(10/9/04) feminine schizophrenic; san mateo ice cream shop; be strong for me; scary giant and sexy twelve-year-old; defending the deformed; charge failed

(Entered in paper journal at 4 AM at home in Albuquerque.)

Dream 1

Man with split personality. 120 seconds/100 minutes, brushing leafs off bed.

Dream 2

M (? -- not sure who this could be) tells me to go to corner, gives me partial ride home, streets get weird, I go to ice cream store, piss off girl, fly over flowers.

Dream 3

Drive in car with Mom, brother, and sisters. CD disagreements. Ninja, XXXXX (Redman?), Gay Male. Sister said, How is he successful with that name? I say, I don't know -- Eminem did it. Mom starts to cry. Tell brother to support her. I know not even to touch her.

***

(Daytime paper journal entries.)

I kind of don't even want to write down my dreams today. I left the Ghost Book at home on accident and now feel like Dumbo without a feather. Ha! Emily Dickinson says hope is a thing with feathers, and Dumbo's flying fetish was a feather.

Anyhow, three of my dreams from last night were written in brief (finally!) form there. I can remember two of those three without the Ghost Book and probably would remember the third (actually first) if I could just see the first few words in the Ghost Book. I'll write these "unwritten" ones down first, and if I have time tonight I'll write a fuller account of the first dreams.

Dream 4

I'm not exactly sure where I was. It was strangely like an Asian temple, though it was lit with yellow light, like incandescent light. I think the floors were large stone slabs and the walls were thick plaster (?) with thick, dark, wood columns. The room was tall, empty, and wide. And yet it wasn't a temple. It was something more like an office complex or a place like a business product demo area.

I, with some other workers, had finally cleared everybody out of the place. But for some reason I had to go outside to clear people out of the building as well (?). It was early evening, the light being dark, dim, cobalt blue-grey.

I walked out onto a wide, carved stone patio. At the end of the patio was a four-walled structure of tarp-like fabric supported by aluminum poles. In front of me a wall section had a split which I could fold open to enter the structure. I did so.

Inside was something like a giant. At first I didn't quite understand what it was. It was twenty feet tall -- or at least I "knew" this thing was twenty feet tall. It seemed to be made out of soft, shiny, silky, thin material. It looked like baggy, hoody, male blue jeans, an orange shirt of the same hoody bagginess, and a large, puffy, black afro on top. It was in the far right corner, wandering aimlessly and about to turn toward me.

(HA! just remembered first dream!)

I dropped the fold of fabric and stood back outside the structure. I tried to understand what I was seeing. Obviously it was a man on stilts, right? Just a man with a huge costume around him. But, I tried to assure myself, I'd see that his head was just the same size as mine if I were to look at him again.

I pulled up the fold again and saw the thing now walking toward me. It looked like a large person, not a person, but a living doll of a stereotype of a black man, actually more like a gigantic version of that stupid puny doll in those dumb-ass Sprite ads they used to show before the movies in the theaters.

I saw it, but I also couldn't quite see it. Not that it wasn't there or that it was transparent or translucent or ghostly. Instead, I looked and didn't look, or, ratherm I looked and was so freaked out by seeing a living, twenty-foot-tall humanoid that I couldn't quite "admit" that I saw it.

As it came closer to me my feeling of dread became greater. At last I dropped the fold and ran back into the building, yelling, "ML! ML!"

This time I had to run through two sets of glass doors. ML now came up to me. I told him what I had seen in the structure. He walked out with me to see.

Now twenty people were scattered around in the large area. They were all black, guys and girls, about my age, all in a good mood. They told ML, "We're a bunch of acrobats." (?) "We dress up in these costumes. It's meant to scare people. But they shouldn't act scared. You gotta be pretty cowardly not to see through the illusion."

Now ML and I were helping the folks with something. Now the setting changed. But we were still helping.

We were in a bedroom in a basement. It was a nice, upper-middle-class bedroom, but cluttered and disordered. The walls were lined in dark wood at portions. And in the wood lining things came out like headlights and small cylinders with glass faces and needles against numbered circles, like instruments used to measure humidity or air pressure. But mostly it was the headlights. An Hispanic girl stood up with her back to a corner and faced a column of those headlights.

ML and I knelt to the floor, picking up piles of clothes and junk. As ML stood up to take his load away the girls said, "Well, you may think it's an impossibility, Preemie. But I've read the medical books, and they say that the human body does have an organic system that can support a growth of up to twenty feet."

I felt bad and stupid for having thought that was an impossibility, but I also felt even worse now for having been such a coward in my encounter with the giant.

Now none of us was wearing pants. The Hispanic girl was gone, but there were now two black girls. ML wore plain underwear. I wore white cotton panties, which fit me so loosely they were like an old man's briefs. One girl, young, wore navy blue panties with pink horizontal stripes. Another girl, about my age, wore stonewashed-like, denim-like panties.

The younger girl was thin and pretty. I honestly couldn't tell her age. She may have been seventeen, she may have been twelve. But I liked her a lot. But she liked ML, I was pretty sure. Not that ML would have done anything with her, as he respected the fact that she was a minor.

Now they both walked out of the room, up a dark, short hallway, up a small flight of stairs, and up a long, dark hallway. As they did I followed the girl. Her bottom was so tight and nice and her legs and back so thin, even through her dark blue sweater, that I wanted her in quite an animal way.

I told the girl at some point, "Your panties are cute." But she didn't hear me. It was like I wasn't quite in the same place as she and ML. Now I realized if either ML or the girl saw how I lusted after the girl they'd think and talk badly about me, if not actually turn me into the authorities for being sexually attracted to a minor.

So I quickly turned around and rushed back to the basement bedroom, to the girl who was my age. She was fattish, not too pretty, and a little dull. Her panties hung as loosely to her body as mine did to mine. She was at a tall dresser, playing with some clothes in one of the top drawers. She turned to me and asked me something, but I really have no idea what it was. I had lost all sexual desire and now sat on the floor, not paying attention to much of anything.

Dream 5

I was in a grey, small, old-timey office, like an office you'd see in a 1980s version of a 1950s-style detective movie. I don't know if I was there, but I saw the door of the office, as if I were inside. The door had one of those translucent windows of jangled plastic that distorted everything and made it all misty and vague, just watery shapes and color and movement.

"Someone" said, "He'll be coming in here to make the delivery. When he does, XXXXX." (Something like, "Don't let him in?") "He's XXXXX." (Green, mottled, deformed, XXXXX.) This series of adjectives was used regularly, like a cliche, to describe this certain kind of deformed person. I was slightly afraid to see the person.

Now the person came quickly toward the door. He wore a beautiful business suit, purplish grey and blue, I think. But his entire body, including his face, was, I could see, even through the door-window's distorting plastic, as if it cleared its wrinkles (yet kept its fogginess) just for him, wrinkled and mottled and bent and deformed, as if the man had been through a horrible, flaying fire. The man only had a tuft of hair on his sloping head. His eyes, though almost unseen for the shadow of his brow, were bright green.

The man sensed as he stood by the door that I in my terrible fright was chanting to myself the cliched string of adjectives. His whole face filled with an awful anguish. He stepped backward about thirty feet, to an elevator bank. I could see all of this clearly, as if seeing through the door. He fell back and half sat, crumpled in depression.

He now burst out moans through pursed lips, as if trying to stop a flood of complete, unstoppable despair. I thought to myself, How can anybody ever help him?

And now, two more of these deformed men came rushing down the hallway. They wore green jumpsuits, like they were movers or people who brought refrigerators to houses. In fact they had come to bring some equipment to this floor.

Seeing the other man moaning by the elevator bank, the men stopped their cheerful conversation. They immediately knew what had happened. They both bolted toward my door.

One of them, in a beautiful, clear, manly voice, shouted out the cliched string of adjectives and said, "You wanna call people that, eh? You think it's fun to hurt people that way, do you? Well some of us won't take it!"

And with that they bolted through the door.

Dream 6

I grabbed my phone off the dresser. It was plugged into the charger. I pulled the cord out of the wall. The phone made a dismal, low-toned beep. I looked at the LCD screen. It said "Charge Failed." I plugged the cord back in. The LCD screen lit up for a second, then low-toned again, went off, and said "Charge Failed."

I thought to myself, Christ. I cannot have this cord fail me now, now that I'm heading back to New York City tomorrow. I need the phone to be fully charged for my train trip.

Dream 1

I was in a place like a workshop. It was dim, kind of old-looking, like a wood carver's shop. There were a few old men at some counters like science lab counters. There were also beds everywhere. The old men were like mild-mannered mechanics or electricians. They kind of exchanged some rude jokes with each other, but basically were rather kind, though always cheerful.

Every once in a while some young men and women would show up. The old men kind of regarded me suspiciously, as if they sensed that I thought myself better than they.

At one point an old man came in. He was one of the regulars. But he wasn't quite sane. At first he spoke in a weird voice, high-pitched, almost like a male trying to sound female, but crackly, like he had a scorched, wrecked throat. I could sense he thought he was a female.

I looked to see him: a tallish, bellied, balding, wrinkly man, in a wide, pale blue, button-down sports shirt with two wide, white vertical stripes and a pair of pale, loose, denim slacks.

I was unsettled by this man. Even his wide, watery, blue eyes seemed masculine. But he so violently thought that he was feminine.

The old men all chuckled among themselves as they watched my reaction to the man. They said of me, "Look at him now. He's afraid of one of our best friends."

The man sat on a bed beside the two beds (right together) that I sat on. He continued speaking in the high voice and then suddenly spoke regularly.

Now one of the old men indirectly let me know, "Our friend has a split personality. He can't control it. But it doesn't mess things up for him, and it makes neither him nor us uncomfortable."

But they all, sensing my discomfort, decided to tease me anyway. The man even pretended to be the high-voiced personality again, just to upset me. But I ignored him. There were some dried leafs on my bed. I worried about them and brushed them as well as I could into the minuscule crack between the two beds.

But now the man became quite serious (I can't remember why). He said, "Isn't it interesting how one hundred seconds can seem like one hundred twenty minutes when you reflect upon it a while later?"

I understood this, somehow, to be a schizophrenic kind of statement. But I also felt a degree of truth to it, which matched my own personal experience. I told him something of my own experience, to let him know I agreed. But I wasn't quite telling him. I was kind of telling someone like my friend R, who stood a ways away, knowing that "R" seemed to have much better communication with this old man.

Dream 2

I really can't remember the beginning. But I was now getting a ride home from the Balloon Fiesta. It had been my second night of work. My co-worker M and her husband were going to drive me home.

But somehow the streets all got messed up. They seemed to curve around and shift their curves even as we drove on them, like they were snakes. Now even the fences grew up out of the ground, restricting our movements and leading us into dark alleys.

Thinking it would make things easier, I just had M and her husband drop me off on the roadside. Apparently this was San Mateo. They drove off.

I walked through a tangled area of old fence and up some ditch-like hill and across a street to a very small yet classy strip mall. the only store open this late at night was an ice cream store.

I don't know for sure but I think that even though I didn't see them, M and her husband were also in the store. I was afraid at first to go in because I didn't want them to see me and think that I just hadn't wanted to ride with them. But I went in anyway.

The place was a mess, not dirty, but filled with counters, machinery, and all kinds of store items and food. I went to a bar that had trays of ice cream and ginger snap cookies. This was the free samples bar. I was so hungry from not having eaten all day that I took a free sample of a ginger snap cookie and some white ice cream with mini M&Ms in it. The ice cream might have been colored a cinnamon-tan.

As I walked out the door a lady behind the counter said, "Aren't you going to buy something?" I said, "No. I just came in for a free sample. I was just a little hungry." I could hear her disgust.

I walked outside, down a small lawn, and onto a parking lot, thinking, Well, crap! I've bought things here before, haven't I? So why does she think I'm a cheapskate?

Dream 3

Don't remember beginning. It was daytime. I was in a car with my mom, brother, and sister. I don't know or remember where we were. But it was pretty much like downtown Denver and Albuquerque rolled into one. The buildings were all a pale, soothing, tan concrete or stucco.

My mom drove along. At some point we stopped. My mom was upset. She got out of the car. My sister showed me two checks our dad had given her. My mom was upset about this. There had been some argument, in which my sister had made my mom feel pretty stupid, in the car.

We were now on our way to the movie theater. My mom, to calm down, put some music on. She asked me if I liked it.

Annoyed beyond belief, I yelled, "No! It sucks! Take this shit off!" She did. I could tell my mom had now been pushed too far. She was hideously depressed but terribly silent.

We drove (along a sidewalk?, like the concrete path in between the De Vargas Center shopping mall proper and the Albertsons in Santa Fe, even with the stucco arch between the two buildings, although the place felt classier and more full of shops, all of which were trendy).

As we drove I asked my sister what kind of music she liked. I asked her about a particular style or group, which I can't remember now.

She said, "Oh, no, I can't stand that. But I like rap, like XXXXX, XXXXX," (Redman?) "and Gay Male." (?) "Gay Male's pretty cool. But I always wondered, how is he so successful with a name like that?"

I said, jokingly, thought I didn't exactly know why it was a joke, "Well, Eminem didn't name himself Gay Male, but he certainly did the Gay Male thing for a while, and he was incredibly successful." My sister laughed.

We were all now, somehow, walking along the concrete path, the left (i.e. "Albertsons") side of which was actually a movie theater, like the Century Rio, with poster cases, all of which were jet black and glossy, solid, with no posters inside, apparently.

We came to a little niche in the wall. My mom crumpled against it. we were right by the glass doors into the theater. My mom was trembling, about to burst into tears.

My sister said, "Oh, God, I knew Mom was upset about these checks. But she was just holding it all in. I hate seeing this."

My mom squinted her eyes till they were pools of black shadow, and opened her mouth narrowly to match the watery anguish in her eyes. Her breath quivered, trembled, heaved, shook. She clenched her fists and her arm trembled stiffly.

Finally it all shook loose. She bellowed to my brother, "Please. Stand in front of me. Be strong for me. Don't leave me. I'm about to collapse. Please. Grow up for me and be stable for me. Everybody else has -- !"

She now melted into profuse tears. My brother stood in front of her. He held her.

I walked up to my mom. I wanted to touch her, even just touch her right arm, to let her know I loved her. But I knew that what I had done to her was so bad that if I even touched her she would fall apart and act violently toward me.

So I just stood there. And yet, even as I stood there feeling hideous, I also felt like this was just a desperate ploy by my mother to keep me here at home instead of going back to XXXXX.

(1/12/05) an exercise in shame; straight queer eye; avenge the unborn

(Entered in paper journal at 7:55 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in a car with my mother and my mother's good friend's son, RH, on a desert highway or possibly on a highway going past some desert-like industrial district. My mom drove. RH rode in the backseat. He was a child. I may have been a "child" with my "adult" mind.

I said to my mom in a smart-ass way, "I guess it's time to head back and drop RH off at TH the F--"

I was about to say "B" to make the abbreviation "FB." But my mom interrupted me. She said, "I'd watch who you say that kind of stuff around." I knew she meant RH. But now I couldn't take back what I'd said. I knew the damage had already been done.

I was now an adult before a committee of superiors. I don't remember where we were. They told me, "You aren't allowed to say those kinds of things about a person. You should know that."

I thought the people were right. It had been a moment of indiscretion. It was probably even sexual harassment. But then I thought, I wasn't even talking about sex. I wasn't even talking about someone at work. In fact, I was far, far from work when I made that comment.

Now I was lying on a mattress in a tall, thin, thin-walled, pitch-black room. I was on my left (?) side and covering my ears desperately with my hands.

My Aunt M came into the room. She knelt down and whispered over my ears. I heard her perfectly, almost too loud: "Get ready. They're calling you in to a meeting. But really they're just calling you in to fire you."

I walked into a room. MK, one of my coworkers from a temp job I'd worked in 2003 and 2004 in New York, might have been there.

I was now fired. I lay on the top bunk of a bunk bed in a room dark but illuminated by a green light that glowed from behind the bed. The bed was put about three-quarters of the way back from the front window, so that behind the bed was maybe four feet of space.

Two women stood in the empty space. One looked like my Los Alamos Americorps coworker, AL. The other was a blonde girl with short hair and tan skin. She looked like one of my NYC Americorps crew mate KB's friends. She wore only a black thong. "AL" wore full clothing, though I don't know what exactly she wore.

I rolled around on the bed, which I think was bordered on one side by a tall, thin-posted, black-painted, wooden gate. I said, "This is just the kind of thing that happens around here. People think I'm lazy. They think I do nothing. And they're always looking for a reason to fire me. But now they've gone too far. They've ruined me. If I had been in New York, people would have been grateful for me from day one. For some reason people in New York always appreciate the work I do. I'm going back there."

The blonde girl said, "I think you'll have problems with that. Haven't you heard? The people at your Albuquerque Apartment  don't want you, either. You're barred from staying at any of their locations."

I thought, I'll have to find some other place to stay once I get to New York. But chances are nobody will take me.

I was now riding through a big city. But I was now some strange spectator of other events. As I moved through this town, apparently watching this as if by TV, my arms, which I couldn't see, were doing exercises with some coiled-spring-type devices. I would close my arms in together and open them out beside me. I sat at about a 115-degree angle. But I also wasn't exactly there at all.

The TV show followed some guy who, it was narrated, would bring shame on himself in this episode. He had been to all different cities, doing this reality show competition. But now that he had gotten to New York he would break down and stop.

I now saw a huge indoor coliseum. It was night. All the contestants were in a circle at exercise machines like the one "I was on." The guy was maybe forty-five years old, balding, a bit fat, with a panicky look on his face, almost foaming at the mouth. The competition was about to start. But the guy wouldn't start.

There was an empty machine. A young girl, with whom he had made good friends, had not shown up. Her name was either Lake Jones or Jones Lake. The man wanted everybody to stop and look for her. He thought she was in danger. But people were pushing against him, trying to sit him back in his machine.

(Entry continued at 9 AM on an unspecified subway.)

Dream 2

I sat at a huge, fancy dinner table with some friends and the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. At some point I said that I arranged my house so well I was thinkging of making a show called Straight Queer Eye for XXXXX.

One of the Queer Eye guys said sarcastically, "Oh, like that's a funny title. What are you doing, making fun of gay people?"

I said, "No." I may have tried to explain.

Dream 3

I possibly stood at the edge of some barrier and behind a black girl with a nice body in tight, black jeans. I don't know where or when our conversation was.

I said, "How old are you?"

She said, "Fifteen. How old are you?"

I said, "Thirty. We are at the perfect ages to 'avenge the unborn.'" (The phrase was actually a lot strong than "avenge the unborn." It meant pretty much the same thing. But it was so powerful it actually made me sit up in my bed.)

(1/27/10) guggenheim wilderness; aunt's dead head; friends on a ledge

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a tall building like a museum. I floated (or walked?) upward alongside a ramp-like walkway (like the spiral walkway at the Guggenheim). The building was dim, with the only light coming from windows somewhere. The place felt unfinished somehow, as if there were a lot of bare concrete all over the place. The handrail-barriers of the ramps were painted traffic-sign yellow.

As I floated upward, floor by floor, with the ramp to my left, I may have noticed doorways into the fluorescent-lit library rooms. I was looking all the way up the flights of ramp.

At the top, my old friend R stood behind the handrail, looking down. He was talking to me (I could hear him like I was right beside him) about things he'd eaten. He was making it sound like he was leading up to saying he'd eaten human flesh, but like he was afraid to admit it.

I tried to listen passively, without any reaction, so he'd say whatever he felt like saying, so I'd know for sure what he was talking about. But he paused and instead something like, "I'm a lesbian vampire, and I've drunk blood."

I was now standing before one of the doorways to the fluorescent-lit library rooms. I walked in. I walked along a waist-high shelf of books (to my right) the top of which was possibly cluttered with papers. The light was brightish white fluorescent.

I thought of myself (saying to R?) that I didn't think vampirism was so bad. I was now trying to get "back" to somewhere from this place. The place was now something like an empty warehouse or workshop. It was very dim inside, almost black, with the only light coming from a large doorway (for tractors, etc.?) at the front.

I walked through that doorway and into a field. The sky was grey, and the wind was breezy and warm, as before a big storm. I had to cross the field to get "back" to wherever I was going. But the field (somehow) seemed harder and harder to cross.

Finally I was plowing through waist-high, dense vegetation like dormant, tan grass, which smelled like sage. Something had made me decide I needed to get down low and plow though it, like I was swimming through it. I was afraid of getting messy from it -- it was so dense and fragrant.

My left side brushed along the underside of a thick evergreen's broad, minutely-branched canopy. I thought it might be a good idea to hide under the tree. But I decided against it, thinking the tree would get me as dirty as the "grass" was getting me, and that, under the tree, I'd probably also get bugs on me.

It was now dark and raining outside. I was in the middle of a camp. Large, multi-person tents stood around me. But now the area was being flooded. The water rose to about six feet. Some of the tents were swept away. Some of the tents had had their doors open, and were collecting water all the way to their tops.

I heard R talk about how he had come here to work on his (Masters degree?) research project on water, but how things had gotten out of hand and turned out this way.

(Stopped writing here and headed into work. Back on B-train, heading home, at 8:20 PM, I started writing again.)

I thought that possibly things would still be alright. I wondered if people could perhaps get into the tents and zip them up, to keep the water out. But it occurred to me that the water would just lift the tents up and carry them away. I thought of all of this (and saw it in my mind's eye?) as I saw water rise around me, as if I were standing in the water, though I actually wasn't quite there. I saw everything as if stage lights were being shone on it all.

Dream #2

I walked along a balcony-like area on a high-up floor in a building that may have been something like a museum. I ended up in a small room that may have resembled a bedroom or living room in a cheapish apartment. I looked through the doorway, out to the balcony (hallway?). I may have seen my aunt, possibly in a wedding dress.

I was now fully in the room, the door closed, with a few relatives, possibly including my cousin P. We all lounged around in the space, on a few couches, etc. At some point my aunt came into the room. She was being a real bully. She may have been wearing a wedding dress.

Later, I held my aunt's face in my hands. It may just have been the skin of her face. The eyes were closed, and trails of blood came from the eyes and other orifices. The head/face had been wrapped in something like a wedding veil, which I had unwrapped around the face. I thought I had killed my aunt. I may have thought that I needed to do a more complete job -- possibly by smashing the face, even crushing it somehow.

Dream #3

I stood out with a group of friends on the ledge of the roof of a building. I looked down to the street far below. The day was grey and rainy. The ledge was a grey stone, veined like marble. I was a little afraid of the height and of the possible slickness of the wet stone. My friends and I spoke about a number of things. We were all relaxed and having a good time. Our conversation was calm and serious.

At some point I got overwhelmed with being at the ledge. I had to step back. I did so calmly, as if I were simply through with seeing things from the ledge. I stood against a white-painted concrete (?) barrier. It went up to just above my waist. I went around some kind of glass-walled part of the building.

Looking down into the space between the barrier and the glass wall, I could see metal, slotted sheets, like sheets for fans. I knew that these sheets went down into the building, which was something like a museum, so that if I fell, I'd fall a long way through the museum and probably die when I landed.

The ledge was now something like a two-foot-tall, concrete step. I knelt against it. I back away from it and looked to my left. My friends were sitting by the step, all talking with each other. The grey of the day was now a little brighter and paler.

I joined my friends. We were all talking about a dinner we'd had just downstairs, maybe two floors below. It was good, very classy. But it was a little less than perfect. I said, "Yeah. If only they hadn't started out with that beef custard." (In my mind's eye I saw a small ice cream dish with yellow custard topped with a brown powder, which was probably something like powdered beef.) My remark had somehow shocked everybody. They stopped talking and had a slow, unsure attitude.

I looked off to my right. It was now a clear, blue, warm day. My friends and I sat in a concrete and pebble path in a small garden, still on the roof of the building. There were a moderate amount of people all around. In the distance to my right was a shallow pool of crystal blue water. The pool was a long rectangle with a white stone lip around it that stepped maybe six inches above the ground.

A beautiful woman stood in the pool, wearing only a loose, pure white overshirt which sagged off her right (?) shoulder and, possibly, a white swimsuit. She was tanned and blonde. Her hair was dark, pulled back in a ponytail. The water came up to just above her ankles.

The woman had her legs held together and she bend down at the waist by about twenty degrees to look down at something in the pool. When she did so, the shirt-bottom came up just enough for the curve of the woman's bottom to be seen. I and a couple of my friends looked on in solemn amazement.

But now an old, Japanese man, thin, but broad-faced, with scraggly, white hair pulled back in a fraying ponytail, with black glasses and a big, loose tank-top, came up to the group of friends, towered over us, and yelled that looking at little children was wrong, that it was pedophilia, and that we should be ashamed of ourselves.

I looked around and saw a shopping center to my right. It was kind of set up like Lincoln Center, with porous, which stone and a lot of diagonal ramps and walkways, low ceilinged tiers, etc. I told my friends that I thought I would go shopping here before we had to leave. My friends may have said they thought they'd come with me.