2003-04-24 - 11:05 a.m.: sulfur

i had another crazyass dream last night. i wake up to some npr drone going through the details of a horrific event: a bomb went off in a b-ball locker room killing 27 NBA all-star players. michael jordan is missing in action, and some authorities believe he may have ties to al qaida. watch out, he's on the loose. so i get dressed, walk outside and who's there but michael jordan in the flesh, trying to blend in. (not easy.) he looks so nice and so scared that i offer to hide him. gratefully accepts. we go to my grandmother's house for dinner. everything's wonderful, friendly, my brothers are there 'cause they wanna be like mike, my uncle's there (a huge fan from birth) and we talk about the old chicago bulls. then mj takes out a pocket knife and carves his initials into the table. everyone stops talking. my grandmother looks like she's going to have a heart attack. mj smiles and keeps eating. i stick my finger in the wound and brush away the wood-dust. sure enough, it's real. my brother (who is now 20 but was 8 in the dream) gets really excited. "cool! grandma, michael jordan just autographed your table!" she smiles weakly, gets up and walks away. my uncle, then, gets really excited and crawls under the table to point out another gouged "mj" made years earlier, when mj visited for the make-a-wish program (never happened). i ask if this is a common occurrence... he says "yeah, i carve my name in everything i touch. almost." wow. so of course i start examining my surroundings more closely, throughout the rest of the dream, and notice that in almost every reachable surface there are "m.j.s" of various dimensions�some light scratches, some deep and thick. i begin to worry that he'll carve his initials in my arm. this stresses me out.

after dinner we go to italy. i don't know why. we're walking around in milan (?), when suddenly we hear a screech. we look to our right and notice that a train (yes, a train) is rounding the streetcorner a little too quickly and is in danger of losing control. everyone is looking, holding their breaths and waiting for disaster. it comes... the caboose gets caught on a fire hydrant, stretching the cables in such a way that they spring back like rubberbands when the hydrant finally gives (sending a fountain of water into the air, which children immediately flock toward to dance in), launching the caboose like a pebble from a slingshot into the building across the street. the driver of the caboose (yeah... it's a dream) looks uninjured, but a man is being pulled from the building with most of his skin scraped off. it's charles atlas. he was bowling. a woman reporter rushes up to him to ask if he's okay. he smiles and flexes a visible muscle (a gruesome sight with flesh hanging down) and says he's never felt better. to prove it, he grabs his bowling ball and holds it high over his head and sets it on the nape of his neck. it stays there. the gawkers cheer. the ambulance leaves.

next thing i know, we're standing at the top of a cliff, looking down at an idyllic cove with tiny boats and children on rocks at play. i think it was sorrento. mj now has one of those twirly moustaches and a white bowler's cap. he's lost his paranoia. i haven't. turns out all these boats and all this land and water are owned by him. he hands me a fishing pole and asks if i want to have some fun. i say "no thanks, i'll just watch." so he starts fishing for people. he catches a hook on one of the little white boats bobbing in the cove. it appears to be empty. he reels it in, bouncing against the side of the cliff, then drags it a few feet back and gestures for me to get in. "why?" "well.. i thought you might like to take a boat ride." "i think it would be better if we launched the boat from the BOTTOM of the cliff." "alright, if you say so." so we take an elevator down to the bottom of the cliff. there is a sulfur pool (hot spring) right next to the entrance, with a mother, father and child enjoying a graceful picnic at its side. we decide to rest with them for a moment. i recall a book that i read (for real) in yellowstone about "yellowstone deaths," the most gruesome of which involved people purposely or inadvertently winding up in these beautiful hot springs and boiling to death. apparently the heat of some springs is intense enough to melt bone. ouch. so i warn the child not to get too close to the pool, because it was hard to tell how hot it was just from looking at it, and they're so inviting that it's hard to resist finding out. of course the first thing he does is ask how i know that. i tell him a few stories. he's enthralled. the mother's pissed off. the dad decides that the best thing to do is to find out for sure how hot it is. so he jumps in. nothing happens. the mother screams at me for scaring them. we leave.

i think the dream ends, at this point. i'm not sure.

p.s. if you've read this far... WOW. i'm sorry. i honestly don't mean to bore you with these bizarre imaginings, but i figure if a dream is weird enough to remember, i might as well write it down.

ciao.

inward...outward