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b | Barb Sanders | I am lying in bed and see a man I kind of am attracted to. I let him come to my bed to make love to me and suddenly realize it is Howard. I let him make love to me, but he ejaculates prematurely, I feel no sexual excitement. I am disgusted with him and he is ashamed. He apologizes and I shrug, barely politely accepting the apology. Now I am aware of his wife, who is jealous, and I spend some time in a crowd of people, trying to stay away from this man, now not Howard. He'd sit next to me and I'd look around to see where the wife was and then think up excuses to move away. Now it's time to go see my play. I am waiting for Corinne, who is going to go to the play with me; I have bought both our tickets. She's late. I look for Bonnie and Mateo, who end up not showing up. I decide to go in and leave Corinne's ticket at the box office in case she makes it. I am led in and I announce to the usher, "I am the playwright," so she'd give me the special seating. We go around to the side wings area so I'd see the play from the wings. The entire area is graveled and I notice there are no chairs for the audience. The usher, a woman, sets a chair for me and I tell her I need one for my friend, should she come. She gets it. Now the audience comes in and there are folding chairs set up. A large crowd is in the next room area and then just as the play is to start, they walk across the audience area, to leave. They are some other group. The video cameras and lights go with them. Now the play starts and it is a series of scenes involving kings, magicians and puppets. I am impressed with how well the actors are doing with only a few rehearsals. They are off book and have done some nice things with puppets to augment their small numbers. Some audience members chuckle at my humorous lines. It isn't an overwhelming success, but it is an OK play. The king announces, "I am the King," several times. I notice the actor who is about to enter and exit from my side of the wings is pulling the curtain closed so I won't be able to see. I say to him, "Psst. I am the playwright." He is annoyed, but complies and pushes the curtain open so I can see. He'd rather have closed it for the convenience of the actors and the production. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in a room and Dora is exhausted. She's a housewife and mother and works from morning until night and never gets caught up on her rest. She is folding laundry and Aunt Esther or Aunt Charlotte is visiting. Aunt Charlotte is wearing a black print dress and Dora pulls out a white, pretty dress from the laundry basket and says she can wear this one if she stays overnight. Bonnie holds it up to herself. Her hair is dark black and she has a pale complexion, so the white of the dress isn't all that complementary to her. She'd rather wear the black print one again. Dora is folding up bras and is searching for one that is comfortable for Auntie. She looks at one that is counterbalanced and says, "Maybe this one will help." They are all quite large, like "D" cup size. Aunt Charlotte then starts twirling and dancing and singing like she's pretending to be on stage and I think, "She really does have talent. It's too bad she isn't doing anything with it." Dora then turns to me and says, "We'll have to figure out something about the throat" (I'd had a coughing thing when I was being visited by this man, maybe Dovre's young man, Dwight. I'd impressed him with my humor but I'd had a coughing thing where I had to excuse myself from the room to choke and cough. He thinks I'm pretty talented. It was too bad about the throat.) | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Merle calls me from Idaho. He's ill and needs my help. I am going to go to Idaho to help him out. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | A red-haired woman comedian (like the short, plump one from Jay Leno challenge, Lorna) is doing a routine. Then she takes her wig off and her head is balding, little tufts of hair here and there. It looks terrible. I wish she'd kept her hair on. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am a judge in a women's breast contest. I look at the women walking past and look at their breasts. They are all clothed and this is outside on a regular city street. It's kind of fun. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am about to be a part of a production, but I haven't been to any of the rehearsals; perhaps I'd been ill. I ask the large, overweight woman teacher where I should stand. The teacher, who looks a bit like Grandma Agnes, is busy and abrupt with me. I see the girls standing and practicing where they will be during one song. If I join them, I will have to know the precision turns and moves. If I don't join them, I'll be standing alone and conspicuous on the stage with nothing to do. I am aware that if I had taken the initiative and rehearsed, I'd not be in this predicament. I go in search of the teacher who is rehearsing a woman singing. I stand there, edging nearer to get her attention, which interrupts their rehearsal. I am envious of the woman's singing ability to do opera. My throat can't do that any more. The teacher is annoyed with me. She goes to the piano. I am crying copious tears that drip onto the piano. The teacher says, shortly, "Oh, for goodness sake, at least don't get tears on the piano!" She says I'll just have to figure it out, where I'll stand. She hasn't time to work with me. When I'd asked to be a part of this production, I'd promised I wouldn't be a trouble, but I sure am one now. I decide I have to go to the bathroom and find a stall, lock the door and am still crying. Girls look at me sympathetically, but I don't want them to fuss over me. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | My truck is broken. A metal thing dropped out of it. Can it be fixed? Someone, a woman, suggests I drive to class around the mountain. It takes longer, but it's a safer route with a broken truck. I think about it but decide to go straight up the mountain. I feel confident the truck can make it. I don't want to waste time going the long way. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I find gold stars and foil cut out ornaments on the floor and am picking them up. I am showing the girls how we are going to fold the dining table so we have more room. I fold it really narrow. The girls modify it so there is enough room at the table, but it doesn't take up so much space in the room. I look for a lace tablecloth in the closet. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am cooking a great special dinner for a man I like. It's sort of a first date. He is very handsome and charming. I am putting things in the oven. He comes to the door and I invite him in. There is exciting tension and anticipation in the air. I set up a table in the other room, which also has a made up double bed with a blue bedspread on it. It's my roommate's room. I take out three pies from the oven and take them in to the table, with my oven mitts on. He is impressed; I am happy. I set the table, with his plate at one end and mine at the other and a third plate on the side between us. I realize I didn't give him the biggest baked potato as I had planned and exchange it. He demurs, but is pleased. He sits and I sit. He says, "This is too far away from you." He moves his plate to the side close to me. Now Ellie and "I" come in to visit and "she" pulls us aside to explain she wants a night alone with this man (she's now sort of like Judy P). We giggle and leave to go to our house. We walk across the unkempt, wild yard to our house. Our third roommate is watching TV and I tell her of the date. She recognizes the man and says, "He's not a doctor, he's an actor." I realize he's a fraud trying to con her. So we rush over and pound on the bedroom door and look in the window. It's too late, he's in bed, maybe they already had sex. We sneak around to where he's left his coat and bags. I search for his car keys. I find them and hurry to take his precious car for a ride to pay him back. He's coming toward me so I rush, I drive out and he chases me calling stop! Stop! I want the car to be a sporty car and have trouble getting it to appear so. I drive down a bumpy gravel road and see a road block up ahead. I slow down and the men working the construction let me through. I take a sharp hairpin curve up a side road up a hill, slowly. I go up to a promontory and peek over, watching for him. He arrives huffing and looking all around for me. He's very handsome. The men point to the road I took and he's running up the hill and I slowly drive down the road, luring him on. I know this switchback will take me almost back to the house, but he doesn't. He's lost and upset. This is a great joke. I feel very satisfied I've taught him a good lesson he'll never forget. I stop, get out with his flashlight and wait in a tree as he retrieves his car. He hesitates and calls out he'll give me a ride back, he doesn't feel right about leaving me alone in the woods, but I don't respond and he finally drives away. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am at a resort, looking out a window at the ocean far down below. I enjoyed watching the waves and marveled how high they could come up the cliffs and how they worked back toward the sea with such foamy power. I get up to pack, because it's time to go home. I have trouble gathering up all my stuff. Lucy is also packing and her things are mixed with mine. I hold up a blouse on a hanger which also has a small girl's dress on the hanger. It belongs to her. I am a bit frustrated because I don't really want to leave, and some men have sat at my good spot by the window so I can't watch the waves and Lucy's stuff keeps slowing me down. I get to the truck and discover lots of Lucy's stuff under it. I am annoyed. She asks me where her laundry basket is. I see a yellow plastic laundry basket by the wheel of the truck, and lots of clothes, papers, boxes of things. Now I see that the things on the truck are just laying around loose. I start to pack them into drawers in the dresser to keep them from flying away when we get going. A plastic package of honey is there and I wonder if I should put it in the drawer, because it could break and make a mess. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | It's time to go somewhere, but the bathtub had just been filled with warm, pleasant water. Oh well, we can use it later, only it won't be so warm then. The tea set is set up under the water already. Then Ginny throws herself into the tub and splashes around, showing me to spontaneously have fun. I smile and go out to tell people we'll be delayed for awhile because Ginny is bathing. I see a woman with long hair down to the floor and another woman cuts the length and it still touches the floor. The hair is luxurious, thick and silky. I admire it. I see my own hair and it sort of has some length to it, but it is thin and falls out easily. In fact, the hairdo is short now, not because I had a haircut, but because it falls out. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Howard has a camera and a woman is trying to convince me to let bygones be bygones and take advantage of this and work with Howard because I need a camera. Howard stands on my left and I say what kind of camera? 16 MM? He grins and says bragging, "No, 32 mm." Whoa! A professional film camera. I am tempted, but really am disgusted with the idea that I'd have to work with him. Then I see a wee baby crawling on the grass and see her bottle next to her and say to her playfully, "Hey, you're too young to be smoking," calling the bottle a cigarette. The baby has no sense of humor and bursts into tears, crying. I pick her up to soothe her and as I am walking with her in my arms, over my shoulder, I feel how skinny and loose she is, not compacted like a healthy normal baby is, wobbly like a doll. I say, "Hey, we're going to have to make you plump." She bursts into wailing tears again. I pat her and say soothingly, "It's a good thing. You need some fat. It won't be too much." What a fussy, sensitive baby! Now I am arriving at the studio in Hollywood where I'll be learning how to make a movie, with Howard's camera and Howard in tow. I enter a big room with a bank of video machine like things I'll be learning to use. I walk the length, looking at the dazzling machine array. This is exciting and will be fun. I sit at a table with other interns or students. A man calls out "B." I say, "That's me." He says, "Can't be. He holds up a purse he found that belongs to a B, with a funny, artistic face etched or carved inside it. It doesn't belong to me. He's the teacher. I'm going to learn a lot here and have the advantage of my own camera. Lots of other students will not have the use of a camera and won't get their projects done for a long time. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am on a talk show, maybe Phil Donahue and acting as an assistant CO-host, I make jokes with anything at hand and the audience loves me. I'm very funny. The audience is far away. There are pillars or partitions between them and me, but they love me! Phil is impressed and calls me into his office. We chat. I use the label on a package of dried meat to use as a prop to tell jokes. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Howard is very unhappy. He's having marital problems with Karen. Ellie is around. Howard has bald spots, large ones where he's losing his hair. He wants me to help him. I am reluctant. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I had been doing some work on paper and then it got crowded and I started to leave, and then decided to return to take my papers. I end up in a library or store and look. I ask where left papers are and she points to a counter. I start to go and then remember it was art work, and not writing I did. That is in another space. Then I feel a strong need to pee and go in search of the bathroom. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Dwight and I decide to go out after Grandpa Clyde and his friend to find out where they are fishing so we can watch. It's a secret fishing hole. I go back into the house to get my wheelchair and just then my mother is taking it apart to fix it. I say excitedly, "I need it now to go somewhere." She says, "Well, I just got started. You'll have to wait." I am frustrated but give up. Then my father is there and he says, "Well, sometimes Dwight would ride the riding lawn mower." I say, "Great, we'll use that." Now, my father is driving and I am sandwiched between him and Dwight, who sits behind me as I sit behind my father. We bounce and careen over the countryside. I am worried I'll get my feet caught in the wheels and maybe I'll fall off, but I hang on and we make it to where the river is, only we've lost their trail. Now, there are a series of dressing rooms. I peek in one and see a little bathroom next to the changing room. It is a high step up to two toilets. They are not accessible. I go back out and we wonder what to do next. My father sees a phone booth and we push the button to talk with the ranger. My father speaks, calling him Ricardo. The man says, "My name is Robin." My father explains, "We are looking for two men fishing and need to know an accessible way to the river and where they might fish." He calls him Ricardo again, which annoys the man so I take over and call him Robin, and ask again. He asks what kind of fish they were going for and my father says the name (it starts with a C). I don't tell the ranger the name, fearing it might be illegal to fish for those kind. Robin says he'll be there in a minute to help us out. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Some kind of vampire woman is going for Ellie's neck and I am yelling a warning to her. Get up, push her away, but Ellie is oblivious, and in fact finds it sensual and enticing. I watch her face as she allows this female vampire to move in on her neck, laying down on her. I am very upset but can't get her to listen to me. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am back in the M City house and looking at the inside of the house, remembering fondly. I say this will be the second wedding from this house. I see the beautiful lace curtains and admire them. That's different than when I lived here. I think it is me getting married. I decide to step out on the side porch to look around. I haven't been here in a long time. I see it is a ramp now, not the steps, and it is all fixed up nicely with decorative porch lamps, all white and gold and pretty. Then I look out across Hembree Street and see a house that never was there before. I don't like that. Then it moves away, along with the other three houses, like it's a train of houses. After it is gone, I see a big vista like a golf course in its tidiness. I think, "Hey, where's the train trestle?" and then see it. I am relieved and then I see a creek going under it and across my lawn diagonally past the house. "My creek," I say nostalgically. Then I wonder what the back yard is like, and I look. Horrified, I see a road has cut through the canyon and a train track. I am very sad and sob uncontrollably at this loss. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am writing a finishing part in a play. I am in the M City House and Lucy is rehearsing her songs in the other room. I realize I haven't been memorizing my lines and feel concern and some frustration at myself for leaving it to the last. I won't be prepared. I admire Lucy for preparing well. I write a bit for Mark H to do, about Christmas candies. I think it is a funny bit until I realize he won't have time to get it memorized. I think, "Well, then what would be so wrong if we did it as a staged reading, not an off book production?" I know this is a cop out. I should have prepared, Mark should have prepared. Now the candy skit doesn't look as funny and I pick up the packages of glittery sugary candy from the box and look at it again. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Something about insects. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | H and I are talking. Merle has moved and is back visiting. He comes by. I am teaching something or examining something for work. It's time to quit work and go home. Merle joins us. He is talking. He is standing up and is very, very skinny, almost as thin as a pencil. He says to someone, "My wife and I..." and I turn and look at Hasani, wondering why she hadn't told me Merle was married now. Hasani looks like, "I was sworn to secrecy." I go over to talk to Merle. He says, "It was a marriage of convenience. It isn't really working out." He still likes me very much. He then hands me five blouses on a hangers and an old pair of printed pants of his. He tells me that this man wants me to put them on. I am to choose which blouse to wear. I pick one. Merle says, "The man says not that one. You can't wear it ever. It's just to be in the closet." I am a bit annoyed and choose to comply now, knowing that I will rebel later at his orders. He thinks he possesses me, but I don't agree. He's sort of like the crazy man in a previous dream. I put on the pants. It's like clown pants. They are so overly large for me. I cinch in the yellow belt farther and farther, until I feel quite slim in comparison to the pants. This pleases the man, who is watching. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am traveling on a mountain road and look out over the vista. I see cars going into two huge twin tunnels far off in the distance. I see a lake and beautiful mountains. I travel on with my group. Then we meet my cousin Abner on the road. I introduce him to a man in the group. Abner is uptight and unsure of himself and begins to shake and tremble. I remark that he has the "family" trait of fear around other people. He and I go off down the road without the group. We find ourselves in a deep hole with furniture in it. We climb up the huge dresser to the top of it and look out. We see lots of bunk beds in the woods, a camp of some kind. Abner jumps down to the ground and I am to follow, only it's a long jump and I am worried. He holds his arms out wide as if to catch me and grins. I then turn to go down; I hang on to the edge of the dresser top like I'm hanging off a cliff edge and then see handles and go down, using them as hand and foot holds. I didn't have to jump after all. I see the handles are on drawers and open one to see fleece pajama jeans for the campers. Now we go exploring and go around a corner to see a group of people singing religious songs. We turn and try to sneak away, realizing we've stumbled on a radical cult group. Now some are coming for us, one woman singing a fundamental hymn. We run back to the hole and get in. They are coming for us. I suggest we hide in a corner under a table, but they see us. This isn't good. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am swimming in a pool. Dovre's swim coach, an older plump athletic woman, watches me. I am a very good swimmer. She is impressed, but stoically watches, not encouraging me. I swim fast and do laps. Now she wants to train me for the team. Now I'm on an airplane, with a small girl with me. The coach is the pilot of this small craft. The little girl doesn't want to sit on the seat I chose for her right next to me because it's a "holding" seat. I assure her it is not a holding seat. The pilot coach also assures her. He sits reluctantly. Now in the back of the plane is a famous male movie star and the other women of the swim team are all agog around him. I watch him and he watches me. We are interested. Now we are at a party, perhaps at my mansion, and I change into a lovely evening gown. I am now drunk on bubbly champagne and fall, and stagger and giggle. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am at a conference, only it's in my living room. A woman comes from California and teaches. We'd had one last night and now I wake up on the couch and it's time for another one. The women come in and I sit up. The instructor is in the kitchen taking the dishes out of the dishwasher from last night as I hadn't gotten up and done them. I apologize to her, saying she doesn't have to do that. The dishes are white glass with gold trim on the edges. Bonnie had put them in because they'd been in my cupboard for so long and needed washing, from all the accumulated dust. A woman like Kathleen from poetry group sits on my right. I am telling them how the first time I used the word "abuse" to describe my upbringing felt so shocking, because it wasn't physical abuse, but emotional abuse. They were good people, but didn't know how to express themselves. Kathleen encourages me to keep calling it abuse and not cave in to society's ways of denial. I agree that I will persevere. I get up and say I need to pee and brush my teeth. There is a tiny alcove next to the living room, with a curtain as a door. I sit on a tall white bucket which sits on a toilet. I balance precariously. I pee a torrent of urine. It all rushes out of me at once. I know it can be heard by the women. Then the one man participant arrives. I immediately spill urine on the floor, it splatters from the rushing torrent. I am embarrassed. The topic f the conference is Men's Issues. I don't really want to be there, but I need the credits. [BL] | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in a house. A silver-papered bag of cat food is in the sink, but we don't have cats any more. A tiny baby girl is laying on the floor. I dance around her, teasing her, my toes nearly stepping on her head and shoulders. She doesn't much like the teasing. I sing a chant about "No more flu germs, No more cold germs," like a chant to ward off germs. I prance around saying that over and over, and then as an afterthought, I say, "And no more germs from outside this room too," meaning if I go outside, I don't want to catch any germs there either. It's a way of protecting us. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I have to pee really bad. I am in a house. Some man is injured and I am helping him. A cat is there somewhere, maybe also needing help. I go into a bathroom and try to sit on the toilet. It breaks off from the wall and is wobbly. I am standing and peeing so I won't tip it over. I pee voraciously all down my leg and around the room in front of me. I am concerned the water will back up and flow out of the toilet onto the floor. I leave. Now I am going from room to room in a hotel-like exhibit. I look out the window and see the beautiful emerald green ocean waves far below. There is a crowd of people walking through the exhibit as I am. I really need to pee and consider finding an exhibit toilet and using it. One room has a whirlpool and a single bed with an air mattress-like thing, sort of a health spa room. I wonder where people sleep and see another room with beds in it. I go out the door and go to the next exhibit room. On the way I see parrot beaded earrings and go over to see the price: 1 or 2 dollars, very cheap. I don't really want the parrots, but like crystal things or beaded things. [BL] | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am swimming in a huge ocean and the waves are a solid wall of water. I feel fear that Ishall drown and decide that discretion is the better part of valor. I turn to swim back to shore but the waves that way are smaller, but more turbulent. I'm in trouble no matter which way I swim. Why am I there in the first place? | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am holding a playwright class in my living room. "Merle," like Paul of old days, is there, the only one to show up. He is nervous and wants to leave, but I think he's cute and want him to stay. So he reads his scene and wants to go and I keep talking to keep him there, saying that at 1:00 Linda and perhaps others will be there and will need him to read their scenes. I tell him in detail, slowly, all about my new play opening up soon to keep him there. At 1:00 Linda rings the doorbell. I stand up and walk past Merle, caressing his thighs from behind seductively. He is surprised and not too pleased. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am a queen or princess. I can have anything I want. I feel sexually excited and grab a man and slide him under me and make love to him. I don't care who he is. He's like Dr. Fleischman of Northern Exposure. I have orgasm. Now I get up. I have a group of male guards around me all the time. I am walking through a field. I have a path worn around the edges of the field because I don't want to be wasteful and trample the beautiful flowers, and they are very pretty and colorful. Now the guard on my left will die for me, he loves me and is devoted so much to me. We approach the double doors of an auditorium of another country. A bishop or monk comes out in a hurry, sees me and bows, surprised. His hankie falls to the ground. He picks it up. We sweep past him and on to the crowd. My guard warns me to be careful, the crowd isn't on my side. As I prepare to walk to my center seat by the king of the country I am visiting, all the religious types file out, so they won't offend me with their presence. I go and sit by the king, but not in the chair provided. I sit up on a table, on top of income tax forms. The crowd is luke warm in their reception with the exception of one woman who is standing and facing back toward me applauding. She sees she's the only one and stops, confused. Now the star, a woman in a manual wheelchair, comes out on stage and makes a sarcastic remark at me, something like, "We'll wait until you are ready." I zing back a sarcastic remark like, "Oh, you sing? When did you start?" The crowd gasps at the sharp barbs. I sit haughtily. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am at a conference backstage with Mirabelle. She is going out to the front of the stage to give a message or speech. I agree to hold up a printed message for her so the audience can see the points she makes. I walk out following her. Someone whispers, B's standing up. Mary wanders down the aisle and I follow, feeling the strain of standing. I call a girl over and ask her to bring me one of the step ladder stools that had been set up for the presenters. She says Ginny or Karen McDonald had put those out for the speakers. I say, "Well, I'm one of them, so go get one." She does. Meanwhile Mary has picked up a sweet, little dark-haired baby and is holding it up for everyone to see. She's going to massage it. I reach out and touch the baby as Mary walks past me holding it up for everyone to see. I point where I want the stool to be placed, and then someone moves it down a center aisle. I sit on top of the upside down plastic Melmac plate on the stool. It's a bit wobbly. A woman brings me a blanket and whispers she also has a pillow if I need one. It's too warm and I say, "Here, thanks, but I don't need it now. I'll let you know when I do." Someone calls my name. I turn and see a woman in a manual wheelchair, dark short hair. She says, "Hi, seems the same people as last year are here again." I say, "Yeah, but we're trying to make it more consumer-oriented this year." She agrees this is good. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am at N City. I am given a plant, or rather several plants transplanted into one pot. There is room for one more plant in the pot and we look at different plants to find one that uses the same environmental conditions so it will be compatible. We find one sort of a tiny, ivy-like plant with small white flowers. It is very pretty. We put it into the pot. When these baby plants get growing they are going to be very beautiful. Now it's evening and time to go home to M City. Shall I wheelchair it to M City or take the Greyhound? I go for a while in the wheelchair and realize I'm lost. I ask this man for directions. He's very tall, towering over me. He tells me he is partially deaf on one side and I need to get used to his speech. I say, "I am too." So he starts trying to give me directions. I can't decide if I should wheel it or bus it. I try to call the bus depot for information but can't seem to get through. The phone book is buried behind papers and the man on the phone is unclear. He does finally say I can't get there directly from N City. I'd have t bus to Dover and then transfer. It will take lots of time and is difficult. I feel tired. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am a small child, girl. This Hitler kind of man puts a small chip like round lithium battery in my mouth and I swallow it. It has important info on it. I shit it out and he is looking for me to get his chip. War is starting and I have to leave; everyone is running around, trying to escape. I know that chip is important so I hang onto it, shit and all, and am swept by the crowd out of the house and onto a boat. As we are leaving, I want to call out to my Grandfather where I am and that I am safe and alive, but if I do, the Hitler man and a woman will hear. Then I worry if Grandfather is a part of them. I stay quiet. Now I am in some strange battle for my life. The chip transforms into some kinds of animals I can use as weapons. Three other girls use their weapons (animals) to fight me. I fight these biting animals off. It is hard. I steal their babies (stuffed little animals that are alive) and climb up a ladder to a high hidy hole. A huge male giant stands looking into my hidy hole, but I have pulled down a metal sheet that I can see through that apparently he can't see through. He stands there stupidly, not knowing what to do. The little captured animals want to get out and I must keep them with me so I can survive this fight to the death. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am working at a hotel counter. It's the end of a shift. Murphy Brown asks me to rotate and stay another shift because her child needs help. I go to the counter. Merle comes by and is sympathetic and agrees to stay and help. We are tired but trying to keep up. I pick up a glass of milk to drink but realize it is curdled, thick and creamy. It tastes terrible. I look up and see Murphy coming back very jauntily. We are exhausted and we poke a woman co-worker in the ribs and say, "Don't tell her." It's a silly kind of revenge. Murphy tries a glass of the stuff, poured over a cake as frosting, and loves it like it's buttermilk or something. Shucks! She would! Now a teen boy and girl comes up to the counter and I introduce them to Murphy, like she's their Aunt. The girl's name is Spirit. She grimaces when Murphy is introduced like, "Ugh, that eccentric Aunt!" We are exhausted and make mistakes because of it. We just want to be off duty and go home and sleep. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am a woman teacher in a prison. The orphan boys were brought in to get a taste of what it feels like to be prisoners so they'll think twice about being criminals. They are called pre-prisoners. I write, "Good morning" on the blackboard with a maroon colored chalk and step back to see if it is readable. It's not too good as other stuff is on the board and it blends in. I write my name, Barb Sanders. I then go to a boy and question him to see what kind of innate intelligence he as. I ask him if Nanu the whale was born with three different colors and it was dark when you saw him, would you see the black color part? It was a trick question. The boy had some ability. Now its break time and I walk around and see a group of women prisoners seated together talking. I try to join them, but they don't want me there, so I go to find a place to lie down and soak up the warm sun. The row of cars parked in the lot leave and there is a line of logs or boards left. I want to lie on one of the sections, but other people are sitting or lying on them. I find the end section empty. I lie down. I have a hard time balancing the plastic different colored glasses and dishes in the drawer, which is sort of me. A good-looking prisoner comes over and kisses me and moves the white bowl to another spot. Now I am more unbalanced and he moved the rows of colored glasses to the end of the section where my feet are. He is attractive and I don't know if I can trust him. He says he's going to meet me tomorrow morning. I go to my room and sleep. The next morning, I have a phone message from him. He can't make it. I am disappointed and concerned he's playing me for a sucker. He says to go ask the prison priest about him. I put on a fur parka and notice a cobweb with a spider hanging off my sleeve. I try to shake it off but I can't. Finally I ask a woman to help me get it off. It's a bit creepy not knowing where it is. Now I go to the priest to check out the man and the priest tells me the story of the man's life. He is the son of an evil multi-millionaire who the son turned in because the son is honest and good, and the father set him up. I am glad he is innocent because I am attracted to him. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am at a shop/library. A good-looking man is attracted to me. I am trying on different hats. One is an old leather brown flying pilot helmet. It looks silly on me. I hear Rochelle going by. She is talking about her hormones. She always talks like that. I don't want to make any noise so she'll know I'm there and come over and talk. Boring. I am going to connect with this delicious man. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am talking to a man and explaining to him (he is like Vern H) how I could tell from his body language that he felt OK about disability. He is gentle and sweet. I start to show him what I mean, and it turns into a swim lesson. The woman teacher says, "Now gently sink down and submerge yourself into the water, keeping your nose open (not holding it pinched shut) and keeping their eyes open as well." I manage to do it, but am aware of some tension and wanting to come back up. When I am underwater, I see the circle of other students with me. We look into each other's eyes so we can see we did this with eyes open. Now I am given a small clump of white sticks with gold ends on them. They are defensive weapons. I use them to hit out at an attacking man. I hit him at the eyes and at the groin. The multi dimensions of the sticks are supposed to make it easier to hit and cause pain with. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am sitting on a pasture-like land. I see a tiny kitten sitting ahead of me. A large dog and a cow are playing near her and I get concerned because she could get accidentally stepped on. The cow gets very close and I get concerned. The kitten finally gets up in the nick of time and comes over and crawls into my arms. I pet it and hold it, relieved it moved out of harm's way. Now I notice the cow is very close to me and I realize it's the same situation. Someone bigger than me is behind me watching like I was with the kitten. I get up, holding the kitten, and move up on a big rock where I am safer. The scenery around me is expansive and beautiful and peaceful. I turn around so my back is to the ocean side and see the pasture. It is also a pretty view, even though not as spectacular as the usual view. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am leaning against a wall and talking to an Uncle, maybe Uncle Joel, whose wife is dead now. I am sympathetic. He leans on the wall with me and puts his arm around my shoulders comfortably. We chat. It feels nice to be comforted like that. He's very tall. Later, I am the "star" of a TV piece, where I am like a Murphy Brown character. I am standing at the edge of a lake or ocean facing back toward land where a crowd of people is gathered to watch. I am reminding them that years ago I did a role and this is very much like it. Did they remember the name of the character I did then? They didn't. They didn't much care. I dither on for a while, but can't get their interest. Suddenly, a mistake is made and the crew all disappears. I am left alone and a huge black Doberman is coming toward me, growling. I back away, saying, "Nice doggie." I throw him a pencil to bite on, but he keeps coming for me. I toss him a book, maybe my script book, and he spits it out and is loping right behind me as I run for the cover of the pickup truck. Where is the crew when you need them? | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I sit at a table in a cafe and see some earrings and jewelry that someone left. They are pretty. I ask the woman at the table if they are hers. She says no, she doesn't know who they belong to. I start picking them up to keep. I feel some guilt, because they do belong to someone and I didn't try very hard to find the owners. I feel like I'm stealing. I pick up a blue one and some woman says, "That's an owl feather one. That's bad luck if you wear it." I hold it up, close my eyes and try to feel the vibes. I ask my inner self if this is safe to wear. I decide it feels fine and I put it on. There is only one. Now a young woman actress is having auditions. I go in and read. It's a weird part, about a woman and spies and a super man or something, a long, involved story line. She gives me the lead part. I accept after asking if this is just a staged reading. So I go to her house, which she shares with many roommates. It's a large and busy house. She begins the rehearsal and it becomes clear to me that she intends for it to be a full production where I sing songs and am off book, memorizing all the lines, all with one week of rehearsal. I say to her, "Then I can't do this. Sorry, but you said it was just a staged reading." She glares at me and says, "I did not. I told you it would be the whole thing, but now you are waffling and letting me down." I say, "No, I remember you saying"--and we argued like that for a while. I was adamant and needed to protect myself and not do it. My throat couldn't take the pressure of singing and my mind couldn't take the pressure of memorization. I am relieved I am not doing it. She's pissed and ridicules me. Her roomies also look down on me. I leave. Now a man and myself are visiting a house, a sort of cult runs it. We decide to leave. Jerry Lewis is on the front porch talking to a woman and I recognize him but don't acknowledge him because I want to respect his right to privacy. Now we are walking down a road. Maybe the man is Ellie, and not a man. I look up and see a huge lake and say somewhat jokingly, "Are we going t walk across the lake??" She says, "No, but I guess I miscalculated and the water here in the road is too deep." I see puddles almost covering the road. I say, "Wait and see." I try to pick my way across and manage to do it, with a cute hop from one place to another. Ellie thinks I'm very clever and votes to do it that way. We keep walking, then we realize we left the little girl behind at the house. How embarrassing and what a bad thing to do! We look back and see a long line of people parading and she is in the line, in a cute bunny suit with a curly wig on. We are relieved she is coming to find us and a bit concerned how she's getting sucked into the cult's activities. We circle around to go back to meet her and lose her in the crowd. The cult leaders see us and are moving in to entrap us too. We keep moving. Now we enter a town and try to find a building to go into to hide. We don't and then I see another huge body of water where crocodiles are swimming and snapping. We decide it is safer to stay on land; there are still crocodiles but we can see them coming. They come and one bites my leg. I peel him off and use a piece of wood to stick in the jaws of oncoming crocodiles. The place is infested. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am at some campground where a conference is being held. Mary and Lucy are there. I go ahead to get us a seat at the luncheon tables, big round tables with pink tablecloths on them. I find one very close to where the speaker will be and secure a spot, saving a couple of spots for my friends. Other people are trying to sit at the table. Suddenly I realize that Deepak Chopra is sitting at the table. I see he looks ill. He has a snot booger hanging off his nose and looks bad. I say sympathetically, "You look ill." He smiles weakly. I try to help him. I offer to sort his speeches in chronological order for him. Later I go to his house with him as we'd struck up a relationship, but there aren't ramps and it is hard to get in and out. I gently chide him that he is not very sensitive to the disabled, even though he is one himself. Later I am W. talking with a couple of male friends about stuff and mention my co-worker John. [BL] | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am on a train track and running from the Nazis and I rest for a second. Someone says, "Take a bath now because when the war is nearly over you won't have time." So I take a wonderful hot bath and then hear the Nazi train coming and get out quickly to dry off and change into clean clothes. My family runs for cover and I run down the sidewalk, trying to get to the border where the Dutch can help me. He (the huge German guard) yells, "Halt," and I run. I pour a cream-based jelly out of a tube into his eyes as my defense. He tries to shoot me. I run. I make it to the intersection and try to cross. A Dutch person comes across and helps me across. The German follows and I nearly empty the tube in his eyes and kick at his groin and trip him. He falls and I yell, "Get me a gun." I meant to kill him. The Dutch laughs nervously, surely she doesn't mean to use it. Some wise person says gently, "Get her the gun. She won't kill, but needs to make the effort of holding him at gunpoint for her dignity." | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I light some candles and they melt quickly and spread a melting pool of candle wax on the table and on the floor. The kids must have been playing with the candles before. I try to clean up the growing mass of candle wax. Finally, I figure out to blow out the candles to not keep making up more of a mess. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am being chased by a bad guy. I'm a sort of spy. My helper, a man, is telling me to keep walking and to find a room to hide in for a while until the danger blows over. He's speaking into an earpiece I have in my right ear. I walk and walk and lose the guy and go into a sleazy hotel and get a room. The sympathetic landlord agrees to send up food until it is safe to come out. I go in the room, but there are many doors that keep opening and I am busy going around and locking doors and putting furniture up against them. There is another room and I need all this sealed off, and so I keep trying to remodel the room with my thoughts and see it small and only one door, which I can lean the bed up against. It's hard to get it to change to that. Doors keep popping up all over the room. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am an exchange student in France. A very fat woman is the lady of the house and she is asking me to do some chores around the place. I'm a bit annoyed, but do so. She wants me to do the dishes and then read stories in English to the children. It helps them with their language skills. I have a hard time speaking French. [BL] | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am the director of a film. I am filled with the enormity of how important each decision is, and I have to make each decision frame by frame. Millions of dollars ride on it. I look into the camera viewfinder and give direction. We are filming a getaway down a very big and steep mountain. I am getting different angles. Now I take time out to look at photos of the shoot. People keep coming up and asking me questions. I tell them to give a few minutes of my own to enjoy these photos, pictures of a crevasse in the mountain and so on. One woman says "Oh, the plastics" meaning the photos. I have trouble getting a few moments to myself. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am a member of a two- person team and the other team is getting ready to descend the cliff. We sneak under them at the base of the cliff to spy. They are wimps and are going to drive down and around in a car rather than repel down the cliff face, like we did. I keep very close to the rock face so they won't see us. I keep shifting my position around to remain undetected. Now I am creeping down a long dirt rut behind a shield of grasses. A goat comes up to me and is grazing. I get around the goat and see the hut of a native African friend of mine and ask his wife if I may come in to observe the other team through their window. She agrees. It is a skinny little room and only one chair in it and I use it to sit in front of a round, pretty window. The window has a slit in it and there is a wooden shield closed over it. I ask the woman to open the shield so I may see. She goes outside and does so. I see two men seated near the window talking, an English captain and someone else. I listen in on their conversation, hoping they don't see me. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I need to go to the store my woman owns. I am sort of Dwight. We'd taken the night off to be together, and I need to get some stationery. I take a dime out of her wallet and ask if she wants to come along. She says she's tired and she'll stay home. I say, "Ok, I'll be right back." I am walking barefoot and with each step, I say, "This is stupid. Why am I doing this? Because I forgot to bring more money which means I'll have to come back tomorrow anyway so this is a wasted trip. And each step I take is doubled with the step to return and then I just have to repeat it again tomorrow." I stubbornly keep going, however, arguing with myself all the way. I get there and am looking for the part of the store my woman owns (she is like O'Conner of Northern Exposure). The place is a mess and needs to be organized. I'm too tired to do it now and I'm upset because I haven't the time to do it right, and I feel frustrated. Suddenly, my woman shows up at the door, apologizing for letting me take the walk alone. She said she realized that the time we spent together was very precious and more important than anything, so we'll spend it together cleaning and organizing the store. I am pleased and happy that she sees it this way. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I work for some TV company or something. I am working on my dreams. Carlene of Merton Circle comes over to see how I'm doing. I explain to her that lots of people say I'm obsessing on working on my dreams, and maybe they are right, but I just have to do it. She sympathizes and says she's working for hours at a time on a computer program. She understands. I am now opening envelopes and finding 10 dollars in cash in them. People are finally sending me some grudging support for my birthday, or for my dreams project. Some arrogant man isn't working out for the company. Someone measures the love a man has for me and Dwight's love for me. Dwight's love is stronger. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Jock says to me he just now heard that he wasn't being paid for his work on a play. I say, "What a gyp." Another man says, "It's not really a problem, because all we have to do is fill out this form and take it to the office and they'll come up with the money." I decide to do this and try to fill it out. Now I'm walking to take the form to the office and I'm walking on a "carpet" of sticks and twigs and hollow cork bark and pussy willows which have been sorted carefully so each kind of thing is all in a row. I pick up a cork bark still in the shape of a branch and admire its beauty. I admire the work that went into laying all the pussy willows out together in a row. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am at some huge gym where there are lots of bleachers, and Marianne Fabray sees me and she says, "Come sit where I am," and we walk to the corner and go up. She helps me walk up the bleachers and we sit. I'm not going to be able to see well from there when others sit, and then I sit on something that raises me up so it will be OK. Now it is announced that there is a team driving course and a man named Andy, kind of round faced and wimpy, has a car and we decide to do it. The first run through he's the driver and I'm the passenger. I watch as he drives and try to remember the curves. We come around one and he says they didn't let us know it was so steep a curve before. He's slow and cautious. He passes two slow cars on the right. I am urging him to go faster and thinking I'll really go fast when I drive, and wish I had time to practice with the clutch so I can feel it right. We get to the finish and have to return to our place in the bleachers and then return for my driving part. I somehow get lost or decide to skip that part and I show up without the car or Andy and realize he won't know I'm there and we only have 5 minutes till start time. I tell this official woman who suggests we page the bleachers. She turns on a microphone and says for Andy to meet me there. He does come and I apologize several times for not being at the right place, and thank goodness this is working out. Now we are in a line, only where I am standing is in a small, cold freezer chest for food. I realize this is where they keep the food and back up out of it. Andy goes to the head of the line at the counter to get our fees paid and so on. Two military navy men are behind me and talking. One says loudly, "Look at the son of a bitch," meaning me. I turn and say scathingly and angrily, "Oh yeah? who's the son of a bitch?" We stare at each other confrontationally. I feel powerful. No one is going to mess with me. Then I notice the man at the counter is giving Andy trouble and asking for 10 dollars instead of the 7 dollars. I push my way up there and lean on the counter and chew the man out. I yell like a drill sergeant and say, "Either you straighten this out or let me speak to your supervisor, ass hole" He is arrogant but the woman supervisor hears me and comes forward and fixes things. She gives us our tokens we have to place at particular curves and the necklaces we have to wear. I ask her two or three times for clarification on whether a specific token must go at a specific curve and if I have to wear the specified necklace, because I saw one metal round one with two blue herons carved in black wrought iron on it and want to wear that one. She agrees it doesn't matter. Now we are finally ready to do the drive. I am ready to put my foot to the metal and speed; I test the clutch and we are off. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am playing a guitar on a stage and I play well. There is a man there who is in competition with me. I get off the stage and run hurriedly into the audience crowd to try to get away from the man. He teases me hard, or something. I run into the women's room. I come out and someone is interviewing the man, who is drunk, and he kisses me and the interviewer on stage says something and the man says, "Hey, I'm married and I am loyal to my wife." I am asked if he's a good kisser. I say, "Yes he is. He smells like shit, but he's a good kisser," and I see his mouth is full of duck shit, green stuff, and the cement corner he had been leaning or sitting in had shit on it too. It's nauseating. Now I see on the stage some animal act where the ducks are trained to raise their wings and gesture them like arms and they are told to find someone and cure him, like a doctor. I watch as they all line up at their spots against the side walls and put their heads to the wall like in hide and seek. I think, "How interesting." They probably had to train a long time to be able to do that. They have sacks over their heads. I feel gritty stuff in my throat from the duck shit kiss. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am with Ginny and Ernie. Ernie gives me sweet glances of love. I am unsettled. It feels wonderful and I feel terrible because it isn't right. I try to avoid him. He follows me around and then finally says, "I want to kiss you." I walk away. Then he comes up behind me and hugs me gently and with love. I want to relax into it, but walk away. Ginny comes in and I don't know how to act. Ernie says truthfully and directly, "I kissed B." Ginny bursts into tears and walks away angrily. I follow her saying it won't happen again. She says angrily, "You can have him." I say, "No, he's yours." We do this back and forth. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am awakened by Corinne. I am grumpy and exhausted and sleepy but she says it's important because Darcy and her husband are upset and might leave the reunion, and it's uncomfortable and everyone is having a hard time talking, not knowing what to say. I get up and find Darcy and her husband. I say, "I hear you two had a hard time." Darcy looks very serious. She explains that her husband drew up blueprint plans and made an error and now they may lose this job because he made an error. I soothe them and ask questions about the man who hired them. I assure them he probably would feel confident when they correct the error and show him how they can stick to it and fix things. I suddenly realize the man seated with us is the client they are worried about. I begin talking to him and realize he is a very nice man. He plays baseball for a living. I say, "Let's go jogging, but I have to go to the bathroom first." He agrees. He follows me, talking, and we are having a great time getting to know each other. I come out of the bathroom and he is seated and I ask him something and then I see he's crying. All the tears are streaming down from the right eye as I face him. I say, "Let's talk." He sits at a table. He hesitates, but I am such a good listener that he talks of his troubles and pain. He says, "You are very good at this." I say, "I am a professional." He says, "Then I must pay you." I say, "Oh no, because I offered it as a friend." I feel very tender and like this man a lot. Now we go out to do a jog only we find Dovre and we are going to visit her home. Se step on a conveyor belt thing and are whisked around and then Dovre says, "You aren't going to like this part." I look and see we are going straight up and then straight down in a tight tube. I feel claustrophobic and scared but we get through. Dovre reminds me to step off and walk normally when the green fake grass like belt ends. I do so and now we go into the house. Dovre says something to the man, who doesn't respond. I say, "He's hard of hearing, repeat it." Then we go in and I am going to introduce him to my parents and my "brother" and my "Uncle Bob." I debate if I should announce he is hard of hearing and decide to trust that he can take care of it himself. I say, "This is my parents," and so on. When we get to Uncle Bob, seated with "my brother" on the couch, the man says, "He sure looks like you" (or your father) and I say, "Yes." Then my "brother" says, "I sure like him. Maybe I'll become a hairdresser and really like him." It was a joke. My mother says, "Don't joke like that, people will think things." I say as a joke to her, "Mom, please, try to be more PC," politically correct. I sure do like this man. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am walking with Ellie and Charla. A huge, rough man comes rushing past and beyond us on the sidewalk to an empty field. Ellie starts taking off her clothes. I am appalled. I want us to get out of here and back toward safety and she seems to be courting the danger. He sits in the muddy grass. She goes over and sits with him. I turn and walk away back to the sidewalk with Charla. I see two steps up to the cement sidewalk and a huge horse turd on the step and a gun or rifle the man had put there. Now the man is roughing up Ellie, and she cries out "No, don't hit me, then I'll look bad for my boyfriend. He'll be upset." The man is going to hurt her, possibly rape her. Ellie calls out for them to stop; another man is going to help him. I rush up the sidewalk calling out, "Help me. I need a phone. Help me someone." I go to apartment buildings and pound on doors and look for lights that indicate anyone is home. No one is home or responds. "Help me," I call, now leaving Charla behind in the men's pickup truck in order to go faster for help. I am scared and concerned for them both. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | The Merton Circle is meeting. It's a large group, and Hillary says during the break, "Why don't you tell us what's going on for you now?" I am shy and hesitate, but go up in front of this group and speak. This is fun, like when I was teaching, making them laugh and think. They are warmly responsive. I say, "As you know, when we first met, I was teaching at the community college, well, at east, part time and now things are changed." Tyler says, "Boy, have they!" I smile. I say, "And so now I am going back to high school." They laugh with me. I say, "To learn math." Tyler says, "Calculus." I say, "Yes, I am interested in some aspects of physics and math has always been hard and this ties into how much the Merton circle has changed." They all murmur agreement. I say, "We need to talk about this. I'm not sure I like the changes." | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in a huge house being made over into apartments. There are lots of interesting rooms off rooms. Ellie and Charla and I take a room and I am looking to see where to put my furniture. I see I have a sort of hallway. and someone else, a man, has put a chest of drawers in the bathroom. I go exploring and find another room in yellow paint with a nice window looking out to the busy city streets and I hear music from some dancing place across the street. I go back out to the big room and go around a corner and see Ellie's side. She has a beautiful closet with all her clothes hung up and pretty things and lots of room. I say, "Maybe we can move things around so I can share this space. I can bring my bed in here, and use that yellow room for writing." Then I look out the window. There are lots of interestingly dressed people walking by in crowds, people with roses, headdresses and so on. I say, "Ellie, bring me my camera." She does and I look through the viewfinder, trying out different shots, looking for a good one, trying to be more discriminating than I usually am. I get frustrated as none of the shots look really good. I sit on the edge of a window, knowing it is several floors down, and feel balanced precariously. Ellie asks me if that isn't dangerous. I say, "It could be, but I'm being careful." Then the camera isn't working well and Ellie opens it and sees I've wound up toilet paper into the case by accident. It had been on the bottom holding something broken. Now it's all enmeshed with the film. I say, "The film will be ruined," and I burst into tears and sob and sob. I am so stupid. Ellie says, "You did the best you could," and tries to console me. I walk to the bathroom to pee and Charla follows and I sob, "I didn't now it was going to be like this, when I was a child, I mean. Thank God." I see Charla has on a pretty dress and compliment her. I don't want her distressed with my sadness. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in a building and trying to get a job. I am going to go take classes at the University and want to work part time also. Ellie comes in and is going to apply also. I am very upset. She will mess up my chances. I go to an elevator, which is a tiny space at the top of a flight of stairs, and go down a flight. I am going to go to classes. Now I return, using the same elevator. I go to my new room, which I will live in and counsel in. I try to set it up. Then I think I have two rooms, one with a bed and a tiny kitchen and the original room for counseling sessions. I can be very economical with my living needs because that isn't as important to have the conventional space a house would have. I do want to separate the living space from the counseling space. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in a play about disability that Jock wrote. At first I am sort of a volunteer from the audience. I get up backstage, in the side wings, and sit in a chair. I realize I'll be the first one called on stage. I change my chair so I'll come later. Unfortunately, I end up being the last one and they don't have time for me. I am disappointed and wish I'd had the courage to be first. I go back into the audience and later I am in my wheelchair and I'm going back on stage to be an actress. I back up and the chair tips over and I gracefully roll out of it, unhurt. The audience is upset and concerned and I show them how this is normal to reassure them. It is also part of the play. Now it is later and Jock has returned with a rewrite of the play. I am reading it and seeing the images like a movie. He has completely changed the script and it is science fiction now. I ask him if I'm still in it because it's so changed. He laughs and says, "Oh, yes." I see from the perspective of the enemy aliens who have laser beam guns and they try to shoot my ships out of the sky. We have protective shields and the enemy is in awe because to them it looks like a ship within an invisible ship. The beams bounce off. Now they narrate how they will follow the ship, but unfortunately there are huge seas and oceans on this planet and it is infested with mean and dangerous sea lions. Every dock where they can launch from has hundreds of these huge beasts near it. I see them. We are skimming over the surface of the ocean like in a low flying glider and looking for a place to launch from that isn't covered with sea lions. We have to go far out to do that. Now we are in a room talking, and Jock's wife Melinda is there. I say to Jock how much his writing has improved. I am impressed and a bit jealous. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Bonnie and Mateo and I are traveling, planning to go to Paris. Some crazy woman from India interferes and we lose Bonnie. Mateo and I are going to get on a train but if we do, Bonnie will never find us and I'll end up having to care for Mateo. This was not my plan, to be baby-sitting when in Paris. I try to back track, and remember clues. I must search a computer data bank for info that will help. I feel thwarted. Now I am trying on clothes, I saw a pretty suit. I think will look nice. I put it on: a leather suede jacket, a wool textured skirt, a lavender blue silk like blouse. Corinne is there and feels the material and says, "This is wrong for you, textured like that. It will be hard to work." I am annoyed at her. I want the outfit to work. I like it. Corinne has laid out a bunch of pretty earrings and I like three of them, blue glass and clear glass. I would like to have them. She has them out over my outfit, making it hard to get to my things. I look in the mirror. I open the top button on the blouse and say, "I like it a bit open like this, what do you think?" She agrees, but is still reserved and negative. The outfit feels heavy and cumbersome, but I like it. I feel the hem line at my ankles. Something about a person from India (like Chopra? I better beware of them). | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I tell my mother I am going to church. She doesn't really approve. I am Murphy Brown. I sit in the front row and the minister is two twin women who sometimes look like a two-headed woman. She is preaching. I see Uncle Lionel and I cry, because he is dead. I leave the church to go out and try to be near him. He is sort of invisible. He hands me a poster or flyer or letter he wrote before he died, which is a narrative of his last days. I cry and cry because he was a good man and I will miss him. A young man is there, maybe like Abner or Arthur The story is that young men were musicians and they carried some disease and Lionel got it. Gasp: does that mean Lionel had AIDS? I thought he had cancer. I am assured he didn't have AIDS. He then describes how he and Aunt Elaine escaped from a nursing home and went off to the coast to fish until he died. I loved his rebellious spirit and his sweet humor. He felt sad for the young men who didn't even know they had the disease. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I want to attend a seminar, like the Chopra one. I line up very early to get a good seat up front. Then I am told it is being held in another spot and I go there to discover I'm a bit late and only get a spot in some other more distant section. It even requires another entrance at another field, called "Hunsaker "or something like that. I start to try and find the place to go and am told I have to take a shuttle bus thing there. As I am going to the bus stop, I tell some woman the story of how people resent people with disabilities and tell the Chopra story of the woman who said, "You have kind of an advantage, don't you?" I find a bus stop, but I'm not sure this is the right spot and I do not want to miss the bus. One comes from the wrong direction and stops and I run over to ask the driver if this is the right one or not. I nearly get hit by the bus as it pulls up to the stop. It is "articulated." He looks down at me and I can't seem to understand him, whether this is the one or not. I finally decide this is the one going to the station and go back to my spot to wait. The seminar seems so distant now. [BL] | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I'm in a big gym and finished for the day. It's time to go home. I take my clothes I want to change into, a more informal, sexy outfit. I go to the gas station to change in the restroom and see that Jerome has taken over the place and is busily and energetically setting up things for sale. It's a fundraiser thing, I think. I walk around the premises looking for the restroom. I change, to a red tank top and a blouse. I look pretty good and feel comfortable. Now I'm walking to the car to leave. Jerome calls me into a room to say goodbye. He and I had been antagonistic and attracted to each other. He leans me into a wall and presses his full body against me and kisses me. I respond, which surprises him pleasantly. I want to show him I am sexually warm and responsive. Now he has me pinned to the wall and is working at getting me excited. I feel manipulated and pull his hand away from my vagina. I say, "No." He hints I am a prick tease. I say, "No, I just want it to be real, not for games." I walk away with mixed feelings. After all, it felt delicious up to a point. I write his name on a line in a book, last name first, and rewrite it in red ink because it wasn't very clear. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am laying in a bed and my mother and Corinne and Dwight are there. We are talking. I say to my mother, "You and my father, but mostly you, are very injured people. I don't know how you stood it all this time." She smiles and agrees it has been hard. I say, "You could work on it; it would be hard but it could be done." She agrees. Then she asks what I want to do, and I say, "I want to live on an island near a big city and do my writing and my art work." My mother looks at a painting of a wooded area I did and says, "It is good work." I feel warm and appreciated and acknowledged. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I realize I'm going on stage in 45 minutes and I thought I'd have my script with me, but I won't. I say to Jock sheepishly, "I haven't memorized my lines." He is very upset and disgusted with my lazy unprofessionalism. I pick up the pages, hanging on a wire, each page in a plastic sheet protector, and go away with the intent of committing it all to memory in 45 minutes. I do it, but it is very intense and concentrated work. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in a nice neighborhood and intend to walk home. As I walk, I notice I am headed toward some railroad tracks and trains and see I am now in a dangerous neighborhood with black people all around. I am alone and walking along a railroad raised area. The black people are running around like in a riot. I am blocked and trapped in this dangerous area. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Now I am going to the bathroom. A black family is in the area with me. The father doesn't approve of me. I say, "I am going to a show at the United Brethren Methodist Church," which is black. The mother approves. The children, a boy and a girl, about 12 years old, or 10, like me. We roller skate together, the boy on my right, the girl on my left. The scenery is breathtaking: horses, wide open spaces on the right. We get to the church and they take me to a small office room where a going away party is going on for a white woman who is playing a character of mine in the show. They are all very happy to see me. She hugs me; they are very impressed with my work. Now a young man, the actor John Ritter, is in love with a young woman and he courts her. She is going to declare her love of him and she hands him a gift. It's a joke gift that teases him and then she hands him a real gift, a box of baby things and so on. He takes this to mean she is pregnant and they will be married. He is thrilled. They embrace, and I lay next to them on the floor feeling much sadness and poignancy at being this close to that kind of love, but not being involved myself. Now I'm the young man, who is chosen as the "Ron," like a homecoming king at high school. I stand in the back of a pickup and wave to the crowds who cheer me and want me to stay. I want to leave to be alone with my love. I am torn between the two needs. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am standing in a public bathroom in a health clinic place and combing my hair. I am very upset, because I scratched a sore scab and it is coming off with my hair attached (like my psoriasis of long ago) and I have bald spots. I am looking in the mirror at all the ugly black and blue bald spots and bloody lines where I've scratched them. Maybe my daughter Ellie, or someone like her, agrees to shampoo my hair and color it with dye. My hair is a dark black now. I don't know how I like that (color of June's hair). My blouse and bra are off and now two old men, gay men, get in the bathtub to do therapy together. I feel a bit uncomfortable, being so naked, but think, "Oh well, it's OK. This is a clinic." I turn and am now putting on my bra. One of the old men, now out of the tub says, "I hope she keeps the cleavage. It's great cleavage." I look into his eyes and he has on weird glasses like opera glasses inset into his eyes. I hurriedly try to get dressed. There is another room where patients are being treated, mental therapy. I am pacing. I am now a man. My friend comes in and asks where I am, even though I am pacing right past him. Other people (women) in the room laugh. I say, "Vagina," and a man laughs archly, "Aha." I am upset he misunderstood me and say, "No, not that meaning. I was trying to explain about a woman being pregnant." [BL] | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in my wheelchair and going down the sidewalk. I go to a building and take a sealed envelope in. It is crowded and not easy to get around, so I go to a man who works there who is typing things. I interrupt him and say, "I want to turn this in. It's that scratch sheet or questionnaire thing." He takes it and I say, "It's not too accessible here." He looks around; he's a very busy man. I say, "I've been here for concerts before and it is hard to get around." He is trying to figure out how I can get in, as the tables are all set up in a huge square in this gym-like room. I say, "It's OK, it really is accessible, but I don't want to be there" (for whatever boring event it is), I just brought the paper by. I leave and go home. As I enter, a small boy is standing behind a large dog, a Great Dane kind. He is pulling on his back legs as the dog is eating his dinner. It looks like he is humping the dog, but he isn't. I laugh. I hear the teen kids talking about football practice, they love it, twice a week, and how they can get their mother out of the house or otherwise engaged when the football kids come so she won't embarrass them. She doesn't like or understand football. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am on an arduous journey, a difficult time where I am with enemies, captured, enslaved. Our people come home, finally, we escape. The man, native American, that I worked with, is nearby. I slowly realize that this is our group's last moments together, the last night before we all break away and go on our own ways. I start feeling sad and nostalgic. He watches me. I step to the side and want to walk around outside. I see a place I might go to the bathroom, a hilly knoll. I get there and see an old gnome woman and a line of cute animals in a row. I say, "Oh, I didn't realize there were people here." She says, "Stay, if you want." I am embarrassed. I say, "Oh I just saw the cute animals and was curious." Actually, I needed to pee and walked off. It isn't appropriate to just sit on anything around and pee, copiously, anymore: couches, the ground. It creates a terrible stink for others. I go back and sit, holding the red leather wallet of the man gently in my hands. I stand up and walk to the open wall and look out at a huge movie screen in the rich house across the way. A love scene is on the screen and I feel sad. He wonders what I am looking at and walks near to see. I am embarrassed because it would be better if I was looking at mother nature, but I am looking at a TV or movie screen. I turn and walk back in. I hold this document journal book from the trip and then sigh and put it back where he had it. I replace the wallet. I hold a packet of photos and Ellie suggests she take them and get them developed tomorrow. I don't want to trust her with them. I don't want them misplaced or stolen. I hold on to them. I then see flashes of his face when we had been on trips or camp outs before and I realize he is the injured one I had taken for granted and not noticed much. I see his scarred and injured face. I realize he's been through some surgeries and now he is sweet and good-looking. I want to touch the scars on his face lovingly. He now realizes I am waking up to my feelings about him. He comes softly to me and suggests we debrief our travels. I look around the room to see what other group members he meant and see I am practically the only one there. He meant me. I agree shyly. Now I touch his face softly. I feel wonderment and sadness and love. I had been so blind, so numb, I had not given a moment's thought or feeling to what I had with me all this time. I am very touched. He is happy I finally have connected with him in a loving way. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I and Valerie are sitting in a chair together and my mother is seated in another chair. she tells a story about Jake when he was a baby. She relates that someone noticed his tail wrapped around her breast when he was nursing. I suddenly say, "Oh, what an incredible metaphor." She looks at me suspiciously, with huge eyes with enormous pupils, and says, "Is this going to be profound?" I sigh with frustration. She never understands. I try to explain, "When other people say 'space,' you hear that you are at fault." She does not understand and I am frustrated at her again. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in a room and there are alien beings in human form. They capture me and put me in a room to lock me in. My young boy and younger girl are with me. I see many bright yellow ripe bananas on the floor. This will be our food. I go to a window because I hear the sound of a monkey, apparently being enticed there by the bananas. The enterprising monkey opens and unlocks the window. I have a way of escape. The male alien comes in and I stand in a way that hides the monkey. I don't want him to know I can escape. He leaves. I now gather up papers on the floor and find one with money paper clipped to it, odd denomination bills, like $7.50 or a $13.50 bill. I am choosing what ones to give the children so they will have the resources with them as I send them out to get help. They leave and Rochelle is now in the room. Another woman is there and she asks Rochelle how she's doing. Rochelle says, "Oh, I was very presumptuous. This man was teaching the first grade and he made a mistake and I assumed that meant they'd fire him and I'd have the job, but people are behind him and supporting him." I admire her honesty. She has on a blue denim like poochy cloth hat with a bill on it and has several sets of lips, or several shades of lipsticks on. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in the very roomy back seat of a chauffeur-driven limo that Nate and Cate Evers own. We are just driving around and Cate is talking about feeling depressed, even tough she has everything. I talk to her like a counselor, saying, "I know you know all this, being counselors yourself, but the problem is..." and I go on. Nate shows me a poster he made with a series of pictures of children crying. One is crying so hard she looks like she is beaming a laughing smile. Nate says, "She's finally taking a breath." I agree that is hard to observe, the child crying so hard they don't breathe. I notice the area behind the back seat is a huge room like a trailer house. I go back to explore a bit. I notice the chauffeur is in a black uniform. He's male and a bit overweight and large. The steering wheel is in the center of this long roomy front seat. Now we get out and go right into a building where some religious women are training the children. They turn them upside down and spank them harshly. The children are crying and crying. I am appalled and say to her angrily, "This is abuse. What are you doing?" The woman says they are training the children. I say, "You sure are...training them to be docile and to accept whatever you give them spiritually as the truth. This is shocking." I turn and go out to the front porch and as I leave, I turn and say to her, "When we die, I will go to heaven and you will go to hell." She sneers and says, "You have no hell" (meaning no religious beliefs that are real, like theirs). | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am writing a story. It must be only 1 and 1/2 pages long. I am very conscious of the fact that I must be aware of the form and then make the content work with it. This seemed a very important lesson about good writing. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Howard sits next to me in a meeting. I pat his knee reassuringly. I am helpful and kind as he is a stranger here among my friends. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Another person and I take a shortcut across the lawn. The grass is filled with fallen apples, very pretty. I worry a bit about getting caught, leaving wheel tracks across this beautiful lawn. We go downstairs to make Xerox copies of words and letters, the alphabet and so on from some long document. Then I look on the wall to see where the copies are being kept. I find the right hole and take out the copies to examine them, wanting to make sure that when I put in the letter "c," I also go the capital version as well. I did. There is something about time travel and magic. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | My rooms are very cluttered and messy. Some women friends come by to visit and peek in and start to go away because it is such a mess. I call to them and say, "I've been cleaning it up; come on in." They do. Now I am at a doctor's office. A man like Billy Crystal sits on a toilet and gets some procedure up the ass. He now understands what it is like for women giving birth and so on. He is surprised at the pain. Now I am going on a drive and read an account that thousands of starlings are in the area. I want to see them, it would be beautiful and interesting, but I add, "Not where I'm driving, because I could get into a wreck." I'm driving along the coast. I stop and see a small boy crying and adults trying to explain things to him. A woman says, "He wanted a cone to eat." I say, "I have one." She says it's OK to give it to him. I go down a ramp to him and show him the ice cream cone, which is filled with sticky cactus-like things. He's eats it all. I am amazed. As I go back up the ramp, walking, I notice some of the sticky cactus things are stuck in my flesh. I pull a long thin thread of one out of the palm of my hand. Then another one and several others on my hand. Then the woman, like Hillary of Merton Circle, says, "You are bleeding," and I see a hole in the palm of my hand with blood drops coming out. One drop falls to the floor. She assures me I'll be all right. I keep pulling these things out of me. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in a room and some people are getting ready for a party. I walk around the pillar in the room, like prancing. Then I see a man burn his hand in steam at the sink and I go to him and say, "It might help if you put butter on it." I open the refrigerator door and pull out a stick of butter and rub it on his injured hand, which is a dark brown. It melts yellow on him and I get too much on. I apologize. Then I want to write down the dream I had before I forget it. I have two half finished dreams to write. I am using a quill-like pen and dip it in a chocolate-like ink. I have trouble getting the ink to form the words right. They bunch up like it has sand in it. Mateo interrupts and asks what I'm doing. I say, "Look, the dream was about a birthday party in Mexico. See, the boys are invited so the parents can look them over. See what they do for a living, how much money they have, the family background. If they approve of them, they let the girl date them. They form two groups, the girls in one group, the boys in another." I then tell Mateo about the quincinero, how the girl is 15 and it's as ornate as a wedding, her dress is. Mateo gets bored; he's heard this story before. I tell him about how Hector wasn't very rich, but his Uncle, the police chief, was. I remember the opulent dinner party we witnessed and shiver, Really rich. "But I've told you all this before," I say to Mateo. I still want to tell the story, but he doesn't want to listen. There is a cat around somewhere. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am teaching a kindergarten class. My daughter Dovre has been working with Madonna, the sex queen rock star. They come to visit. Dovre's face is all covered with makeup and I am a bit shook up at how different she is. I try to get her and Madonna to behave well in front of the children. Now Ellie and Charla and a baby boy are there and Ellie makes a mess and I demand she clean it up. She refuses and I get furious and slap her face and fight her and scream "bitch" at her. Others have to drag me off her and take me away from the children because my behavior is not OK for them to see. They ask me to cool down when the children are there and I am so furious I can't. Later, Ellie comes to visit me again. I tell her off and call her names. This hurts her feelings. I don't care. I am so upset that I now have my house moved around the corner and bushes are grown around the door so in case I go off the deep end about Ellie again, the children will not be exposed to my behavior. This upsets me because it is Ellie who creates the problem. I am merely reacting to her, and it's my life that is getting changed. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am trying to clean up the mess in my rooms, reorganize my things. I find a box of muffin-like cookies and bite into one. It is sinfully delicious, with puffs of chocolate on top. I get sexually excited and want to make love. I yell to someone to send Melville down to me. I go into another room and a woman insists she wants to make love to me and this angers me. She's like Howard in her crass insistence. I push her away. I call again for Melville. I go upstairs to find him and he is an ugly thing with a huge jaw that protrudes out and a part of it falls off his face. This is repulsive and I change my mind. I go back downstairs and move dishes and jewelry around, trying o get things to be where they belong so things are more functional and useful and pleasant to look at. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I walk into a room with two bathtubs and a shower. A man is taking a bath in one tub and I decide to take a bath. I then decide to shower. I get in and am wiggling around to get all the spray because it feels so good and warm, and I know the man can see my movements through the glass shower door. Then suddenly the shower door slides open and two naked men come in to rape me. I bite and kick and scream, "Stop it, stop it." I then see myself from behind and see the purple welts I have (from the arthritis and bunches of single strands of course black stubby hairs growing out of my butt. Not very pretty. I wake with my voice screaming, "Stop it," in my head, very loud and realistic. Nightmare quality. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | A boy and a girl are going to do a bit of a speech from a play I wrote to show this man. The boy says, "I'd like to put in an explanation here," and I say, "It's not necessary. If you'd do the bit that I wrote just before it, it will be clear." The man questions me and I explain if he'd do it as I wrote it, it would be fine. So the boy starts. They ride off on a tricycle and I say to the man, "It went too slow. I didn't write all those words." He smiles and doesn't quite believe me. Then a woman interrupts, asking if I was the one that sold the beads. I say yes. She opens a backpack to look at the beads. I am seated on a couch and start to scoot to the other side to give her room to lay out the packages of beads. I am now smooched clear to the other end and she says to me, "Your girls said you were the one that kisses." I said, "I'm the best kisser." The girls do it too soon. The woman, who now is like a figurine on a trapeze with glorious beads all over her, is demonstrating different patterns and positions. I am impressed. The man is kneeling at the side of the couch near me as we were in mid conversation and interrupted. She says, "I'd like to kiss you." We'll then see. I say, "You would like to kiss me?" I continue to watch as se shifts into another dazzling display. I'm still trying to form the rest of my explanation to the man while being intrigued by this woman's transformations in crystal beaded color. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am on a boat. I will be traveling for several weeks. I left a place of danger and change. I ask the Captain where my room is. He gives me a number and I walk down narrow halls looking for the room. I open one door and see the back of someone's head. Nope, not my room. I keep walking. The boat is old and wooden. The paint is chipped and peeling. I find my room. It is filled with a couple of old junky metal beds, twin size, and an ugly purple overstuffed chair. Boxes of stuff are laying around, crowded and junky. I start to clean it up. I am sorting piles of papers and so on. I decide to go to the storeroom or the ship's library to get other nicer furniture. I go in and see shelves of video movies. I decide I could watch a movie a day with all this selection. I go back toward the room. Now a man like Chevy Chase likes me. I am attracted to him. I am laying on a berth in a room and I motion to him to come up and join me. He is standing next to a black man and the black man looks confused about whether I signaled for him or for Chevy. I do these elaborate signals to confirm it is Chevy I want. I want to make love to him. Even though we are in a room with other people around and would be exposed. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am traveling on a special highway or freeway where it is electronically fixed so that all vehicles go on it. There are planes and trains and cars. There is no gas and exhaust and so the vehicles are bumper to bumper. I have my face near the muffler of the vehicle ahead of me and not fumes. It's great. I think we are headed for Mexico. Ginny is around, helping me out. I have trouble walking because of the arthritis. She's helping me choose my clothes and helping me change them. Now I'm on a beach and people are feeling very sad for me because of my pain and arthritis. They want to help me. I sit on a blanket. Now a man shows me a rifle. I aim it out toward the surf. People are playing out there. The man says, "Be careful." As a joke, I point and say, "I got one." He says, "What did you shoot?" I say, "A surfer." Now I am with a man who plays music and I have a small snare drum with a crocheted yarn thing on it and I play it with my fingers, making a soft snare drum with a brush sound. He likes it with his banjo music. He asks me if he should sit farther away so people can hear me too. I say, "It's OK if they don't hear me." Now we are in separate cars driving down the freeway and Abner is my helper. I say it'd be nice if we could play the music together, not in separate cars. The music man then finds a tractor and he says, "Look, we can both sit on it." There is another man, an agent for the music man. Now we're on tour in our tractor and I see posters on a wall. One tells how many millions of dollars we've made, because we're so successful. The agent says to Abner, whose name is Roy Ward now, that he should change his name. Someone else famous already has that name. Roy won't change it. It is his name. I look at the posters and say, "Look, other people have acts involving food and music too." One is about cheese. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Abner comes to visit me. I am sitting on my single bed. He comes and sits on it as we talk. Then he tries to come closer and I open the covers and say, "Come on in, it's OK." We lay together, still talking. We cuddle and as we talk, he lays down the opposite way and pulls me on top of him. I am sitting up looking down at him. We are talking about the V family. I say to him, "I'll probably spend the rest of my life thinking about how the V family has influenced me." The dysfunction and the ways they taught us we were not good enough through negativity. Then I say, "You don't agree with me, do you? You don't think they were bad?" He says no, he doesn't agree. I say, "I know they meant no harm. I love them and always will, but the style of communication was negative and nonsupportive." He shrugs and says he doesn't agree. Now he gets up. Somehow the nearly sexual postures we'd been in feel uncomfortable for him. He walks around. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I'm in the old west and there is an gang, all men and one woman, two old men leaders. They'd worked together for a long time. Now there is some discussion about change. Should we keep everything the same or change things, a remark about whether this man would play with the dog on the right side, where it always had been, or whether he'll be in the fire, if it is moved to the other side, or if we'll be in the 60's (which is new times). Now they have some respect for each other. They sit around and one man says to the woman, "You've changed. You're better at your job now." They take turns complementing each other. There had been friction when they all started. The old guy, like Harry Morgan of Mash, starts to feel sad and he goes off to visit the graves of the two leaders who were killed in the recent fight they were in. He's going to commit suicide and join them. He's on his horse and on the edge of a raging, swollen creek. The horse jumps in and then he jumps in. Now the gang is searching for him. I see the woman with a blind white cane feeling the bank. She's hip deep in the water, carefully searching. The narration feels that she is blind but methodical and will not miss finding the body if it's there. Behind her I see a wooden log in the shape of a crocodile coming up behind her. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I'm with this man. We like each other. There's something about Jamaican music. Then we go to a seaside viewpoint and he and a woman are showing me a beautiful view. I am entranced. It makes a semicircle, the waves and the shapes of the rocks under the water. I say, "Oh, it's beautiful. I must get a picture or two." The man smiles. I get out my camera and start to look in the view finder. I open the lens for the widest possible shot to get the full sweep of the circle, but a rock outcropping on the bottom left corner is in the way and messes up the beauty of the shot. I squirm for a better position but can't get around the rock thing. The man asks what's the problem and I explain about how the rock blocks the picture, or unbalances it or mars it. He says, "Well, then, I wanted you to take a picture of the cheerleader girl." I say, "The what?" I look out and see some rock formations that look like mermaids, sort of. I am not enthused about this angle, because it isn't as artistic, but I start to snap one for him. One of the rocks is now alive and is a little girl who wants her picture taken. She bounces around right in front of me and I try to focus, getting a head and shoulders shot and then a closeup of her face. Then I notice some wiggly boxes in different colors coming up on the view finder screen and realize something isn't right with the camera. I hadn't got the little color squares in it and all the pictures will turn out bad. I open my camera case and see that all my squares of colors have fallen out of their black metal frames. What a job this will be to get it all put back right! I start. The little girl is eager to help me. I open the book of instructions. The words are written like they were in a base of stone and spaces are used for punctuation. It describes what color goes at what point in the story. Now I look up and the man is laying about in a spa or hot water hole with an Evangeline hat and silly Evangeline glasses, narrow and to a point on the sides and on a beaded chain thing. He looks cute and silly. I laugh. I know he wants my attention and is impatient. I get done with all this fiddling around. I smile and say something that means, "This is just like when you were working (maybe a musician or actor) and I waited for you." He acknowledges the hit. I say, "I'll try to hurry." I get to the next part of the story. It doesn't seem to apply to the colors thing. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Arnold Swartzenegger is in the water, like an ocean, and a woman is swimming. He grabs her legs by the ankles from underneath and drags her down to drown her. She struggles, but he is clearly too powerful for her. Another man is watching and Arnold, after killing the woman, goes deeper and deeper to get away from the accusing eyes of the other man. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I go to the ocean and stand on the beach and look out. The water is gone. I am shocked. I see only the foamy stuff left on the sand. This is terrible. Then I turn and walk away. I see a huge bunch of dried bushes pulled together and know this is where the bad guys are hiding. I torch the dry bushes and burn the bad guys out of it. Now they are coming at me and I have a pistol, maybe a .22. I fire bullet after bullet into this one man in a white shirt. He keeps coming at me. I keep firing. I feel bad about having to do this, but I am determined to protect myself. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am at a house at the beach. There is a cute litter of black and white puppies, curly soft fur, like poodles. I pick up a white one and hold him on my lap. I say, "Oh, oh, he's peed on me." Then I look at my hand and see soft, green puppy shit. Ugh. I show it to a man seated on my left. I try to wipe it off. The man puts up his hand to mine and we clasp hands with the puppy shit smooshed up all over both our hands. He smiles. My mother is around somewhere. I say, "Too bad I can't have a puppy at my apartment. But I know I'll take one, only I hesitate, because I'm afraid I'll lose my temper and scream and hit when he makes a mess or is whiny. I don't want to do that ever again and realize this is a way to learn how to do it differently. I decide to go upstairs and look for the stairs. Someone says, "There's this ladder that goes up." I sigh and say, "I can't go up that. Why aren't there stairs where I want to go?" Maybe I'll not go up until I have to, but only, I really want to go up now. So I will do the extra trouble to get there. I go up. Someone has a beautiful bird/butterfly, multi-colored, that flies around my head and sings. She's very pretty. Now I go to the edge of the room and look down, like a counter. The top half of the wall isn't there. I am going to jump down into a box of water. People are laughing; this is just for fun. I have a long skirt and a white long slip on and wonder how I'll make the jump without the skirt flying up and revealing that I don't wear underpants. The girls get in the box and splash around and now the water is all out of it. I scold them and say, "Fill it up again and this time stay out of my water." It is filled up again and I am ready to jump, only I hesitate, because it seems so high up and the water so shallow. Will I get hurt? | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | My father and I are outside on a city street. I point up half a block and say, "There, that's the house I was thinking of buying. I like it." He says, "Let's go look at it." I feel reluctant, like I was just talking about it and not really that interested. I look again, and I say, "Oh, it wasn't that house; that's a church. I meant one further on a block or two." He says, "Let's go." I hesitate. He says, "Is it too far to walk?" I agree it is. Then we are at the front door of the house and ask the woman who lives there, and if we can take a look around. She agrees. We come in and walk through the hall, and turn right, the living room. I look closely at the size of the room and how much furniture fits into it, being aware that I ordinarily do not look that critically at a room and then have a faulty memory of it. I see a large ornate china cabinet, couches and two Christmas trees. An old woman sits in a chair; she is ill. I encourage her. Now I go to the first of three or four bedrooms. It is the old woman's room. There's a single, thin bed, a TV set, a closet. It's crowded, a small room. Next we go to the next bedroom, which is a bit larger. Then we go to the master bedroom, which is huge, beautiful, with lovely furniture, lots of windows, all the curtains matching. I say to the woman owner, "This is a lovely room. My mother is on the tour and asks her when she is moving. She says she has no intention of moving. We go to the next room and more rooms seem to present themselves -- a dining room, a central kitchen. We have gone full circle around the house. I turn back and can see the master bedroom through the window of the kitchen and I see a beautiful fountain, a water fountain. I point it out to my mother, who looks in the wrong direction. I keep pointing and trying to give her verbal direction, but she just can't see it. I say, "By the brick fireplace." She just can't see it. I give up. We leave, thanking the woman owner for the tour. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am in a living room, apparently mine and my new boyfriend and his 4-year-old son are with me. I am seated in an easy chair trying to clean up the area around me. It seems that lots of Charla's toys and junk from Ellie living there are piled up in the corner. The boy wants to play with his toys, but there is no room until I get the other stuff picked up. Now Ellie comes in and wordlessly starts picking up things. She pulls down the Christmas lights from the wall and other old decorations. It is way past Christmas. This is encouraging. I say I want to talk with her. The boyfriend realizes we need privacy and says he'll go to the other room for a while. Now Ellie and I sit side by side on another couch and I am very angry at her and I am slapping her face, only now Ellie is a tiny baby and I slap her face over and over. Now we decide to go upstairs to my bedroom for more privacy and Ellie leads the way upstairs. It is hard to walk up the stairs and the entry way is a cubby hole, not a door, which makes it physically hard to even get in. Then after we hunch down to crawl through, we have to step on a rickety ladder of sorts built up with like video or CD cassettes in a wooden rack which my boyfriend had built for me. That angers me too. Why did I choose such a difficult entryway to my own comfortable and nice room? [BL] | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am someplace where there are many rooms, sort of a house hotel. I carry a bag with a donut in it in my left hand. I really look forward to eating it as a treat. I open it and discover it is a sugar-glazed donut and feel real upset. I want to eat it but am afraid, because of the sugar. I almost decide to eat it but then give it away to the tall, large-chested man who seems to be enamored of me. I look for some other treat. I see a display of baby food jars and think about that, but decide that's too bland. I decide to return to another room where there are fruit-sweetened treats. He follows me. I can feel he really loves me and wants me. I seem to be drawn to him as well. We go into the room and he is showing me a special house he built that is earthquake proof. There is no roof and hardly any walls. I say, "I guess about the only place you can live in a house like this is the Southwest." He agrees. I sigh. I guess I'll have to learn to want to live in the Southwest. We go outside the room and suddenly he kisses me. His big rounded chest is very prominent, and he has to bend forward to be able to get around the chest to kiss me. He starts taking off his jeans. I say, "Please," I feel rushed. He is gently pushing me into the room. He lays down on the bed and asks me to take off my dress. He wants very badly to see my breasts. It is a passion for him that the breasts be the way he likes them. I feel embarrassed, rushed, and also feel his desperate, warm need. So I let him take the dress off as I sit on the bed with him. He pauses to say in a strangled voice of how terrible it is to be afflicted with such a strong need and not know why. I remember then, that he had told me his father had died in his arms, and right after that a large, buxom woman came into the room and comforted him. I realize this is why my breasts are so important to him. I say, "What happens if my breasts aren't right?" He says, "Then I'll love you anyway." He then gently sucks on my breast like a baby. I kiss his arm gently. It is sexually exciting. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Ellie comes over with Charla. She says she wants me to baby-sit her so she can go out to breakfast. She seems shy and hesitant. I think, "Well she might, after all we've been through." Ellie comes over to me, her face soft and child-like, and starts to hug me. Then she curls around me and wants to nurse, pulling my breast out of the bra. I am shocked. I say, "What are you doing?" She says something like a 4-year-old child might. She nurses. I know something is very wrong and don't know what to do. I remain calm. The sexual feeling of the nursing is beginning and I know she has regressed to some childhood place and I want to support her, but this is so odd. I can't do much other than tolerate the moment. I try to pat her and lay my arm around her, but I am not genuinely being her mother as a 4-year-old might want. I gently distract her from the nursing. It is clear now Ellie has a severe mental regression problem. Charla is clear and direct and her own energetic self. My mother calls me asking if I'd found the first aid papers yet. I say, "No, I have a real big crisis here and haven't had time to look." Ellie wraps her body around me. I say to her, "You are a 25-year-old woman, with a child. You need to act like one." Ellie doesn't seem to notice, she's so off in her own world. I know I have to have her committed. I'm not sure how to do that. [BL] | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | A "secret pal" came into my rooms the night before and painted lovely mural-like pictures on my walls. They aren't done yet. I am very surprised and pleased. Then Rosemary comes in and I realize it is her art work and she's pretending to have just dropped by. I show her the paintings, yellow in one room and blue in another, designs on the wall, sort of sketched in some places and fully done in other places. I am mildly curious why she chose to do this. It is ironic since she and I haven't spoken since the Mexico trip. Maybe it's a peace offering. Now I have a white dresser with a mirror on it and some pictures I want to take to the sidewalk "Saturday market" kind of thing to sell, only Rosemary has painted part of it blue; thick blue paint. I realize this will make it come down in value. Ironic, eh? Rosemary was trying to help. I decide it was never painted in the first place. The blue disappears and it is pristine white and valuable again. I get it down a full flight of stairs and onto the sidewalk. I place the paintings around it. Rosemary is there with me. Some young college age women come by and are interested. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am at a party with old high school classmates, a reunion. I walk past them and they nod acknowledgment, but we never interact. I feel sad about this. They don't really care about me. Ernie and Ginny are around somewhere. I look in my little purse to find a lipstick. I take out some old glasses and other things and lay them aside. I find somebody else's lipstick and keep it. It has a double tube, only one side of it has lipstick in it. I put it on and look in the mirror. It is bright red, with a black outline partially around the lips. My lips look full and luscious. I decide I like this color better than the washed out pink I usually wear. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | A man is attracted to me and is trying to get my attention by hanging from a light fixture over a stairwell by his hands and doing tricks. I try to ignore him as I go to my apartment, but he is irresistible and I join him up there. We drop down in an embrace and I look up and say just in time as the square metal box was pulled apart and holding by one screw. We now go up to my apartment. He has moved his things in and a huge black and white bed takes up the entire room with maybe a dozen pillows across it. he turns down the comforter and we get in. He also has maybe four teenage boys. One wants to sleep with us. We laugh and send him on to his room. He goes in and there is bedlam going on in there as they noisily fight. One teen daughter is in there. She's the only nice one. I guess his kids didn't turn out well. Even though he's a wonderful man, his children are ruined. We cuddle up lovingly in the bed. Later, I am coming back to the apartment and a woman stops me and says, "I'm so glad I met up with you. I have the address of a place where you can write. It's one big room, the owner keeps fifty books there in a stack and the rest of the space is all open. If he moves in more books, he'll prorate the rent." She writes down the address, maybe like 219 Ausilaudes. "You don't have to live there," she says. "Just go there each day and write." I agree I need to do that and thank her for the address. Now I'm walking across a porch where small open boxes are displaying segments of a mystery story. I'd been curious to know how this story went, so I walk and look in each box which depicts a scene. "The battery," I say. It was a foreshadowing at the beginning. Now I understand why. My man is being attacked by horrible round organisms that are just a circle of color. They voraciously eat everything. and if he stops emitting this high-pitched noise like a scream, they will close in on him and eat him alive; me too. I am swimming in a lake and they are under the surface, coming at me. I scream and scream. This is an endless struggle. Finally his noise-emitting thing's battery runs out and he is trying to get a new one in. In the seconds while it's changing, they eat him up. I keep screaming and screaming. Finally I am exhausted and simply give up. They decide I shall die slowly and painfully, and I see myself bruised and battered and exhausted, waiting only for the agony to end with death. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Charlton Heston is a director on a movie and I am hanging around. He calls me over and asks me to evaluate a scene he is going to shoot. I am very pretty and young. I look over the scene: a pond where groups of men are set up in twos and threes ready to ambush the hero. I notice that they are all attached with a rope. I decide this is a "one," a highly difficult scene, because of all the elements. I tell Charlton and he is pleased with my answer. He is now flirting with me and gently maneuvers me into a quiet room and finds an excuse to shut the door. We chat and I am aware of sexual attraction. I know he is going to make love to me and that he is married, but this is OK with me. I like him and am attracted. He lays down on me and I am pleasantly excited and expectant. We manage to get out of our clothes and so on. It is all sort of innocent and one-step-at-a-time as I watch him maneuver the whole thing. Now I am his assistant director and mistress. It all seems OK and nice. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | My brother Dwight is dressed up in a nice suit and has received a guitar and a banjo for his birthday. He sits for a moment in a manual wheelchair that is in the room. I comment to him that my father was pleased that he's enjoying his birthday gifts. Dwight asks how I know, since my father didn't say anything. I said, "It was in his face, his expression. I could tell he knew you loved sitting in the wheelchair." Dwight says, "All I did was sit." I say, "I know, but I could tell Dad could tell you loved the gift." Then, as Dwight is making a chair out of the cardboard boxes, the gifts came in by folding them on the perforated lines, I say, "You know, I had a guitar, a mandolin, a fiddle and a banjo." Dwight says, "Really?" I say, "Yes, but I sold some of them." He asks, "Why did you?" I say, "I was poor. I needed the money. I was a student then and on SSI" (Dwight says the SSI word with me like he's heard this story many times). I only got $1450 a month and I had to save $100 a month for the kids, for child support. Dwight says, "It doesn't matter anymore." I say, "Doesn't it?" I clearly think it still matters. | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | Howard keeps a photo of an old wedding. He says the bride is his sister-in-law and his sister a bridesmaid. I look and see that it is Dora's wedding photo. She is the bride and Sonja is the bridesmaid. I look to see where I am. I am off to the far right half, hidden behind other people. Or maybe I'm the tiny one off to the far left. I'm not sure. Now my daughters come to me. Paulina says she belongs to a group called the "Trauma Survivor's Group." Dovre says, "Yes, all three of us have been hurt." I now have to go to Howard and ask him if he ever did anything harmful to the girls. I don't want to talk to him, but I must, to get to the bottom of the situation (story?). | female | 1960-1997 |
b | Barb Sanders | I am sitting in a room, watching TV and wearing my bathrobe. Women from the community college, like Charlene B, come in with leftover sandwich fixings from a lunch. They have a leftover sandwich that's "juicy" and full of all the fixings they are giving me. I feel a bit embarrassed about being caught lounging around in a bathrobe and watching boring TV. Now I go into another room and I am talking to a daughter, maybe Jock's daughter Megan. She's sort of my daughter, Dovre, as well. I say to her, "I am a bit worried about Jock." I quickly reassure her that he's fine; it's just that maybe he doesn't really know what he wants to do. She sits up high on a bench up in a corner and moves some of my things off a table so she can eat. It's almost like the place she's sitting is suspended up in the air, half way to the ceiling in a corner. I am a bit annoyed with her for moving my things. | female | 1960-1997 |