunting.

But then, so was our studio work. We still did it. "Perseverance furthers."

THAT NIGHT

I'm in southern San Francisco, in a scruffy post-industrial stretch near Bayshore Freeway. Small factories, now repurposed. Cheap little tract homes--built cheap, anyway, and under a million--cheap for here and now. Few trees, no parks. The streets are mostly empty.

It does have bright murals by the freeway onramp, some Modernist some Impressionist, of smokestacks as Greek columns--nice visual pun. Framed by the columns, painted sailboats on the Bay. I think these murals are city-funded, trying to encourage homebuyers & investment... and so far, by the look of it, mostly failing.

But I live here now, in a square wooden house on a corner. A semi-wasteland, yeah, but that made my new huge, light studio affordable.

I just moved in. Still a lot of set-up to do.

Climb the stairs to my studio in the northwest corner. The windows and my bed frame and the frame of the house itself are linked--and flimsy. Loosen one, loosen them all. Find a broken screw-in hook too. Needs replacing. And the slats of my bed wobble! Unsafe.

The windows are still grimy too. I clean the insides, while my housemate Pinkie, on a long ladder, cleans the outsides.

Now wait, my housemate is... Pinky Pie? That ditzy pink party animal from My Little Pony? What's she doing in our universe?

And how does she cling to that ladder with just hooves? (Answer: recklessly.)

Now a mutual friend peers in to see how we're doing. She's Rarity, an artist who's the polar opposite of cheerful careless Pinky. I know she won't actually help us clean up; too fastidious. She's a fashionista unicorn with a purple mane and tail but a white coat showing every spot and stain. No dustrags and ladders for her!

But Rarity leans her head close in to murmur some some advice low enough so Pinkie can't overhear through the glass. "The space has lovely potential, darling, but... just get the west side done today. Don't do the windows around the corner on the north side. They need cleaning dreadfully I know, but Pinkie can't safely reach around the corner, and she'll try. She needs to climb down, move the ladder, and climb back up. Don't tempt her to stretch and fall!"

Rarity loathes dirt and ugliness--so when she warns me to leave some dirt for tomorrow, to pace this cleanup...

...I better listen.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Studio in the northwest corner of a house in southern San Francisco: Snoring Dog Studio!
• Prep work: the tedious, repetitious, fussy work of studio recording--so different from playing live, for fun.
• Wash windows: Mine are grubby. But the dream windows felt symbolic, like Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception"--the senses.
• Loose slat: one holding up my bed really IS loose...
• ACTION 1: Wash my windows, fix my bedframe! Gotta hook up the proper gear to record music--or to do anything right--including live right. I've neglected basics!
• Pinkie Pie: I just read a My Little Pony comic by Jeremy Whitley. Princess Luna, beautiful, smart, but shy and stiff, asks Pinkie Pie to teach her comedy. But Luna holds back. "You don't understand. You're just a clown. I'm a princess, I have responsibilities." Pinkie retorts "You don't want to be funny. That means making others happy, and you don't value happiness. You just want to beat your sister." Luna has to admit that's true, and unbends. Onstage, she pulls off a practical joke mocking her own pretensions. Starting to unstiffen!
• So the fact that Pinkie's helping me renovate is encouraging. I'm not a party animal; but Pinkie's also intuitive/psychic and insanely energetic, so she may mean ESP or stamina. In my life those are linked. Follow my urges and I have energy. Don't, and I get tired and sick!
• Does the dream warn I'm like Luna? Do I want friends and love truly for themselves, or are they, for me, partly symbolic, signs I'm okay?
• ACTION 2: Wash my windows spiritually, too... as Pinky demands of Luna. Cleanse my Windows of Perception!
• Why does the dream have Rarity drop by, not Princess Luna? Rarity's...
  1. Fussy, but sexy, smart & a talented artist. I think she means art itself! Art turns me on, challenges me, AND is my counselor--makes me look deeper.
  2. A successful businessmare. So she may mean the planning and pacing that big, multi-year art projects like the World Dream Bank and Planetocopia taught me. I used those skills to win a solar grant for our home, then turned to investing and made a lot. The stereotype's false--art skills DO apply to science & business.
• ACTION 3: Clean my Windows of Perception, but don't let Pinkie recklessly overstretch. Clear my vision one pain pane at a time.

Thanks, Pinkie. Nice one.

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