Dream of: 10 May 1987 "No Time For Imagination"
I was walking around a grocery store, lugging four Time magazines, two in each hand. I had carried two of the magazines into the store with me and I had picked up the other two while in the store, thinking of buying them.
I was unsure I wanted to buy the magazines because I thought I might not have time to read them. I was busy with law school; I was taking a course in constitutional law, and another course being taught by Dohoney (a female law professor at Baylor Law School). I was also working on a couple other important projects, and at the end of the school quarter, I had to take the bar exam. I was swamped with work and I simply didn't have enough time to do it all. I might even have to drop the law course I was taking under Dohoney. I could retake the course next quarter (my last quarter), since I wasn't going to have many courses in my last quarter.
I finally decided not to buy the magazines. I threw all four of them onto a shelf, even the two which I had brought in with me; I simply didn't have time to read them. I was glad I had stopped and thought about all the things I was doing and that I hadn't wasted my time buying the magazines.
When I finally walked up to the check-out counter, ready to leave, I suddenly realized I still had approximately eight paper-back books in my hand. I thought about simply leaving the books on the counter, but I had already blurted out to the man at the counter that the books were mine. He looked at a couple; one was a pornographic novel, and as he glanced through the others, I noticed a second pornographic novel among them. He said the books were indeed mine and after he had slipped them in a sack for me, I walked out with the books.
Some people whom I knew met me outside. One reminded me of Mike Saxby (an English fellow whom I had once met in Mexico City around 1977). Two of the fellows outside climbed onto a motorcycle, while the rest of us boarded a car. The car and the motorcycle headed down a road which seemed to be Route 23, several miles north of Portsmouth, Ohio; we were headed south toward Portsmouth.
From the window of the car I could watch the motorcycle in front of us. Apparently the fellow driving the motorcycle had never driven one before because he kept running off both sides of the road; I thought for sure he would wreck. When I finally thought I saw him crash into the side of a car and run off the road, I thought the people in my car and I were going to have to do something to help him.
Almost immediately, however, I found myself in a furnished room where someone apparently lived. I was uncertain how I had arrived there, but it seemed that someone had transported me there and it seemed natural for me to be there. I still thought I needed to do something to help the fellow who had had the motorcycle accident, but I was unsure what to do.
Finally, my first priority came to me: I needed to find a key! I was unclear whether the key was to the room I was in, or whether the key was to the motorcycle which had wrecked. I only knew I needed to find it.
I decided to call my father and ask for help. After I picked up a phone and dialed, my father quickly answered on the other end. I also heard someone else on the phone who had apparently called my father at the same time. The other person was apparently from a company trying to sell something. My father apparently only heard the other person (and not me) because my father suddenly hung up the phone. In place of my father's voice, I now heard a recorded message which I figured my father must use when he didn't want to talk with someone. Although my father finally came back on the phone himself, I hung up anyway.
I thought about how my father had answered the phone with a simple, "This is Leroy." When I used to answer my phone in Dallas, I had usually said, "This is Steve Collier's law office." I remembered that my father also used to answer the phone in a more business-like manner by saying something like, "This is Collier's." It seemed as if he now had a more relaxed attitude about the way he answered the phone.
Having hung up the phone, I walked over to a doorway which led to a hall. There was no door – only a plastic curtain hung over the doorway. I pulled the curtain shut, but then pulled it back open and walked out into the hall. Another doorway was off to my left; and it sounded as if a TV might be playing in that room. The building appeared to be a boarding house of some sort; apparently people were living in the other rooms.
A girl walked through the hall and entered one of the doorways in the hall. She resembled Denise (a Portsmouth girl with whom I had a short relationship when we were teenagers in 1970). I thought she might be able to help me later.
I walked back into the room I had been in. Slowly, I realized two very powerful women were living somewhere in this house. People hardly ever approached the women because most people were afraid of them. One woman was named Lady Di and the other was named Persephone. I decided I was going to try to enlist the women to help me find the key.
Realizing that Persephone lived upstairs, I walked up the stairs and knocked on the door to her room. She came to the door; she was only about a meter tall and very slim. She had long black hair and a very dark complexion, although she wasn't a Negro. Although I knew she was very powerful and that most people were afraid of her, I wasn't afraid of her. I immediately felt as if she would be willing to help me. She seemed as if she wanted to immediately get to the crux of my problem, the problem of finding the small key.
But I didn't stay long with Persephone. Instead, I walked back downstairs and headed toward the room where I had first been. My father was standing in the hall in front of the door; he was concerned about what was going on. Apparently he also realized I needed to find the key.
In addition, the fellow who lived in the room arrived. He stepped up to the doorway and looked inside; clearly he could see that someone had been in the room. At the same time four or five other people arrived who were apparently the family of the fellow. All of us stood together in the hall. The fellow who lived there was clearly concerned. I wanted to explain exactly what was going on and why I had been using his room, but something about him startled me: he was wearing a white mask over his face. I had the feeling that he either had scars or was ugly in some way under the mask. The fellow unsettled me and I wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible. Although he didn't say anything or do anything to me, there was something rather frightening about him.
Finally Persephone also walked up. As we all stood in the hallway, close to the door of the fellow's room, I explained to the fellow that Persephone was helping me. I figured he would no longer object in any way to what I was doing, because people didn't object when Persephone was around.
Persephone was very straight forward and business-like: she indicated that we needed to immediately begin concentrating on finding the key. After we all walked into the room, my father began looking through an assortment of objects which where lying on a table. I had earlier looked through the objects for the key. My father started to say, "I imagine ...," and he was about to say something about where he thought the key was, but Persephone interrupted him and said, "Leroy, I don't think we have time for imagination."
She was implying that we didn't have time to simply imagine where the key was; we needed to know exactly where it was.
I now remembered that I had also earlier tried to contact my old buddy from high school, Walls. I thought that he was somehow involved and that he would know where the key was if we could just reach him. I told my father to call Walls. I said, "Tell him where we're at. We're standing here with Persephone and Lady Di."
I thought that Walls also knew about Persephone and that he would be much more likely to help if he knew that she was involved.
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