dammit

well, i'm back from our little fact finding mission to portland and i'm not anywhere close to making a decision. portland is certainly as lovely as everyone says, but it's a damned ghost town. even lunch hour monday downtown felt like early sunday morning in san francisco. and san francisco already feels too small... argh. but portland is so cheap! it's unbelieveable, really. studio apartments for four hundred dollars. i could live there for a year on what i've got saved. i'm just not sure if the isolation and boredom would make me more productive or drive me out of my mind.

i had this terrible dream: i was watching children play in the street. a little boy and a little girl skipping rope on the median strip. i have time to think, hmm, maybe i should tell them to get off the street, and then a bus comes rumbling along and knocks them aside, right in front of an oncoming trolley car that grings them beneath its wheels. i run over but its much too late. they are flattened, dirty roadkill. only their faces are intact, flat on the macadam, eyes closed as if in sleep. i try desperately to phone someone in authority, but no one is willing to take responsibility. and i had already had my chance to do something about it, but blew it.

without having done too much work on this, this dream seems like a warning that my book--my baby, you have to be willing to kill your babies, the writing manuals say--is in danger from all the jetting around i've been doing. the writing, the playing, shouldnt be in the public thoroughfares. children need safe, private places to play. i need to find a place for them, and for myself.

well duh. that, i am aware of. but where, where, where.