drawing lots of maps towards Hub these days. Here’s one from a few months ago actually. I have a strange ability to be working on things long before I know I’m working on them. Also I had a nightmare last night.

I had a strange and powerful dream last night. I was visiting friends in the North West (maybe even Alaska?). It was in some America of the future, a realm where the war on terrorism had become domestic and the Feds were everywhere in their black uniforms. I remarked to my hippy type pothead North Western friends about how strange it was that the feds would choose a uniform that so completely quoted Italian Fascism. They didn’t get the black shirt reference and we all went out to eat and drink some spectacular beer: a lot of laughter and joy and little talk about the war. Later I was walking through the snow filled streets when a strange vehicle hovered out of the sky and landed in front of me. Two Feds got off and started casually talking to me. I asked them about the machine. They said it was a snowmobile. I said, Snowmobiles can’t fly. They assured me it was a snowmobile. They asked me if I always walk in the middle of the street. I said, no, but the snow hadn’t been cleared from the sidewalk (if there was one) and I was just trying to get back to my friends’ house and that I was visiting from New York. They wrote me a two hundred dollar ticket for walking in the street, but they expected immediate payment in cash or credit card. I told them I didn’t have that kind of money on me and that I don’t have a credit card.

They hand cuffed me and took me off to the station. I was interrogated for a long time by a senior Fed who had a sort of Judge Wapner / Dick Vandyke kind of charm. We talked about the Twin Towers falling and what New York was like at the beginning of the war. We mentioned the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We laughed. We commiserated. I didn’t mention the rebels in the hills, or the mortar attacks that I’d heard several times while visiting. I explained again that I was an artist out here for a show and staying with friends and didn’t have two hundred dollars and couldn’t afford a lawyer (I didn’t want to scare my now elderly mother and try to get a hold of hers’…. even though I knew that one good call from Msrs Stein would have squashed this thing that was clearly a form of extortion…the black shirts were raising money to keep fighting in the hills through illegal taxation: parking tickets, speeding tickets, trash tickets…. Even tickets for walking down the street). He said, “You say you are an artist? But I look at you and I see crummy clothes. Cheap, dirty shoes. A beard. Long Hair. You aren’t an artist. You’re a bum. I don’t like bums. I put bums in jail.”

With that, the arresting officers grabbed me by my arms and hoisted me up into the air. I started screaming in panic (I knew that falling into a Federal jail was much harder than getting out: the Federal jails had all been gitmoized). I screamed, “Put me down! Let me stand up. Up Up Up. I just want to stand up and be free for two more seconds. You can take me to jail right after. Just let me be free again! I want to be free again!”

I awoke in a panic.