LaUltima

Dream 2/14
I was on 4th ave changing clothes in this little alcove, getting ready to go out for a night. I had a new pair of shorts and when I put them on I was disappointed to see that there was a larger spot of grease (I thought it was brake fluid) on one leg already. When I took them off I realized it was a boil on my thigh that had popped and drained its pus. I messed with it but it seemed to be all drained. Friends were impatiently awaiting me somewhere I knew, but I decided that getting drunk didn’t sound too great, so I decided to leave, (this area was the Arcosanti commune like I noticed).

And so I walked into the night, and trudged up this dirty road with half finished construction of downtown Tucson on all sides. I was looking for a place to park, even though I was on foot, and as I started walking towards a good spot I noticed a sign wired to a chain-link that said “parking $5” and a guy approaching me ready to collect so I spun on my heal like Bo-Jangles and walked off. Then I realized I was close to my old shop, and when I came to a new shop whose property line and fence blocked off the road, I climbed over it. Inside was a woman who’d come the other direction in her Prius, realized she was blocked, and decided to turn around. I felt that I could just pick up the road again once I crossed the property. It was a Caterpillar construction repair place, and the owner was still there even late at night, although it was now more like evening. I talked to him and a guy that reminded me of Carrot Top I listened to the owner describe the coming economic collapse set to occur “Monday” when the stock market re-opened. He used the term “pregnant market” to describe various problems. He went on to talk about how he was ready to weather any storm out here on the outskirts of Tucson. The red-head guy left to his small property nearby, and I said goodbye and that I was going to keep walking.

The sky was dark with thunderheads and as I walked past the last buildings into the sonorant desert, there was a flash of lightning. It also might have been my imagination flashing and illuminating this mountainside for what I remembered it as before the drought. It was steep, ascending up away from me into the clouds, and covered in pockets of green, (desert palm trees like in the Kofa Mountains).Then the reality returned and there was little green. But I could see a family of contemporary African foragers quickly running along a path skirting the side of the mountain. I walked quickly up and intersected them, and said hello to the parents but I made them nervous and so they just nodded and walked faster. I ended up in the back with their three kids, 10yrs or younger, all boys I think. The wind blew hard and it was difficult to keep my footing on the tiny deer paths in the grass that we followed. The youngest boy tripped and spilled his basket of raspberries everywhere, and they scrambled to collect them as the parents hurried on. I didn’t know what language to speak so hoping they’d know English or Spanish I yelled “Here! Here! Aqui! Aqui!” pointing to a huge berry them missed. The middle boy replied in his language which I didn’t understand but I took him to say “you can have it”.
We were now running through Cyprus trees that were thrashing in the wind, and the boy was having trouble getting up these huge wooden steps dug into the mountain going straight up. The steps were old and sticking up so they made you trip sometimes, and I took a minute to lever one up with a stick, and take out the obstruction that kept it from sitting flat. It was a thick book of childrens stories, one I used to have as a kid that was blue with a burgundy box around the gold lettered title (don’t remember what it was). I kept the book and showed the boy the best stride to take to move faster, and we ran on with no one else in sight. Soon we did get to his house, a hobbit house built into the mountain, and his mom who reminded me of a Kenyan friends mom greeted me and thanked me for helping her son (in English), and her husband was there lighting candles. Their house was huge and made of wood, with tree trunks hewn into rough rectangular pillars holding up the ceiling beams. George showed me to his library and was surprised that I had found the book, because he found copies of the same one up there all the time on the mountain, and collected them. The mother talked to me of their preparation for a resource war and how she was training her boys in martial arts.

Then the dream shifted and I was talking to my dad as I watched my relatives frolicking in their fields. And he was talking about his mom and how his side of the family tended to have excellent relationship skills, that they were such “superb halves of a relationship bubble, that when they found another half, they were set”.