I am preparing to adjust the spiritual machine under the floorboards at the publishing office, which is somewhere out of town, east and south (a large upstairs space shared with other operations). The floors are made of squares of stiff composite of some kind, which can be lifted up at the corner to reveal a supporting structure of boxes about 4 or 5 feet square and a foot deep. I lift up a couple of corners and there is nothing in the boxed spaces below. Dad calls and says that he will be coming along to give a hand on his way to visit others in the family. It will be a while before he arrives. The office manager and another man–I am their superior–say the spiritual machine is working fine and shouldn’t be taken apart until later in the week. I wonder if I should call Dad and tell him not to come: he may have been bringing dinner with him as well. As I think of Dad I keep seeing glimpses of Richard Nixon, but I know that it wasn’t Richard Nixon’s voice on the phone. I have the formula for fixing the spiritual machine on a disk labeled with a list of its contents: I have forgotten what was in the list except for “files” and “formul”–the misspelling seems significant when I see it in the dream and then I am aware of another dinner coming up, and I hear a voice say “Guess who’s coming to dinner,” and I think of Sydney Poitier, and remember or foresee an upcoming dinner with three friends in waking life, on Thursday.
Early in the morning I woke up and read more Jung: a sentence describing the dangers of untrammelled intuition, floating away from the earth. The dream that followed was stark and to the point: I was putting on my good shirt, and realized that it was inside out and that it was smeared with–as they say–excrement! It was disgusting but necessary, and quite odourless. I considered turning the shirt inside out so that no one would see the shitty side but that would mean it would be next to my skin. I was looking into a mirror as this was taking place.