80 nights

I only recall fragments of the Dream.
It´s daytime, I’m attending an event in the street, a wedding I think.

Someone close by offers me a camera, but I don’t accept it because maybe in the Dream I understand and fear that to use it would be to assume the ephemeral nature of the moment.

In another piece of Dream we’re here on the terrace of the Container, arguing with some people: a situation that’s not very nice:

There’s a man who might well be Joaquín, his girlfriend tells me that what’s happening is that I’ve got too much stress.

She also says I ought to hire an assistant, but I argue that only I can write down my dreams and describe the present moment, the day-to-day happenings in the logs.

I become offended and react badly, because I feel she doesn’t understand the meaning and the sense of my work.

On the defensive I fire back with a stinging expression, “You think you’re really chora (sharp), don’t you?” I’m aware she doesn’t understand the Chilean expression I use, but the energy I’m sending is enough.

Sadly, we’re not on the same wavelength.

Later on I put the neuroheadset: I’m worn out and can’t sleep.

I Dream I’m in an empty city at night that’s unfamiliar to me. Daniel Margulies is busy organizing a series of events in various places and over several days. He takes me to visit an important building in a small town. Thanks to his connections he’s getting it on loan for an event that has to do with me: perhaps the exhibition.
It’s a neo-classical building, rather smallish and in truly bad taste, but my options are few. Even though it looks run down and abandoned (or that’s how the graffiti makes it look in the dark), it seems like a good place to me.

I notice a sign in the entrance that says: Sauna Mund (Oddly, I’m reminded of Chile…).
It’s what it is and that seems fine by me.

Then we move on to somewhere else and enter into a stadium-like amphitheater full of people where everybody is looking in different directions.
The energy is chaotic; I’ve had enough and wake up.

In another Dream, still nighttime, I come to a sculpture studio and a woman that appears to be my friend, the artist Siobhan Hapaska, has sculpted in clay, a full-size newborn baby. It’s a bit grotesque. I’m taken aback by its very prominent head and the body’s mutilated structure: strong arms but no hands.
I find it upsetting and decide to make my own model, but first I have to get more material than is on hand at the studio. I say to a man next to me that I’m thinking to make a solid plaster cast, the model of a head made of clay, a technique that I’m quite familiar with.
Once the head is done, I’ll have to get the plaster for the cast.

A man comes into the atelier and shows us his painting; the figure of a woman-object dressed in black latex. I hadn’t realized it, but Siobhan notices that he has painted a weird fold in the right breast: it’s not natural; it’s frightening.

In the Dream I go somewhere else, an episode with Joaquín. I ask him what happened last night when he met with his ex-girlfriend (perhaps Mariana). He tells me he acted correctly, and he cleans up the wine spilt on the floor: an effort to persuade me to be humble and noble.
“So what went on,” I insist, while I watch him cleaning with a rag the wood-plank floor that reminds me of the stairs in the studio. He only tells me that after awhile he sees her laughing.
Then I ask once again, “what went on?” Deep down, I want to know if they became intimate. I realize, however, that my insistence shows anxiety so I restrain myself because I don’t want Joaquín to see me like that.
Joaquín becomes evasive; he turns and goes.
I figure he’s looking for his son Camilo.

Nighttime, still: I return to the preceding Dream. In a community there are several open houses where people are coming and going. We come into an open space full of big, square, modular cushions: a nice place.
A man tells me where he bought them. He shows me some are made of leather, others of cloth, but I think I like the overall idea more than the object itself.
He, of the weird painting, arrives and shows us another painting he’s just finished.

Siobhan and I are astonished to see it’s her again, like a sick obsession, the dark-skinned woman: his object. But this time, the fold and in the middle of the breast is bigger. I say, “It looks like a vagina!”

Then, we come to the man’s apartment; people passing like a communal atelier.
Stunned, we see her -the woman-object- there.
She’s up high on top of a mezzanine.
He locked her up and now he’s pretending not to comprehend what’s happening in his space.
He feigns amazement to see her latex leggings aren’t torn from being up there.
It’s his fetish and he’s made her captive. It seems to be a secret though, a sort of dark accord between them.
The man has some unstable traits. His head is shaved. It makes me curious to know more about him.
We sit facing each other closely. His body leaning leftward at table level, he whispers secretively to me, but I can’t understand what he’s saying.

In a snippet of Dream I remember, I speak with Jorge about publishing my book of dreams and the task up ahead of us.

I also Dream I’m with Roberto, telling him the battery for the Emotiv has only a two-hour reserve. I ask him to check how long it could last when we measured it before (in 2012) and make a comparison, but Roberto answers: I’m going to see Lucas.
While Roberto is speaking, an amorphous being beside me is simultaneously talking to me. I don’t know who to listen to.
At that moment I start to suspect and become aware it’s a Dream. I wake up.

I’m so exhausted that I can’t sleep.

First I Dream Jorge and I have plans, but I cancel out. To the other people I say emphatically, “I wish to be left alone!”

The alarm goes off abruptly.

I Dream I go with friends to a forest at night where the others are. In the distance, I observe a scene through the trees. I think I see Enrique Macías, long hair down to his waist, with two women, everybody bare breasted and wearing pants. It’s an intimate scene so I discretely avert my attention.

Enrique, enthused about my project to record the EEGs of my dreams, is now in my room. He approaches me from behind me and puts his chest against my back, hinting at intimacy. Slowly in my ear he says, “I can spend the night with you…” But before he finishes the sentence he steps back and recants, aware his desire is off base. I think his proposition imprudent because we haven’t seen each other in quite awhile.
I feel I’d better keep my distance.
Sleeping together now is out of the question: we’re in the lab and I’m wearing the Emotiv.

Suddenly I perceive people downstairs in Lyrica—my studio—who have come because somebody included it as a studio open for visiting in a program resembling the “Roma Arts Corridor.” People are entering.
A man, without asking me, is permitting them entry as though it was open to the public and I won’t tolerate it.
Alarmed, I go downstairs to throw them out. I figure he’s using the keys I lost just three days ago.
Likely some of the people are innocent bystanders, but he, the phony valet-parking guy that roams Calle Córdoba, has brought others into my space to do his business.
I feel invaded and on the defensive. I climb up to the ceiling at the top corner of the entryway and tell them from on high that I’m going to fetch Víctor the blacksmith to help me evict them.
I go in my room to look in the drawer and every set of keys has disappeared.

In a snippet of a Dream I recall an astrologer telling me that Joaquín won’t get close with me because he’s too prideful.
I’ve already figured that out.

In another Dream Eddie comes to the lab in the morning to fix the audio app.
Just awake, I see the studio is still full of people.
I turn on the water to take a shower while offering Eddie a piece of bread.
I’m scurrying around doing different things simultaneously so I tell Eddie to fix the bread for himself, I can’t take care of everything.
It’s important I tell him the EEG recorded on 18 March is not valid, the names of the files and the numbering of the days have to be changed so as to begin on 19 March. I show him where they are and Eddie agrees.
The shower is still running and the bread offered remains pendant.
Eddies finds a sponge cake in the kitchen, but when I go to check it out, I can’t find it. However, I do find a bag of bread that says it’s made of grains—something like for astronauts. I’ve never seen anything like it. I turn on the stove and toast some pieces, but it never ends up reaching Eddie’s hands.
Eddie tells me about a personal situation, a story too complex to understand. My attention drifts. It seems he’s going to move to a tiny town in the Andes Mountains, on the border with Chile.
My thoughts elsewhere, I vaguely understand it has to do with some Italian guys he knows and a relationship with the Apennine Mountains.

I Dream, then remember going to a garage sale that has oddly decorated plates for sale. I see they are badly painted. As it turns out, the customers buy the blank plates, paint them themselves and then return them to the store to be sold once again.
It seems like a closed circle, but they tell me it isn’t.

I see a man wearing a yarmulke. He’s carrying some curious black boxes I find interesting. One’s a container like the one in my atelier, which are used for export shipping. Another is a small suitcase. I offer to buy them. Probably he needs money, so he assents. The Jewish man is looking to do business. There’s a weird structure, a cloth pipe hanging from metal nails that’s vulnerable to the atmospheric elements. It seems like an article for ritual and Eddie gets caught up with this. He knows how to use it, segmenting the column with lines every so often, which gives it the sense of an initiation into Judaic wisdom.

I find this pretty abstract. To me, the pipe has the shape of a hanging sausage that’s packed with air.

We move on to a big party. We’re leaning against the bar, but nothing is happening. A woman friend approaches, expecting to find me “on the moon,” but I feel perfectly lucid, despite having smoked something. The place looks like a club as we walk through the people to the rear of the party where another friend is. She tells us a story about her boyfriend. He suddenly became furious, made a scene of choreographed jealousy, leaving my friend perplexed and an empty space behind him. After objectively analyzing it, she describes his ridiculous dance. Bare-breasted, open-kneed, hands on genitals, he had moved forward in small leaps. Most serious of all were the flashes of hate, a truly surprising reaction. In spite of seeming like a scandal to me, her description is thoughtful and measured. I grasp by the way she’s dressed that she has had good upbringing. Trying hard to view it in deep intellectual terms, she believes that the scene could have to do with French theater.
I figure if this is so, it gives us another reason to leave the party.
Besides, it’s late.
She says no, though; that she’s going to stay because she can’t live without him.

Due to tiredness I only remember a fragment of the Dream. We’re with Eddie, his girlfriend and a friend of her’s. There’s a jar of honey that’s not quite empty. It’s runny. I figure we can use it for lunch so I’ll take it up to the Container terrace.

At the start of the Dream I’m in a house, convinced somebody’s coming to buy paintings from me. Then I recall being on a street when two women appear, each of them wanting a 15,000-peso commission for selling my paintings.
That would leave me only 15,000 for my work. I deem the conditions unfair so I’d rather not sell.

I’m with Michel Blancsube, who’s working with me on a project. An old lady appears on the street and gives each of us big pieces of bread, one of them alone enough to satisfy. Out of the blue, the two women return, insisting on their outrageous commissions while giving me small earrings.
Without my offering, they snatch my bread and eat it right in front of me.

I’m very irritated, but Michel has no trouble dealing with them. This creates some distancing with him, even though I know he’s a loyal ally. He has unassumingly stood behind me and my work for years, my Void Painting and my dream diary Bed Time Stories. Michel is entirely trustworthy, I cannot deny it.

The lady that brought the bread explains that in a triangular shape, the angle that fits in the center of the pie circle multiplies itself and that the outer edge, its perimeter, is of poorer quality.
They have eaten all my bread and have gone, leaving only bits of the outer edge. It’s deplorable.

Leaving there, we cross Avenida Insurgentes, which seems a lot narrower now that it has the dedicated lanes for the Metrobus. These hellishly noisy buses speed by, making walking hereabouts unpleasant. They disturb the public peace. I prefer a system of silent trains like the Tramway in Paris. I no longer feel content here.
It doesn’t bother Michel, though, who says this is the way things are, which is fine.

Toward the end of the Dream I recall Pablo MacKenna and I commissioning a group of people to manufacture small wooden dolls that we name “Ekeko”(even though they bear no resemblance to the real Ekeko, a doll native to the Andes).
We provide them with all the materials needed—which we already have on hand—to make the finger-size dolls. The Dream reveals them to be highly colorful and related to traditional Japanese culture: perhaps Chinese and other Asian ones, as well.

I put the Neuroheadset. I only retain a little of the Dream. I’ve been floating in the ocean for a while, emptying my mind and leaving my concerns behind. I become aware the water is a darker color, possibly indicating I’m in danger that the current is carrying me towards the rocks. Aware of this reality, I prudently react.

I Dream we’re on a big train. Looking out the window I notice the speed is extreme and I fear it might be dangerous. I don’t recall what leads into the Dream.
I believe I’m with Marguerite and a group of people in attendance at artist Cyrille Weiner’s project, which I believe Cuauhtémoc is curating.

In my Dream I see Cyrille on the train, presumptuously looking quite the artist, his chubby body dressed in white clothes and sealskin clogs. What’s more, his younger brother affects the same flamboyant sense of style, but smaller. I perceive him to be clumsy, sickly deformed, but he’s with Cyrille, “the great artist,” who’s about to do a performance inside the train.

I run into Cuauhtémoc like in the old times. Hunkered down on a little seat, he kisses me on my mouth in heated passion. I feel true love. I wonder why we weren’t open to a relationship when we had the chance. Our love hasn’t faded with time.
Cuauhtémoc tells me he’s particularly fond of a red silk scarf he’s wearing. I don’t recall having given it to him and can’t figure out what he’s talking about… In my Dream I purposefully take out of my purse a very similar one that Jean Fribourg gave me a while back.
I do it on purpose to show that Cuauhtémoc’s is similar but different.
I’m surprised he has a keepsake of me.

I don’t want to miss out on Cuauhtémoc and Cyrille’s project. We go into another car to catch the industrial-style performance in small scale. It involves a sort of bulldozer that rises up to a platform with the aid of a forklift. It’s a sole movement.

Farther along, I’m able to observe from outside the big white train in which we’re traveling. I see that two trains are about to crash head-on at full speed, but just in the nick of time, they’re able to sidetrack and avoid the fatal collision.
It’s a powerful vision. I’m aware I could have died.
At this moment, my spirit is serenely soaked in the recent experience of love.

I remember in my Dream I’m with a group of friends. I’m outdoors wearing a bikini and with the neuroheadset on my head, seemingly at a public recreation place. I lie down on my back alongside my friends. Over the way, another crowd of people is whistling flirtatiously, as though they’re coming after me. I’m their target.
I await them resolutely, knowing I’ll have to confront them sooner or later.

Later, I remember I’m scheduled to meet with Lorena via some sort of video-conferencing device. But then the device takes me into its new space, a dark room; a laboratory full of state-of-the-art machines that work with an EEG system with many more electrodes.
I ask Lorena, “What’s it like?” She’s too busy, though, and doesn’t answer me.

Franka has returned and now lives with Lorena, her sister. She can’t avoid me because I’m in the midst of a project with Lorena and Roberto. Franka is OK with that.
We’re into the final preparations of the system –lots of software- and I’m seated in the hallway of the lab, right side of my back resting in a very high chair.
There’s a programmer in the lab that is quite familiar with the Emotiv. I invite him to get acquainted with my equipment because they can likely link up and share codes of information. They greet by slapping hands, but with bodies half turned away: out of pride, I figure.
I don’t know why I’ve put on the programmer’s black and gray sneakers, which are equipped with all sorts of gadgetry, including two light bulbs on either side of the sole, with lights underneath. I don’t know why but before trying them out I remove the soles and the bunch of electrodes and terminals installed under them. They are uncomfortable.
My voice in my Dream tells me that the responsibility is now on me; the ball is in my court.

I recall a lovely dream that takes place in the early evening. Out in the middle of the wilderness, Mijael and I discover a huge cliff, its wall of red stone showing impressive geological layering.

At the bottom of the cliff there’s a small grouping of houses and cobblestone streets.

I get excited when I note a slight split that I hope might be a town square, but it’s too small, it’s just an opening.

We continue admiring the houses, seemingly solidly built of local materials like red brick. They painstakingly follow classical European village architectural lines while also having some contemporary touches such as curved walls. Getting closer up, I observe they’re made of brass, a more vulnerable material. This application makes me aware in the Dream that it’s an architect’s house, so we go in.

Mijael and I get into the owner’s bed. We figure the architect is a cultured fellow who proposes another way of living because the construction and the detailing have been done with a lot of love.

At that, we recall that the architect has attended the seminars at the School of Architecture in Ritoque. It seems I’ve also seen him in La Ferme du Bonheur in Nanterre.

In his bed, Mija and I gossip about this Frenchman being a bon vivant, quite fond of his wine. We extend thumbs and little fingers and bend our elbows to mimic drinking.

I hadn’t realized I’d slept while wearing the neuroheadset. Everything seems the same and flowing naturally.

Something’s bothering me, maybe the shelf at the head of my bed. I ask Giselle to move it somewhere else.

She affixes it with huge nuts and bolts to the pebble wall that’s taking the place of the red curtain in my room.

It’s rough, but Giselle sensitively paints them the color of the wall to mask them.

The shelf looks terrible there and I’m about to ask Giselle to remove it when I get the feeling that something’s not right: Giselle would never do this sort of heavy work.

I realize this is a Dream so I get out of bed to go to the kitchen. Everything seems normal. I see my father and, farther off, another person I can’t identify. They move silently in the morning so as to not awaken me. They know I’m working with the Emotiv.

When I go back to my room I’m surprised to see thousands and thousands of little tracks, paw prints left by the cats that I think live on the roof. There are so many, though. The whole floor -my sheets even- are covered with them.

Worried, not knowing what to think, I remove my sleeping mask and the tracks disappear.

It was my sleeping mask that made everything look like it had paw prints on it.

 

I Dream I’m with Mijael in a new Paris Metro station, a splendid example of French industrial architecture. We have to take care of some administrative paper work. I have to get a credential-size photo taken. I’ll likely need two of them in black and white, for the Metro pass.
We don’t go through the underground passageways, but rather walk along ones outside with other French people. It’s a bit chaotic; I don’t understand what’s happening.

Then I’m in a house with Mija; I’m waiting to go out with him.
I’m sitting on a porcelain potty after peeing in it while waiting for him.
When he arrives, I chastely cover it with a cloth. I’d intended to empty the pee in the French porcelain potty into the lieu. It’s a question of modesty, nothing dirty.
Mijael tells me he’s going to bed. Although I’d hoped to go out with him, I have to understand him because, when I peed, I had relieved myself.
That done; now it’s his turn.
He’s right; it’s his turn.
Furthermore, it’s that time of year.

It’s his right, I can’t deny it and must accept it, despite hoping we’d go out.

I Dream we’re staying at Marguerite’s house.

A woman -her renter- arrives and we quickly have to change rooms. She’s young, dark skin, long hair hanging down in a ponytail. She looks smart and she’s also an artist. Coming back to her apartment, the renter and Marguerite go into her room.

They put us in another place. My friend (we’re not in a sexual relationship, he’s just a friend in the Dream) and I get in bed. I’m aware the quilt belongs to Lorena. I have the impression the bed’s not made, there are no sheets on it and we have to make it. I feel everything’s impromptu but, as visitors, we can’t be too demanding, even though I feel precarious.

I recall another Dream. We’re traveling on an airplane. It’s a project and the cabin is divided into compartments like a train. As is usual on a flight, we have to fill out some forms that declare us as artists. My father is in charge of all the passengers and he checks every one of them. He tells me I haven’t done mine correctly; I have to do it over. Then he goes away. I feel a bit lost; I can’t figure out what he wants. When he comes back, my declaration isn’t ready. He tells me I have to describe my work. I understand it’s much simpler, just routine. I just have to do what I’ve always done.

I recall only the Dream’s last thought: I need to beware of Michael Milham. He steals my energy.

Wearing the neuroheadset, I Dream we’re with Eddie on a beautiful yacht, a handsome Frenchman at the helm. Motoring along a canal, we ought to turn right at a crossing, but we continue downstream, the Frenchman not having reacted soon enough. I insist again on turning right and he puts the yacht in reverse and agilely maneuvers its prow to head upstream, which delivers us into a lagoon. There we see an impressive ship that looks as though it’s under construction, its black hull empty and half submerged in the water.

My friend Johanna, looking guilty, gets out and tells me sheepishly that she slept during the day and stayed awake at night. I tell her to not worry about it, it could happen to anyone. Her mother comes from behind her and worriedly asks me to take charge of her.

The curator Ery Camara is beside the ship in the lagoon. I go over to him and ask if he’s received the press release about the opening of the 80 Days. He says no. Maybe I didn’t even send it to him. I can make sure he gets one, even though it’s just for the sake of politics and not really important.
Farther along, Erika Harrsch comes to find out what’s happening.

I write notes in a notebook with Ery’s letterhead. It doesn’t seem right to me so I stop. What am I doing?

We’re out in the lagoon taking off parts of the ship that look like neon light tubing. I’m marking big letters on them with a felt-tip pen, which seemingly displeases the others because they say something to me, but I pay it no heed.

The lagoon is as big as Peuco (Cordillera) National Park (in Chile). For a moment, I journey in my mind, imagining the garden of my cousins’ house with an industrial lighting system that’s too intense. Later, some electricians are setting up the system in my studio, in addition to the one it has already. I have no idea why, but I want to go up to the (building’s) ceiling.

Still facing the half-built, half-sunken ship, from afar, someone lying on top of the hull gets my attention yelling at me, “Here comes the ball!” I hope it’s not the size of the ship… No need to worry, I catch the inflatable beach ball.

I wake up.

Again, Dreaming, a woman is in a kitchen installing a number of screens that cover the walls surrounding big tables made of black cement that resemble mine a great deal. It’s a very tight space. The screens are not alike, but they’re all up-to-the-minute technology. I see she’s installing them by herself and I imagine they’re paying her to do it.
We hear the system’s sounds. They’re too long, seemingly fragments, scenes from movies. The kitchen looks like a laboratory inundated in light. I have to keep it spotlessly clean and without clutter.

I recall a fragment. I see Matías outside the Oven Floor, making his homemade vanilla ice cream in a machine. In passing, he tells me a Japanese taught him how to do it. I also make my own vanilla ice cream. I see him walking down the street behind his wife. I offer him a special dark craft beer and he takes it. I have two, but he just takes one. In his other hand he has a Diet Coke. He’s lost track and forgotten he’s with his woman, when he remembers, he runs after her.

In finishing, they tell me that Edgar (Giraud) called. I perceive it as an interpretation of the entire Dream before awakening. It makes me wonder how they know that. It’s all recorded on the screens.

I have the neuroheadset, I only recall Dreaming of a situation in which a man is behind me, the agreement being that I go first in front of him. An exit door opens before me and I, in a canoe lying face down as though on a surfboard, float over the threshold and into the open. I’m on a mission I’m keen to accomplish.

I wake up in the middle of the night too tired to recall my Dreams.
Only sleep.

My recall of the first Dream is a bit shaky, but I vaguely remember a humble couple that they appear to be immigrants. It’s at night.

Going from place to place, we end up in computer-whiz Hugo Cárdenas’ room. He’s got his hands on a laptop and won’t let go of it.

I jump at the chance to download his music into mine, but the first attempt is unsuccessful. I’m with a group of people that doesn’t seem to have any unifying purpose.

They’re frivolous. I think there’s even a nanny present who spoils them.

Hugo hands me a key that I put into his computer’s USB slot. As it’s shaped like a door key, I give it a twist to gain access to his music. Hugo lets me do it.

Hugo, in his huge room, shows us his toys. I’m astonished at the gigantic sculpture of an antique car, painted in gray.

This simply goes to show that Hugo has remained in childhood.

I Dream I go to Paris, to the home of a man whose presence I can only sense. I talk with Mijael on the phone. The relationship is as it is now: distant, quite tender and with unconditional loyalty, much like it was when we were ardent sweethearts in our adolescence.

No words come from Mijael, I only hear difficult breathing and something horrible happening to him in silence.

Mija! Mijael! Music on a French radio station plays in the background.

I usually call him first thing when I get to Paris, no matter where I’m calling from, which is right now seated on the floor in a corner of a darkened house.

I’m aware something atrocious happened, he’s in such a bad way he can’t articulate. I simply speak a few, but very affectionate words from the bottom of my heart, my voice extremely sweet, “Mija… Qu’est ce que c’est?”

I’m thinking all sorts of terrible thoughts. Maybe he’s met someone else and is afraid to tell me… In the silence, suffering emanates from heavy breathing.

The silence consoles him and I’m there with him.

His breathing, immensely painful, impedes his speech. “Mija.”

“My mum has died,” he simply says.

Now I understand and can feel his pain. Death is experienced totally alone, nobody can make us company. It’s unavoidable. Life runs its course. Monica’s time had come to its end, finished.

I’m completely aware of the close relationship they had and what this means. The silence is like death itself.

“Mijael, don’t die along with her. I mean, don’t die very much.”

Only silence remains.

Fate alone has brought us together at this moment: two people who have meant so much to each other, brought together at such a significant moment in life.

Mijael is paralyzed, death having submerged him into solitude, and he has an intense process ahead of him. There’s nothing to be said.

I awaken to my own voice saying, “When did it happen?”

I ware my neuroheadset on but cannot remember a Dream.

Starting out I recall just a little of the Dream. Inside a theater, a Fascist black armored car savagely plows through the seats. It’s a chase. That’s all, nothing more.

Another fragment.

Returning from a trip (probably to Germany) with Roberto, we’re driving through Paris.

Instead of going straight to Roberto’s house, I secretly escape into my dreamscape 9th Arrondisement. At dawn I’m walking along a street lined with shops because I like the style of clothing they sell, even though it’s cheap and somewhat in bad taste.

I go into a store and steal a big bowl to match a similar one I already have. I look around the store. It sells household items, Chinese imports. I check out the purses and luggage, but nothing strikes my fancy enough to buy it. I go back out. Truth to tell, I have everything I need.

Farther along, I duck into another store. I try on a dressy beige jacket. It’s well cut, the neck is ample so I buy it. I meet the owner, a woman that’s done a laudable job in choosing to upgrade the store’s quality in comparison with the competition in the area. She seems badly dressed, but stylish nonetheless. She tells me all it takes to change your look is a change of earrings.

The story is that, instead of going to Roberto’s house as expected, without telling him, I go to see a friend. Roberto is nonchalant, though. I get away. But the obscure part is that the man looks a lot like Cuezco, brother of my mother’s husband. I don’t recall anything else.

I’m left solely with the memory of the intense experience, as though it were a reality that I dearly hope was just a Dream.

I receive an SMS from a woman (not Marie) from Mandaro, which I’m certain needs to be passed along to Joaquín. In my Dream I go to a parking lot where they are. When I see her, I can’t recall her name; I don’t recognize her. She wants to know how I’m doing. I, trusting in her good will and friendly look of concern, tell her straight up, “Tell him whatever you want.”

Sometimes I’m fine, others, bad.

They’ve been partying all night long, although I have just gotten up to an ordinary day. I’m well dressed in jeans and an extremely stylish black leather belt with dangling strings that my grandmother gave me. I feel good like this.

I’m astonished to see Valerie Meyer and also Ana Perusquia go by, two people out of my past. They’ve been at the party, but this morning they seem clearheaded enough to take on the responsibilities of their job activities. They’re setting off for work.
Valerie’s coordinated outfit includes sailor-style stockings with blue and white stripes.

There’s a clear indication that Joaquín is thinking about me: he misses me.
We meet up on the pathways outside the house. He himself has come looking for me. He’s confronting his emotions.
I note changes in him. He’s different; strong-bodied, taller. When I see him I say with irony, “You’re another Joaquín. Which of the two am I talking with?”
He seems a kind and sensitive fellow; the vulnerable Joaquín… Liberated now, he embraces me, showing his affection and making me feel important.
Here, now, he is powerfully alluring and the feelings are running strong.
I say forthrightly, “But you didn’t even take me home the other day. Your moods change color from one moment to the next. Right now it’s red.”
“I know,” he replies.
I know him well: he’s insecure and assumes different attitudes according to the circumstances…
The party is in a very big house, a collective studio or a film production company. Even after the party is over, people are still scattered around everywhere.

We enter a room where his friends are seated on a couch mouthing off and having fun. A close friend of Joaquín, a rather attractive woman whom I hadn’t noticed before and whose name I can’t recall, is talking up a storm. She’s a flirt. I don’t like her looks or the way she’s acting because she doesn’t show respect for the space of others. Right in my face she grabs ahold of Joaquín and yanks him toward her.
I ask Joaquín if he likes her, if he’s got something going on with her. He tells me flatly there’s no relationship, they’re just having fun. With that, I begin to feel out of place.
What am I doing here?
I lose patience, I should be doing the things I have to do.
“I’ve got to go to work,” I say.
His friend (maybe her name is Lizette) makes the same statement right after me, adding that she has a job with an important firm. Her assertion seems hackneyed, though, said without conviction. There’s no truth in it. I drop my defensive mode.

By way of transition, I drift along with the context, ceding customary control to be able to free myself up and tune into the party spirit. The barriers come down.

In response, I move away from the group, extract myself without a goodbye and leave via the outside pathway. But Joaquín comes after me pleading that I not leave, as though it wasn’t right for me to take off without saying goodbye.
I’m fascinated with how different Joaquín looks: short hair and sideburns strikingly trimmed to separate them from the hair on his head.
He asks me if I still use bed fragrances, recalling the smells of when we were together. I tell him it’s a deeply engrained custom I’ve always had. He embraces me, but I feel he doesn’t mean it because he’s looking away.

“It’s good to have friends, right,” I say rhetorically, but with a touch of irony, because, although I’ve omitted saying it, I’m thinking to go on a trip with Juan Pablo.

He starts talking to me like an adolescent about a group of attractive Italian women at the party. He’s speaking Italian to me. We normally speak in French, our language in common, but he’s on another wavelength, yakking away in Italian. I have no idea what he’s saying.

I want to leave, but Joaquín keeps hunting me down. A thoughtful and discrete looking Italian lady with blond hair and blue eyes comes looking for him. I ask if she likes him, to which she replies “no, but he’s really flirty.”
Then a dusky lady with a strong personality comes along, calling to him to stay in the party groove with her friends somewhere else. They have liquor and a box full of big wilted marijuana leaves. “It looks bad,” I tell him. “Terrible, bad weed!”

I don’t know if it’s the same woman or another one that brings a gift: thick pants like for skiing. They’re too big, even for the transformed Joaquín. She politely mentions his children. She has a son and uses him as an excuse for him to go out with her.

I’m starting to feel bad. I’m out of place, I don’t belong in this circle. I feel split in two, anguished, but unwilling to leave. I stay.

I’m feeling out of sorts; jealous, no longer clear minded. We go to a place that’s like a pathway opened through the house’s yard. Joaquín gets involved with an Italian woman who’s totally given over to the sensual.
Seated, he takes hold of the Italian woman by her ankles, limiting her movements. She’s small, well proportioned, and has her torso bared. She’s on her back, ready to give into the usual pleasures of libertine sex.
I find the scene off putting, out of bounds; spiritual death.
It pains me to say it, but at that moment I loudly awaken: “It exists in me!”

I’m happy it’s only a dream.

My Dream takes place here (in my living quarters), where it turns out that near the stairs there’s a small escape passage between the Hornero and the wall separating the kitchen from my bedroom. Matías, Said and Rubén go into it.
What had been a vent has expanded into a hole in the drywall that I would now have to repair. I’m horrified at the work in store to patch the wall these folks have destroyed in their passing.
Due to the rain, Matías has left muddy footprints on the white kitchen floor.
Giselle’s cleaning job is now a mess.

On the one hand, I try to do things well and, on the other, I mess up the things that have cost me so much effort. It’s discouraging. It’s not them, it’s me.

Then I recall a long Dream: a series of episode having to do with the Louvre Museum.
We’re in a branch of the Louvre in some town. This museum focuses on more recent art: modern and contemporary, let’s say.
In the company of Jonny, a woman is telling us that a monumental painting is being exhibited outside the Louvre proper.
I’m taken aback because I know how careful French museums are in displaying their exhibits and I’m also aware of the dust and suspended particles in any city’s atmosphere. How do they handle that? The woman goes on to say that the painting is in the pointillist style, which leads me to suspect I might be familiar with it. My interest has been whetted and I’m keen to see the piece.
Where exactly is it displayed in the Louvre?
The museum we’re in seems completely empty, as I don’t recall seeing any works at all. I only remember the concept of a program that involves the spectator. The only contemporary art in sight is the architecture. We leave.

At the Louvre we find out that the painting is not truly outside, but rather in one of the rooms on which the rest of the building pivots. They are usually empty. Rather than being outdoors, it’s under a big dome with light streaming through its top.
The piece’s relationship to my painting, Void, is more and more evident.

I follow the Dream’s destiny. I ask the curator where they’ve exhibited the painting and she replies it’s in the museum’s central patio. Jonny and I go to see it and there is Void on display, hung in the museum’s right wing. It’s an achievement and an honor, even though I didn’t do anything.

The Dream gives evidence that I need an atelier for my work.

Continuing along in the Dream, Jonny and I return to being a couple: order and harmony are restored.

Jonny will work here in the atelier’s big studio. He will use one wall and I’ll use the one facing. The space is big enough for both of us to have our own freedom.

Jonny and I are quite strongly and clearly marked with the number 3.

I vaguely recall the following fragment. An artist couple is visiting, most likely in residence. I have a hunch I’ll have to deal with them.
Although they were invited, no one is paying attention to them.
In observing them, I see they are having to procure everything, a troubling experience they are ill equipped to deal with.
On the one hand, they’ve been handed everything, but nothing is forthcoming.
Everything revolves around the tour through the branches of the Louvre.

The artist couple is forever in need, either they lack something or they wanted something else. They’re constantly complaining. In the last part of the Dream we’re on an airplane flying over the French countryside. I feel I’m responsible for what I’m viewing out the window: the plane’s wing scraping the side of a hill and losing altitude.

I am seated in the rear of the plane, along with the artist couple I’ve taken charge of. But when the accident unavoidably happens, I go to the front, right behind the pilots, endeavoring that this doesn’t turn into a fatal tragedy.
I’m seated next to Marguerite when the plane goes down. Nothing happens, though, just a forced landing of the Air France flight.

Viewing it from outside, it looks intact. It’s a small, white Concorde with its familiar aerodynamic shape.

Unfazed by the incident that has just taken place, the pilots, a man and a woman, nonchalantly take out a couple of bottles of beer.
I understand that a sense of humor is called for, that the story could be an analogy for the Day-by-Day dream log I’m keeping.

We’re at the edge of an ancient village, wondering what are we going to do.
One of French culture’s key components is the bakery and the Dream gives us to understand that deep inside every Frenchman there’s a baker, which is nothing to be concerned about.

In fact, parallel to the incident, the woman pilot and Marguerite have gotten into a complex conversation on the subject of curating, their art theories revolving around the previous experience at the Louvre. Their conversation is hard to follow.
As always, I concern myself with practical matters: what to do with the people that had connecting flights or were going to continue their trips by other means? Some need to get going, others can while away the afternoon in the village library, a branch of the Louvre.

Fascinated, I wander among the books. Books thrill me. Every publication is here, this library is a cultural Mecca. The books aren’t shelved, so we walk between them, over them and through them.

The man of the artist couple is still griping, this time because the store doesn’t have water and only sells pastries.

Wearing the neuroheadset, I remember watching a dark-skinned girl with a long ponytail. She’s about 12 years old and quite agile. She runs and bounds up some stairs, taking four stair steps at a stride. In four strides she’s atop a platform that she uses to cross over a floor before scurrying down the other side. The intricate rhythm involved in taking four steps at a stride can only be maintained a maximum of four strides: the exact measure, the limit.
I myself have done it; it’s physically demanding but can be done. She makes it look easy, but it’s not.

There’s a shadowy Dream I recall in which I’m in a taxi on a freeway in an unfamiliar big city. I’m on my way to see Margaret and my stepbrother Jacky. We pass by a huge shopping mall, which, in addition to the long ride, signals me that we are way out in the suburbs. I realize we’ve gone too far and ask the taxi driver to go back.

We’re in a house where I feel an enormous tension between the family members living there. We don’t share the house, as each member has a different area.

Normally patient and generous, Margaret is upset; relationships are in shambles. The trouble is palpable, gloomy.

The Dream has given me to understand that the situation will continue for as long as it takes to sort out the inheritance my father has left and that I must take care not to intermix certain things.

In another Dream I’m in a rural area with Mane on a dirt road. There’s a medium-size dog resting, stretched out belly to the ground on top of a base.

Mane and his family own an extensive plot of land and I wonder out loud if I might build me a house there. His answer is evasive.

Cold, empty or distance?

The Dream continues in a covered garage with not much light. The job we’re doing is heavy-duty. I observe as I make them company and help out.

Mane is here and there’s a turquoise-blue sea within sight. I pay close attention to the immense waves that, as they crash, roll all the way up to the hangar. To me, they seem like tsunamis, although in reality they aren’t.

I have to climb an unfinished concrete wall without the aid of the others. With the climbing abilities I have in the Dream, I’m barely able to do it.

The wall is about 5 meters high. I hope I can get down. They need me to fetch them some rebar.

Below, there’s a dusky man I find attractive. While I’m climbing down, I overhear him telling somebody he wants no commitment, even though it was he that offered it.

The end is hazy. Supposedly, I’m to meet with a man on the 28th of the month, but I’m not hanging my hopes on it.

In thinking out matters, I need order. A final order. Time flows along and I accept the situation.

I Dream I pop in to see Rubén in a appropriately open place. He’s chatting with an olive-skinned woman with long, wavy hair. She’s jammed right up against him like an intimate friend because it is in her interest, due to his generosity. She doesn’t look very pleased to see me coming, but Rubén is happy to receive me and he turns his attention to me. As a gesture of friendship, he gives me a bud of marijuana, the best I’ve ever laid my eyes on.

I wasn’t expecting it and I simply express my heartfelt thanks to him.

He hands me a collection of German films. The list of titles appears to be bilingual, demonstrating a certain excellence of source. I also recognize several movies that, due to their artistic merits, I’ve been wanting to see for years. I’m thrilled to have such a marvelous collection of films.

I remember only a fragment of a title, the word “Damiana.” I tell him its one that I’ve always wanted to see.

The Dream clues me that they’re residing in Germany, sharing a house with other people. Matías is there, along with others I don’t know. They’re very generous to me and I thank them. I note they have a vital relationship, more practical and intelligent, likely because they’ve moved to Germany, which implies they are now more conscientious. Without fail, an adolescent from the capital city shows up, a rebellious punk, the archetypal product of an associative social model.

A woman from far away arrives, still wanting things from Rubén. Her face openly displays her intense displeasure with me.

I calmly and detachedly observe her.

Further along I Dream I’m hard at work with a couple from Norway and another Nordic pair, all artists. They tell me that with SOMA (Abaroa and Okon’s project) and LYRICA they have begun a series of some sort of on-screen WEB conferencing projects. Between the two institutions they have created two core projects, which spontaneously sprang up among them. I’m pleased things have turned out like this.

That done, they have closed their temporary residence in Mexico and are now moving around the city, preparing to leave. I consent to close the initial session and hope to continue later.

For a while now, in my windows and on my screen, I’ve been viewing windows upon windows opening one on top of another.

I start closing them when one of them with technological knowledge shows me that it’s a virus alarm. My screen is infected with a virus and the computer—like all computers that are constantly turned on and automatically connected to the Internet—is reproducing it. The alarm fills me with an atrocious anxiety, a terrible state I can’t shake off. Worse still, I have a new screen and I can’t turn it on because it’ll connect to the Web and become infected.

I have another screen in a hotel room that, although it’s infected, I want to recover.

They (the artists) are going and I’m left with my anxiety over the virus: no allies; confronting the void. They’re gone and there is no way to stay hooked up to the Web.

I’m left to feel my intensifying anxiety.

They head for the airport. Their program is clear, yet I’m left behind.

I ask if they will return soon, but they’re not sure. December, when everybody is more peaceful, is a good time, but they are on a tight work schedule with no time to spare.

They have laid the groundwork for a project and are leaving, saying simply they’ll be back next year. I’m left alone, out in the daytime street, prohibited from turning on any screen so as not to infect the machine due to the rupture from the alert of a virus that’s hacking all computers.

I wake up and don’t go back to sleep.

In another Dream, I’m in a dimly lit open space. I’m playing with Roberto, lobbing the Emotiv back and forth with our heads. It’s harder for me than for Roberto, but I’m intent on learning so I try over and over. I find in practicing that it’s a matter of technique. Instead of hitting it with the front part of the head like I’m doing, I should do it with my neck…

Roberto goes off to sit in the corner of the pitch’s grandstands with Franka. They make fun of me and ridicule me because I don’t know how to do it. It doesn’t bother me and I humbly keep trying: with practice, I can do it.

In the Dream I enter into a state of total and brilliant lucidity.

I go off to explore a street with restaurants, one of which sells fish. The one in the Dream brings to mind that I am avoiding eating red meat and that this restaurant is exactly like one that I frequent. Everything is set forth as though in a state of reality.

I’m seeing paintings and things at high speed. It’s a joy to know they are a product of my mind. The flow of information through my internal world goes lightening fast and demands great attention.

Farther along there’s another restaurant, this one named “Les 9 Amants:” it’s a mirror-like state of clarity.

I’m also able to create the meaning of my Dream so I decide to do something to show Roberto that I’m awake in my Dream.

I go up to the 7th floor of a building in a claustrophobic old lift, so I open windows while I’m going up. I can mobilize spatial structures.

Getting off on the 7th floor, I’m in a club. A woman orders her paintings done in … style. I’m quite familiar with it.

I hunt for a telephone. The first one I find is old and unserviceable and I continue on my search. I later find a phone in a booth—but it’s not what I want—and then a wireless one on a table.

I call Roberto, having remembered the number at his laboratory, although I’ve only dialed it one time.

I talk with him and tell him exactly where I am; which building, on the 7th floor, etc. I give him a full description so he can come looking for me.

I ask him how is it that I could remember his number if I was not lucid.

I challenge his skepticism. I ask him to go looking for me at the spot where he believes me to be because I can be in two real places all at once.

Shreds of the first Dream are all that remain.

Toward the end, we are three people walking along out in the middle of nowhere with nothing in sight, having left behind a deserted beach.

We climb a stairway in the midst of the sandy landscape to rejoin the others—architects on a trip through the wasteland. We had devilishly gone off until 11 AM without attending to our responsibilities.

I remember returning with my sidekicks, dressed very casually in gray sweatpants that are too big in the hips.

The stairway we climb is full of messages written on paper like some bulletin board. I’m able to make out a sweet message written in red ink and posted on top of a plastic Tupper Ware container that says, “Always, Cuauhtémoc.” As it has to do with me, it gets my attention.

Another one, offhandedly written on paper says, “Harry: I sent it with what the blond had loaned me.” I understand that it’s a reference to his girlfriend. It’s directed straight at me, a message of great urgency.

One of my companions tells me I’m lucky to have Harry because of his commitment.

I inquire if there are always messages here.

I dream a scene in somber light. Sophie Magne, a friend from my obscure infancy, is there. We’re visiting Joaquín’s new apartment and its nostalgic view of buildings because he has kept something that’s mine.

He’s now keen on becoming a painter, but he wants to learn a style I’m unfamiliar with. Despite being uninformed, he seeks another technique, his fancy, elsewhere.
Across the way, Sophie says to me, “You’re not a teacher.”
Neither Joaquín’s pride or what they say matters to me. I’m quite aware of who I am and I’m confident of my painting technique.

Facing a canvass, brush in hand, I’m erasing with Naples Yellow, along with a brick-red color. With another lighter color, I paint a frame, gradually diminishing toward the interior. I cancel the previous painting. I think this project will not take place.

I recall another Dream or maybe it’s the same one.
Although Roberto Toro’s apartment has a very high ceiling, the lighting remains the same as in the previous Dream: dreary. Roberto and I are partners. He tosses me a wad of bills, a sum of money.

Tania Ruiz, amazed, curious, comes to take a look. We leave Tania at the apartment. I reckon she bores him, nothing gets his attention. He’s looking to do something else.

We three are again at Roberto’s house. I get a phone call from a Chilean. He remembers me from way back when, although I have no idea who he is, I don’t remember him.
Thrilled to have found me, he plays his music for me, a sampling of digitalized trumpets, cultivated music. Over the telephone I hear a newfangled electronic sound and that’s when it dawns on me I’m wearing professional earphones with the volume turned up.

I innocently ask Tania and Roberto if they like the music at this volume. I perceive a closed-off and distant critical rigidity.

The sound of a radio program comes through the earphones, rapidly giving a biography of the musician. First, it’s about my friend, but there are really two musicians.

I hear they are from the northeast side of Santiago, currently a high-income part of town (I know because that’s where we used to live).
From all the information I only retain the second, the now grownup musician that lives on the east side, on Boulevard El Bosque, a place known for its dining establishments and shops.

My personal freedom takes the reins and I leave Roberto’s flat to go see my friend.

“I’m the Apple,” he says, happy to see me. It’s a younger crowd, but with the passing years, differences disappear. Looking at him, physically, he sort of resembles Juan Pablo. Tentatively, I say, “Juan Pablo?” Again he tells me, “I’m the Apple.”
I figure out I’m confused, he’s somebody else.

I return to Tania in her apartment, both of us looking at a computer screen showing the French government’s contact for a grant. However, she has to pay for it and it’s expensive. Tania’s not interested. She’s grown, she’s at a higher level, and the listing of restaurants that the system offers is not very attractive. She’s accustomed to going to better places than the ones the grant offers.

Tania and I go back to Roberto’s flat. This time, he pitches me a cookie that I catch. He has a baby in his house, a child of about two who is sleeping on his back on a sofa. Nobody else is in the house, though. Roberto takes time out to lie down and nap, leaving a momentary and necessary void. I reckon he needs to take a break from the family pressures so I let him rest up.

Just a fragment of the Dream stays in mind.

I’m taking care of some business in a bank.

I’m getting ready to go on holiday with a man to the same place we went last year.

Preparing to pack, I find my bag with the same things I left in it a year ago, several shoes and, among other things, an album of photographs.
We take it out to look at them, snapshots of the sea we took on the previous trip. Some of the plastic pages remain empty. Maybe the photos we take on the upcoming trip can go in there.

I Dreamed with great attention, precisely due to tiredness. I recall only some of it.

I remember that Joaquín’s ex-lady friend Karina comes to my atelier and climbs the stairs. She’s tough looking, an arrogant and controlling woman that I find disturbing. She almost climbs up to the Container, but the structure changes shape. Amazingly, right before our eyes, the stairway transforms to shut off access.
The spatial context prevents her entry. As though taking their cue from E.C. Escher’s mathematics, the angle of the stairs is articulated so that treading them becomes impossible: in order to continue, she has to climb up backwards.

Karina falls, but gymnast-like, acrobatically tumbles in backflips all the way down the stairway’s wooden steps.

There’s a lot happening in the Dream, but my mind is so saturated that I have only a vague idea that Carlos is present. He has come to take her far away on a ship in the water.

In another Dream, I recall seeing Katri and also Joaquín on a European train.

A splendid railroad takes us through the mountains to a skiing center. Here, many people of all ages are gathered, their long and short skis for many sorts of skiing. The crowd hurries off in a race that I suspect was invented as a way to get rid of them, an easy means of handling all the competitors. The place is quickly vacated.

I’m back on the train heading for another skiing center, where the feminine branch of Joaquín’s family tree has a house.
The landscape I see out the train window differs greatly from what I’d expected: it’s a clear horizon; a clean, intense blue that reminds me of the Caribbean.
Although Joaquín and I are traveling together, our relationship is cold. It is so distant that it has fallen into ambiguity. It’s sad, but I have a detached attitude with no expectations, taking up the position of observer.
Joaquín contains his emotions, limiting his expressions to the necessary, evincing traits of a regression to childhood. The journey reveals his family’s bloodlines.

I believe Joaquín feels himself more distant. I look out for myself and seek a window seat. This is a luxury train, the seats gray and comfortable. We’re going to the same place, his family’s home, so Joaquín comes over to me: it’s normal because we usually go together.
He is infantile, though, timid and insecure (making him arrogant because he can’t deal with his emotions). The seats recline into a bed and Joaquín lies down next to me beneath a blanket I’ve peed on because it is normal for me in private to free my emotions and flow. He is horrified, blocked by his own barriers: our togetherness is abbreviated.

His vanity takes him off to another seat to sit alone. Later, slouched in his seat, he has two ears of corn (impaled on Mexican-style stick holders), one of the ears having a mix of white and black grains. Joaquín is eating the other, a yellow one. He offers me what’s left of the half-eaten one. I accept it, eat it and spit out the grains right in front of him. My reaction upsets him, brings out his insecurity; he doesn’t expect anyone to confront him. He’s emotionally quite fragile.

It’s nighttime and I’m talking with my mother like back when I was a child. Tomorrow I’m going skiing, although I don’t know if that’s certain. Likely it will be really cold and I know how lazy I am. I should go right now, duty is calling, but I won’t do it.

Out the window I see fancy mansions. I realize they are paying high property taxes. I would never invest my money here, I’m thinking, it’s not worth it to pay a lot of taxes just to be a part of this area. Coming here makes no sense, it’s unnecessary.

Joaquín, Camilo and I are arriving at the seashore, conceivably the coast at Mazunte, Oaxaca. The coast, lined with several beaches bunched together, is unrecognizable, but the wild greenery is the same as in Oaxaca. On a boat out in the water, Camilo speaks in baby talk, “There’s the rock group,” he says, pointing his finger at a cove.

Finally, we go to the town via a road lined with prolific plant life. Joaquín plays with Camilo, but Camilo turns into a black puppy dog; hyperactive, playful. Joaquín, playing, grabs his hind legs. I observe the scene with sadness.

I put on the neuroheadset and Dream.

I lie down directly within the radius of the sling. A thin steel wire rapidly and unceasingly rotates round and round within a discomfiting proximity to my nose, my movement severely limited.

On the outer edge hearing the word imagine I keep my attention on the distance I have to keep. An edgy state. I also hear the name “Daniel.”

Mauro and Rodrigo Hidalgo are in my Dream. We’re testing colors, various blacks, purples and whites in oil paints, which we ledger and save in my artist’s books that I myself have been binding for years.

Someone calls on the phone and says, “Check out who I’m with,” and it immediately dawns on me that it’s Jenny Bohner (Johanna’s sister), who now lives way out in the hills in the United States. (I imagine living there gets boring.) I sincerely greet her and inquire if there is anything I can do for her here. That’s all.

I then remember being with my friend Johanna at what was once her mansion. The lower part of the land around her house had always been the border separating city and country. She tells me it’s now a wasteland and takes me to see it. “Are you referring to the banks of the river where the heliport used to be?” “Yes, now you have to go by the General Hospital.”

We head down there so she can show me what was once rough terrain, but now it’s quite changed. It’s daytime, indigents are everywhere, milling about in search of food amid the rocks and dirt on the slopes of the riverbank. I remember in previous dreams having gone to this place, but never at this hour, and the only thing I had seen was an inn constructed of wood.

She tells me that heads of decapitated women and other mutilated bodies have been found.

We come upon Gonzalo, who says he can see fate in a grapefruit. Despite his having been Johanna’s childhood love and in consideration of their mutual respect and involvement, I take the liberty of asking him to read mine. With pluck, attention and suspense I slowly cut the grapefruit with an improvised instrument. I figure he’ll also read Johanna’s. Gonzalo goes to fetch the gear he needs, while we go off in search of telephones and recorders so we’ll remember what he’s said. All this organization because, as he says, “The cards don’t stand alone.”

Johanna’s attention is suddenly drawn to the other side if the land and I go with her through a garbage dump to gather up a photo, a backlit shot of a dead girl’s breast and head. We’ve been close friends since childhood and it upsets me that such a sordid picture has gotten her attention. Out of respect I don’t judge her, though: it’s her right. Spurred on by the forensic photograph, she hunts in the garbage dump and finds a biology book of a German who murdered the victim and discovers the plot of a psychopath that claims she had brought it on herself.

We are treading on the outer limits of culture and society. I find a trashed book, its initial pages missing. It’s about peyote. The back cover has a list of freaky subcultures: gore, zombies, vamps, etc.

Although I’m proud that she has brought me here, nevertheless, I’m struck to see Johanna so badly dressed and I am distressed that such a highly esteemed sportswoman, such an impeccably competitive spirit and my childhood role model has descended into schizoid indigence and perversity. Still, out of loyalty to her, I stay.

I observe the making of a zombie movie. Surprisingly, I notice Beto, the valet parking attendant from the restaurant next door, in his red vest, white shirt and black trousers, the only variation being his rocker-style shoes and black leather bag with encrusted metal studs. “You are always dressed the same,” I tell him.

Memory of my Dream begins high up in the mountains amid snowy peaks and blizzard. I’m following a woman on skis that’s quite accustomed to the weather. This mountain woman knows her way around, even off the trails, and she’s leading us to a better spot for a totally new experience.

We’re in the mountains in a winter blizzard, with my mother driving a vehicle on a downhill road covered in snow and ice with other vehicles ahead of us. The danger of slipping makes us tense.
We have to go slow. I keep in mind that we can brake with the motor if the vehicle picks up speed. (I’m reminded of the Farellones ski resort 30 years ago.)
Once again I see the mountain woman. Inured to the weather, she cleans obstacles off the road with a broom until the blizzard returns. A Christmas tree someone has thrown away, baubles intact, goes flying. Weather conditions have made it necessary to get rid of all that’s useless and obsolete.

The weather has calmed down and I’m strolling a street amidst venerable vacation homes. I have the feeling of having been here long ago, but everything has changed in the intervening years. My attention is drawn to the gardens and their carefully tended greenery. One of them has a series of clay pots with flowers on a brick terrace that, in time, has conjoined into one piece.
The houses are large and there’s a white cement platform between them. Along with someone else, I effortlessly climb a ramp to get on it, even though it’s steep. Moreover, as I sense another person is looking at me, I flirtingly strut my way up. On top, despite it’s being the terrace of a vacation home, I have the impression I’m on a ship. There I catch sight of it, a white building several stories tall, imposing, one of the biggest.
I know he is there and I ready myself for the encounter.

(Nap)

Just a fragment of the Dream stays with me. I feel a desire for sexual pleasure, but with a woman. I would like her to lick my sex.

I Dream we are on a boat on the Seine River. I marvel at an extremely ornate building in a sort of Arabesque-style of architecture. It is the Jardin des Plantes, all its plants inside, none in sight. My mamma observes that one side of the river looks plusher than the other, which is the way it has always been: the Left Bank and the Rive Gauche.

It’s a lovely tour. Paris is especially resplendent and I feel at ease with the crowd on the boat so I propose that we board a Bateau Mouche (excursion boat) for a less tiring and more rapid tour. I tell the driver we have to see him under the bridges.

My memory is sketchy but we come upon a bizarre gathering: everybody with hairdos that look like masks. They are all masks. One woman I see in profile is headless, just a face. They seem to be freaks.

Ariel Orozco is there. He asks me to serve Ades Soy Milk to him and Gustavo Aceves, telling me “it’s the season.”
Fortunately the refrigerator and cupboard are stocked with enough of it to serve several glasses. I whip it before serving them a glass.
Gustavo, sitting in an armchair, doesn’t talk, doesn’t move; he’s mysterious. He has a flower-shaped black leather bag next to him that looks like a black rose. I recite Gérard de Nerval’s renowned poem Le Malheureux to him:

“Je suis le ténébreax –le veuf- l’inconsolé
Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie:
Ma seule étoile est morte –et mon luth constellé
Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie.”

I ask if he’s familiar with it and he says yes.

I’m sleeping with the neuroheadset on in the silent early morning hours before dawn when I get the feeling that Joaquín and Camilo have entered my room. Joaquín gets in my bed. Apprehensive, I wake up. In the dream I want to believe it’s not him, that it’s just a bothersome presence.

I go back to sleep in my Dream and the same thing happens: Joaquín and Camilo here in my bed. Again I awaken. There’s no harm done, it’s not even unpleasant, but I want to scare away the semblance: to know it’s just a Dream. I need to rest and I go to sleep once more.

Back they come, trying to not awaken me, but it bothers me to have him in my bed. In connivance, they insist on visiting me while I’m Dreaming. Cautiously, affectionately they approach.

I Dream that I, free of prejudice as to race or origin, am in a family’s home, taking part in daily life.

I don’t recall at what point the trouble begins, but the mother seems to hold me in contempt and I feel unwelcome. I’m out of place and there is no equality amongst the children.
I need to do something, take action, but the matriarch won’t let me.
There are four of us, two youths of African descent, another person and I. The mother, however, does not consider me equal with the rest and I’m denied equal access.

There is not even a place for me at the dining table and, when they serve me a beer, the glass is inverted. I ask what kind of beer it is and they answer vaguely that it’s bottled draft beer.

I forthrightly express my dissatisfaction and provoke the mother by threating to leave the family for good. Furthermore, I tell her I’m taking my furniture with me.
Strangely, they ignore me: nobody reacts or says a word. It’s a weird family.
I’m staying with them, yet they incongruently make no place for me.
In reciprocation for their lack of regard for me, my esteem for them lessens. It’s odd; I have nothing to do there.

The two black girls are adopted; not blood relatives of the family. The father appears to be absent.

I notice a ham badly carved into small hunks on the table (exactly like the dining table in my house). I take a piece of bread and slice one of the hunks of ham in half in order to share, but, as there is more on the table, I simply eat it myself.

They are roasting meat in the oven, which they are going to eat with lentils.

In the bit of Dream I recall, I’m at a birthday party for Santiago Espinoza and Alberto Kalach. We’re going about making a scarecrow and a snowman with whatever we find at hand. We creatively come up with an amorphous figure that has a small-scale head and mouth with a wood plank for a body.
I notice that Santiago safeguards his father’s coffin on a high shelf. This, he does not touch.

Children are all over the place, sleeping in separate rooms, not according to sex but to age group.
Someone has broken the law and a camera records it. An adult has snuck into the room of the youngest age group and hidden underneath the bedcovers.
Surprise! It’s Mijael! His weakness has led him to pederasty. He has crawled into another bed because of his need to embrace somebody, and has shamelessly resorted to a child.

In another Dream, in an institution, a man well versed in arts management draws a map and assigns tasks to young university students inexperienced in the subject who are seeking diplomas in arts-related fields.
Seemingly, they had not even understood what the subject is about and it is not what they were expecting.

In one Dream I arrive at Lorena’s home, a huge mansion in Valparaíso. They loan us a house to stay in. We’re in a state of heightened sensibility, hallucinatory, as though we had smoked marijuana.

Lorena apprehensively gets out of bed, a mere mattress on the floor, distressed about a hole in the wall at the head of the bed. However, there is no hole, it’s just a figment of her imagination.

I carefully observe the surroundings and wonder:
How did we get here?
Whose house is this?
Why are we here?
Some truly beautiful drawings in pencil are posted on the wall.

One of them, perhaps a soul-scape of the owner of the house, is a spirited drawing depicting a fellow with the aspect of a clown who is seated at a piano. Instead of making music, though, he creates molds of clowns’ faces (like Krusty in The Simpsons) that he fashions from cheese. The molds quickly melt and return to an enormous mass piled next to him, which he uses to fill the molds that go back into the machine in the shape of a piano.

As the masks he makes melt and return to the mass of raw material, they form a closed circuit so he has plenty of raw materials to keep him busy.

He reminds me somewhat of Harald, an industrial designer and alumnus of the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.

Another drawing on a small piece of paper stuck to the wall attracts my close attention: a map of a remote geographic area. Though tiny, the picture’s simplicity of expression makes it quite poetic.

There’s also one that I admire for its soft shadings. It’s all art.

The bed is in the entry hall facing the door and I wonder why it’s located there.
Though the house is in shambles, it’s not bad. The owner has undertaken to make it creative. One of the doorway arch’s two columns (its vertical support) is missing, but the decorative detailing made of wood is well cared for. It reminds me of the mansions in ruins in Valparaíso that the students of architecture and design restore.

The view from the bed reveals a three-story high glass dome that’s a part of the entry.

To be sure, as students, we did occupy vacated mansions in ruins and lived in them. I’ll never forget the house on the way up to Agua Santa that Lorena lived in for months: a singular ruin. I delighted in exploring in the basement, delving anthropologist-style into the lives of the people that had inhabited it at one time. There, I once found an accounting book of the expenditures for their parties.

I hazily recall Dreaming I’m in an airport. Rodrigo is there, wanting to go on a trip with me by dint of a friend of his. I buy passage to go together, although it’s not of my choosing. Indeed, he is carrying me off and I’m mistrustful of Rodrigo’s manipulations.
Everything is ready, his friend having paid for everybody’s ticket. He gets the boarding passes and, bag on hand, I’m a step away from boarding the flight when for a fleeting moment I get paranoid that I’ve lost the pass. Surely they gave it to me. I’ve got it.

Rodrigo got his way.

I put on the neuroheadset and Dream I scoop up dirt in my hand and it’s full of cat shit. I become nauseated.

I also Dream I’m in bed in my room recording EEGs when Joaquín comes in as joyful as an adolescent about the project. Alongside me, he puts on the Emotive, but backwards, with the signal amplifier turned to the front over his eyes like glasses. It bothers me that he is playing with an apparatus I use for work, but, then, it dawns on me that the one he has is not mine, it’s another one, and that I’ve been recording my EEGs all along.

I’m not perturbed, I’m glad to see him here.

Then I remember sitting down in a big refrigerated box.

I faintly recall in the first part of the Dream seeing teddy bears: small, endearing, their coats in bright, shiny colors, encapsulating a load of concepts.

I Dream I’m in a house, going to sleep in a dark room.
I hear Daniel Emba and friends, a couple, arriving outside my room.
I seem to be in my home, as my father and Julie are sleeping in another room.
I emerge from the room with the intent of accommodating the couple in one of the rooms within the house (the layout resembles Joaquín’s house, which, if so, my parents would be sleeping in the kitchen). I tell Daniel to come to my bed so that the couple can have a place to sleep.

I wonder what my father would say if he saw me in bed with a man, but I then realize this misconception is of my own making because he is actually quite liberal about sexual matters and I’m just playing mind games with myself.
Julie comes out of her room to talk with me and that’s when I glimpse a big white rat with a fluffy furry tail.
It frightens me, but Julie seems unfazed. Then I see another rat in my father’s room, this one spotted, also with a fluffy furry tail. Rats are everywhere; I can’t sleep here. I tell Daniel, “Let’s go to a hotel.”

Later, the Dream segues into another episode where I’m in the restroom at an elegant restaurant. My sister Dominique lifts her dress and instead of peeing in the lieu, she does it on the floor.
This is inexcusable and I reproach her. She makes the cleaning lady clean it up. That done, with a repugnant attitude, my sister departs. The lady is doing her job when my grandmother comes in.

She beckons me to go to the dining room. It is a tribute to me from a moral perspective that she makes me go.
The most venerable and influential high-society women are in the elegantly relaxed ambiance of the dining room.
Little cakes are on the table and my sister grabs them.
I give my full attention to relating with my grandmother in high hopes she will defer to me and guide me, which she does. She takes me to another room.

We are outside, an inkling of Paris, near a Metro line. She tells me a name containing the word “Marroniers,” where they are giving away “futé” (I’ve no idea what it means, but the Dream gives me to understand that it is a small upholstered chair). Two chairs would be perfect for my room, but I’m not willing to go all the way to the other end of the Metro line to pick them up.

The third part of the Dream continues in the same place where, all of a sudden, I’m on a date with Marguerite’s ex-boyfriend Jérôme.
I’m still preoccupied with morals as I find myself with my best friend’s former romantic partner. If she were to feel our friendship strained over a romantic interest, how would she take it? Maybe it would upset her, but in the belief that their relationship is a thing of the past, I don’t let it bother me.
Right now, there’s a lot of passion between us.

A few meters ahead of me Jérôme has an accident and breaks a wheel on his bicycle. Unable to continue on, he returns to me and declares his love for me. He confesses that he peed in his pants when I left. Even though it seems to me he’s exaggerating, my tenderness and compassion make me aware that it’s a big thing for him.

For the first time ever, he takes me to his home, where I take on the attitude of nonjudgmental observer. Jérôme is an artist. We go into an eccentric garden that’s divided into areas for children. It demands effort to give due regard to his point of view. He has children and he’s devoted to them.

The yard looks like a kindergarten, parceled out as it is in Walt Disney-style theme areas: a world apart and very personal. I spot a tree and, in addition, the colorful little teddy bears from the first part of the Dream. I dare not pass judgment on anything. The only thought that crosses my mind is the weather in France: how nice it is to be outdoors in a garden under a tree in springtime, but in winter, it’s probably hard to live here. Where does he live?
His house is back at the far end of the garden, a one-room affair with all four walls thick and built of stone like the houses of yore (it reminds me of my cousins’ estate). That’s all he has.

I stand in awe and respect for his domain: the single austere room for himself, his manner of expressing himself and his openness to the realm of the child.

I Dream I’m in my house with a group of friends. Their casual attire lets me know they are at peace, although, at the same time there is a fascinating restlessness, a lively energy.

Luis Hernández is among the friends. A blog spot posts an alarming report and Luis, a respected journalist, takes command of the computer where he briskly inquires about the news. He is breathtakingly fast at the keyboard. He, an editor of the newspaper La Jornada,insists on truthful answers in his quest for real information. Luis is a talented chap and I’m proud.

Joaquín, a friend but not close, is in my house. He’s constantly confronting me with the same intent: to prove his superiority over the opposite sex. He asks me to cook for him. My natural enthusiasm for doing things keeps me from realizing he’s treating me like an object that performs tasks.

Luis comes to take me away from there and I go with him.
The high spirits and enthusiasm prevailing among my friends contrast with the relaxed feeling.

Joaquín approaches Luis as though to get rid of him. Poor guy, he looks ridiculous taking such a senselessly weak stance.

At that instant in my Dream Luis awakens me to another plane of awareness. I tell him, “How good of you to come!” “You’re so impatient,” he says. “Why did you leave the other night? You were at my house, ready to go out…”

In the same Dream I remember a little girl asking me for one of my dresses. I try to think which one would fit her but end up telling her, “You’re too small.”

In another Dream, my father, Julie and I are on an airplane bound for Chile. We’ve been fortunate in being assigned seats almost as comfortable as beds, the same as on the out-bound flight. Julie says something to me and hands me an envelope (I don’t remember anything else).
My father is old. I notice spider webs on his body: extraordinarily fine white filaments between his ears and shoulders. I brush them off.

Although we’re traveling on KLM, just before reaching its destination the plane loses altitude over a Chilean highway that’s under construction. As it is landing on the highway in the countryside, anxiety overcomes me because I’m afraid the wings won’t fit between the trees alongside. I also don’t believe it has enough room to take off again.

Having landed, I’m the first to approach the pilot to talk, as befits a woman (strength of character).

The pilot of the Dutch airliner is a Swedish woman. She intends to take off again, but she hadn’t taken into account that Chile, a developing country, is still being built or rebuilt. The highway looks familiar; it goes to Santiago. When the pilot gets off the plane, she looks like an astronaut walking on Mars, her nifty suit out of context in such rural surroundings. The pilot tells me it’s not that she doesn’t want to take off again, it’s just that, “I don’t want to take the risk.”

Truth to tell, our lives were in danger several times during the trip. It’s irresponsible for a respected airline to deploy such inexperienced pilots. Now, in a measure to reestablish order, the copilot, a man, is going to take control of flying the plane.

While we’re on the ground, I explore the countryside. Out in the wilderness, I come upon an indigent that’s improvised a camp with everything he needs to stay out there. His condition does not distress me and I continue on my way, the impression having lost potency.

I climb atop a hill that looks onto the hollow of a valley and I return to find the plane ready for take off… without me! I run to the plane making signals… oof! They see me and I’m able to get on at the last second. I was about to be left behind even though they know me. I’d gone off investigating Dreams; it’s in my nature. Now my mother and José Luis are on board the flight. I believe the plane goes into a tunnel.

We’re on the road with my mother, approaching houses like the ones in Valparaíso, when suddenly we’re in Playa Ancha, on Calle Errazuriz, where the house with the best view of the bay is.

I’m back where I lived 20 years ago in that house with my mother, with whom I’ve never had a close relationship. Now, she sees it.

Another Dream. In dim lighting, with girlfriends I’m on the same highway, but bereft of plant life. We stop off beside the road and Ulises Jiménez (from the Sleep Clinic) drives up in a snazzy Porsche, bringing us earrings. As is my custom, I put on just one. It’s light and colorful and looks like a beautiful feather.
Ulises insists on checking them out, all the while showing off his blue shirt made of cloth so lightweight that it almost floats. It’s too big for him, in my opinion.

I remember an antique item I find interesting and I take it to Ulises. It’s a wooden gun that oddly has a nail-bullet still stuck in the barrel, which I remove. Ulises whips out a real pistol and shows it to me. He says it cost him 1,200 and it’s good.

He has given earrings to all my friends and he shows us some traditional shirts embroidered with geometric motifs that he’s brought from abroad.
He says he bought them cheap and one of my friends –I believe it’s Ruth- says she would like to intervene them by cutting and pasting them.
Despite enthusiastically paying attention to what is going on, it’s too contrived; I don’t understand and lose interest.

Ulises is at the steering wheel on the right side of his sporty Porsche. Kyla, in the other front seat, says with a sexy-sounding flair in British-accented French, “La musique est flamboyant.” Ruth and I are in the jump seat. I, demanding my space, tell her to share half the seat. We’re motoring along the highway about to enter a tunnel.

I recall one Dream in which I’m walking along Avenida Insurgentes when I come face to face with a man that wants to accost me and hit me with a stick. I warn him if he touches me, I’ll kill him. However, he foolishly opposes me and clumsily raises his stick to prevent me from passing.

Supremely confident and without hesitation I leap to the fight. I throw him to the ground, crunch a knee into his chest and pressing a quadrangular metal tube against his trachea, I tell him, “I can do whatever I want with you!”

I leave him on the ground, but another man comes to help him up. Still doubled over, he vomits a yellowish liquid. I heard his trachea pop, maybe I killed him. It’s a profound experience, but I don’t stay around. I leave.

I’m crossing the Insurgentes Metrobus lanes when a man approaches me and menacingly asks why I want to come between him and his woman. I’m aware it would be advisable for me to retreat so I deftly walk away, but not without saying in leaving, “She called you at 4, though.” His ambiguous look confuses me.

Barely having boarded a bus, someone tells me that my horoscope for Sunday says, “Let some off so others can get on.” It’s a clear message and I ought to heed it. There’s a mentally challenged girl on the bus that can’t figure out where to get off. She asks for help and I show her the place. We get off together.

A tire is jammed up against the station’s platform walkway. There’s a narrow opening between the built-in protectors and the space for the bus’ door. I squeeze out sideways.

I feel my body asleep as I Dream.
I fall out of bed… sideways, as I discover. I couldn’t help it, the frame of the cot had collapsed. I’ll just let it be, there’s another bed in the next room.

A horrendous noise erupts in the middle of the night.
I look out the window and see heavy-duty trucks speeding past on Calle Córdoba . What’s going on?

I’m traveling with my mother in a gasoline-tank truck going at high speed through industrial outskirts on a highway leading out of the city. We’re in the hind end next to a boiler that’s lit. I tell her I smell gasoline, but she pays me no mind. It’s an extremely asphyxiating atmosphere, like a holocaust; a point of no return.

Ephemeral lights in the profound darkness reveal a pig by the side of the road.

In awe I catch sight of a hellishly savage landscape, but avoid looking.

A longneck goose, wings spread, swoops down on top of the pig.
They’re battling over living space. Their instinct triggered by an environment where survival is difficult has turned them into impoverished rivals.

Animals fighting is a powerful metaphor for chaos.

Tension mounts even more. The lighted boiler portends danger.
Lights along the road sweep across the interior of Mijael’s white tank truck and I see gasoline start spurting out.

We jump out of the vehicle and make a running dive to the side of the road.
“We should’ve at least killed the engine,” I tell my mother. I’m horrified but trying to stay calm.

We’re running downhill when Mija’s truck spectacularly blows apart in the silence of the darkness.
Although there’s no fire, pieces of it are flying all over the place, threatening to fall on us. We have no control, making headway is diabolically horrifying.

My mamma is frightened out of her wits, but we have to get out of there by any means possible. I tell her, “Tu m’énerves, move out!”

We duck down to avoid a huge hunk of the boiler that almost falls on us. I have to push my mother to get her moving. She’s terrified, but she follows me.

We come upon a market and the first thing I see are the fresh vegetables. I’m tempted to buy the artichokes because I can’t find them where I live. However, I don’t have time. It’s a French market, a familiar place. It’s before dawn but the people are working and they kindly come to our aid.

Still muddled, I approach one of the folks. I notice something strange about his mouth, a scar. At the mere sight of me he says, I must return to Issy-Les-Moulineaux.” My mood shifts smoothly. One of his coworkers offers to take us. He’ll be ready in 20 minutes to drive us back.

He’s our salvation…

I recall only a snippet of a very different Dream. We -Daniel Margulies and the Neuro Bureau- are together in a big store, enthusiastically buying things for the exhibition in Germany. We need a sieve –an antique kitchen utensil- that the store sells.

My brother and Margaret are also along with us, both wearing pink sweaters.

II feel my brain is too tired so I just rest.

Poor sleep.

Wearing the neuroheadset, my main Dream takes place in my bedroom with a gathering of people, while I record the EEGs of my Dreams. Eddie is among the people and I’m standing with them.

My computer is online with the control screen, the screen saver casting 3D images about the room. They appear to be details of the organic shapes in Erika Harsch’s paintings, vast horizons and planes, some shoes and so on: new images in my computer.

I want Eddie to see them, but he has to catch a train to go back home and it’s getting late for him.

I’m wearing my sleeping mask and recording EEGs with the Emotiv while everybody is here. It seems odd, but it flows.

I fall into a deep sleep and forget all.

I’m forced to stop the dream session with EEG computer recordings because Giselle and the blacksmith arrive at the studio.

I sleep but cannot remember a most miserable Dream.

I don’t attain the proper sleep state.

I Dream I have a project involving webcams, however, the system is unstable and disorganized. I plan to film a room at night where there’s a man, my mother’s husband. He is uncooperative, though.

I want to appoint someone to assist me on the project.

A good part of the film –titled Double Vide- is already completed, with just this last segment remaining to be done. Troubles with the system persist, however, and it must be stabilized. Someone tells me that for just 1,400 pesos he can connect HDMI cables to make it function properly, but there’s no money, so that’s that.

I tell Franka to take care of it.

In another Dream Mauro and I are opening a major exhibition, a live performance in which we are painting canvasses. While we paint, I negotiate with him.

The industrial setting, the spaces and the canvasses we’re to paint are the largest I’ve ever seen, some canvasses spreading over into two spaces.

One of them stretches end-to-end through the spaces. Mauro is painting in one space and I’m in the one next to it. My painting is made up of pixels, while Mauro’s gestural painting depicts his usual personages and portrays himself in a dubious situation: his shadows.

I propose we collaborate on one painting and Mauro agrees, which sets the event abuzz. Afterward, I suggest he paint his subject matter, with mine added on. His specters and mine: everything in pixels. He has already done his, but painting over them might create a stiff, thick coat.

After the opening, the thrill of collaborating on a work fades, Mauro withdraws (I figure he has allowed the medium to influence him), thinks it over and decides my deal does not suit him.

The opening was a big success, but the promise is unfulfilled. What a letdown!

I come out of a castle and go to its parking space. We’re in a country where refined manners and royalty still exist: Austria, for instance. I’m on my way to see my mother, as Ami Barak has offered me a ride in her auto that sports an elegantly up-to-date Nordic designed body made of recycled cardboard.

As she has yet to arrive, I go for a stroll. When I return, she has already left. I catch a glimpse of her on her way… without me!

I scream and wave my arms, but to no avail. She’s gone.

There’s a girl on her bicycle left on the road –maybe Ami Barak’s daughter. She does nothing to help me stop the car.

Nothing. And I was hoping to go with Ami. I’m disappointed.

The 12 year-old girl and I return to the house. She simply didn’t want to help me and made no effort to do so. I don’t understand why.

She only says to me that, when she can, she’s going to make a big website about “La Piñata.” She’s just a child and that is her world.

She gets into an unmade bed and so do I. We return to the starting point.

I only recall the last part of a sentence I’m saying to someone, clearly enunciating,
“Night 29.”

I walk alone along Álvaro Obregón Avenue.

The Dream begins at La Banlieue Parisienne shopping Center.

At the entry I see an androgynous person dressed in tightfitting black attire. I do not go into the mall, I’m looking for someone to give me a lift to Paris. I spot a group of women and I ask them, but one of them, a toughie, doesn’t want to take me. I don’t let it bother me, though, and I move along. In the background I hear a radio playing the Simple Minds’ tune “Keep Holding Back the Years.”

I watch the women drive off, the toughie at the wheel, smiling cynically. It’s no big deal.

A bus station is there and I board one bound for Paris.
To pay the fare, I take out some weird bank notes, a €6 one and another for €2.
In the Dream, my peripheral vision takes in a group of chaps, one whose manner reveals him to be my friend Mijael.
I inquire if he’s going to St. Lazare and, although it seems he’s on his way to Beaubourg, it makes no difference, in Paris it’s easy to get around; I still have 10 euros and can get other transportation to Marguerite’s house.

In another Dream Amy and John are walking together wearing similar shoes: hippie-style leather boots. John is walking ahead of Amy, thinking about his project. Although he’s momentarily caught up in his own concerns, they are truly a tight couple.

In their home there’s a big “entry,” as John calls it; a painting that belongs to him. John’s house has lots of furniture and there are several paintings by the same artist, one of which depicts downtown Valparaíso from a perspective adjacent to the buildings’ cornices as seen from above: a fine painting.

Amy has a baby girl whose head is framed in fine blond hair. Her mind is more developed than normal: she can do mathematics and she asks about everything, even though she’s barely one year old. What’s more, her movements are quite free. We’re with Katri, observing Amy with tremendous respect. She’s an amazing person; maternal, strong, protective and sensitive. This weekend I’m going to a contemporary arts festival in another city.
Amy, who’s well informed about it, urges me to attend a performance piece. She tells me all the details, but I forget them. In view of how much I respect her, I feel obligated, even though I’m committed to go to another event with Marguerite.

A beautiful energy is bonding our companionship as the three of us arrive at an institution that’s taking part in the event. It’s similar to the Glasgow Sculpture Studios, which Amy founded some years back.

I’m surprised to hear her say she would never lend over 500 euros to anybody –not one artist- because, first of all, she works for herself. Her ideas teach us a lesson: no wonder she is the founder and curator of GSS.

I Dream I’m in bed with Benjamin about to make love.

Out the window I notice a suspicious looking woman dressed in red. From outside, she locks us up in the room. I get up, hunt for the keys and find them.

I go out to the house’s entry gate that gives unto the street and I find her there with a man, waiting for the bus. They’re ready to climb aboard with some sacks. I suspect they are dealing in stolen goods so I open the sacks to see what’s inside.

It’s beans… that’s all!

I return to the bedroom in my atelier. It is now situated next to other artists’ studios inside an estate. Benja and I go out for a romantic stroll in the gardens of the estate that have waterways and bridges.

It’s Le Corbusier’s home.

I wear the neuroheadset but am unable to go to sleep.

I Dream I’m working with the neuroheadset in a school or institution. I take off the Emotive, sweating. I exit through the halls amidst rooms in a house.

I respect the limits my body allows me.

Wearing a short skirt, not pants, I look for a way out. I come across people working, but I’m not even tactful enough to be cordial. I’m fed up.

The demands of working with an Emotiv are beyond the level of education. Although this is a school, I feel alone.

I sleep but, after the day’s activities, I just want to rest.

No recording

I’m so worn out that I don’t recall any Dreams.

I Dream that Carola Larrain says to me, “We’re lucky to have the mothers we have.” Angélica, her mamma, has always been understanding with her and they enjoy a good relationship.

In another Dream I’m among a group of people visiting a building. The red brick walls of its interior are yet to be finished. Lack of organization has left them bare. Perturbed, I imagine it’s an industrial space, but I inquire if it’s for offices.

The building exudes an especially sordid energy.

I ask just where in Mexico are we and they tell me the name of the place, a rather well known one that I don’t recall now. I believe I become quite alarmed.

I ring Marguerite but end up talking with Tania. (I had been hoping all along that Marguerite would pass me on to Tania.

Tania is pleasantly surprised to be in touch with me and the feeling is mutual. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen her and I miss her. Tania appears in person, right here in Mexico, and I tell her to make ready for what she’s going to see.

My anxieties about the place we’re in were unfounded.

Fog covers the city like some curtain or veil of illusion that hides things.

Tania, too, looks on in awe. The hilly terrain leads our sight to a forest-enveloped lake, small islands in its midst. The lake lies inside the city –Chapultepec Park comes to mind- and people are doing recreational activities like sailing and windsurfing: a peaceful and lovely scene.

Up high, at a swimming club, there are women wearing bikinis. A lady in a flesh-colored one inspires Tania to comment that it favors her because it hides the fat in her breasts. Tania then helps another woman that’s preoccupied with her swimsuit so that she looks better and feels more self-assured.

Lastly, I catch a back view of a slim woman with long dark hair, walking along in a black bikini.

Before awakening I look at my clock: it’s 7:28.

 

The first Dream, I recall only a bit: Pedro Rosenbleuth says to me, “six alive.”

Another one begins with me inside a light shelter at a snazzy beachfront swimming club, my companion (maybe Joaquín), in the background. I’m feeling on top of the world, even though some old-lady busybodies with nothing better to do than to pry into my life have invaded my space and are trying to chat with me, despite my paying no attention to them whatsoever; no interest at all.

The Dream continues at night in the same place. A lady is attempting to sell her home and, having shown some slight curiosity, she takes us to see it. The house has been abandoned, though, and is teeming with big rats. She’s been trying to sell the wreck for quite some time and I reckon she knows her chances are slim.

I don’t know why, but immediately afterwards we check out a house for ourselves. The one we see, which is next door to the lady’s house, definitely will not do, as the rats have invaded it, as well.

Someone else now hovers in the background as the Dream moves along. There’s a price-jump as the format widens out to reveal an expanse of land. We’re in an airplane and the view opens up to show a vast urban area in which a huge industrial plant in ruins stands firm, though its tin walls and towers are partly fallen.

My brother is piloting the plane and we’re gliding along with the engine turned off. I’m co-piloting and I ask Dominique to glide down smoothly like he always does.

In the third Dream I remember, my mother, an independent woman, is living alone in a hotel with a communal bathroom. Entering the bathroom in the morning, I spot a beige purse and figure there’s someone in there. Sure enough, it’s a French girl and we start chatting pleasantly, she commenting on how nice the hotel is and how she doesn’t mind sharing the bath. I tell her I’m visiting my mother, who’s living there while her new home is being built. The girl inquires as to where, but I don’t know what to say. I think, or have a vague idea, that it’s in the Middle East.

The girl is getting ready to go to work. As I am unfamiliar with the bathroom, I ask about the shower. Her partner is taking a shower at the moment and she requests that I not hurry him and let him be. She’s about to leave for her daily routine of work. Among my things I have some very lightweight, transparent black lace stockings. She says they are perfect. I assume they are hers and that she’s going to put them on.

I remember another piece of the same Dream in which my mother is driving a fine BMW automobile that’s 6 years old. She wants to get rid of it.
It was a great car in its day, but now it has lost value and she doesn’t even want to bother with selling it.
I ask what car she wants now and she says she doesn’t know, that none appeals to her in particular. She’s not looking to buy one.
I become aware of how pleasant it is to be with my mother, a light-hearted, intelligent and independent woman: a good friend.

I slightly recall that in the process of interpreting the information of the Dream, within the Dream appears the word “avaluation.”

I put on the neuroheadset and Dream there’s a woman –perhaps Lorena- and my brother in a room. Another man is also there.

In Jacky’s room there’s a screen at the foot of the bed. Lorena is in another bed with its own screen.

We’re watching a group of gymnasts performing acrobatics. They wear the attire appropriate for the sport and I’m focused on their genitals, which jiggle freely along with the strong leg movements.

Suddenly a cockroach appears in my brother’s room, it’s small but has big antennas. We kill it. Another one comes along and I ask my brother to kill it. I assume it’s not unusual for roaches to be in the room.

Seated, we watch a gymnast ascend an escalator doing backflips like a slinky in reverse. I’m awestruck, as the stunt seems next to impossible to me because it requires so much strength and agility. In this peacefully sweet Dream, my brother embraces me with his left arm.

Lorena says she wants to watch something else on her screen. A movie resembling a TV police series begins with a woman walking into an office of investigations with a big yellow poster.

The fifth Dream goes like this… I Dream that I’m sleeping and Dreaming. Or maybe it’s that in this Dream I’m sleeping and Dreaming in the last Dream.

I have to write down the Dream that the neuroheadset has registered. I wake up from one Dream inside of another and, from there, inside yet another. When I get up I feel like I’ve overslept. I see Eddie in in the house and I ask him. “How do I know this is not a Dream?”

Eddie, with a residue of white cream face masque still on his face, approaches me. I notice his renewed enthusiasm for his work on the 80-Day Dream Log project. He tells me what we’re doing has an occult meaning “of ancient lineage.” I have no idea what he’s talking about and answer lightheartedly, “Probably because everybody does his or her job and the project keeps moving ahead.”

I see his calendar is organized into colored timetables, orderly squares in the manner of a work map and I admiringly tell him, “What a pretty calendar!”

Eddie is constantly worrying about things and he says if use the Emotiv a lot, it will deteriorate. I tell him that’s not the case and, anyhow, if this one breaks down, there’s another Emotiv and more electrodes. Roberto also has one in Paris.

Before awakening, I look at the clock. It’s 15:15: I’ve slept all afternoon.

I Dream I’m seeking a more original and creative way to record my Dreams. I see myself face down in bed in order to tighten my abdomen and attain a different voice. My head is hanging down and my body almost up-side-down.

I awaken.

With the Emotiv on my head, I Dream of Dr. Reyes Haro and the Dream Clinic technical staff.

I’m standing outside a door, just about to walk through it to see the doctor.

I’m standing at a table, a glass of water and lime on it. I want a glass of cranberry juice to drink, but there’s not another glass. I first have to drink the one that’s full.

I wake up to go to the bathroom and go back to sleep, but I don’t Dream.

In my Dream I’m on a pirate ship at sea looking out at a whole lot of water. We’re fighting to impede other pirates, violent savage ones, from trying to sink us. They, however, have contrived a weapon that takes us by surprise; thick boards affixed to their hands.

An up-to-the-minute report informs us there’s a battle going on in the marijuana traffickers’ territory, so we head off in that direction.
Off in the distance, a samurai woman seated on a raft comes into view. Outfitted in kimono and sable, one knee tucked underneath her the other extended out over the raft, she’s enveloped in a ceremonial air. Aha! So this is what they fear? This is what they’re fighting about? That’s the sum of it and I grasp that the battle has lost importance.

We’re a bunch of adolescents alienated with our own liberty.

We’re in a house and Mijael, who’s part of the group, puts a piece of furniture in the middle of the living room, which divides it. It has to do with Mijael’s irrational and eccentric makeup. He wishes to impose something on us, but we are free spirits.

In the Dream I delve into a profound analysis of the limits and conditions he wishes to impose on us with this unclear gesture.
In the Dream I interpret it as a willful act.

I speak with a gorgeous blue-eyed man, a serene chap that’s one of us. I comment to him that Mijael’s attitude is out of keeping with the group spirit. He agrees that Mijael should adopt a “flexible” attitude and not put “limits.”

It’s a powerful revelation. Mijael is truly left with no other way out than to withdraw from the group, which he does.

We continue.

In the same spirit we move along to a social event, a record company party.
The Dream also leads into something else having to do with maintaining a certain distance with work. Posters warning to keep a distance with work hang in the room. One of our bunch -who might be my youngest cousin Nahual- takes one down, then another, perhaps a “no smoking” one. He publically denounces it. The roomful of people is in chaos.

We’re here because of Mijael’s rock band. The record company is awarding it a prize. Tortoise, his band, is among the best.

We acknowledge amid all the banal conversation that the National University’s Museum of Contemporary Art has a genuine interest in music groups because it provides bands with air transportation, as well as other things. While we make our way to the museum, we find out to our surprise that the government is the main supporter of the arts, even the ones far out on the cutting-edge.

As we enter the museum’s parking lot on the National University campus, a sign over an entrance says “Sciences.” This is not the place, it’s the one next door. We’re attending a dance performance in a roofed patio.
A dazzlingly beautiful woman, her small, magnificent body clothed in red, makes ready to perform. Mijael, unavoidably attracted to her, is captivated. She dances and performs acrobatics, her nude body expressive under her attire.

I’m astonished to see that the museum and the culture make no moral judgment. It’s marvelous that it shows “the body” just as it is.

Another tawny-skinned, extraordinarily gorgeous woman with long hair and bangs makes ready. By now, Mijael is physically overwhelmed.
Out loud, he asks the name of the neighborhood and they hush him. He becomes disrespectful and disruptive during the performance.

Next comes a piece choreographed to be collective and participatory so that anybody can join in. Ben Scott spontaneously does so. Despite not having a “trained body,” he’s a free spirit, free to be himself, and has an innate talent for dancing. Unassuming and talented, he has an administrative job in this institution. It surprises me that he is Mijael’s brother.

We go to see his office located among lots of other “bureaus” in the halls of the only wooden building in a major complex. Looking around amongst the items in the office, I find a small acrylic plaque inscribed with the name of the head of the department Alejandra Ruiz.

Finally, I recall indiscreetly passing by the restroom, which is downstairs in the workshop. I see Mijael standing in front of a lieu that’s full of excrement. He’s just had a bowel movement.

I remember in the first fragment of my Dream, my mother and sister and I are expecting an imminent visit from my father. My mother thinks he’ll come next weekend, my sister and I think otherwise. We know our father will elegantly avoid traveling during the weekend traffic jam.

He’ll come at the beginning of August.

I Dream I run into Carlos Pérez in the park, who tells me his relationship with Karina is on the rocks and he’s thinking to leave her. I’ve been friends with Carlos for 20 years and when we run into each other it’s like old times.
We were a couple once, a cycle that ended and is now a thing of the past.
In celebration, we go off to drink a beer.

I’m wearing the red dress I bought years ago in New York. I’m free, younger, my hair long, in a place covered in trees and plants.
Carlos and I spot Karina in the distance, dressed like a New Wave-style troubled lad. She seems to be taking leave from her son.

A typical bus sits in the park. We get on and I ask Carlos if he wants a beer and he, reclining in a seat, requests time to contemplate. He has work to do on letting go of the relationship and he’s yet to talk about it with Karina.

Lots of children are in the park, some looking familiar to me, possibly Camilo’s friends. I encounter women, new faces; happy. They enthusiastically show me a cream cake that’s not horizontal, but rather hangs like a piñata: it’s for a children’s party. They tell me it’s the latest thing and what it’s called, although I don’t remember the name. It’s huge and full of fruit that appears to be caramelized, but is instead fresh plums.
I see Joaquín, he has long hair and looks slimmer. He’s making comments about the origin of the cake’s name, although they pay him no heed. He sneaks up behind me and puts his hand on my head. I ignore him, though, and without a second thought, I eat the plums right in front of him.

I don’t even realize when he suddenly leaves.

His presence or absence doesn’t matter.

One of the women has an Emotiv and I ask her what she uses it for. She replies she reads its feedback on a computer in order to keep check on her frame of mind, as though the Emotiv were like reading a horoscope.

I Dream I see Rod Stewart on stage in concert. He projects the same image after all these years. He’s cavorting about while the strobe lights play on the drops of water showering the stage.

His musical backing, although it sounds like conventional instruments, is totally digitalized, computers now generating the accompaniment to his golden oldies. The audience requests English pop tunes, which Rod readily summons from the memory banks and from his own cultural memory.
Rod alone with his machine in a not very large venue, animates the audience to get involved in the show.

I recall having awakened after putting on the neuroheadset, but the Dream continues on to an enormous swimming pool.
As I dive in, I become aware of a man in the background that’s attracted to me. I go underwater and do turns in a forward motion, an aesthetically sensual expression that I halt after only a few. I’m still dizzy when I stand up, it’s imprudent to go on.

There’s a poolside cabana where a gentleman is talking with a boy. The man’s presence makes me stiffen and I avoid him, he is unpleasant.

In another fragment of the Dream, I’m outdoors at night with my mother and I see the moon smiling in the heavens.
In wonderment I tell her to turn and look, when suddenly the moon puts on a sad face. Then it puts on a smile again and then downturns its mouth. “This moon is a clown,” I say offhandedly.

My grandmother is with us. It’s hard for her to understand that I can’t even rest on the weekends.

She asks why I don’t go off (I don’t remember to where) on the weekend and I explain that I can’t because I have to keep recording EEGs every night for a project that lasts 80 days.
Furthermore, I’m proud of having developed the skill to dream while wearing the Emotiv, which demands a lot of concentration.

It’s just an experience, but to my grandmother it makes no sense.

I’m back at the Rod Stewart concert where the Dream began. He’s still performing songs the audience requests, even long-forgotten ones, his musical memory awe-inspiring. I take a close look at his computer: by pressing a button labeled “log” and selecting the tune, the rest is done digitally with mixers and equalizers.

A man approaches, opens some boxes containing batteries and tells me I’m lucky that, even though they are for home use, they still have a charge.

I Dream Víctor Rodríguez asks me a favor.
He wants me to call Fed Ex to ask for the “key” some Australians forgot.
He says they decided to change their ticket.

I sense some evildoing. Imagining the worst, I shift into my defensive mode.


Even though they need my help, I tell him, “They should take care of it themselves.”

However, they need someone that speaks English. Their Fed Ex Key remained behind in Australia…

Fernando drops in and I open my heart to him. I’m sitting on the bed hugging his hips, pleading for mercy and hoping he won’t take this as a sexual advance.

Vic tells Fer his friends decided to go. After the earthquake, lots of Australians wanted to leave, snapping up any available airline space.
Vic also lets him know Werner Herzog has died.

I can’t get a cheap ticket and Werner Herzog has died… I can’t take any more of this. I close off into myself.

I Dream I’m in the middle of a road at night. A crane is lifting the Container to smash it into parts. It was designed to break apart in sections, perfectly planned to deconstruct. The divisions are at the middle of the box’s main facing. There’s an esoteric sensuality to the maneuver that’s similar to the video we made with Jen Skull , but this is the inverse; its to deconstruct.

Manuel Forte, in a strange mood, is present. It upsets him to watch the winch slowly take apart the meaningful Container. It’s like he takes for granted that he has rights. He’s pacing, disgusted, as though he were losing something basic.

It’s raining.

I, on the other hand, could care less. I feel absolutely nothing.
The process is over and Manuel is left with a piece of scrap, vulnerable and with nothing to protect him from the rain. He’s hoping I’ll react.

I lose concentration, my memory is fuzzy, but I believe he leaves and comes back to ask me if I can permit them to haul off the Container and deconstruct it.

Without missing a beat, I dispassionately say, “Yep.”

I Dream it’s daytime and Thierry Désiré and I make plans to get together for lunch with some other folks, as Chris Sharp is in Mexico City. We’re going to a restaurant in a little park at the corner of Monterrey and Insurgentes.

The restaurant has nice lighting, a veritable garden of hanging plants and birds in cages dangling from the ceiling. Dining there is truly pleasant. Once we’ve been seated at table, though, I start worrying about the birds in the dangling cages taking a shit on my head. Everything will be fine as long as that doesn’t happen.

I recall just three Dream fragments.

I’m staying with Mauro in a small dark room. Michael Milham walks in with a couple of friends I’ve not met.
They whisper about going to a club to see a famous DJ. Something tells me I’m not included in the plans for this party.

I overhear the club’s name, “Sambo,” and I say, “The same name as my dog.”

Michael stays behind in the room for awhile to talk with me. He’s kind and considerate and calms me down. Midnight rolls around and he heads off to join them at the club.

In another fragment (maybe the same one) I Dream of a contemporary arts fair, perhaps in Germany. Along with the usual tension and stress at such events, there are also stories about people and their affections.

Sculptors Pancha Núñez and Siohban Hapaska are caught up in the pressure that the galleries apply in order to accumulate missions. Their growing workload includes talking with the collectors and they are stressed out.

An upstanding gallery owner falls in love with a full-figured, dark-skinned lady that doesn’t belong to his social class. He hugs her from behind, their bodies pressing together in the crowd. He’s been swayed by a woman from a less than well-to-do neighborhood. The art world is snobbish.

It seems unacceptable, something the chap must not allow himself to do.

The fair is coming to an end. I observe some security guards closing a gate to cut the lady off from passing. She seems to accept it rather well. She tested the limits while she could and now she leaves with a good attitude.

Another fragment takes place at the beach, strong waves rolling ashore. I see a dressed woman and a young man getting their feet wet as the concavity of a wave overlaps them. They run into a cave to escape the undertow. It’s of no consequence. All is calm.

I recall a bucolic scene at a beach with no people. A grandstand tumbles to the ground, a man with a long rope having pulled it down.

Nap

I remember the Dream begins with a dreadful situation. Moisés Vargas and I are arguing without getting anywhere. I feel a heavy load, a fiendish circle.
I lose attention and leave.

I move on to Roberto’s laboratory and Guillaume Dumas is there.

In the Dream I’m asleep and dream I awaken in the lab. Once again I sleep and wake up.
Sleeping and waking takes me into the dream reality where Roberto and Guillaume are. I hear the audios at the moment I join them in the common reality.

I’m making them aware I’m awake in the Dream when I hear “The Isle of Man.”

At first I can hear the audios, but they then take on a creative aspect in the Dream: they’re words. Farther along they’re not just texts I can take from the dream, but concrete images, another mode of expression and production that enhances the experience. With that, I feel fulfilled.

I can move around in the story of the Dream so I can hear “The Isle of Man” recording and to assure Roberto we’re hearing the same thing. It’s clear now, no doubt about it.

In my Dream I see Miguel Cordera walking along the sidewalk across the street in my neighborhood. He’s decked out in fresh-looking, light-colored clothing. I notice that the gray, blouse hanging long over his draped trousers is mine.

Although we’re headed for the same place, I don’t say hi. I’m busy with my mother.

We’re in the School of Fine Arts in San Miguel de Allende, where there’s a Siqueiros mural. There’s a discrete plaque with my name on it, as though I had something to do with the school’s origins.

We plan to have breakfast before viewing the mural, which I’ve probably already seen before. On the way from the restaurant to the mural there’s a shop that sells basketry. As my mother likes this sort of stuff, I suggest we go in and have a look.

The Dream continues in the colorfully picturesque, multilevel restaurant. My mother goes upstairs while I remain below to order our breakfast. A sweet roll would be plenty but the menu lists “sweet roll with coffee,” but included as well is a “link of sausage, hot or cold.” I’m not terribly enthused about the option…

The same Dream has another fragment, this one at the seashore. Flowers have been sprinkled all along the shore, blanketing it in brilliant colors. This is because a bank, Banamex, is holding an event here. I go over to get a close-up view and see that they are rose petals that the tide is washing away while folks are taking a dip. The people are chasing the colors as if they were beach balls: a corny scene.

What if the tide carries the petals far out to sea?

I observe, though, that it redeposits them on the shore.

We’re in another country, England perhaps. The Dream is perplexing at the beginning, nothing is visible, it’s night and there’s no light in the street.

The country is at once different but familiar. I go from place to place amidst fashionable objects. Aware of my own autonomy, I’m taking care of my social obligations, Eddie following along.

We come to a place that’s sort of like the cheap shopping area between Avenida Monterrey and the Insurgentes Traffic Circle.

The whole area overflows in new and used music listening apparatuses. I have earphones with me, but only one side works -the right ear. The other is a bizarre looking item, between retro and futuristic.
I continue walking around, although now it is I who is secretly following a man that knows about audio devices. I sneak along, spying on what interests him, open to his influence. I’m looking to buy a device that reads CDs, but a vendor offers something else, a silver-colored radio that’s not plastic but real metal, a good one.

It’s what I’ve always wanted, a radio to play in the studio. Maybe I’d better buy it.

In the only tiny bit of Dream I recall, some scientists are in a room discussing the energetic implications of a man standing in the center of a circular or rectangular space.

I remember Dreaming, but I go back to sleep to forget it. I only recall that Dr. Reyes Haro is present in it.

I Dream again. Tania Ruiz is showing off her new De la Ville de Paris studio. She wants to start painting. Although she has everything she needs to do it, she has no idea how because she’s never painted before.

I’m surprised to see Tania with another romantic partner.

They’ve just arrived from Colombia, Tania hoping to start a new life with him here in Paris. He seems odd. I take a good look at him; he’s younger than she is.

I give Tania well-intentioned advice so she can start painting.
She needs to organize the bags that are on the floor, line them up and tie them all together so they’re united.

As the Dream begins I do a drawing for Mane Sota, a plan for a square piece of furniture that’s divided into four spaces, between which there’s a place for a person to sit; a sort of student desk. It’s made of light-weight materials like a beach chair.
It falls apart when Mane sits in it.
It’s too fragile and it breaks.

I Dream afterwards, but my memory is fuzzy. I’m in a pretty hilltop village at twilight. A man, French maybe, has a restaurant at the bottom of the hill. He looks edgy, nervous: I figure he’s trying too hard to get customers to go downhill to his eatery.

Just a vague memory remains of Mane and a big family that’s all over the place. I have the same impression I had 20 years ago, I don’t feel included.
I keep apart.
I recall a conversation about a tough lady that smokes Gauloises and drinks good liquor. However, they no longer appreciate her in the same way. It’s perplexing.

In another Dream I’m at a Chilean painters’ get-together. Folks are making a lot of noise as I try to talk about the neuroscience project, the dreams and the tie in between what the brain registers, the everyday activities and the body’s emotions. I’m having a hard time explaining to them the value of all this. It’s frustrating.

They’re tuned into another channel.

With scissors I cut the profile of a shape painted on canvass. I separate the figure from the background and in a gestural manner sketch a picture of a group of artists I have nothing in common with.
Omar Gatica comes in.

A lot of time has gone by and now there are new people in the group.

Omar and I view the painting and the people in it up-side-down. One of them is named Juan Downey.

It’s night, I head for the lift. One is out of order, the other in bad condition. I get on the lift and go down. I take notice of the old, worn out metal gate.

I get off at the ground floor into a chaos of people. It’s late and I don’t feel safe hailing a cab on the street. I approach a woman and inquire about a cab stand. She happens to be the building’s concierge. She has just arrived and can orient me.

I Dream I’m outdoors, in an especially uplifting environment, water, fresh air; it could be either the coast or the countryside. My faithful pal and follower Hugo Cárdenas is by my side. He shows me an organic, egg-shaped architectural prototype woven out of roots. The webbed structure has space for people inside: house-like. I don’t know if he’s propositioning me. I become wary.
We pass by a fence built of logs. It thrills me to see it.

Now I’m with Lorena. We’re going to celebrate Christmas together with her family. Franka is searching for shoes. Mine are high-heels, open, flirty; I’m even wearing a gold ring on the middle toe of my left foot. I have no problem walking on the dirt and sand.

In the next Dream I’m sitting in the back seat of a friend’s car that’s in a supermarket parking garage. He insists we go into the supermarket together. For some reason, disinterest maybe, I don’t want to get out of the car.
I feel my mouth is unclean. I’m wearing my calypso dress for the first time and notice it’s smudged…

He mawkishly insists I go into the supermarket with him, implying an intimate relationship between us. I have no desire to go in. He gives me some fuchsia-colored, open-toed little booties to put on –likely belonging to his ex-girlfriend- that are pretty hip but in bad taste. What’s more, they clash with my calypso dress.
He says he likes the typically British trashy style. I agree it’s fashionable.

Out of the blue, some friends of his come into the parking garage, spiritedly jovial, blond-hair, blue-eyed chaps wearing hipster hats. They come over to say hi and then head off.

Now I see what’s making the smudges. It’s blood! Horrors!
It’s staining his clothes too. I can’t go out like this. I urgently need to get to a restroom. I go to the one in the parking garage.
He comes for me and I’m lying on the restroom floor covered in a blanket, as if I was in my bed.

Finally I go in the big supermarket where I run into some former students of the Craighouse School that are working there. I’m acquainted with them –they were never really friends- and I view their work as basically nutritional.

One of them looks like Spencer and his colleague tells me he wants to study art.

These days, everybody wants to study art.

I only remember my brother getting up concerned that the scaffolding he had ordered was out in the street. He wants me to move it into my atelier. However, I can’t find a place to store it away, there’s no room for it.

He insists I not leave it outside.

I recall Cristina Paoli in a little Dream fragment. She’s wearing blue jeans and makes me take notice how faded they are (I can’t tell if it’s from lots of use or if they’re pre-washed). I happen to be going with her to a shopping center to buy some pants.

It’s raining.

Each of us has been conferred the body of a dead person. Mine is of a woman still lying in a yellowish residue of liquid splattered on the ground. The experience is at the same time both sordid and privileged.

I observe a woman—I reckon she’s strong—carrying the cadaver over her shoulder to put it in a van. It seems a harsh scene.

In order to take care of the job we adopt a feminine disposition.

She’s wearing a white poncho and a length of plastic to prevent sullying.

I’m can feel calm because I belong to a privileged circle.

We leave. Everything will be ready when we return.

In my Dream I see Castor Díaz kissing a woman; showing off his brand new girlfriend. We’re in my atelier.

I Dream I’m embracing Juan Pablo as we make love. I feel him introduce his penis as though experiencing it in reality. I’m familiar with how it feels, therefore I become aware that the man in the Dream couldn’t be Juan Pablo because we have never come close to that degree of intimacy.
I only know the spiritual intensity that I share with him.

My mother comes into the room, but Juan Pablo and I do not part. We rather continue joined together, but now with clothes on, as if to dissimilate.
We are accomplices and we have a plan.

My mother ties a string across the room so she can hang the typical Mexican festive cutout paper decorations. My cousins Huaíra and Muncho come in with more folks.

From the second story of a colonial-style home’s interior patio I see lots of the colorful cutout decorations strung this way and that.

I plead with my little cousins to not use them to perform tightrope walks. Muncho assures me they will do it downstairs for the party.

In the first Dream, Eddie comes into my room with two men I don’t know. I only hear voices because I’m lying in bed on my stomach.
They are planning to gang rape me from behind. I feel tremendous pain and anguish. I awaken.

The Dream continues and I understand that the above refers to work.

I recall a bit of the major Dream.

Eddie is now moving through paradisiacal spaces set off from each other by long, high white walls. He happily goes about his business within these limits.

In the semi-darkness, Mijael and I are still children accompanied by our families. I recall in the Dream we’re at my cousins’ country house in Pueca. The whole story begins again at its origins.

In the halls, Mijael comes to me to tell me he loves me.

I hear a big noise outdoors in the wildly rough terrain where the orchard is. In the distance, I see a tiger and some white animals with black spots, Dalmatian dogs maybe. A hunt is taking place so the animals disappear.

Mica, Mónica and Gato Alquinta are hanging out together. Child that I am, I stick my finger into a huge square cream cake that’s decorated with pecans that I snatch off so I can eat them. Mijael comes over to do the same.

I head off to see an ancient tree that’s dry, the size of knots all over its trunk indicating its age. It is so huge that a person can hide inside it. I start playing with someone or some thing among the big branches. Mijael comes seeking to play with me. However, after first confessing he was seduced by the sight of me, he then tells me he doesn’t want to be with me.

His telling me one thing then another frustrates me. At first, he tells me let’s start from the beginning and then that there is nothing. It’s yet another deception and it makes me angry.

At table I’m left with Gato. I give him a 300-milligram Lyrica capsule and he takes it. He says he’s familiar with it. Mónica is there and she helps me. She tells me I’m the one that has to help Mijael.

I have to take his place in a play being presented in a theater. His role is as an extra. I have to cross the stage as though walking through a storm, but with my hand on my heart.

I imagine the kind of movements I have to make. Mónica, though, is more experienced and makes other quite different types of movements, more feminine.

I remember going with Mijael to another place.
I see one bride then a chubbier one, poorly nourished, that’s looking in through a window. I wouldn’t want to be in her place.

The Dream sends me a message saying that the illness I feel is lack of rest.

In another Dream I’m in the service entry of a French building. I have a brass bed. For some reason I move it. I’m under the impression that a car has to park there. The concierge comes to tell me my bed is not in the way. Nobody uses the service door behind me. It gives direct access to the apartments. We go up to a man’s room. There’s a bed and a piece of furniture made of transparent acrylic, which looks like and old archive. We go back down.

I recall in my Dream some inexpert skiers on a snowy slope. Some experts come to help them get down. These embrace them from behind and hurl themselves straight down the steep slope as fast as gravity will take them.

Afterward, the expert skiers transform into high-performance athletes that, rather than going down the slope on top of the snow, they go beneath it. I think it is improbable, so I approach them. The zipper of their ski suit is a little open at the neck, but no snow gets in.

One skier has indigenous features. Giving meaning to the story, he reminds me of one of the athletes at La Parva Ski Center in Chile, 30 years ago.

The ski center closes at the end of the season and the athletes depart. One of them, despite being among the best, looks like a less-than-daring bourgeois slacker. Before leaving, he raids the refrigerator, which is what makes me think he’s self-centered. He doesn’t want to go down amidst all the traffic.
However, I recall there’s no snow this time of year, everything is closed and there is no traffic.

An Asiatic-looking young lady comes to say goodbye. She asks me for my business card, but I can’t find one in my purse. I promise to send my information via email, all the while aware I won’t do it.
The commitment is taken lightly.
She hands me her card. Her name is Yto—I forget her last name and the name of the street—and lives in San Francisco. She’s American, although her features say Asian.

She leaves.

I ask what’s her sport, to which she replies “paragliding, not skiing.” She shows me photos taken of the earth from a camera installed in a paraglider. We visualize an exciting painting with all the detail of a realist technique putting motion into it. It’s truly admirable.

Just then, José (my mother’s husband) comes to tell me he is remodeling a stone shelter. He has reconditioned the one-room affair for several beds, but with just one bathroom, for which he built a wall ensconced into the wall. He has worked with authentic materials that he finds on the mountain to renovate a room and make it bigger, leaving the washbasins inside to recuperate space. José has done a fine job on the interior of the shelter.

He brightly proposes we dine together before going down.

Wearing the neuroheadset, I Dream I can begin to have more freedom with the Day-by-Day Itinerary. Now, logging the events is more natural and systematic, with the only detail I need to take care of being the distance I need to keep between the times of the events and when I write them down.

Before awaking I become aware that my attention is dispersed everywhere.

I Dream that the Neuro Bureau holds an event.

Daniel Margulies, looking effeminate in short, straight hair, is awarded a major prize.

It’s quite unexpected and causes a big commotion.

Although far from the organization’s main cause, it’s an important award—on the scale of the Grammys—for a song Daniel impulsively produced.

It’s a cover of the Song of the Year “Get Lucky” done by Daft Punk. It causes trouble when I point this out, but I’m telling the truth.

I show them some brightly colored portraits of the Parkinson I did 20 years ago. I see Miguel Conejeros.

The Neuro Bureau also appropriates the Parkinson name. Miguel is surprised to see his band in other hands. It has turned into something else and no longer belongs to him.

New times are upon us.
Nowadays, you can appropriate, sample, pirate, copy or whatever…

In full production, the Neuro Bureau operates successfully from a modified container open end-to-end.
Cameron, Daniel and Pierre are storing industrial materials and everybody is helping out.

A woman swims onto the seashore despite her hands being occupied carrying bags for the cause’s efforts.

Although the light is waning, there’s very little undertow in the sea. A wave rises up behind Pierre on his way out. I advise him to be careful coming back in, while we swim amidst the waves.

I feel slightly guilty. We talk over the matter of the cover. I point out it caused a bad impression.

A woman in front of me covers her face with a plastic bag, perhaps in mock shame. But she can cover her face if she wants because I feel it’s not bad to say what one thinks.

In the Dream, an external pressure makes me feel guilty.

I Dream I’m in a nightclub with some girlfriends—I don’t remember who they are. One of them is waiting for a guy that doesn’t arrive, so we leave.

On the way out I run into Ollin in an intensely charged encounter. I’m wearing a rocker-style black leather jacket just like his. Ollin isn’t wearing his usual t-shirt, but rather a white shirt. He looks very handsome.
My jacket is worn out. That’s life…

The waiters, bartenders and other club employees are about to leave. They’re cleaning up all the mess. I’m about to drink a beer when I realize it’s not mine, but one of theirs.

I ask Ollin if he can take me home and he says yes. I take leave from my friends. Knowing Ollin, he’s going to want to spend the night at my place, with me.

The Dream continues with me in a parking lot where they are selling old and new things. I want to sell something.

People are carrying off an old projection screen they bought for 2,000 pesos: a bargain.

I bargain with a lady for a fancy looking old screen that includes amplifier and speakers. She wants 3,500. It’s in good shape but I insist on paying no more than 3,000. She doesn’t go for it. The lady gets bored and starts packing up everything. Before she leaves, I buy the screen.

Ollin’s car is old and big. We pack the screen in and go. I soon realize we forgot the speakers and we head back. Ollin takes his car to the limit on the way back. It doesn’t matter, though, that’s just the way he is: careless, spontaneous and fun.

Sleeping, I Dream about the Emotiv EPOC channels, aware that all the people and things play a part in my project.

Even Giselle is a piece of the puzzle. She, on her own initiative, comes to tell me that the pages of the Dream Journal ought to be trimmed with a proper paper guillotine so they are exactly aligned.

From my viewpoint, the Dream Journal is the most human component and is therefore entropic in essence.

Now, in terms of commitment to form and aesthetic, Giselle has embraced a more inflexible philosophy than my own.

I recall that Moisés sends a text message to my cell-phone in the morning, saying, “I went out on a spree,” which means he’s unable to get together. Fine by me, but after resting up, he should be able to come over.

I remember being with Jacky and his computer. Although I don’t recall what happens, there’s a really fraternal feeling.

Another bit of the Dream comes to mind: I see Lou Kronolowski with her sweetheart, a tall handsome guy, walking to their car.
I wonder what attracted him to her… Lou must have “something.”

Now the Dream transports me to the south of France, where a man is holding a bal-musette in the interior patio of his château. Tables surround the dance floor in the middle where people whirl to the music in a moment of togetherness rooted in local customs. The variety of tunes the musicians perform is a show in itself.

Muncho, Mica and I look for a table. It seems they are all occupied, so they bring chairs for us, for which we thank them. Later on, we get a table.
Cousin Huaíra comes along afterwards.

The wine flows and Muncho drinks like crazy. Mica is more careful and guarded. Muncho orders a glass of the finest wine—the name slips my mind.
Laughing maliciously, he then orders two. (I plead with him to stop.)

Mica prudently chooses to sit at a corner table; Muncho grabs a seat close to the dancing.

I’m feeling on edge, hoping the loud music doesn’t upset my mother.

Mica happens upon one of his students in the halls of the château, a young lady that’s naively attempting to cover too much ground in the field of art theory. Mica advises her to study Gilles Deuleuze, which surprises me because the girl’s intellectual level has yet to attain to those heights.

The next dance is a fling to the tune of the bagpipes.

Elena Agudio comes along one of the walkways carrying a book, most assuredly an informed text. She’s going to read it by happenstance, in the Dadaist style, because she has yet to prepare her presentation. She knows what she is doing.

Meanwhile, out on the patio, C’est la Java.

I’m so tired that the only thing I do is sleep.

I rested up but I didn’t Dream.

I Dream I’m here in my room with Matías Camus and Alejandro “el Chiapaneco,” who was with me at “El Nigromante” Cultural Center in San Miguel de Allende.

It’s been quite awhile since I last saw Matías. He lies down on the bed and extends his arms back in a gesture of ease, of enjoying the good life, while he tells me he’s no longer doing art work and that he’s sticking with rock and roll.

I see it as a weakness. Even though—by way of giving context to the Dream—I could care less about what other people think, I ask him how his parents are taking it. I believe he doesn’t reply.

I recall another fragment of the Dream.

It’s morning and I’m in a house that’s not mine. I don’t know why I’m there, I’d rather be writing down the latest dream.

I’m at table eating breakfast with other people. A man across from me grabs a piece of bread and, ill mannered, throws it on the table. His disrespectful attitude upsets me.
He then tries to grab my hand and I, fearing he knows no limits and wants to take advantage of me, snatch it away. What’s more, both my hands are occupied, one with a big, sugar-coated chouquette, the other with a chocolate croissant.

I control my impulses, believing it’s better to be calm and indulgent. After all, there’s plenty of bread.

I still can’t figure out what I’m doing there.
I look around the house. It has a big yard. In the distance I see a snake with its neck raised, its entire body attentive to what’s happening. It approaches and slithers into the swimming pool. The light is dim and the water looks dark.

Later, it is stretched out on the ground and, though it’s too far away to really discern, its skin looks fluffy like a furry animal.
Astonishingly, it has spots like those of a tiger.

The snake then takes on another shape, mammal-like. Lightheartedly I tell a girl that the skin looks like Little Nemo.

A fox comes into view. As it approaches, the girl tells me it’s a household pet, Marta by name, and it’s harmless.

In another fragment I’m back at my atelier Lyrica. The worktable has Los Angeles-style graffiti all over it. Someone was here while I was away: an artist I missed seeing.

I’m with Joaquín’s friend Aquiles in my bathroom. I’m picking up little white paraffin-like granules scattered about the floor. Meanwhile, Aquiles is making plans to watch the sunset somewhere out south of the city. I’m aware that my friend Gilles Fougerat (a lawyer) is also going.

Resolutely I tell Aquiles that my life revolves around writing dreams down at night and picking up pebbles during the day. That’s what my life has come down to.

I want to go see the sunset with them. And Aquiles replies, “Everybody comes as they please. To each his own.”

Before going, we have time to eat, which makes me very happy. I want a heaping plate of pasta.

Before I awaken and during the final processing of the Dream’s information, I wonder what is going on? I wish to clarify exactly which places and levels of my living quarters are involved in the Dream’s storyline. The Dream about Matías and Alejandro has a dark cast to it, still unlit. The wooden staircase is not yet in place. At this stage of construction there’s only a small spiral stairway that’s not sturdy.

A piece of a Dream…

Moisés and I are seated at table in Restaurant Volver, chatting. I see he has an “either-or” choice to make: either he stays or he leaves. The black awning that shades the terrace is shaped like sunglasses, as though the place had a face.

Personally, I think it’s hiding something crooked.

I go back to pick up on the previous Dream.

Said is on the beach. All of a sudden, the countryside behind it freezes. Everything stops moving except some shadows. They are iguanas, their eyes brightly lit. I’m awe struck; it’s an amazing transformation.

The reptiles multiply exponentially like a computer animation and color returns in the form of a pink-hued plant that blossoms baby piglets linked together one to the next.

Said observes that, “It’s hard these days to safeguard secret information, now that whenever you turn on any computer, it automatically connects with the Internet.

I recall a fragment in which Marguerite appears.

I just remember bits of what happens.

The first Dream is abstract.

Two men and I are undertaking a technical design, perhaps a car. They extract a beautiful ruler from a box and give it to me. It’s like a “T” square for a drafting table, rigged with a system of cords.

In another fragment I’m walking along the seashore with family members on a stone pathway hedged with greenery. I take joy in seeing a new species of plant with long, intensely green leaves.

After others have already gone their way, my uncle Muncho also leaves as he holds up an elasticized length of cloth inscribed with “their trip was functional.”

Some people pass by wearing brightly colored outfits. We make fun of their loud belts and exaggerated sunglasses without their being aware.

The aesthetic issue basically has to do with ethics.

We continue along a stone pathway covered in sand.
They have negligently left the stone pathway’s stair steps covered in sand.

We go to an office to ask for an explanation, but the reply is meaningless.

We go back along the pathway, which gradually clears off like melting snow to leave us some ground to walk on amidst the sand.

I Dream Ricardo and I are making love in the darkness of night in Mexico City’s Historic Center. It’s an intense physical experience, his member giving me tremendous pleasure. Valerie Meyer is beside us in the same bed. Inflamed with jealousy, she flings herself upon me, entirely determined to not let us continue. I am unafraid. I don’t believe there is anything she can do.

The Dream transports us to an apartment complex where she lives at home with her family. Valerie is out to get me! She’s out of her wits and will stop at nothing! I run away from her.

I had no idea she was so weak.
I had no idea that, even though she has a beautiful blond two year-old daughter, she would be capable of lowering herself to this.
I had no idea she would go so far as to get her father involved in order to stop me.

She has sunk so low that she throws a big rock at my head.
“What’s going on in this woman’s head,” I ask Ricardo.
The broken rock is lying on the ground; two chunks of brick. Ricardo doesn’t respond. I’m all alone. A patrol car passes by.

I flee to the far end of a house’s garden in the night, hoping no dog will come out. I’m hiding behind some bushes, waiting nervously… A man approaches: the owner. He offers me a job in exchange for letting me stay there, but there are several conditions of conduct, which I accept to abide by.

There’s no wine and no party.

I find out the owner is a professor at the National University. He doesn’t know I’m running away from Valerie.

In the dark of night, I’m rolling on the ground, playing with two dogs on top of me.

I Dream that someone broke into my studio last night while I was asleep. A federal policeman comes to investigate what happened. We climb up to the roof deck. It has changed. There are entryways to the next-door houses on both sides and the thief has left a door open that leads to a garden. We discover an extraneous red lighter he left behind on his way in: a piece of evidence.

I’m with Mari Carmen Suárez downstairs in my office, a scarf belonging to her brother Esteban lying on the couch. I suspect this is evidence that it was her brother that broke in: he has been mistreating her ever since she was little.

I go up to my living quarters stomping on the stairs in order to be heard. Behind the door there’s a man, the miscreant. I grab him by the collar and take him downstairs hanging by his shirt like a baby. He doesn’t fight back or try to run.

I hail a patrol car on the street. The police stop and come in to take charge of the case.

The burglar is handsome; he reminds me of “Blackie” Aretxabala. He’s somebody else, though. He confesses he and his band of thieves were the ones that broke in last night. He turns himself in because he’s disillusioned. He simply states, “Coming to the Roma neighborhood to steal is not as easy as I thought it would be.”

The Dream continues in bits and pieces.

I’m with my mamma in her bed in her house in Las Condes.
I go out on the street in the early morning.
The sun hasn’t risen yet.
It’s before I’m to board my flight.

I head into a Metro station at the corner of Insurgentes and Reforma Avenues.
I ride down the escalator into a big station without spotting a single train.
I wander among the coffee shops and breakfast take-outs.
It takes me a long time to find some oatmeal cookies among all the packaged pastries.
I walk through all the passageways possible in the station.

I discover one that’s closed off, practically in disuse.
They open it for me so I can walk through.

I go out again at night. Has a whole day gone by? Has time slipped away and I missed my return flight?

I’m at wit’s end. Time marches on and I can’t turn back the clock.

I come across some musicians who engage my attention with an article written about them in a badly printed independent magazine. The paper is light blue and the ink black: not enough contrast for easy reading. A second one is even worse, as the smudged ink on dark blue pages obliterates the letters.

I move on.

Another Dream:

Thierry Désiré gets an excellent opportunity to show a curatorial proposal involving paintings and systems.
The project doesn’t work out. I enter a gallery to see his show.
I see Michel, who’s glad we’ve come.
Today is “Curator Day.”

I’m not alone. I don’t talk, either.
Just the ones with me talk… for me!

The only vocal expression is to say that Thierry is an idiot: he had everything to put together a good show and he didn’t do it.

We leave from there. I spot a bee trying to sting me on my left arm. I attempt to wave it off when, alarmed, I see it’s not a typical bee… its tail is like a scorpion’s!

I smash it on the ground, its tail extended, stiff.

In the process of taking account of the information, I’m with Dr. Eduardo Pérez Cantera. I ask him if I should write down my Dream now or later on.

I ought to do it now.

I Dream the atelier’s corrugated roof has fallen in, the whole building is in ruins and I’m faced with having to rebuild everything from the ground up. Despite the tremendous loss, my willingness to work has not been reduced in the least and I’m keen to tackle the job at hand.

Nicolas Darrot is here. He turns up in my life from time to time over the years.

Tottof, also, but I have a mission and there’s no time to spare.

In marshaling my forces to take care of the needs, I’ll call on electrician Benjamín Sánchez to fix the lights and to add lighting for the Container, which is still in the dark. This is a new phase; I have to start over again, whatever the price.

Along with the workshop area, my living quarters are also in shambles. This is no small task. I take stock of what’s left standing and what needs to be done. The flooring is mournful… I’ll have to call Javier Muñoz, the carpenter. I know whom I can count on.

I pick my way through the wreckage to inspect the bathroom and another one next to it. Hereabouts, I’ll need a mason. I proceed to a third room and it’s a bathroom, too. There’s an outlandish number of bathrooms for the amount of living space, but I accept the originality as it is without complaining.

Another one just the same… I reckon I could turn it into a wash room without ignoring that the drainpipe dumps whatever gets flushed onto the street. I also take note of the horizontal windows—like the ones in the work area—that let in the light.

I wonder if it’s better to wash clothes facing the light or with your back turned to it.

The Dream’s signature is that now I can be neighbors with Mijael and Karen without getting into disputes over her jealousy.

I Dream I’m seated across the table from Cuauhtémoc Medina. I’m talking while a waiter lays out the silverware.

I immediately see how they do it; the people in the know—not just one, but several—forming work teams that sweep the awards and grants.

Oowee! “Tell me about it!”

I find out the level is over his head even.

I meet up with Roberto in the halls of an elegant institution (like the CIEP in France, for instance).

Oof, I just took off the Emotiv.

I think it’s five o’clock, but Roberto says it’s 2:30.

“Do you know what patience and optimism are?”

While he’s saying it, he lightly kisses me on the lips (we deserve it after so much time working as a team) and opens the door for me. We enter the fancy bar in the building.
I ask for a pen to make note of a time—data for my itinerary—and he hands me a rather large one.

As he leans on the bar, he proceeds to tell me, “That’s called seduction.”

To my astonishment, I see Dr. Reyes Haro behind the bar as the bartender.

Everybody pulls out their annotations of data, which are quite similar to mine, although differently organized, processed 4 by 4 or other posterior orders that are not lacking. Each has his version of the shared information; mine apparently not having anything that sets it apart.

I’m saturated, so I ask for a sheet of paper to take notes the moment I take off the neuroheadset.

 

First, I recall a Dream about Eddie, whose girlfriend is dressed in rags. It’s a pleasant Dream, though.

I Dream I’m in an up-scale gallery (like the Yvon Lambert, for instance), where they’re installing an exhibition. It’s a big show. Sam Duran is putting on a technological work. Another couple of artists are also participating. In this congenially elegant ambiance, but setbacks occur just before the opening.

The show isn’t ready.

I’m there with a friend. We wander among the pieces and the artists. In spite of the high pressure, we’re kindly included as friends. There’s a party scheduled for after the show. Sam intimates that he finds me attractive and I’m pleased to hear it. It’s quite a compliment, although I take it lightly.

Despite the noble intentions of inviting us to the party, the installation of the show has not been completed.

Sam Duran’s piece—electronic and mechanical apparatuses on a wall—is different from what I’ve seen before. A test run of its functioning is a disaster because everything short circuits. He’s practically going to have to remake it. The same happens to other artists, either they haven’t finished their piece or it doesn’t work as planned.

One can only assume the opening will have to be changed.

The gallery is preparing for a show in which most of the works involve lights directed at a façade. The opening has to be at night.

For this major production the gallery has to be completely transformed by building two cement-block walls that impose themselves upon the space.

They’re still being built, the fresh mortar creating a mess common to all construction sites. There is no way the opening can take place now.

Sam emerges with his shoes caked in cement like a laborer… his personal elegance intact, though.

The gallery concludes it must change the opening to take place at midnight. As it belongs to an impassioned cultural elite, it can convene a crowd at that hour.

I’m going to get some sleep and, if I’m awake at that time, I’ll come.

We leave.

I’m riding sidesaddle on back of a motorcycle: my friend driving. We stop at a traffic signal next to Sam in his car.
I slide off wearing the same blue dress as the other night. Sam, who bears a physical resemblance to Vincent Levalois, now tells me in no uncertain terms that he finds me charming.

I find myself talking face to face with Sam. I ask him where he lives and he says in Mexico. But I want to know precisely where and he says near San Antonio… And, where is that?

Close to Villahermosa… I’ve no idea where that is.

He says he bought his apartment for 80,000 US dollars and that, most certainly, his is different from the others: none are the same.

He invites me to try something new: a serious relationship. I find it hard to believe.

My first Dream is a fragment.

I vaguely recall being on a trip with others. The whole scene is covered in snow. A symbolic figure in the form of a head swallows fire and light up incandescently in the darkness, shining on the snow until it crumbles to ashes like paper.

Moving along…

I return to the Container, which is a personal space as well as a collective one. I find a stack of big branches when I enter. (This is Mexico, so maybe my associates have set them aside to use in a recreational activity or as a symbolic item in some religious ceremony.)

I’m getting into the morning with my friend Fernando Montoya. The open door of the Container lets in a breeze.

I’m sorry I allowed them to use the business cards (tabloid-size in the dream) that Cristina Paoli designed for Lyrica to play with paint.

I pick them up from the dirty paint-soaked table: messy like after children’s play.
For Fernando’s sake, I ironically select out salvageable ones for us to talk about.
One, a childish drawing, we name “Frutilla,” for another, we make up a story and yet another has clouds ordered to the right that, with a bit of imagination, might be the view from the Container through the door. We name it “Close the Door, the Wind Is Coming in.”

I want some music, so I hunt through the old cassettes for Pink Floyd. Among ones that are split apart, I come across a Peter Murphy album. Finally, I find The Wall, and I ask one of Fernando’s girl pals, who is lounging on a bed, if she minds me putting on Pink Floyd. I do it out of respect because that’s how I was brought up and I still find these niceties important.
She makes me feel as though it was a weakness. Would it be better to do things without asking? It’s a philosophical issue.
Intending to wash my hair while fully dressed, I get down on my knees. Fernando proposes that I should bathe instead.
I turn the shower on and the water shoots out full blast. It’s an old bathroom and Fernando demonstrates how to jiggle the knobs to adjust the pressure and temperature.
Now, though, having turned on the water the full blast, I’ve finished off the entire supply. I’ll have to wait…

In the closing phase of the Dream, I wait for the water to be replenished. We head down to the beach. The sea in sight, I wholeheartedly wish to go for a dip, but I’d best wait for a bath. The scenic landscape includes palm trees and a restaurant with glass walls. A thatched roof shades the tables at water’s edge.
I glimpse my mother off in the distance just when I run into my friends from adolescence, Blackie Aretxabala, Andrea de Lorenzo and Matías León. However, I must go greet my mother.

I tell her I’ve bathed in fresh water; I guess I needed to point out it wasn’t in saltwater.

In the restaurant, an older woman with the body of a yoga practitioner—but still older looking—comes over to tell us something, walking like a teacher.

I go say hi to Blackie and Andrea.
Fernando tells me something important; that Andrea used me back when we were teenagers because I guided her and “took her under my arm like a book,” exactly as she had planned. It was an arrangement that benefitted both of us.

I start going back over the past, calling to mind how I had introduced her to my friends, noting how she became more and more involved with us before moving off to live in Viña del Mar. That gave us an excuse to get out of town to go visit her, the trips leading to a breakaway from the control of our families to the point of freedom in the extreme.

Maybe he’s right. I’d never viewed it like that.

I Dream Gilles Fougerat, a lawyer, is going to lease out his house, whose interior decoration is accented with palms.

One wall acts as a reflector, giving the illusion of doubling the space. The room also has a reflecting pond in the middle: it’s a pretty snazzy loft, all in all.

The renter is constructing a wall straight across from the other one that will reflect the same space. He brings in a crew to build the wall out of a material that’s rather coarse, to say the least.

Several folks have gathered to hang out while the construction is in progress, among them Joaquín. I’m telling him about the real lions Alberto Kalach has as house pets. What’s more, they’ve had babies: cute little things the size of your index finger.

Joaquín, putting up a bold front, lets on he has a girlfriend.

A bunch of people are at the gathering when I notice that one part of the new wall is not as thick as the rest: it’s much weaker.

I show the crew boss the part where it has cracked. Everybody turns attention onto the faulty area, closing in for a better look. The crew boss the renter hired, a banana republic dictator-type, has not one whit of common sense.
I propose a solution; introduce a column of expansive material into the crack in order to isolate it.

The onlookers form a committee, with Joaquín and Alberto Kalach representing opposing opinions. Each present his arguments and conclusions about how to solve the problem. The dictator-type—maybe he’s more like a bodyguard—rises to defend himself against my offense.

Alberto, who’s near me, discretely takes my hand.

He talks to the dictator, spiritedly backing my position. By way of convincing him, Alberto suggests thinning the cylinder’s volume before introducing it into the wall and setting aside the unused material. The latter can be used for the regular maintenance work that will have to be done.

Alberto has construction experience and he’s quite familiar with the entropic economic system existing in Mexico, considering the labor force.

The deal he’s proposed allows the boss and his crew to get paid and for the leftovers to be used.

The solution is magisterial; Alberto and I are a team.

Affectionately cupping my face in his hands, Alberto tells me it’s been a great pleasure to see me. We’ve created a synergy together, solving a problem where everybody wins.

We corrected the dictator’s error and, in the doing, made him our ally. Victorious, satisfied that love has won the day, we leave the field of battle.

I move along.

Among the group of people I find Mauro, who offers me a torta, a Mexican-style sandwich stuffed with breaded cutlet, vegetables and chiles. I don’t turn it down. I again run into Alberto, who’s also eating a torta, his with a higher quality cutlet. He’s picky, removing the vegetables and tomato and avocado slices before eating the bread roll and meat only. In a gesture of love, we dine together.

In another Dream I recall being outside on the street with a dark-skinned lady (my friend in the Dream). A chap rides by on a finely designed bicycle. I ought to get myself one like it.

If I wanted to take a ride on a rent-a-bike, I couldn’t because I don’t have a license.

The woman and I are in her al-fresco house, open to whatever might happen. She receives a call from The Dream Clinic because Dr. Reyes Haro has acquired a taste for art and he’s collecting works. He wants to buy one of hers and she has to go see him.
She is a member of the team, too, and works at the clinic. I’m curious to see her art and she shows me a digital animation, a lively composition that’s closer to design than to art, so I lose interest. But a series of oil paintings of portraits done in profile draws my attention.
I go to the bathroom and come upon my dream diary Bedtime Stories, an important work that I’d loaned her at one time and would like to get back. I hear Dr. Reyes Haro come in and, although I’m ashamed of getting friendly with one of his workers, I go out.
We greet each other with a hug, jumping with joy: a demonstration of affection and brotherly love.

In the last part of the Dream I’m lying alone on a mattress on the floor. Before going, I sense how tired I am of living in these conditions: I miss my bed. I’s better get used to it, though.

In a piece of Dream I’m with a man, I dare not say who. I don’t recognize the city we’re in. I do remember a red building; a big house they’re painting.

On one side the color is even, while on the other, as far as I can tell, the artistry becomes ever more pronounced. It ends up, however, in graffiti and the building degenerates into a ruin.
I discover the ruined part is the façade: no art there. It reminds me of when I was in architecture school and students would occupy this sort of house to live in.

The man asks me where I live.

I shyly tell him in a store that sells Chinese imports, cheap stuff in bright colors. We’ve just passed one and we go back. I go in, but before coming back out, I go by a pastry shop where two women are eating coffee éclairs. I order a piece of prune tart, aware that I’ll be eating it by myself.

I then only recall when we return home at night.

Finally, there’s a bit of memory of peering into a darkened room and seeing a couple in bed. I alertly call Katri to come look. It’s actually a screen that shows them asleep.

They’re sleeping with the TV on, which allows us to temporarily watch an accelerated sequence like an animation of real images taken over a longer period of time, perhaps an entire night.

I’m surprised when I distinguish the bedspread: flowery, just like mine.

There’s development in the sequenced image storyline. At first she seems to have insomnia, but that changes when a baby appears. I’m afraid he’s the one that ends up being unable to sleep. Her absence makes him irate.

In the silence I see the image of an eye.

An eye open from fear that has the appearance of a pencil drawing.

I Dream we’re in a chalet in the mountains. José Cortés added on a new bathroom properly outfitted as a survival refuge, including full-size bathtub and bidet.

Andrea, entering into the spirit, proposes moving the bathtub, while, to me, the bidet is useless. The others think its better to leave it, though.

The bathroom is in a hallway and I suggest it should be closed off with frosted glass for discretion’s sake. One could still see if somebody else was using it.

The whole family, along with some neighbors, are going down the mountain. We stop off on the way down at a village with rustic stone houses. A wrinkled old mountain man (he’d look like a hermit if he had a beard) comes out to meet us and takes us into his home.

My mother says no
No, one more time
No to whatever’s proposed
No, always no

“You seem like an adolescent.” What’s with you? Nothing excites you.
Why don’t you get enthused to have new adventures?

Vanessa Crocker, an old schoolmate, comes walking into the village on her own. As always, she’s a free expression of herself.
I gaze out onto the street: a tiny colonial mountain village. From a foreshortened perspective, the buildings are red.

Meanwhile, a set of webcams is keeping watch over my sister. They’re installed in her bedroom and bath and they’re storing time-lapse photos.
She’s locked into her apartment alone, confined to her bedroom and bath.

“You only think of yourself.”

My comment offends her.

“I’m not judging you. Deep down, that’s just the way you are.”

In the Dream, I hear the alarm clock go off. But I don’t want to leave the Dream: I want to return to the story, the village, the old man… I don’t have the option, though.

 

The Dream starts out alarmingly. Daniel and Cameron had gone out partying the night before. The details escape me, but they got in trouble and were arrested. It was shameful.

In one instance of the fragment, I see Daniel driving a white car, a classic, which he ends up wreaking. In the accident, it flips over and goes flying through the air.

The bumptious Cameron has Daniel as his henchman. More disturbing still, after their arrest, Daniel, under his influence, accompanies him to a sordid, ecstasy-soaked orgy. Cameron, in his hedonistic pursuit of lewd personal pleasures, is a case study in condemnable materialistic spiritual poverty. It’s bewildering to imagine such a decadently negative situation.

Later, in the same house, I talk with Mijael. I ponder on what makes a person truly attractive. I think it is authenticity; a code that flows from the interior, something deep-rooted that makes a sincere connection with others. I observe that Mijael is younger. He’s dressed in gray with a gray street-fashion cap, the sole color reducing his spontaneity. Not even Mijael, who never paid attention to appearances, conserves the sincerity he had when I met him.

It’s a let down.

I Dream I’m in the atelier with other people, everybody going about their work without much talking. Carlos Pérez is there.
I’m repairing the binding on an artist’s book, a log of my studio work from 1997-2008. My mother comes in. With her dominant controller personality in full force, she asks us to pick up the trash. We’re not done working and she’s ordering us around.
I make up my mind to preserve the harmony and I ask her to leave, self-assured in taking action to get rid of the source of pressure.

In another Dream, Francisco García González and Claudia Grajales drop into the atelier. I haven’t seen them in quite awhile. They bring their 6 year-old, fair-headed son Camilo along. He’s a good boy with a positive outlook and quite intelligent, so they seek ways to stimulate him. He also displays an artistic aptitude.
Irene Dubrovnic is with me and I suggest she initiate him into meditation so that he’s drawn into deeply exploring his creativity in a controlled way, in spite of his high energy.

My attention returns to my artist’s book. I’ve made a structure out of sticks of wood, working from a drawing of a sculptural concept. It’s like a crane standing on an open book. I’d like to show it to the boy.

I don’t see Claudia and Francisco that often, but when they come around, they have time to spend. In the studio, which is also a restaurant, Irene and I order a vegetable and potato dish. I’m indecisive about eating beets for health reasons. Finally I order half and half. Francisco and Claudia don’t order anything because they’re keen to go to a luncheon, to which they invite me. They serve the meal, but we don’t eat it.
Soon I’m at a birthday party.

Ah, Rodrigo Peñafiel…
Although I wish it weren’t so, once again I don’t know what I’m doing there.

The table is set for the invitees: the restaurant is empty. Claudia sits at one table, Francisco at another: it’s a social tactic, even though they are alone. The waiter seats me. I have barely sat down when the chair breaks. It’s fragile like a cheap patio chair. It’s an exclusive affair, but lots of people are invited, some 20 odd. They have two kinds of chairs.

I suspect that Francisco invited me without thinking. I ask if I was invited and he says no. I’m uncomfortable. I insist if I stay that they give me the other chair so I can at least be comfortable.

 

A part of the Dream story takes place in the early morning. Mandaro, one of Joaquín’s pals, looks me up to do something my memory wishes to keep secret. Mandaro takes refuge with me behind the wall that separates my space from the rest of the world. It’s a sign of true love, perhaps due to an interest related to my work or simply to make me company.

He’s my sidekick, a good friend. Marie, wondering if he got lost and in the face of growing distress, comes looking for him high and low. She has no idea Mandaro is hiding out in my atelier because, in the Dream, he’s the one that’s covering for me.

Like every weekday, Mandaro has to go to his job.

I see him leaving on a lift that descends into the earth carrying a group of workers: miners, likely.