Surf the San Andreas

dreamed 2008/8/21 by Wayan.

1: the Gate of Trust
I wake predawn in a cabin near the beach. I slip outside, goaded by an urge behind my eyes, to find two looming gates. One is high-security: spider-eyed with cameras, and a laser tripwire: faint red thread in the clear dawn air. And the other? Silver driftwood framing empty sky. I step through there.	Americans! Right. A paranoid gate whose sister welcomes all-- twin portals to the midnight sea. But twin gates are our specialty here in dream. Their ancient names were truth and need, or horn and ivory. Now it seems they're fear and trust, or fear and truth (a hornier thing!), or just... simplicity.
2: The Ship of Brick and Beer
Mad mansions cling to San Francisco cliffs above the sea. "Sacrilege" says my eco-purist brain But a simpler me says "pretty! See the Kremlin shimmer!" Spiral golden onion domes and spires Gaudi'd admire. Next door, a great ship wades in surf, made of... brick? Mock-ups, big as beds! The mockbricks make Faux Freighter seem dilapidated dinghy. A cubist fifty-foot beerbottle hulks on deck, crowning the wreck 's delusions of rowboat nongrandeur. A sign pontificates "This installation references universal human experience: the Morning After the Wild Drunk Party." Postmodern liars! I didn't go, allergic to human food and drunken fun. Did you? Man, that is one clunky Titanic-- and they won such a hunky grant for it! Is all my esthetic response "What a waste"? Nope--I'm grinning too, in selfish hope, for if they fund this Postmodern piss, they might fund even me, a Prearchaic.	A second stranded blocky ship--this time not of bricks, but great soft packs of toilet-tissue rolls as big as BART. Mordant modern art! Subtle, subtle, subtle as a fart. My confidence is on a roll! For a town that helps such clowns fulfill visions banal will help me too. All I need do is to the great hog-trough apply. They have, it seems, an infinite supply. Mid cliff-cottages we stroll, my girl and I, in sun of noon. I break my waterbottle on a step. Warily sweep shards, glass ow! And then out bursts a song: "How noble I am, protecting all the bare- foot tourists with flowers in their hair, who visit our graceful Kremlin Shore, the Ship of Toiletpaper, and the Ship of Brick and Beer." My song's a lie. Postmerdean art Draws no one! We're alone out here.
3: Fault-Surfer
My car wades in Crystal Springs spang on the San Andreas Fault. The road is flooded, nearly a foot; The car awash, and slow. Storm blew, lake grew; momently grows clearer. Oaks root yards out, grope from silver mirror. Odd. Traces of an older road stitch an asphalt high-tide mark. It wriggles round the reservoir, bounding a strip of bare red shore. Branching bleached debris makes clear that high water often laps that far. The oaks say flood. The stones say drought. The car swans on, through the middle of the riddle.	The lake is both low and abrim! Fault-tilt proof. Pacific Rim. An old man glides across the silver eye on a silent surfboard. No wave, no sail, no motorboat to pull. He's just a man of skill-- rides slow earth-shift or is it his own sheer will? Bare feet grip the board; he angles in, until he slips above the rippleroad itself. He trails us, bearded, mirrored, mute. Shadows of his toes flit across the drowning road-- our shifting, faulty world.