Getting Outside Saturday: Name That City!

Pic. 1. Well no one wants to say, so it’s up to me. It’s so obvious from the mural behind him and the escalator down that Bildo is in Sin City and headed directly for the Gates of Hell. Normally I would shout out some warning, perhaps throw a football at him to try to stop the whole thing from happening. But after my last night’s dream…

I blame the black cat for my discomfort, I think he might have conjured the event, for although my fang-faced beast normally sleeps wriggled into my calf or arm pit, last night I woke to find that he had found a most awkward burrow, and this was causing me all sorts of nocturnal aches and pains, hence my weird dream.

A knock at the door of my single-girl condo. It’s Bill! What a surprise, but no books. He’s selling little jars of jams door-to door. “They’re from Maine, home-made!” Well, of course they are, but I’m trying to adjust to the change of venue. I look over all the pretty options. There’s purple, magenta, orange–all the lovely berries. But he works me to buy the brown jar. “Mushroom!” he boasts. “Found them in the woods behind my house!” I express my concern that I’ve never heard of mushroom jam. “Well, it’s more like a spread, you can put it in a cheese soufflé, make a sauce, all sorts of things!” Well, my “awareness of certain currents” (Dave G. line), you know Bill’s cheeks are all pink, his eyes are sparkling. I give a last wistful look at the pretty pots and take the brown concoction. Later, I make a cheese soufflé and add the mushroom spread. I’m just about to take a bite when my white dog knocks over my glass. Red wine spreads across the counter and pools against the spine of my book, Life Among Giants. I look at Io, she wags her white tail, I’m being mushroomed! I realize. Here, I wake and find the black cat, sleeping comfortably while I’ve stiffened into a terrible shape. I lay there sleepless after that and thinking of the lines to a new poem I’ve been working on: “Hark! What voice on this wind to me does come/on December night too temperate?” Clearly all of this cloak and dagger stuff has gone to my head.

I reckanize number 8. Place I love. You already been through, or you coming? Let me know.

6 and 7 Stamford CT?