dreams: September 11, 1998



the true Western drug: sugar

I'm in Africa, in a small village. Many little black kids are trying to get fed. They are scrambling to be in the smoke of burning dead bodies. Someone tells me they're trying to "get protein" from the flesh of the deceased. The whole scene is scary, sick and sad. The kids, all looking about 4 years old, get up on each others' shoulders, one after another, to form a very tall vertically balanced stack (sitting on each others' shoulders, holding onto the legs of the kid above them); the purpose is to get as high up in the air as they can. They work together so that the children on top can then be up immersed in the rising smoke to get their protein so they won't starve to death themselves. I'm very sad.

I'm standing on the sidelines with other white adults from foreign countries. Someone mentions that people want to do anything they can to help alleviate the problem, thus Europeans have opened a food shop for aid. I look at the building behind us. There are large windows that show what's going on inside. People are making foods to give to the kids to eat: table after table of cakes, pastries, pies, cookies and other sweets. Some of the cakes look ornately decorated with white icing and colorful frostings. I'm immediately appalled. I talk to someone about how sick it is that the Europeans and Americans are giving the African kids so much sugar! They're feeding them glucose and fructose -- empty, useless, addictive calories. I'm sickened and in mourning. I talk to a young American man. We agree that it's heartbreaking. "Why aren't they spending the money on beans, rice, hummus and other forms of protein?" I cry.

There are more supplies stacked outside the door to the sweet shop. I see a bunch of big, rectangular, plastic bottles filled with clear liquid. A chubby foreign white man picks up one of those bottles. A plastic tube is connected to it, which is attached to a long silver needle (it looks like an IV). He sticks it in his arm, into his bloodline. He has a crazy look of satisfaction on his face while he kneads his arm's flesh with the other hand. Why is he doing that? He looks like a drug addict. The liquid is a toxic drug! It has been pumped into the native kids (through the baked goods?). It's glucose liquid, totally clear and sweet. I feel very sick.

A middle-aged foreign woman is standing a few feet away from us; she sees the younger man's action and then picks up a bottle for herself, doing the same thing by plunging into her arm. An older white man is with them. "Stop!" he yells at the woman. He tells her that her "sickness goes back too far," and that she's now passing it on to her son (the younger man, apparently). The older man then starts raving like a missionary evangalist, telling them that they're both sick and demented (in the hands of the devil?). It all feels like a nightmare to me.

my blonde friends

NEXT, Anna-Rose Mathieson and I are hanging out in the same house with a bunch of other people. I realize that now would be a good time to share with her the dream that I had about her home and family. I give her my dream journal and tell her to read the dream on the page I opened the book up to, pointing to it as I pass it to her.

Later she hands back the journal, saying she read it. I look on the page and see that I abbreviated her name, Anna-Rose, with "AR," so she might not have known it was referring to her. I tell her, and she nods.

Then I see Calina. She had been visiting me from London but now has to leave. I feel bad because I had wanted to spend more time with her, but I had been too preoccupied, feeling mentally groggy the whole time. She's sitting in an armchair. I go kneel down next to her and tell her how much I would've liked to see her more. "We could've talked about your poetry (I know you've been writing), and about your school, and your boyfriend," I say. I apologize.

- FIN -



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