Excerpts from the ongoing Dream Journal. . .

There is a black screen, like at a cinema. White letters appear across it in white script. The words say "Life is a Series of Ephemeral Sagas."

I am in a strange mood, walking across fields of growing vegetables right in the middle of urban Portland. There are farmers out there spraying the vegetables. There is a strange spider that keeps morphing its shape. I walk into an art store and loook at an interactive 3-D pottery/sculpture book. I am moving into a huge apartment with many rooms, hardwood floors and georgeous arched doorways. An old roommate of mine I haven't seen in over 10 years is living there, but on her floor there is some strange liquid gel. There are four or five other roommates. They have lots of dogs and I curl up in a chair with two huge dogs.

A friend of mine gives birth to a cat. "I didn't even know you were pregant!" I exclaim. "I know," she says. "I didn't think I should be so thin. But he's perfectly healthy!" The cat is a little yellow kitten named Tyler.

There is a war in Maine. I am walking around the West End near my old apartment on Pine Street and all these people are lined up to board a plane to Athens, Greece.

I am cleaning out my apartment and I find a strange little mechanical toy on wheels that has a female figure on it. I am going to give it away but the figure comes to life and starts gesturing and performing, as if it doesn't want me to give it away.

There is a conveyer belt filled with and the local restaurant owner is under a lot of stress trying to pick the best fish for the restaurant. I have pomegranates and flowers and a huge doll. I find the keys I am looking for. I have Jacob (the dog) and the doll and the other stuff is in this huge sack and I am happy because I am going to drive far away in a van. There are ships down at the waterfront and there is an older man, the father of a co-worker from my office, drinking beer at a bar. He spends the whole time at the bar and doesn't realize what a great job his son has done on a project.

I and an acquaintance are a couple and there is a huge party for us on a very strange revolving boat. One part of the boat even has water that splashes over part of the deck as it revolves in big circles. After the party I am helping to tear down the decorations. There were tons of people and there are tables of food and leftover debris. Some people are gathering these beautiful clothes that were part of some display and I feverishly gather them up and plan to share them with a woman I know.

I have just moved into a new house. There are piles of clothing all around. A man with dark skin and gorgeous braids all over his head is playing a weird guitar with lots of strange objects hanging from it. There is also a woman playing guitar and I pick up an old funky banjo and start playing with her. Even though it is old and broken and has strange objects hanging from it too, it sounds very sweet. I joke that the banjo needs a "banjo doctor."

There is a huge "costume festival" in Portland, with lots of local people dressing up for a parade. It is summertime. There have been so many parades in Portland recently that there turn out not to be that many participants in the costume festival parade. There is a woman in a plastic fish costume. People are selling stuff on tables along the sidewalks and I examine some delicate silver-tiered earrings. They are free for some reason and this woman gives them to me. I go around a corner into an alley to avoid someone, but it's a tight squeeze past a big wagon and it's turning wooden wheels. There is an ownerless dog wandering around and there are lots of gay guys out frolicking like it's the Mardi Gras. I wander into a woodworking store where there are lots of hinged wooden things for sale that are called "truncheons" though that word doesn't make sense for them. I leave and walk by a lake where I watch some amazing, gorgeous, large red and purple birds in a tree. I keep walking and come to a huge black woman who weighs about 300 pounds. She is sitting in the back of a blue pick-up truck and I offer to help lift her out to her wheelchair on the ground. She doesn't think I can do it but I say I can and even though it is really hard I do it and put her legs up on the wheelchair rest and cover her with blankets.

I am with two friends of mine, one of whom is disabled, the other an artist. He is driving a car, which is a little nerve-wracking, because he probably shouldn't be driving. Then there are some car problems so we stop. It is summer. There is blue sky and white clouds. There are yard sales everywhere. I draw a big bear using crayons. My artist friend cuts it out and makes a funny caption for it. There are jugglers. I come home and my neighbor is painting the hall.

I am hired to do filing for a business that is located on a huge boat down on the waterfront. The business sells artsy high-priced jewelry (that is rather ugly) and they also do software design. The boat goes flying across the bay where it is moored some distance from a house where there is a party going on. There are lots of young "Generation X" type people working on the software designing. Even though I am supposed to do filing I spend most of my time hanging around with them talking about software and design in the large softly lit blue-black rooms. The owner of the company is at the party. One of the women takes me back across the bay in the boat and I tell her about my design ideas, such as decorating parking meters with rhinestones and glass jewels or making custom-made, arty "helmets" for the tops. There is a little boy playing ball with a white dog on the boat.

I am a computer programmer who spends my time arranging little miniature worlds with different kinds of pictures.

I am on a train. There is a woman and her child sitting across from me. There is also a Cairn Terrier and some other kind of dog there. The woman is talking about a portal that is "like paradise" through which you can see milkweed and butterflies.

A City planner is teaching an art class. I have painted a bull and we are discussing it. I start filling in around the bull with brown colors and can't decide what to do with the rest of the painting. Someone suggests painting in or collaging an image of Abraham Lincoln but we agree that won't look right. I can't finish the painting. There are some people in the class who live on the street and in shelters and they have painted distorted self-portraits.