Saturday, October 25, 2003
DREAM: Unfriendly Dogs and Art Story
I was in an old house that was converted into a store or restaurant or something. I was walking around and there were these two large dogs that seemed friendly, but when I passed by them they started menacing me, like trying to bite my legs. The only way I was able to avoid them was to support myself from a high windowsill and cling to the wall. Then later I was outside and I was in charge of one of the dogs, but it did not want to respond to me too well and wanted to go its own direction. When I tried to pull it my direction, it would resist against its leash so that the leash was almost pulling off it it, and growl at me. Then there was someone who was talking to me and telling me a story about a friend of hers. She started with the background of how when artists sign their autographs to give out to people, they never sign them on pictures of their paintings (something to do with them landing in the hands of forgers? or someting?) but instead sign their names on postage stamps or various random items. I thought this odd, but I told her that I don't actually sign my names to my paintings (just the back of the painting) because a signature would ruin the integrity of the aesthetics of the object. She told me "good for you!" and continued with her story. Evidentially, she had an artist friend who after hearing the same story from this woman, started dressing differently, almost as if she was in disguise. It turned out that this woman had been forging other people's art from photographs for a long time, and when she realized the teller of the story was on to this practice, she was trying to pretend she was someone else. What a very strange story.
Posted by Ann on 10/25/03@08:32 AM CST ..::Link::..
Friday, October 24, 2003
Trip Log
10.8.03 Manitou Springs, Colorado
DREAM 10.7.03 Lincoln, Nebraska
Something to do with the Pink Floyd song Astronomy Domine, but I forgot what.
----
Blow your nose on the motel bible...I can't find the kleenexes. I have Colorado nose...it's all dry. Draught. Yesterday was pretty mundane except for the end leaving Omaha...bad accident going the other direction on I-80 had us at a snail's pace, oncoming traffic blocked for miles. Unfortunate, the small reddish orange car didn't make it, smashed compressed the entire front into the rear of a semi. I've never seen an accident sobad.
My fingers are all chapped, hangnails peeling. I have Colorado nails. We pulled off I-80 to get some gas in a small town in Nebraska called Odessa, but it was too scary to stop. We drove on down Highway 30 which paralleled the interstate, and decided to take that route for the rest of the trip instead of the interstate. This 'scenic route' was wonderfully frightening and was a perfect synch for Dark Side of the Moon. By the time we got to Colorado, Highway 138 paralleled I-76, but it was even more scary than Nebraska's Highway 30. Signs like 'Can you tell if the house next door is a meth lab?' were the focal points for these small towns. But even scarier than Highway 138 was a local road 71 and Highway 24. We're talking meth lab country. We added those two words to any and all signage we saw in the barren high plains landscape...'Prairie Dog Saloon' became 'Prairie Dog Meth Lab.' 'Darrell's Garage' became 'Darrell's Meth Lab.' Well, it was funny when we were doing it, anyway.
We ate Subway sandwiches in a little park across our Super 8 motel in Manitou Springs tonight. Right under the shadow of Pikes Peak as the sun set pink. There isn't glitter in the ceiling's spackling, but there could be. I have good memories of glittering ceilings, but they don't use that effect anymore. Those were very comforting ceilings for a young girl when nothing else in her life was comforting.
10.16.03 Montrose, Colorado
I have been so lax on recording anything. I haven't been able to remember my dreams very well, but it's to be expected being in different environments and all, not to mention, I just don't have time to record them even if I did. I can't use my computer in the car because the sunlight bleaches out the screen. So there. I'll just have to live with two weeks of absent dream life.
Let's see...what have I been doing?
10.9.03: Left Manitou Springs and headed toward the Royal Gorge, but found out it was outrageously expensive just to walk out onto the gorge for a few minutes, plus we didn't want to spend the whole day there because we had dogs and such. We headed for Salida where Stan has never seen the grave where his father was burried in 1997. After finding some incredibly weak coffee, we headed to a greenhouse that Stan remembered visiting when he was a kid. He found a cactus variety that he used to have as a kid, but had died a long time ago. So he got it. And I got a very strange little cactus/succulent. It's the strangest thing...I've never seen anything like it before. I'll take a picture if I remember. We asked directions at the greenhouse to the cemetary...woman looked at us weird. I would include a strange scene from The Ann and Stan movie here, but it's just a little too personal...I'll let Stan do the honors if he so desires. So we're driving around Salida trying to find this cemetary. After having to go back to town to get directions from the visitor's center, again, woman looks at Stan--man in black--weird as he says 'I'll take this map...it shows where the cemetary is.' We eventually find the cemetary, and it hits me. This is a scene right out of 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.' You find the cemetary, but where's the grave? There's hundreds of them! Where do you start? How will you ever find the grave before sundown? What a futile task. We drove down one of the dirt roads, I looked out the window, and exclaimed: 'Oh, here it is.' I found the grave. Just like that. I am someone who couldn't find the creamer that was right in front of my face for the incredibly weak coffee we got just an hour or so before. I am someone who constantly can't see things that people point out to me on the road. But I found the grave. I don't understand it myself, really.
After Salida, we headed toward Montrose. On the way, Stan saw a weird site in the middle of the Currecanti (sp?) reservoir...in the water. I was dozing off.
'Ann, you've got to see this.'
'Huh? What is it, a flying meth lab?'
'Yes.'
Well, it wasn't a flying meth lab, but it sure looked like it was floating.Yes, I realize it's probably a boat dock/bar purposely placed in the middle of the water for recreationalist's pleasure, but it looked like a tacky shack that was floating away. Most odd.
10.10.03: I succummed (sp?) to shopping at a WalMart in Montrose. Don't ask.
Bill, who we usually see when we go to the Front Range, was in Grand Junction that night with some family business, so we were able to meet him downtown and had a dinner with him at a very inexpensive Mexican restaurant. We arranged to meet him at Fourth and Main in downtown Junction. He would be on foot, waiting for us. Symptoms of my lack of sleep for the first part of the trip manifested when I was talking to Bill on the cellphone and asked him 'What will you be wearing?' Like I don't know what Bill looks like. LIke I haven't known him since 1985. Like I need to know what he will be wearing so I can spot Bill in a crowd. The irony is that he was wearing plaid. Not many people understand my plaid thing...just Stan and Bill.
10.11.03: Didn't do much...just took drives around Montrose and caught up on rest.
10.12.03: Met up with Stan's cousins, Dave and Suzy, in a small town called Redstone. Not much there, kind of touristy, but there were these strange coke ovens along the side of the highway from another century. I jokingly called them petrified meth labs. Visited their daughter and her boyfriend in a secluded area between Redstone and Glenwood Springs. They're living in a house built in the trees back in the early 70s. It has indoor plumbing and electricity and everything. It's been standing for 30 years. Quite impressive, but I don't think I could do it myself. Maybe when I was much younger...
Went with Dave on a tour of the Glenwood Caves. Our tour guide was a dork, and some people on the tour smelled really bad, but other than that, it was enjoyable.
10.13.03: Drove over the Grand Mesa on our way back to Montrose.
Different kinds of meth labs we've seen on our trips:
Petrified Meth Labs
Prehistoric Methlabs
Meth Labs on the National Register of Historic Meth Labs
Little Meth Lab on the Prairie
Mobile Meth Labs
Port-a-Meth Labs
McMeth Labs
Floating Meth Labs
Meth Mansions (few and far between)
Ranger Rick's Forest Meth Lab Headquarters
Could you tell if the house next door was a Meth Lab?
Word for the day: 'Detourist:' A tourist who is waylayed by road construction.
10.14.03: Went to see the Colorado National Monument outside of Grand Junction. Quite impressed by it. This was the first time I've been there, unless I was there when I was a teenager but blocked it out because my dad was being...my dad. I had no idea what it was...I was under the impression it was just some stupid man-made monument, but no. It's all natural rock formations, like a proto-Arches. And it's large, too.
10.15.03: Went to Arches (in Utah). Stan and I were there back in 1988, but for some reason I don't remember it that much because I was sick that day, not sure why. Drove by the motel with the evil owner in Moab, I'm sure under new management by now. Moab sure has grown in 15 years. Glad I got to see Arches again on a day when I wasn't sick. On the way back, we took a Scenic byway that goes on the southeast side of Arches. It's this red sandstone canyon. The entire canyon is red. No other rock colors, just red. It's impressive to see as a tourist, but it could drive one crazy. I couldn't imagine living in that canyon and seeing nothing but red and the green scrub brush that grows on it. It would be like living on Mars...or in hell. I prefer the subtle colors of the rest of the southwest, buff, peach, gold, greenish-bluish-greyish rock and sage, pink, cream, purple. But red and only red, no thanks. Surely it would drive one to madness.
10.18.03 DREAM Montrose, Colorado
I was travelling in the mountains, possibly with Stan. We were somewhere on I-70 east of Grand Junction. Someone was saying something about it snowing 'black snow.' The snow outside did look rather dirty, but it was more grey, light brown colored, but not black. We had a hard time turning around on I-70 to go back because there was no where to turn off, but somehow I managed. It was as if I wasn't in a car, but sort of levitating over the highway. We stopped in some store along the way, and they had a bunch of exotic birds there. There were parakeets that were just a rainbow of colors...they looked more like those craft felt and feather birds than real live birds. They were also smaller and slenderer than a real parakeet, and their eyes were big, back and bulgy. I had a baby with me, but I don't know if it was a human baby or Lucifer Sam. I was holding him in my arms and there were some men, young 20s, who told me they wanted to see me nurse the baby. Regardless of whether it was a dog or a human baby, I was nonetheless not its biological mother and could not nurse it.These guys were obviously perverts, and it freaked me out. I looked out the window of the store and saw some more men coming in, headed by General Custer. I don't know what General Custer really looked like, but this guy had small round wire frame glasses, light blondish-grey hair and a moustache and goatee. For some reason, I knew it was General Custer. Stan was with me now and we try whistling some Civil War era tune, but it was really lame. I guess the General and his men went into the store to get some supplies. Whatever. Weird I should dream about General Custer...I mean, why?
10.19.03 DREAM Montrose, Colorado
stan's mom's inn
guy with leonish paintings
Stan and I were on vacation and looking for a place to stay. Stan's mom (not the mom we're staying with now) had an inn (which she does in real life) but there were no private rooms....it was just one huge room like a cafeteria filled with beds. So we took a bed. Then his mom was asking me a bunch of questions like that I didn't know how to answer, questions that implied that I had said something about her to someone else, comparing her to some fictional character or something. I didn't know what she was talking about.
Stan and I were in the art studios at CSU and I noticed someone's paintings that looked like mine that I had done over 20 years ago.One of them looked a lot like Leon and in the manner I would paint him with the dark eyes. I asked around to find out who the student was that did the paintings. It was some young guy who didn't look at all like he was capable of painting, let alone painting subjects in that style. He was blond, short haired, glasses...very average looking in sort of a nerdy, conservative way. He seemed very reserved in the way he responded to my questions. I asked him what sort of reaction he got from his professors, and he said that they really liked his paintings. I said, 'Oh, REALLY!?!' and became rather miffed that Yust and Diettemann would respond so favorably (not that they're not long retired now) to HIS paintings where they were rather baffled by mine 20 years ago. I was getting a bit riled up, but Stan was persuading me to leave because he didn't want me to get involved in a political war.
10.20.03 DREAM Montrose, Colorado
Stan, Bill and I were at my parent's house and Plato escaped out the door. I remember seeing Stan and Bill chasing him around the house trying to catch him, but they never did. I took a walk around the block to look for him, and found him in a school parking lot that would've been somewhere around Stover and Pitkin, but that's just residential houses there IRL. I call to him and he comes to me and I am able to grab him and take him with me. There is another dog with him, a small tan-colored terrier with curly hair. Plato had made friends with this dog....they were getting along really well. But somehow I found myself inside this school which was probably a middle school. It was as if I had some mission there, but I don't know what...I was just trying to get my dog. The school was weird, it was outside in the mountains, and there was a fence painted deep magenta, which somehow represented my presence. There was another fence there that was painted purple, but that had been from a previous 'visitor.' The teacher was a young, wimpy, ineffectual man. He was probably in his late 20s but he seemed younger. He was average height, light very short hair, rectangular glasses. He was like Van Driesen from Beavis and Butthead, but without the longhair hippie quality. Just very 'experiential' learning as opposed to real basic learning. I had no idea how kids would learn anything from this outdoor experience. Then it seemed that Plato escaped again, this time outside. It was just a nonstop series of trying to get Plato back.
10.21.03 DREAM Montrose, Colorado
Very weird dream. I forgot the sequence of events in order, but here's a try: I was with Stan and my friend Dale from Fort Collins. We had to use the bathroom, and we were in this rustic place where the toilets were like those outhouses with several holes in a row where people sat down together. I don't think Stan was sitting down on a hole, but Dale and I were. There were a bunch of other people in the room too; it was like an old time grocery store or gift shop. I really didn't think anything of shitting in front of a bunch of other people, but then I realized that I was the only one shitting--Dale didn't even have his pants down. This worried me as I suspected he was sick or something that he couldn't shit. Then I think it was Stan and Dale, or maybe some other guys...our friend Bill, maybe? put on these Deer costumes. It was surreal...these deer heads with antlers that fit over their head and shoulders so the deer looked like it was standing up. Very weird. But it cracked me up. As I was cracking up, Dale gave me a baggie of marijuana, but it looked more like dried organic matter like pinecones and oakleaves. I put it in my jacket pocket and realized I had another baggie of some other stuff which looked like dried morel mushrooms. I was wondering when and where I was going to smoke this stuff, and didn't want to get caught with such a large amount on me. I was thinking that Stan and I could smoke it in one of the rooms in the basement, but the basement I was thinking of was the one on Grant Street back in Fort Collins that we lived in in the '80s. Then it was like I was actually transported back into the 80s and was at a concert at the Rainbow. But instead of the stage being like a traditional stage, it was like in the center of the audience, like a theatre in the round. The performers (and I have no idea who they were were performing under this blue light and one of them seemed to 'beam up' like it was on a spaceship or something, and when the regular theatre lights, the performer was not there. Then it was like the present, and I was in one of the restrooms at the CSU art building (which would make it the past actually, but it's just a dream, right?) and I was looking in a mirror, and suddenly a man appeared in the mirror (this wasn't my reflection, but it was more like I was watching this on TV or something, and, get this, the man looked like a cross between Bill and Roger Waters (this Roger hybrid thing is getting out of hand...first it was a man who looked like Stan crossed with Roger, now it's a man who looked like Bill crossed with Roger....needless to say, they're were both quite attractive to me!!!). As he appeared in the mirror, he realized he had been beamed into the future (I guess he was the person in the concert who disappeared). Very strange dream.
10.22.03 DREAM Ogalalla, Nebraska
OK, I just can't seem to understand the surrealness or sequences in these dreams anymore. Something about being in a geographically strange place with a bunch of women, two of whom were friends from high school. There was Elvis music (ew) in the background which they seemed to like, and I asked them if they were Elvis men or Beatles men, quoting one of the cut scenes from Pulp Fiction. They didn't understand what I meant, so I explained it to them the way the movie scene did, that essentially people are either into Beatles or Elvis. I told them that I was a 'Beatles man' and although I like other things better than the Beatles now, that The Beatles were the basis of it all. I think they admitted they were on the side of Elvis. Then there was this woman who I didn't know...she was dark complected, either white with dark skin or biracial, with darkhair, and she was holding me down and trying to put various earrings and jewelry on me. She was using force and it was pissing me off, so I started hitting and kicking her, which she took offense to, as if she could use force against me but I couldn't against her. Then someone told me that something was ready for me, which meant I had to leave the place and go home. Some tall man hugged me and told me contratulations because I had to leave. Like I said, I don't understand what any of this meant. As I was leaving this geographically strange place, there was a woman who asked me if she sat on this rock with this strange life form on it (it looked like a starfish or something) if she would crush the animal. I saw her sit on it, but there was enough room that she didn't crush it. It was wriggling around underneath her, and there were these guys watching it and making weird comments about it being some sort of strange lesbian starfish. Whatever. These dreams are making so little sense.
10.23.03 DREAM Lincoln, Nebraska
Stan and I were in the Colorado mountains, I think sitting outside watching people go by. We may have been with some of his relatives, but I can't remember. In the distance, I saw a hippie-ish guy with long red hair (that would be a woman's envy) wearing leggings that were like a beast's legs, like he had an outfit made of a skinned deer or something. But what was weird is that it wasn't just leggings, it also included the torso of the deer, so he had these short stubby legs on his side, so it appeared that he had three pairs of limbs. It's as if he didn't know whether he wanted to be a satyr or a sagittarius-type creature. It was most disturbing...he also had an extended furry beast-like codpiece. Stan and I were cracking up over it in the dream, and I think we brought it to the attention of the people we were with, but they chose not to take a look.