February 11, 2002

Time travel. Apparently for the purpose of retrieving a Lego set. In the mall I would stop and ask people the year. Tables in the toy store were stacked high with the latest trendy annoy-toy, the plastic head of a wizened old black grandmother who would slooowly nod affirmation. The streets were familiar to me from other dreams, a tangle of Old-World dips and lows, viaducts and cobblestone boulevards in the heart of a major American city. I was sexually propositioned by Cirque de Soleil buskers in greasepaint as I asked them the year. Found myself in an auditorium full of 9-11 conspiracy theorists, businessmen in suits packed cheek-by-jowl with beardos in suspenders. Watched a possibly doctored film of New York cops stabbing homeless men to death to inflate the body count. Auschwitz figures toppling backward in too-perfect sprays of blood. At home my mother, dressed as a doctor, confronted me with the photo of a profoundly deformed baby, conceived in zero gravity, mouth askew, dual-pupiled eyes, a conjoined twin tucked beside it like a dolly. What if it happened to hers? she screamed. I told her the risk on an airplane flight was negligible, and if she was so worried, to not go by air. I offered to bring more information up on the computer, but was left alone to confront lurid yellow walls of a slum apartment.