#1. Am giving 3 readings in some kind of large shopping mall. I have a bunch of conflicting documents stating the location and time of each reading. I am nervous because John Ashbery is supposed to be at one of the readings, for reasons that are not entirely clear. I stop into a restaurant of some kind to ask directions, only it is not a restaurant, but rather a sinister looking office with dark paneled walls and shiny floors. At a dark desk with a blue light above his head, Darth Vader style, is John Ashbery circa 1975. I ask him if he knows what time the reading is at and he says he doesn't know anything about any reading.

#2. I am employed by a University or School or something and for some reason G. is also employed by said institution. I go to visit her and ask what she is doing and she says she is researching "protocols for cloning" and that she only has 20 hours to finish up the project she is working on. I'm supposed to go somewhere to write this poem in several days and she agrees to accompany me. For some reason her father seems to have something to do with my being employed by this particular institution. The poem is called "Salomé of the Woods"

The trip to the woods takes place ala some kind of public transportation, though it looks kind of like one of those trains from the Edaville Railroad. Things at this point get kind of confusing. The poem itself is some kind of period piece, and I and my companion, who seems to have turned into K. and some sort of professor or "narrator" and another male companion seem to be simultaneously outside and inside the narrative at the same time. We are all in period garb a-lá Gangs of New York. There is some dispute over the portioning of some kind of food which we are eating, the male companion having consumed more than his fair share of the food (which looks something like barley or wheatberries). This results in an argument whereby the companion struts off into the forest in a huff. When the companion does not return, we go to try and find him. His severed head is found staked to a tree a short distance away. The professor explains that the forrest is haunted, and that I am responsible for the death of the companion for prompting him to go off alone into the haunted forest. I argue that it is the narrator's fault since he did not disclose to me the fact that the forrest was haunted.

"Oh but I did," the narrator explains, "but you didn't hear me because you were paying too much attention to K."

I ask K if this is true and she says that it is. "But you're the one who's narrating this thing, so therefore aren't you responsible for the acts which occur."

The narrator argues that he is an uninvolved third party and that I, ultimately, am responsible for the events which occur, which are also some how in the poem. He argues that ultimately I am the projenitor of the whole affair. At which point I state that if I am the creator of the events that occurred, then ultimately I answer to no-one since, being the creator of the situation, I am more or less absolved of guilt. The narrator argues that a textual murder is still a murder. I grab him by the hair and bash his head into a tree, causing his glasses to shatter and poke out his eyes. End of dream.

[OK, I feel the need to make a few comments. One, I've never read Salomé, though I do know there is some kind of severed head involved. Two, the events which occur in the woods in the dream take place in a state of complete unreality, it is clear to me in the dream that what is happening is part of a text of my own design. (Yes, I'm trying to account for that fact that my subconcious bashed some poor intolocutor's head into a tree. Three, I suppose I will have to write the "Salomé of the Woods Poem."]