I awoke about 6:30 a.m. at my old friend Weinstein's New York City apartment where I had spent the night. I had arrived in New York the night before and was planning to visit Weinstein for a short while. We had gone to bed around 1:30 a.m., so I had only slept about five hours. I tried to remember whether I had come to New York to visit Weinstein, or whether I had simply stopped in New York on my way to Europe. I finally concluded that although I would like to go to Europe, I didn't have the time to do so right now, and that I would have to return to my home on Monday.
I stood and walked into the next room where some quilts were piled on the floor. I remembered that Weinstein had once made one or two quilts, and I thought how I would like to make one. It didn't seem as if making a quilt would be that difficult. I even imagined sewing the pieces of a quilt together and I envisioned a rather elaborate design.
After walking to the pile of quilts and stepping onto them, I realized that somebody was sleeping under the quilts and that I had stepped on the person. I quickly backed away, remembering that one or two women lived in the apartment with Weinstein, and concluding that they must be sleeping under the quilts.
I walked into another room of the rather large apartment and found an elaborate wooden bed on which I sat down. I must have made some noise because Weinstein soon walked in. As I stretched out on the bed, I told him I had probably gained 25 pounds since I had last seen him and I asked if he had noticed. Apparently he hadn't.
I hadn't had a chance to talk with Weinstein yet and I was anxious to find out how he was and what he had been doing. After I rose from the bed, Weinstein and I walked into the kitchen, where we were joined by my old Portsmouth friend Buckner who had come with me to visit Weinstein. I could tell immediately that Weinstein wasn't happy that Buckner was there, and I regretted having brought Buckner along.
When I asked Weinstein to tell me what was different in his life since the last time I had seen him, he told me that his financial life had changed and that he was now earning $60 an hour. I was surprised and impressed. I thought of telling him that I now had $40,000 in the bank and that another $155,000 was owed to me, but I decided not to say anything about it. I asked him what he was doing with his money, and he told me he had lent some to a woman friend. He told me he would lend me some, at interest, if I needed it. When I asked how much he had lent his friend, he said $3,000. That didn't seem like much, and I thought he could surely afford to lose that if his friend didn't repay him.
What I really wanted to know was whether he had been writing anything. After he had finished fixing himself something to eat and had sat down at the kitchen table, I bluntly asked if he had written anything lately. He told me he was on the thirteenth line of an epic poem. That didn't seem like much to me, as I thought about the thousands of pages of dreams that I had written.
I finally stood up and walked outside. As I stood in front of Weinstein's building, I abruptly realized that Weinstein was actually living in a dormitory on a college campus. I walked over to the base of a large tree which seemed familiar to me, and I remembered that I had been there once before many years ago, and that I had put some fertilizer on the tree. I bent down and began digging a hole next to the tree, thinking I would once again like to put some fertilizer there. When I encountered some loose sand, I thought the sand was part of the fertilizer which I had so long ago deposited there. I dug for a while until I was about 30 centimeters deep. Then, to my surprise, I saw something shiny in the dirt, and I continued digging until I was able to extract a small golden helmet like a knight in the middle ages might have worn. The helmet was in good condition and I was quite happy with my find.
I continued digging until I saw some black plastic, like a black garbage bag. Picking the plastic out of the dirt, I soon found inside the black plastic a small baggie containing marijuana and some plastic pills. I then found a second baggie with more red capsule pills which I thought might be amphetamines. Some pills fell out and I gathered them up. I thought a college student must have buried the baggies there long ago and had forgotten them. I figured drugs were probably buried around many trees there on campus.
I then saw a larger garbage bag closer to the surface, only slightly covered with dirt and leaves. I pulled it out and concluded it must also contain marijuana, perhaps a pound or two. I could feel something hard inside the bag, as if it were a compressed brick of marijuana. I then found yet another second garbage bag which also seemed to contain marijuana. I gathered up everything in my arms, intending to take it all inside to show Weinstein and Buckner. I hoped no police saw me.
Copyright 2011 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
