dreamed last night i had gotten tattoos everywhere. text, pictures. they were around my trunk, my thigh. all black, delicate lines. it didn't hurt.
probably memories of the acupuncture treatment from yesterday evening. the needles didn't hurt, but you felt them going in. pressure, a prick, and then an awareness that they were there. my back feeling like a map with an invisible message, the whole surface activated and sensitive. like fred sandback's yarn pieces that create invisible walls and planes by delineating their edges. you feel a strange resistance when you walk through the empty space between them.
the night before i had another bee dream. in the building where we were staying (memories of the mansion in rhode island where i spent last weekend) there was an enormous hive growing on the roof. the storm knocked it over. i went out to look at the empty husk, but the homeless angry bees were still guarding it. they swarmed me. i ran back inside, all stung up.

last night i dreamed i was in london again. first i was in this big reenactment, like a giant diorama thing. it was like treasure island/peter pan/the jungle book. and i was climbing around in trees or sloshing through knee-deep water to try and escape. there were men in animal costumes, fake-looking ones made of shag carpet or twine or something, but they'd forgotten that they were acting. three gorillas rowing a dingy grabbed at me. a friend helped me to safety. i was upin one of the trees and i saw that someone had taken a penknife and carved little geometric decorations into the bark and the branches and leaves were folded up like origami.
later...
i was reunited with an old lover. we were delighted to see each other. we went to see sharyn, who was directing a dance rehearsal for 40 5-year-olds, also in animal costumes. my father started a loud monologue on etymology, interrupting the rehearsal. i shushed him, but then an identical father struck up the conversation with him again. the lover and i got in a car and went for a drive. we were surrounded by carnival rides. i wanted to go up in the great ferris wheel, but a storm was swirling all around. you couldn't see anything. i keeping spinning and seeing the clouds descend and descend. it was frightening. there was a little model of london on a stand. i saw what the problem was: the part where we were standing was covered in sea foam. i leaned down and blew it off.

whoa. if we established one thing in our house discussion on i am a strange loop last night, it was that book club is run on beer. we must've had four or five apiece.
so last night i had another work nightmare. i showed up on opening day with a book in which i was stupidly engrossed, probably one of those george r.r. martin fantasy novels i've been borrowing from sam. anyway, i felt that things were under control, so i could read my book for a bit. when i looked up again i realized none of my staff knew they had to come in, because openings are held on sundays and they're all used to working on saturdays. and the registers had been set up in the wrong place, but the public was already coming in so it was too late to change them. so i set the intern at one of the registers while i went into the computer to start calling people and begging them to come in and work at the last minute. at that time, i realized a few things: i don't have the contact information for the people who have worked for me most recently entered into the computer, i can't find the document on the computer anyway, and the beer guys never came in to hook up the bars. time kept changing in a weird way, as well. i looked at the clock and it was 8, the day nearly over. then i looked and it was 3 again.
whew! que disastre! my brain is flipping out because the last saturday event is this week and after that i won't have constant stress to live off of.

i was visiting a building out in the countryside that i recognized as a frank lloyd wright house (though not one that exists outside of the dream world. i think i more closely resembled one of nyu's buildings down by washington square park). it was a vertical building, almost a tower, and stuffed with antique furniture. somewhere inside a man walked up to me and told me he was going out to the hedge maze in the garden and he'd meet me back in the lobby. since he seemed in a hurry and i was not, i said fine and decided i'd wait until he returned to tell him i wasn't the person he thought he'd recognized. he was fatherly, and for the time it was nice to imagine i belonged with him.

not one of my more interesting dreams. just my brain working through the imagery of pan's labyrinth, fortunately without all the blood and fear.

an aside
i had a dream a few nights ago that was very vivid. i was sitting on my bed (my real bed, lofted four feet or so above the ground) knitting something, and my friend that runs the bookstore showed up next to me, curious about what i was doing. i told him: knitting, and he sat next to me, put his arm around my shoulders, and leaned in to watch.
i suppose the movement can be mesmerising, as a friend mentioned ages ago. if you're stoned, i suppose so.
it's early, and already i've gotten my roommate into one of our "i love you, man," sessions. one of my needs seems to be someone worrying about me in her offtime. she's tough on me enough of the time that i don't feel guilty about it. now i have an underling and i get to start worrying about whether she'd be better at my job than me. when i'm put in this situation the answer is always a resounding yes. will i rise?

last night:
someone handing me a bowl of cereal. i'm starving.

i hear something fall off the edge of the cabinet. i reach down between it and the wall and pull out the necklace sharyn had made for me. i'm relieved to find it undamaged.

some science-fiction fantasy adventure. i'm running from place to place trying to complete some task. a group, a small society of people inhabiting a closed, mazelike environment. we're raggedly and heroic, but the place is new and high-tech, smooth plastic walls. i'm just joining them and they're wary of me, or i've been with them for a long time and have lost my memories. i beg them to tell me about myself: what i've done, who my parents are. there's no time, and they don't quite trust me.
i'm trying to move inconspicuously through a group of seated people. as i step, one of them slips his hand up my skirt. startled and irritated, i move on. my lover is watching from the other end of the room, but he can't say anything for fear of calling attention to whatever it is i'm trying to do.

when i do wake, there's warm sunlight coming in through the window. my head is still full of pictures and feelings from the dream. i glimpse him dressed already, seated by the computer and reading a newspaper. when i wake again he's gone.