May 28, 2013

Redemptive dream before morning. I was returning to graduate school at Johns Hopkins. My first stay there was the first prolonged disaster of my real life, and in the dream I was morose, frightened, lonely, despairing. Ii didn’t know why I was even bothering.  had a file of all my former friends there, but I didn’t know how to contact any of them. I did score an excellent apartment, high on a hill in a row of fine houses. Dream Baltimore, now that I think of it, was like a gigantic Florence, with bridges covered with buildings spanning a great river. My spirits began to lift. I opened a file I had with the poems I’d started there and never finished, and saw that they were good, and I could finish them with little effort. They were also illustrated, in my notebooks, with Impressionist paintings. I began to make calls, and had unusual luck getting the things and people I wanted. Near the end, my best friend from that time (a dream friend not remembered from real life, but he resembled Russell) appeared, and I was embracing him as the dream faded. It was as though my dream consciousness meant to reach back and redeem my biography.

Slow Memorial Day. I watered the Roberts Street garden, painted well if briefly. Spent too much of the evening watching preposterous monster shows (Sharkoctopus, Megagator vs Dinocroc, etc) on TV. Rose from sleep twice with savage and unaccountable diarrhea.