Quoting from Allen’s dreams yesterday (careful notations, as featured in The Fall of America Journals), here’s another one:
from May 2, 1966 Washington DC
In the White House, (President Lyndon) Johnson’s office late at nite, everybody settling down to sleep, I get on a temporary couch by the wall, several others are sleeping the same by oaken doors in large room, Johnson wandering about – unable to sleep –
Who’re the others, Johnson’s aides – I’m an aide – a visitor, a midget comes by and carries his tiny pallet and sticks it underneath my bed after clasping me around the waist with his tiny hardon bulging from his tuxedo pants – I stretch out in bed & fall out fatigued – later I wake the place is quiet –
Johnson’s wandering thru the halls still in his suit – 16-hour day nervousness said today’s Sunday Supplement – I met him and said goodnight politely. I’m leaving, there’s no reason for me to stay –
“Oh”, he says, standing huge by the door to the Oval Room his office ,”I’m lonesome here, stay overnight there’s others here beside you, I like to have people stay overnight, there’s others here beside you, I like to have people sleep over in an emergency like this.”
“But I have no function here and no use to you.”
“Everybody’s use to me”, he says – as I suspect him of hypnotism, but calm my paranoia – “I want your sympathy here overnight I need it.”
“Well, I’m sympathetic but ineffectual”, I murmur politely –
You’ll see what effect you have” – he reasons – and I say “Well, in that case but are you sure I’m welcome.” –
“Everybody’s welcome here by me from the lowliest beggar to McNamara – see all the beds?”
I settle down, trouble hearted, to sleep, wondering if I’m being corrupted by his elephantine charm politics
Later in the dream walking down along riverbank – underneath high city walls like S.V.M. Paterson area, I find a way across the river I never could find as a kid earlier in such dreams, at the top’s a restaurant which I always thought was a factory, a sea food factory, but it’s really with its cozy wooden tables a paella and chicken and $1 sausage spiced workman’s food place – I look down the terraced levels where tables are set and workmen nailing cans shut to the booming flooded river. I’ll have to cross over again to get back where I began
A lady explains the menu to me, sitting at high table near the kitchen’s counter – “try everything not just the cheap $2 chicken from their menus posted on round pillars” – industrial architecture the pillars’ iron support the roof – “I’ve found everything delicious” –
Later that year, another dream-paranoia, 1966, Allen’s visiting England:
September 15, 1966.
Dream in Country House where we (are) all going to sleep? It’s in a small town, we’ve been visiting there some time now at the border.
Early in the night, in the dream, I did pick up some quantity of pure LSD from Leary‘s source, & decided to take some home – Walked out of the clapboard house we were staying, and went down street – a narrow cobbled alley to the shore road like Provincetown by a Railroad track in the 19th Century. Passed a few Bobbies on the way but the Police went their way. I was suddenly struck, in the middle of my walk, how foolhardy it was for me to let myself be in a position to be caught like that, so easily, by accident, in possession. Went down street, another uniformed Policeman there, and still no trouble. I was lucky. Arrived at my own Cottage, where I was staying temporarily, in possession of the blue capsules, Uncle Sam (Gaidemak), Aunt Rose in Newark pharmacy. Nobody knows everything, not even Yahweh...
One more, on a more positive note, from a month before – a vision of Ed Sanders
from 21 August, 1966
On trolley in Liverpool City – going to meet (Ed) Sanders who’s making machinery in the great world – only on roller-skates and gliding smoothly – Everyone mad in the dream universe.
Arrived at his factory – he’s temporarily employed there, I enter the door – he’s making money to support Fugs Nationalization of Consciousness – It’s a steel plant or rubber Mfg. Co. – giant industrial shed filled with boiling red vats, with a worker’s balcony all around the rafters, and no guard rails edging the high platform where the workers skate around.
Ed skates up to the very edge of the balcony, I see his figure wizard-like (also) with cape and Afric-frizzy corona of hair sliding up to the end of the shelf he works on, stopping on the edge neatly with some kind of buffering cloth attached to his shoes, leans to the edge and welcomes us.