Night of 17th July 2010

I'm reversing the car in the grassy car-park (identical to the one at Bodiam, which I visited in waking life, earlier in the day). I'm not the best at reversing, especially with a turn, as here, so am amazed I pull it off without hitting another's parked vehicle. My car's turning circle shouldn't be so tight, shouldn't allow me to get out in one—but I do. It's not through my skill, I feel overwhelmed and not in control, basically winging it. The car has miraculously made it possible.

Outside the rectangular room, Barack Obama is jubilant. This is his moment of taking office, the first time an African-American has done this in history. I'm right next to him, slightly in front, and unwittingly step into the room first. I instantly realize my faux-par, an especially big one considering it wasn't only his first step in that I ruined, but the first step in of its kind ever in history that I ruined. I quickly turn to Obama, and see he is still joyous and exchanging euphoria with the applauding entourage of staff—he's so joyous, he is crying. Unaware that I'd stepped in the room before he could.

Next I see his wife Michelle at the door. There is a sense that her daughter has just graduated from university, and she is proud and joyous too. Also tearful. I lean over and cup her right cheek with my right hand, and kiss her left cheek.

I wake.

Recent Fragments...

[No complete narratives remain in waking memory the last few days; however, here are some images and passages that have survived into consciousness.]

- The Rocky Ascent

I'm climbing an increasingly steep, rocky hill/mountain face—like a crag. The crag seems to be mediterranean or near-eastern. Somehow religious. I'm not sure how I know this, but the light, the rocks themselves, and the sprigs of green bushes growing in the rocks introduce them as such.

I make this climb daily, or repeatedly. As I'm nearly all the way up, this sense of repetition hits me—I've done this before. Along with the repetition, a sense of danger also kicks in. I have no ropes or harnesses to save me if I fall (make a mistake, lose grip); and this pressure makes the climb suddenly more difficult. My grip feels less assured, bits of twig and branch I cling onto seem less safe, I feel the ground, far below, sucking me in. But I'm nearly there.

I muddle through the last few feet. There is a midriff height steel barrier at the top of the crag, I know it will be easy to get over that, so the main point is getting as far as it. I see a young sapling or shoot growing out of the rock and go to grip it. Older branches can be brittle and weak, and I'm sure the young shoot will be rubbery, tough, and supple—though hard to grip, slippy and small. I grab it and some other purchase points too, it's a ragged ascent: bits of rock and branch break away, but I'd managed to get hold of something else before they went; foot holds slip, and hand holds are precarious—but I muddle through, and up to the top.

Vaulting over the metal barrier, I'm standing around the corner from the house I grew up in. The spot where I stand was a bridge over a canal/waterway, also the apex of a hill. There were (are) old victorian mansions all around, and great old trees.

- Stevie Wonder: I Just Called/The Weather...

Two nights on the run, this theme has somehow worked itself in to the dreams (which themselves, I can't recall). I'm searching for an emotive Stevie Wonder song - the lyrics, and Stevie's voice, are all important, and that's why I'm looking it up - and am sure it begins "The Weather" or "The red sky..." I'm sifting through an i-Tunes style list of music for it. The tune is playing in my mind as a song called "The Weather" or "The Red Sky," but I can't find it; yet the melody is so famous it frustrates me that I can't put my finger on it. Sooner or later I realize it's the tune of "I Just Called to Say I Love You" and the opening lyric I'm thinking of is "No...., No...." etc. But this, too, doesn't seem right. It was the tune of "I Just Called..." and something about a red sky or sunset—something weather related.

Night of 8th July 2010

It's a big night out. Mr. Nozawa's treat (the Director of the company I used to work for). As always, our party is large and we file into a restaurant that seems to have been reserved for us. Though we are jocular, there's a special tension in the air—it's not because we've never been to this restaurant before, it's because tonight we'll see underground martial arts fighting.

There are many Yakuza about, and we're careful not to antagonize them. Following the rules carefully. The fighters parade in. As they do, the high-strung tension releases into some kind of excited expectation, people begin to lighten up and look forward to the show ahead.

The fights are underway and we are eating as we watch. Mr. Nozawa and the rest are behind me, and being the outermost member of the group I'm still careful to watch my manners around the dangerous criminal types who populate the restaurant.

A headlining fighter's fight has come up; but it's announced that he isn't available and won't fight. There's a sense that someone from the audience has to fill in for him. I shrink in my seat hoping it won't be me that gets picked. I get picked, and find myself suited up for fighting, waiting in the line, and trying to put a capable face on it. Ahead of me two Japanese men, enforcer types with short legs and powerful 'upside down triangle' upper bodies, are grappling away in their bout. They are actually quite mild with each other, and the win isn't secured by crunching violence, dead meat slaps of foot bones into faces, ashen white shock and crimson blood; no, they are both on their feet, and the whole thing was more like a judo match. It was won quite non-violently. I'm heartened.

It's the next bout, not mine, and I sense the most important, or awaited. I've been awaiting it too, to see one of the fighters—an enigma.

He's carried in on a wooden board, doubled up and unconscious. It's made known that he was suffering a terrible cold or virus, and was in no shape to fight, but has come out anyway. I sense it wasn't entirely his decision to come out (he's unconscious). But he is still impressive, awesome. There's an aura about him. It could be that he's still only a high-school student but fights in these bloody martial arts matches; or the corollary that he must be crazy. At any rate, I'm, we' re all, filled with awe. A collective gasp runs through the audience as he is stretchered in.

I marvel at his body, curled up into a fetal ball, and the huge tattoo on his back. It's a yakuza style tattoo - some kind of Japanese folk character drawn in traditional style - but what grabs my attention is that eyes of the demon or man depicted are shut or empty. No colouring in the eyes—they are just flesh colour (the colour of the fighter's yellow skin, I suppose he's Japanese). Like looking at an unfinished tattoo, where outlines are not yet filled in. Anyway, I sense that his unconscious condition and the empty/closed eyes on his back are connected—that the eyes in the tattoo are the source of his power. When they are on, he is on. Unbeatable.

I never see his face, but his hair is dyed bright white/blonde. All in all, a very wild character.

The fighting tournament is finished and I'm outside in the night, with an old co-worker Hirose (a real co-worker from my old work, and not only that, a once good friend, we no longer keep in touch. He was fired by my old Boss). I'm glad to see him again.

I sense we are in Japan, perhaps Tokyo, and though I'd lived there for a decade, I feel like a visitor or inductee (in waking life I've moved back to the U.K., and intend to stay). We're outside the restaurant, and the rest of the group know where to go next (the next clandestine activity of the night), but I don't. I'm not included. It's either because of my rank; or I have just not understood, but either way, I have no idea, and am left behind. As is Hirose.

We dance about the subject for a while, but eventually I offer him a lift in my car. I have the car and can drive, he knows the roads and can guide me. He's been waiting for this offer, and accepts.

We make our way to the car park where my car is. I notice it parked up, and it is exactly the same car that I own in waking life, hence I recognized it perhaps. This being Japan, I'm not exactly sure what to do, and follow Hirose's lead for getting the car. As we're approaching I look to my right, trying to pick out which of the tracks leading out of the car park is the exit. I go past one track, is that?, no, there's another track with an arrow pointing out along it—that's the exit. I plot the simple line I'm going to cruise around to it and out as my eyes track back to the car.

Now I know where the exit is and what I'm doing, all that remains is to get into the car. But we can't just walk up and get in. I follow Hirose, and it seems we're separated from the car in some way and need to get through a door to get to the car's side.

We're outside a door lit in the blue/green tungsten light I remember well from older Japanese apartment complexes. The door is dirty and dusty, like a fire-escape or utility entrance. We're cramped up close to the door and behind us/over us is a concrete incline—just like a flight of stairs were above us, and we were stood underneath it. I'm behind Hirose; Hirose is in front of the door. It needs a key, and Hirose has to turn around and reach past me to pick up some kind of communal key that was attached to the incline behind/over us. I feel like I'm in the way. Hirose pulls the key out, but it does not detach; rather it stays connected to its holder, but telescopes out on flat metal panes. Hirose gets the key in the door and opens it.

I wake.

Night of 7th July 2010

It feels like the village I grew up in, though the scenery is all different. There is though the same sense of middle-class and upper middle-class about the place. We're all in high school.

The house I grew up in is somehow not mine anymore (indeed, it has been sold on in waking life), and is currently undergoing updating, renovation, remodeling.

There's some kind of party, in my house I think, and I'm running through it—I'm the "it" person because of my fashionable dress. I've managed to wear the things that everyone else wanted but couldn't get their hands on. I got mine in a department store style setting; but I shoplifted all the items. It was more cheeky luck than premeditated theft: I'd been trying on items, and found the store deserted upon emerging from the changing rooms. I stole away from the shop without the black owner ever noticing. The shirt, the item most people at the party are impressed by, still has a price tag on it. It has pronounced tails, and is patterned with large diamond shapes. The colouring is gaudy, like some awful hip-hop fashion brand. Getting to my house, I see some new gleaming shutters or thin corrugated panels on the side of the house—like blinds twisted shut. The appendage is huge, covering a good sized portion of the leading wall. It's purple or green: garish, and set on an incline. I run up the incline and skate back down it on the soles of my sneakers.

A girl, perhaps a girlfriend, is with me inside the party, in my room. She's also impressed with my clothes. More people crowd around and are ogling the clothes on my back; perhaps reaching out and grabbing them. I begin to run again (not in fear, it's like kiss-chase almost).

I'm at the canal, and jump in—I sense this my training. I'm unfit and running and swimming are part of my regimen to get fit and prepared for the upcoming event (I don't know what it is). I'm a bit wheezy (I smoke in waking life), and am not quite up to par. No one is chasing me anymore, but the girl is still there. However she is not as smitten as before. I think I go back to the house once more, and now it is certainly not mine anymore.

It's university. I'm staying in a bedsit, a dive of a place—it's practically a squat. There's no sign of my housemates, the Spanish (my real housemates in waking life when I was a student), and I sense there hasn't been for some time. Though there are still signs of them having been there.

A rented video is in the main room, a small room, and it needs to be returned.

I'm getting ready to make a trip to the outside. The outside is more run-down than the squat; I sense it's a mildly dangerous place and it's generally better to avoid going unless you have to. There is rubble outside, it's like a bomb-site or post-war landscape.

Diego, my best Spanish friend, has come in through a window. I'm overjoyed to see him, but he acts like a stranger. I'm trying to make conversation but he barely acknowledges. Almost as soon as he's come in, he's out again. I too go out.

I'm walking past some rubble that I sense is my (our) university. There are some high chain-link fences; behind them I see students in rag-tag clothing standing about. There is some kind of musical performance or concert about to start/starting. I look again, and see an androgynous black person singing. Perhaps this person is the group.

I wake.

Night of 3rd July 2010

Nana and I are staying in a small hotel room. We must be on holiday. We have 4 children; the youngest of which is still a baby.

I'm in the shallow rectangular pool with the baby, it can't be our first born (who is a baby now in waking life) yet I refer to her as such. I'm holding her in my arms and trying to enjoy the pool with her; but, being a clumsy person, am quite stressed that I have to take responsibility for the baby in the pool (I know I'll make a mistake, so why me?). And I make a mistake.

I fall over to my left, and gravity stops me from being able to stop myself falling on the baby. My entire body weight is falling upon the baby. Its left leg is squeezed off at the knee by the impact. I'm horrified.

I quickly pick up the tiny amputated leg, it's still warm; and I sprint with the baby, and the leg, in my arms. I'm yelling at the hotel reception for an ambulance.

I wake

Night of 25th June 2010

It's like a Japanese TV gala event. The stars are all wearing garish, kitsch kimonos and glitzy dinner suits. We approach the event from outside, I notice three girls walking ahead of us. None of them are sexy; they look bandy and malnourished. As with Japanese TV now, most of the stars are comedians. I sense the girls in front were a trio.

It's still early and we weren't fashionably late. The gala is barely populated, and the desperate few who have already arrived wait about looking for something to cling to onto, to assuage the shame of being there before anyone else. As we walk in, I'm relieved to see a safe pair of hands, someone I can latch onto who has better than the rest (here) cool credentials. He appears to me as a handsome Japanese man, but at the same time as Simon Day, and I infer that he, too, is one member of a trio—"Neptunes," an off-kilter mainstream Japanese comedy act (once off-kilter, now thoroughly mainstream).

He's wearing a pink kimono set-up, very like New Year's dress, but pink rather than conservative black and grey. Though I know him, and he (appears to) knows me, I sense we are passing acquaintances, who only knew each other by name. Perhaps this is the first time we've actually met. Simon is waxing lyrical about some daifuku (Japanese sweets) that he's wolfing down in the waiting area. He says they are the best because they are old-school daifuku, traditional, not like the over-sweetened shit people love nowadays. The daifuku are also pink. He's very proud of the daifuku, and continues that they are the real thing, and he got them from Sainsbury's.

Simon is with his wife, who is not very attractive. There is another comedian with his wife, who is much more attractive, though colder, and I suspect some unspoken bond between the other wife and Simon. It's only a suspicion.

Though no drink has been obvious, Simon is getting drunk. The show is still a way from starting and we make our way about the place, looking for Simon's comedic partners. We're outside, away from the gala building, but not far, and I see what looks like a concrete tower block and a regular, if dingy, looking street. Simon heads off toward it, seeming to think that his friends, or someone he knows is there. I stay put, but am aware of Simon's progress by overhearing his loud words, and catching the occasional glimpse of him between parked cars, etc.

Simon hasn't found his partners, but has found someone he knows—and is very happy about it. He's happier because at last he's come across someone he actually knows rather than just passing acquaintances (me) or other showbiz cronies that have to be pandered to. He is very drunk so this relief/happiness is barely concealed—I hear him bellowing how great it is to see you, and God all those fucking people, etc. He's getting ever more animated and excited and that's when it happens.

Simon fell off the tower block.

The person he was with screams/shouts and at this instant I know something is seriously wrong (I didn't see the fall). Simon hits the ground. The person in the tower block jumps down after him; but their jump is controlled, they land on their feet. I rush toward the crash site.

Simon is still far away, but there are two people over him. He's staring past them into space—the sense is, he's on his way out. The closer I get, the more his two friends retreat. I'm quite shocked by this; it's like they want to palm him off on someone and wash their hands.

I get over Simon, there is a blanket over him, he's losing consciousness. The back of his head is smashed. I don't see the wound, but the back of his head is soggy, and blood is pooling under it. The others have fled. I'm not going to leave him.

I hold Simon's hand and put the thought of his wife and friends firmly in my head—almost as though just thinking of them would be the same as shouting for them, or calling the emergency services.

It seems to have worked. Simon's wife approaches from the darkness of the street with a few people in tow. She is less than distraught, takes an analytic look from distance and leaves Simon. I stay there, holding his hand, trying to keep him conscious, though he is no longer. Next the other wife skips in, she is distraught. Yes, Simon must have been having an affair with her—my suspicions were correct, the truth of them is revealed. But she too, only comes within a few steps of the smashed up Simon. She runs away. I can't believe no-one is stepping in to help me keep Simon going; just to comfort him in his last moments. But no, nothing.

I sense Simon has gone. His body is heavy and limp; his eyes closed; his chest lifeless. I roll him over slightly, a result of trying to rouse him. I see the wound: the back of his head is completely gone; a mess of pink tissue and yellow brain pokes out the wide open crevice in the back of his skull. Bits of head scattered about like chunks of watermelon dot the vicinity.

I wake.

Night of 13th June 2010

It begins with skateboarding. In the village where I grew up, at the curved stretch of pavement between the baker's and the florist bordered on both sides by water - the dam on one side, running water down below on the other - I see myself taking runs, from the florist toward the baker, at a stone bench (in real life there were two wooden benches at this spot that I really used to skate when I was a kid; the stone block is a real stone block that I skated as an adult in Tokyo). I'm not that good initially, I gave up skating over 4 years ago, I'm rusty; someone asks me why I've picked it up again. I say, faux heroically, sometimes you don't want to skate, then sometimes you watch an old H-street video...

At this point the image switches and I watch Phil Anselmo, the lead singer of Pantera, as a professional skater in an old 90s style skate video—in the footage, he is skating the exact same spot in the village. He is doing manuals on the stone bench and kick flipping out. As Phil was in his prime, he is physically powerful, wiry, and his skating reflects this—it's snappy, full-blooded, dynamic. But limited (these tricks are now normal).

I glance at the bench, it's still the same grey granite color and has the same uneven sides with a glassy marbled top (the top was great for skating); but there are three lines, columns, rows of bench now—one attached to the next, each higher than the previous, arranged like steps (though in some views it seems one step is barely any higher than the previous). The bench has stretched too, it's no longer the length of the Tokyo bench (enough room for two or three), it stretches almost the length of the florist's to the baker's.

I'm going back to set up for a run at the bench. I'm past the florist's, and my ex-colleague Matsuo (from waking life) is with me. He was an architecture graduate (but never practiced and wasn't particularly savvy) and I begin to complain about the architectural style of the bench to him. I complain about its tacky modern minimalism - like corporate building design - its ugly on economic purpose; and look about for a comparison. I see the store (what used to be Somerfield in the village) and it has huge windows like the palace at Versailles (not a feature of the real store). The windows aren't genuine works of art like the palace at Versailles, but modern imitations/interpretations—something the first modernists in the 20s or 30s might have done. Looking again they look like imitations of the imitations—I see the detail in the semi-circular tops of the window are just painted on the glass instead of being real lead or metal work. But still, at least an effort at some pretense of art has been made and I point it out to nodding Matsuo; Look at that, you see the difference, it's Neo-, Neo-?, Neo-Deco. Matsuo seems to understand what I'm driving at.

I'm making another run at the bench, but this time it isn't clear that it's me—I see the image in third person, and don't feel as connected as before. Me/the skater is exceptionally good, very very good—I/they can do anything. I carve a bench long back-smith, backside flip out, then begin doing a series of PJ Lad style flat tricks. Ollies are popping very high, and right at the end, by the baker's, I nollie a cone.

I'm thinking about how to email some wine. I see the wine in a cylindrical container and know this is the sample from the bottle; I want to send this. But can't quite figure out how to email it (the physical wine). I try an email and the wine is attached as a series of jpegs, perhaps 6, but I'm convinced something is not right. It troubles me.

It's the sequel to Twin Peaks, Anthony Hopkins stars as the special agent (perhaps Dale Cooper). This sequel is certainly a DTV thing, and the whole idea of a sequel and being DTV leaves me skeptical of the quality and sure it'll be a joke. But it's earnestly good in the way some DTV and sympathetic sequels or spin-offs can be.

I can't be sure of the order of events, but the following took place in the show:

1) Laura Palmer last moments sequence in animation. It was perhaps more like a bargain basement rotoscoping effect, but I saw this whole section as though it were a computer animation. Laura was slightly different - but recognizably Laura - her look seemed tuned for the Japanese audience—she looked like women do in Anime.

It must be the moments leading to her death, she is coming on to someone (falsely, it's just her job as a prostitute) and I see her framed, bust up, in a purple dress talking in a smokey voice. The words are lost on me in waking, but I'm sure she was taunting. Then she was bragging—that she'd had sex 15 times in one session, from one man (whether this was the killer, I can't recall).

She is then having sex, she's on the bottom, and I see the killer for the first time, from Laura's perspective below. Again, it's like an Anime shot, very stylized; the killer is a blond male with a strong jaw line and distant, mad blue eyes. His hair is short. He grins madly and cuts Laura on the left cheek. It may have just been with his sharp finger nail.

2) Dale Cooper in the car park. Dale meets up with the civil servant he knew from the first Twin Peaks (no such character in original real series). The civil servant is dirty and Dale knew it, perhaps Dale had found him out and sent him down in the conclusion to the first Twin Peaks. So now, Dale can trust him in a way—he knows what he is, and that he's been marked by it. The civil servant may in fact be the mayor.

He is pleading with Dale to get in his car and go with him somewhere: trust me, trust me, etc. Though Dale is untrusting, he eventually relents and agrees to drive to where the mayor wants him to go. They walk to Dale's car, get in, and at this moment two henchmen types get in Dale's car. The mayor steals out. It must have been revenge!

The mayor walks over to his large executive sedan, an american car, and gets in the driver's side. He starts the engine and slowly drives out of the car park.

3) Dale in his colleague's bedroom. Dale (Hopkins) is with his old Police buddy continuing the search. His old friend thinks it's a pointless, or damaging/dangerous, case and is trying to convince Dale there's nothing in it. But Dale is driven by something his buddy can't understand. Dale continues trying to crack the case.

He is carefully cutting some flowers and leaves from green ground. The flowers and leaves are tiny, and Dale is being very careful using specialist sowing clippers. The clippings are evidence and this is the reason Dale is taking them.

Suddenly, the meadow from which Dale was extracting little flowers and leaves is his buddy's bedroom duvet. His aged buddy and his buddy's wife are in bed, and Dale is on it, in their bedroom. Dale is still clipping the four leaved clover away from its stem very carefully, while the couple look on from the head of the bed. I'm impressed at the four leaved clover. The wife is initially cross that Dale is here doing work; but Dale charms her as he always has in his wounded single male way. She falls for it, as she always has, in her caring passive lover/mother way.

I see the wife's old grey face, her eyebrows in particular—they are very thin and have been trimmed/manicured. It's slightly alarming, but not sinister or scary. The woman's features, too, are thin—bird like or almost ratty, but dignified. Perhaps a little witch-like.

4) Dale in his apartment. My denim folder from my old work is half stuck through Dale's letterbox (from the inside), there's something above it, maybe an A4 yellow legal pad, also clamped in the jaws of the letterbox. Not clamped in the letterbox, but rested on the platform the denim folder and legal pad make, is a small object—perhaps a black case, like a ring case or cigarette case.

Dale's friend is with him in his apartment. He's again remonstrating with Dale. Dale hasn't noticed the black case, he walks past it several times. His buddy, however, does. He takes it, trying to pass it to Dale.

The wine is still playing on my mind. I see a sequence of 90s music and images. The last of which is three Sony televisions on a chrome stand with black plastic bits on it in the middle of a red desert. The tvs are arranged in vertical, spiraling order—like a DNA helix. The main chrome support is a straight bar, vertical but angled. Off it, short storks come out which hold a tv - the stork into the side of the tv - and the tvs are not directly above one another but staggered about the main bar. I see the arrangement, as though it were a shot in a 90s tv ad, from below: the lowest (nearest) tv is huge and the furthest tiny—there must be some kind of fish-eye or special perspective lens on the camera. It's very dramatic and self-important (c.f., it's an ad) at any rate.

I wake.