Bracelet; Shark Hat; Elevator; Robot Van Helsing; Paintings of Stories

E and L are house sitting for someone and watching a sci fi show. One woman in the show gives another an elaborate metal bracelet. It turns her arm into a beautiful multipetaled piece of metal--or like a metal squid coming out of her shoulder. It divides into flaps of metal and twists and recombines. But it's a trick and it gradually starts to hurt so much that the wearer has to kill herself. We eat candy and E & L talk about loving the big house.

I'm looking for something in a huge new condo building. It's occupied but still under construction. It's impossible to tell if I'm in a public corridor or someone's apartment. Everything is gleaming wood, metal, plush carpets and furniture. There's a common room where a group of preppy, hip young men, mostly black and a white kid with a hat made of foam cut outs of letters that spell out his name and are in the shape of a shark. He says that his name is really British: Earnest Jordan.

I get into the elevator to escape, feeling awkward and annoyed. The elevator is terrible. The floor is made of some thin plastic, almost like a trash bag. There's fiberglass in the walls that pricks at me. I can see through windows or chinks out the side of the elevator. It's going up and changing course. I yell in protest and a bearded guy who's on the landing above me laughs commiseratingly.

I'm a group trying to solve its problems. Most people are worried about being too fat. I split away and hang out with Ira Glass. He laughs at me for saying I don't need a group. I say I need one for being clumsy. We're in the park, almost at night and we climb over rocks to get to his place. My feet claw up bunches of plants, like loose vines but also plastic bags full of mushrooms and broccoli.

Back at his place there's a kind of play room outside closed with a curtain. We sit outside and along come two little boys who put up a special kind of door curtain so they can go in. Ira and I look at each other and laugh. The boys aren't supposed to be there. We go in after them. I catch one of them and he sits in my lap. I tell him I'm going to call him Robot Van Helsing. He gives me a skeptical look.

I'm looking at a painting or book of illustrations of the civil war. It's in childish, vivid watercolors, lots of blood and people's faces.

I'm reading a novelization of The Royal Tannenbaum's. I can see the scenes of the movie acting out, somewhat distorted, and then look down at the pages and see the words describing it simultaneously.

There's a movie/painting of two sisters in the Wiemar republic who fall in love with each other and try to get married. It's in vivid watercolors as well, really purple and red with a lot of emphasis on mouths and teeth. I can really remember one moment where a woman's head is tilted way back when they're in a taxi, and her lips are pulled back so her teeth and tongue are visible.

This was a huge dream, incredibly detailed, that just seemed to go on and on. Very active and fun, with lots of humor, which is kind of unusual. I still crack up thinking of that kid's face when I called him Robot Van Helsing.

Looking at this description, the first part reminds of something I had trouble imagining, the "orchid" weapon in Dahlgren. There's something about being lost in a beautiful but delapidated building that also recalls Dahlgren. The really narrative quality of the last couple of snippets is unusual. I wonder what's up with that? Too much reading/watching movies? The movies I've been watching lately have all been well-made serial killer thrillers. Huh.