Surf the San Andreas

dreamed 2008/8/21 by Wayan.

1: the Gate of Trust
I wake predawn in a cabin near the beach. I slip outside, goaded by an urge behind my eyes, to find two looming gates. One is high-security: spider-eyed with cameras, and a laser tripwire: faint red thread in the clear dawn air. And the other? Silver driftwood framing empty air. I choose to walk through there.	Idiots! Building a paranoid gate whose sister welcomes all-- twin portals to the endless sea. But twin gates are our specialty here in dream. Their ancient names were truth and need: or horn and ivory. Now they're fear and sea, or fear and truth (still horny I fear), or just simplicity.
2: The Ship of Brick and Beer
Mad mansions cling to San Francisco cliffs above the sea. The eco-purist in my head says "sacrilege!" But a simpler me says "pretty!" See? A Kremlin shimmers Spiral golden oniondomes and spires Gaudi'd admire. Next door, a great ship stranded in the surf, made of... brick? Mock-ups, big as beds! The mockbricks make Faux Freighter seem but a broken boat. A fifty-foot beerbottle rolls on deck, adding to illusions of non-grandeur. The installation references (as barbarous artists say) a universal human experience: the Morning After the Wild Drunk Party. The Party everyone was at but allergic-to-human-fun me. O what a clunky Titanic! They won such a hunky grant for it! A waste. Is that my entire esthetic response? Nope. Me, I grin in selfish hope, for if they subsidize this, they'll even fund my work.	A second stranded ship. More mockups, house-sized now not brick this time but great soft packs of toilet-tissue rolls the size of trolls. Mordant modern art! Subtle, subtle, subtle as a fart. My confidence is on a roll! A town that helps such clowns fulfill their visions'll help me too. All I need do is apply, apply. An infinite supply! Mid cliff-cottages we stroll, my girl and I, in sun of noon. I break my waterbottle on a step. Warily sweep shards, glass ow! And then out bursts a song: "How noble I am, protecting all the bare- foot tourists with the flowers in their hair, visiting our graceful Kremlin Land-- the Ship of Toiletpaper, and the Ship of Brick and Beer." My song's a lie. Their art's no draw at all! We walk alone out here.
3: Fault-Surfer
My car wades the shore of Crystal Springs Lake, spang on the San Andreas Fault. The road is flooded, inches to a foot; The car awash, and slow. Oaks root yards out, rise from silver mirror. Clear the lake's in flood, at least a yard past full. Strange. Traces of an old, higher road stitch an asphalt high-tide mark wriggling round the reservoir, bounding a strip of bare red shore. Stains, debris, bleached branches make clear the water often rose that far.	So the lake's both flooded and half-full! Impossible, and so. An old man glides across the faultless lake toward us on a surfboard. No sail, nor motorboat to pull (they're not allowed). He's just a man of skill, sensing earth-shift riding plate-drift Or is it his own sheer will? Bare feet grip the board; he angles in, until he slips above the road itself. Trails us, wordless, bearded, mirrored. Shadows of his toes ripple on the drowning road, the faulted world below.