Dream a Little Dream with Dok

[M. Nigel Salt]

When Dok posts like this I get angry that I cannot express myself like him.

Yeah but you gotta be a little fucked in the head to flow like that, because you have to be IN it, and being in it is crazymaking.

[chimes]

That river, where I've stumbled upon Dok backstroking, birthday-suited, laughing all the way ... that river of shit, and of dreams, and of ghoststuff ...

it's all I can do to keep my lips above water and my wildly flailing limbs away from the bigger, nastier rocks. swimming? Ha.

Maybe I'll learn.

Props, Dok, for doing what you do.

[Pæs]

Sometimes you wake up and find that you live in the Denver airport.

No wait, that isn't quite right.

Sometimes you wake up and your lungs are collapsing and your head feels like a truck (a real one with a steel frame) and before you fully regain consciousness you're already angry even though you can't remember why.

And then you realize that you live in the Denver airport, and the fucking train is always going around and around like a Matterhorn ride, chiming its little tune at all the stops, and the horse... oh god. The horse.

Oh, man. Really rings a bell. I dream about that train, too. Even though I've never been to the Denver airport, I think it's the same train all the same.

This train of mine looks like a grand ol' steam engine like I used to ride when I was a kid, not because I was urgent to be anywhere but just because I enjoyed the ride and the reliable "chugga chugga, chugga chugga, chugga chugga" but it sounded like "everything is on track. everything is on track" and here's Choo Choo Charlie, shovelling candy into bright heat of the engine "chugga chugga, chugga chugga."

So you get on it, yeah, because you trust Charlie and he'd never let you down but this thing is only a steam engine on the outside. It's a molded plastic imitation around an electric cart and you feel like perhaps you're the victim of a joke because this wasn't how it felt when you were younger. There's a sickening sense of mockery, anyway, or maybe you're feeling sick because of the spicy yellow smoke the engine is belching out over the following cars so you make your way up to the engine to see Charlie and ask him why the train is broken but Charlie got older, like you did, and he hates to break it to you but he's always been accountable to The Company who say feeding candy to a train just isn't practical and we've got to make cuts somewhere and things are tough all over so he's shovelling something else into the furnace. They're old photographs. Even though the train is run by electricity. They're your old photographs of the places you went and the things you smiled about when you were younger and as the train consumes them you start to forget what it was like having that innocent love of everything and you should really be taking your seat. You can get up again when the train reaches your stop, if the train ever stops again.

Chugga chugga, chugga chugga, everything is on track.

[Doktor Howl]

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

YOU are delaying the departure of this train.

THE WHITE ZONE IS FOR LOADING AND UNLOADING ONLY

[Doktor Howl]

When Dok posts like this I get angry that I cannot express myself like him.

Trade ya.

[Doktor Howl]

That river, where I've stumbled upon Dok backstroking, birthday-suited, laughing all the way ... that river of shit, and of dreams, and of ghoststuff ...

it's all I can do to keep my lips above water and my wildly flailing limbs away from the bigger, nastier rocks. swimming? Ha.

Maybe I'll learn.

Props, Dok, for doing what you do.

You get used to the taste, after a while.

[M. Nigel Salt]

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

The doors are closing.

YOU are delaying the departure of this train.

THE WHITE ZONE IS FOR LOADING AND UNLOADING ONLY

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I’m having one of those times again.  Doubling the dose of my Lorazapam, to flog my brain into not dreaming, or at least not allowing me to remember whether or not I dream.  And while these times are fairly conducive to productive writing, they aren’t exactly a treat, if you know what I mean.  So here I sit with my bones melting, and the room a little…off at the corners.

It wasn’t like this, back in the day.  Things were better then, life was simpler.  There was not a mountain of stress on my shoulders, while people with skewed faces jam their heads in my office and screech gibberish about artificial deadlines and bellow their incomprehension concerning why it takes so long to troubleshoot a problem.

Fuck them.  They’re a bad dream, bad signal from an alternate universe where some stupid fucking Texan set the national tone for a decade, and all anyone can talk in is absolutes.  Not like our world, you and I, where people are reasonable most of the time, and people hardly ever get their arses kicked by the cops for no reason, or just disappear. 

Somehow, I’ve fallen into THIS future, though, and every night I am pursued by the sculpted horse from the legal district…and on his back is Benjamin Franklin, breathing fire and screaming indictments at me, while little dolls with their stomachs stitched together run alongside singing some Elton John Song.  I’m pretty sure it’s Burn Down the Mission.

I think Pushkin wrote a poem about this, once.  But it doesn’t really fit, because I haven’t lost a loved one, so maybe it’s just coincidence.  There’s a lot of coincidence floating around these days, here in America, where everything is beginning to look like Coney Island.  Rusted, cheap, dismal, and run down.  She’s an old whore, America, and no, she’s not the one with a heart of gold.  Her heart is more a giant pile of shit, cold shit with undigested bits of The Dream embedded in it.

Anyway, those clanging bronze hoof beats chase me every night, while Franklin screams out his questions and his indictments…”ARE YOU HAPPY, NOW?”, “WE RISKED OUR NECKS FOR THIS?”, “WHY DO YOU CRAWL?  ARE YOU A MAN?”, that sort of thing.  And I flee, not out of fear of the horse’s hooves, but to escape that old man’s never-ending condemnation of me and the nation I live in.

That nation IS Coney Island, you know…A rusted old joke that somehow still attracts people, long after it had anything worthwhile – or even fun – for them.  There’s a hundred year habit involved, and no matter how awful it is, people keep going… in the hopes that one day it will be shiny and bright and magical, like it used to be in some mythical time that never really happened except in the blurred minds of the very elderly.  So they wander the midway, trying to smile in the midst of the squalor.

Then the dream changes, and I’m up to my knees in snow, back in Newfoundland…Back in the 70s, the golden years of that unhappy province.  My dad is trying to get that piece of shit Volvo going, and I am  happy in the knowledge that by now he CAN’T get it going, and he’ll spend the day with me and my brother.

That having been established, we get on the city’s only bus, to go down to what passes for a museum.  On the way there, on the treacherous Barnes Hill, the driver takes his hands off the wheel, and turns to us.  My father sees nothing wrong with this, and says, “Hi, Ben!”.

Ben Franklin leers at me, and says “See?  You were born free.  You had a good childhood…An excellent one, in fact.  A first rate education, followed by experience in arms and shady stuff that every gentleman should experience…”

His face distorts, the mouth stretching impossibly wide.  “…SO WHY AREN’T YOU FREE?”, he roars, with breath like Dresden and Tokyo and Nagasaki.

My father laughs at the joke, as the bus careens out of control toward the harbor.  “We’re going to crash!” I scream.

“Damn right you are, you little shit.”, Ben laughs, “What the hell did you THINK was going to happen?  You honestly didn’t see this coming?  Are you a FOOL?”

And then the bus hits the water and begins to flood.  My dad won’t get us out…He keeps talking, instead, about how I must always be careful on Barnes Road, because it’s even dangerous when you walk down it in the wintertime, because it's icy and slippery and, "The trick, you see, the great trick, is to never lose your nerve."

And I wake up as I begin to drown in the frigid water, as the last air pocket fills up.  The last thing I hear is my father, who tells me this is all probably stress related.

Then I take another pill and go back to sleep, hoping that I’ll get 3 hours of half-ass sleep.

I am typically disappointed.

Okay for now,
Dok

Wow.  I wrote this?   

[M. Nigel Salt]

Oh, THAT was an interesting Autumn! 

[Pæs]

Oh, it's this thread.

 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

When Dok posts like this I get angry that I cannot express myself like him.

Yeah but you gotta be a little fucked in the head to flow like that, because you have to be IN it, and being in it is crazymaking.

I'd rather be inarticulate and more relaxed.

[stelz]

I’m having one of those times again.  Doubling the dose of my Lorazapam, to flog my brain into not dreaming, or at least not allowing me to remember whether or not I dream.  And while these times are fairly conducive to productive writing, they aren’t exactly a treat, if you know what I mean.  So here I sit with my bones melting, and the room a little…off at the corners.

It wasn’t like this, back in the day.  Things were better then, life was simpler.  There was not a mountain of stress on my shoulders, while people with skewed faces jam their heads in my office and screech gibberish about artificial deadlines and bellow their incomprehension concerning why it takes so long to troubleshoot a problem.

Fuck them.  They’re a bad dream, bad signal from an alternate universe where some stupid fucking Texan set the national tone for a decade, and all anyone can talk in is absolutes.  Not like our world, you and I, where people are reasonable most of the time, and people hardly ever get their arses kicked by the cops for no reason, or just disappear. 

Somehow, I’ve fallen into THIS future, though, and every night I am pursued by the sculpted horse from the legal district…and on his back is Benjamin Franklin, breathing fire and screaming indictments at me, while little dolls with their stomachs stitched together run alongside singing some Elton John Song.  I’m pretty sure it’s Burn Down the Mission.

I think Pushkin wrote a poem about this, once.  But it doesn’t really fit, because I haven’t lost a loved one, so maybe it’s just coincidence.  There’s a lot of coincidence floating around these days, here in America, where everything is beginning to look like Coney Island.  Rusted, cheap, dismal, and run down.  She’s an old whore, America, and no, she’s not the one with a heart of gold.  Her heart is more a giant pile of shit, cold shit with undigested bits of The Dream embedded in it.

Anyway, those clanging bronze hoof beats chase me every night, while Franklin screams out his questions and his indictments…”ARE YOU HAPPY, NOW?”, “WE RISKED OUR NECKS FOR THIS?”, “WHY DO YOU CRAWL?  ARE YOU A MAN?”, that sort of thing.  And I flee, not out of fear of the horse’s hooves, but to escape that old man’s never-ending condemnation of me and the nation I live in.

That nation IS Coney Island, you know…A rusted old joke that somehow still attracts people, long after it had anything worthwhile – or even fun – for them.  There’s a hundred year habit involved, and no matter how awful it is, people keep going… in the hopes that one day it will be shiny and bright and magical, like it used to be in some mythical time that never really happened except in the blurred minds of the very elderly.  So they wander the midway, trying to smile in the midst of the squalor.

Then the dream changes, and I’m up to my knees in snow, back in Newfoundland…Back in the 70s, the golden years of that unhappy province.  My dad is trying to get that piece of shit Volvo going, and I am  happy in the knowledge that by now he CAN’T get it going, and he’ll spend the day with me and my brother.

That having been established, we get on the city’s only bus, to go down to what passes for a museum.  On the way there, on the treacherous Barnes Hill, the driver takes his hands off the wheel, and turns to us.  My father sees nothing wrong with this, and says, “Hi, Ben!”.

Ben Franklin leers at me, and says “See?  You were born free.  You had a good childhood…An excellent one, in fact.  A first rate education, followed by experience in arms and shady stuff that every gentleman should experience…”

His face distorts, the mouth stretching impossibly wide.  “…SO WHY AREN’T YOU FREE?”, he roars, with breath like Dresden and Tokyo and Nagasaki.

My father laughs at the joke, as the bus careens out of control toward the harbor.  “We’re going to crash!” I scream.

“Damn right you are, you little shit.”, Ben laughs, “What the hell did you THINK was going to happen?  You honestly didn’t see this coming?  Are you a FOOL?”

And then the bus hits the water and begins to flood.  My dad won’t get us out…He keeps talking, instead, about how I must always be careful on Barnes Road, because it’s even dangerous when you walk down it in the wintertime, because it's icy and slippery and, "The trick, you see, the great trick, is to never lose your nerve."

And I wake up as I begin to drown in the frigid water, as the last air pocket fills up.  The last thing I hear is my father, who tells me this is all probably stress related.

Then I take another pill and go back to sleep, hoping that I’ll get 3 hours of half-ass sleep.

I am typically disappointed.

Okay for now,
Dok

Wow.  I wrote this?   

Writing like that all the time is probably lethal.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Please come to Denver with the snowfall
We'll move up into the mountains so far that we can't be found
And throw "I love you" echoes down the canyon
And then lie awake at night till they come back around
Please come to Denver
She said no, boy, would you come home to me

And she said, hey ramblin' boy, why don't you settle down
Denver ain't your kind of town
There ain't no gold and there ain't nobody like me
I'm the number one fan of the man from Tennessee

Or words to that effect.  I think.

Or words to this effect.

Please come to Tuscon for the winter
We'll move up into the mountains so far that we can't be found
And throw "I love you" echoes down the canyon
And then lie awake at night till they come back around
Please come to Tucson
She said no, boy, would you come home to me

And she said, hey ramblin' boy, why don't you settle down
Tucson ain't your kind of town
Jesus don't save and there ain't nobody like me
I'm the number one fan of the man from Gallilee.

Please come to Portland with the snowfall
We'll move out into the suburbs so far that we can't be found
And throw "I love you" echoes over the bridges
And then lie awake at night till they come back around
Please come to Portland
She said no, boy, would you come home to me

And she said, hey ramblin' boy, why don't you settle down
Portland ain't your kind of town
There ain't no love and there ain't nothing to see
I'm the number one fan of the man from Tennessee

Please come to Providence with the smog
We'll move up into Federal Hill so far that we can't be found
And throw "HEY, I'm WALKIN' HERE!" at the cars
And then run like hell if they come back around
Please come to Providence
She said no, boy, would you come home to me

And she said, hey ramblin' boy, why don't you settle down
Providence ain't your kind of town
There ain't real tans and there ain't nobody like me
I'm the number one fan of the man from Warwick, see?

[M. Nigel Salt]

Nice!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Nice!

Butchering country songs is getting to be a habit with me.