Sorting and Packing

If I make it through this I may be able to post actual created work again.  Imagine that.


Looking at air fare to New York.  One way ticket, don't think I could ever come back.  Portland is my home, and this house.  Born in Vallejo, first four years there, but this is my home.  Can't afford it here.  At least one person in my family I never want to see again, too.  Trying to buy some time before I have to go.  May have as little as a month left.  Hopefully more.  Wanted to see Dana again in person.

Hoping to go to Franklin again on Sunday, see if the dedication plaque is up yet.  Try to get a  photo to post.  'Buy-a-Brick" campaign.  Dana's name is on it, and Lori Hamilton's.  I found my Franklin Class of 1984 sweater with all the names on it.  Still have the Kellogg yearbooks.  Dracula poster signed by everyone.

My high school timeline gets muddy in memory now.  When did I draw Kristina Burley?  I think I was already falling for Dana, though I'd been deeply in love with Kris since 5th grade (Mr. Sherrel's homeroom, the portable out back of the  school).  A lot of people knew I was drawing Kristina, but it was only Dana who intuited that I chose Kris because I felt something for her.   I remember her asking me, "You like her, don't you?"  "Yeah.  I do."  "No, I mean...you like her."  "...yeah."

I also think it was around then I was overhearing the girls in another class talking about how Dana was impressing them in The Music Man rehearsals, and I felt a mix of...I'm not sure what exactly, except that I was proud for her.   Or maybe it was a little later I drew Kris, when I had taken a part in The Time of Your Life, if for some reason I had similarly won a spot on Dana's radar.

Kristina still appears in my dreams from time to time, but then she would as she was the first I ever fell in love with and so she became part of the dream-vocabulary of my subconscious.  I was over her a long time ago but the fondness and warm memories are there.  She's a kind of avatar for those feelings.  Sometimes she appears as a proxy.  I dreamt of her a few months ago...as the dream was fading out, she asked me how I was doing.  She didn't look much like Kris anymore by that point in the dream, though.  She was looking a lot like Dana. 

There was a woman who looked a bit like Kris at the Franklin re-opening.  Her eyes, especially.  Kris had the face of an angel.

I recall one time in February '88 that Lori Hamilton was going to come see me to talk to me about her disappearance and her time in L.A.   I had been severely depressed, suicidal.  Hadn't seen Lori for some three years.  An hour or so before she was meant to arrive I was standing at street's edge to cross for the mail.  In my peripheral awareness a car was passing, driving too slow to be regular traffic, but then sped up as it came abreast of me... and I'd have sworn the woman driving was looking at me - and looked like Lori.  But it was only a fleeting impression.  And I still wonder whether she saw me standing there and got spooked.  Maybe it wasn't her at all.  Anyway, she never showed up that day or after.  She didn't call to say she'd try again.

I saw Lori just once more after that time she did or didn't drive past.  Bobby Jackson's band Blind Push was playing a gig at a bar and he invited me.  Lori was there.  She was happy to see me, and she knew I was happy to see her...but I gave her the space to walk over and talk to me.  She didn't.   That was the last I ever saw or heard from her.  I loved her too, I fell pretty hard.  I'd still like to have her in my life again as a friend, and I wonder what it would be like to spend an afternoon talking with her.  She was a spiritual nomad, I wonder where her life has taken her.

******************
(Dream, morning, October 26th)  I'm in  a public diner or cafeteria, sitting at the center of one side of a long table which is filling as the members of a specific group arrive.  Our table is in the corner of the place, so we are surrounded on two sides by glass walls.  It's daylight, in an urban or suburban setting, business district, all concrete paving.  The group has already been in existence for a short time without me, has met several times, but some of them are longtime friends and they have always considered me a member of the group from the beginning even in my absence.   Someone new arrives, invited to join.  He is very neat, dapper,  with dark short wavy/curly hair, very much a business type, and when he sits he begins a dialog with me.  He's bright, outgoing, cheerful.  I can't recall any of the conversation.  He sits at the end of the table to my left, either on the opposite side or literally at the table's end.  We shake hands, he gives his name which I don't catch, and I offer mine.  He says "Name?" as if I've confused him.  I say, "Well, you can use anything you want, really."  By this I mean he can apply my name to whatever he likes, but realize he might hear that as he  can call me anything.

There is a shift in time, more have arrived and the table is just about full.  I have moved to the right end of the table to make room.  A sign in front of me on the table indicates that the group is launching a podcast.  The new guy at the left end is saying something (I no longer remember) about his nature being malleable, that he changes.  He then goes outside, and I watch him through the windows as he begins to dance in ways that seems out of character.  He seems to enjoy his dancing.  No one but me is paying any attention, but I point him out to a female friend sitting at my immediate left and say that I think this guy is going to be really interesting - as long as he's not turning into someone hostile.

The guy comes back in and looks completely different.  He's shorter, younger, rounder of face, hair is longer and straight, now more red than brown.  His clothing has changed, very Mediaeval peasant, loose-fitting (suggestive of a very artsy stereotype).  He sits directly opposite me at the far right end of the table and his demeanor is markedly hostile - though like before he devotes his attention solely to me, like I present a problem he needs to understand.  Again, too much of the conversation is lost, but he challenges me with remarks and I try to address them openly and in a non-combative way.  I tell him that when he  said his nature is fluid I believed him.  He says to me that mine is not, both a statement and a question.  I reply, "Probably".  He's not sure if he's right, and I'm not sure what the question refers to - what specifically he needs to know.  Then his demeanor changes. He's been defiant, but I see this now as defensive, as he willfully drops his guard and asks if he can ask a question.  Now he looks uncertain and vulnerable.  He asks me, "Could I get your heart wrong?"  Dream ends there.

I'm sure I heard "Could I get", not the more sensible "Did I get".  Maybe 'could I have gotten'?  Any number of things point to this person being Dana, the most tangible being the hair.  Still, didn't get a sense of her presence while dreaming so it's probably an extrapolation from inside my own imagination. I wish I could recall the rest of what was said, it might have been important. 

Did she get my heart wrong?  Only she knows.  She's never told me what it is she sees in my heart - malice, love, compassion, weakness, I don't know.  It doesn't look like she's ever going to tell me. That too makes it hurt worse: I lost her and I will never even really know why.  Will she get my heart wrong?

As coincidences go I keep getting nods to one of the other reconciliation dreams, including motifs of dancing, rooms lit in red, and a piano. That dream of long ago has been very much on my mind, so I'm very sensitive to any iteration of those elements.  If they appear, I'm going to spot them and magnify them in my awareness. That leads to hope, which is killing me.  Dana's rebreaking my heart all over again.

I've been getting the feeling Dana hasn't even been looking at her FB account at all, never even saw my replies.  I think the dream of the woman on the ocean liner* re-enforced a notion that Dana had to get away.  Immediately prior to this dream I had a dreamlet flash of a PM someone sent (not necessarily to me) which consisted of three words, the only clear one being HOME.  Emphasized, was seeing it in all caps.  I think another was 'again'.  Suggestion was 'arrived home again'.  Wondered if home meant California or Portland.

*In personal notes, not posted.