*Hialeah and Tropical Park* -- 1 Mar 2001


   Friday, 23 February 2001,
   (after about two hours of sleep)

   Drm 1:  I’m inside the warm and clean interior of a modern-
feeling DC-3, toward the back of it, situating into my seat on the 
right-side of the aisle, the plane filling up with men and women 
stowing their things.  It’s a warm, sunny midday.  People are 
continuing coming aboard, and the engines are not yet running.  It 
feels like the late 1950s when travelling on an airplane was a 
special adventure, when there were places like San Francisco, 
special far away places like where we were going -- exotic, 
tropical, primitive Florida . . . (this feeling all a pre-existent 
context, not dream-consciously processed).

  I’m conversing with a guy (who must be sitting next to me by the 
window and whom I don’t see) while watching the people in our 
group embarking into the cabin.  Everyone is in his or her dress-
up excursion clothes, sun dresses and light-colored suits of 
light-weight natural fabric, all carrying small travel bags and 
stuff.  I’m considering expectantly about the fun to be on the 
trip at our destination, informing the guy about the places there 
are to go to and see, as if I have some travelling experience in 
what awaits “. . . like in: Hialeah and Tropical Park,” I say 
expressively (wherein I was referring to Hialeah Race Track, this 
with the visual-component inclusive “memory” relation to the way 
it must have been back then).

  This is a charter flight.  No one is on this trip just for 
business, but maybe it’s a business sponsored vacation because 
it’s not like we’re all strangers, more like we’re all familiar 
with each other from work -- a wonderful company reward for us 
privileged several.  It’s only for a while; one of the brief but 
more memorable entertainments in life so exciting and fun.
   (then)

   Drm 2:  In South Florida (present day) seeming more like 
Broward County or Dade, an area congested with development.  The 
location is something like a community-resource campus, the view 
looking across at the paved large patio-like meeting area out in 
front of the one-level building -- which seems related to the 
school.  (Thinking about what the place, the whole scene felt 
like: it was like public continuing education for the whole 
community.)  A crowd has gathered for whatever the event is, among 
the crowd being a family I know from Martin County, specifically 
seeing the mother.  This gathering area is packed pretty much 
together, but there’s space left on the paving by the crowd 
boundary.  So I head over across to them.

   (One of the most notable characteristics for this family, this 
coordinated by the mother, is dedication to the rules: scheduling, 
routine, views of others, responsibilities, expectations -- for 
the sake of the rules; that’s why they *are* . . . to be followed 
thus resulting in correct thought and action.  And the validity 
for these rules for choosing correctly the way to be, is -- if you 
were to actually consider it -- that they *feel* right, especially 
with everyone else following them.)

   They are kind of amusing how their minds work.  So I go over to 
them, knowing (somehow) what is the expected rule thing that 
happens next in whatever the reason is that everyone is here.  I 
go up to the family where the mother is and her kids -- the group 
is a family mix of adults and kids who are all partly grown up; 
there weren’t any small children, like younger than about ten.  
Being amused in my mind at the liturgical nonsense they mindlessly 
follow, I play taking the lead role in the move now to be made, 
which is: everyone holds hands in a line as a procession files 
into the continuing education building -- this like whenever you 
may have seen pre-schoolers visiting a public place, all holding 
hands guided by their handlers, sometimes all holding onto a rope.
   So I take the hand of one of the family members and play-acting 
like a preschooler in dorky manner and walk, I lead the hand-
holding line of the crowd into the community center room.
   Quickly the room has filled up nearly completely, everyone 
having filed in behind me.  But then, just as soon as it becomes 
still and quiet, someone near me, right next to me in front and on 
the left, reminds me in a hushed tone what I hadn’t recalled but 
when she mentions it I do recall -- this the responsibility, 
according to the rules, of the one who does the leading of the 
hand-holding filing into the room.  She near-whispers, “*Say* 
something . . .” 
   Ohh . . . I had forgotten.  But she was right.  And since I 
*did* assume responsibility for the role -- amusing myself in how 
retarded they all acted and mimicking their pre-school mentality -
- I call out, “19!” into the seeming vacuity of the room space, it 
sort of going out as a tentative call and getting absorbed away 
quickly.  (Instead of thinking what I was going to call out and 
then performing, it was like backwards in the dream-process: just 
as, and after, I called out, I heard what I called and considered 
it, sort of wondering what that meant.)
   Now, according to the rules, some other person in the mostly 
crowded room -- from somewhere seeming distant and a direction not 
precisely evident -- calls out something like a return call.  It 
was a young female voice, likewise a tentative call getting 
absorbed quickly, this two-syllable return call seeming as a 
completion to what I had called, a lilting “16!” -- emanating from 
away within the room crowd.  I did understand that the purpose of 
this rule-motivated performance was for a reason of discerning 
location of the other -- processing distance and direction from 
the alternating call.  I sort of consider the purpose, like I had 
taken the role of leading my hand-holding line, and she must have 
led another group similarly.  I don’t know why the rules are, not 
that anyone does, but they *are* the rules and are therefore 
followed sincerely.  So I have to play out the role.
  I call out again, “19!” seemingly just like before, calling to 
someone in the room whose whereabouts I’m not sure of -- the sound 
getting absorbed quickly into the room air, only this time I 
dream-processed to call the number, and it didn’t surprise me like 
the first time.
   Again I heard the seemingly statement-completing return call, 
“16!” and this time I *was* getting a fix on generally where the 
other voice was coming from  -- direction and distance -- behind 
me and to my right closer to the door. 

   And I’m considering what an odd community ritual I have gotten 
myself mixed up with, having assumed this co-lead role, and it’s 
really a stupid, pointless exercise -- while engaging curiosity 
about the girl. [waking up, wondering what was supposed to happen 
in this]

   Then a couple of hours later,
   Drm 1:  I had begun a project of making a knife, I guess only 
thinking at first I would make it out of rock -- but then I decide 
it would be better if the knife were made out of crystal.
   (scene-shift)
   I have the project results in my right hand: I had fashioned a 
special knife from natural semi-opaque white crystal.  It was a 
lightweight knife with the hilt made of dark gray stone, and a 
five or six-inch crystal blade -- which, of course, is what made 
it special.
   [and another dream, waking up, and going back to sleep]

   Right before ending my sleep,
   Drm 1:  In a vague scene of like an empty, low-lighted indoors 
sports arena, I’m thinking about Anna Kournikova . . . and her 
recently acquired husband.  So I must matter-of-factly and simply 
accept the idea, that’s the way it goes . . . seemingly all the 
time.
   [and then two other dreams, and waking up]


   When I woke up, I thought mostly about the first dream.  The 
time transference I think is neat.  Anyway, in my mind I thought 
Tropical Park was a place east of South Miami, a tropical garden 
place, which one time I noticed a sign pointing to at an 
intersection.  But then when I began to type this, a vague feeling 
began to permeate my mind, a vague recollection . . . and I 
wondered if Tropical Park was a race track.  I said it over in my 
mind, and the association with horse racing seemed to be evoked.  
So I searched it and found that’s what Calder used to be called -- 
and so as a kid, of course, I would hear the name aligned with 
horse racing.  (The garden thing was Fairchild Tropical Garden.)


http://www.ntraracing.com/tracks/crc.html

      Track History: Calder conducted its inaugural race card 
   on May 6, 1971. . .  It replaced Tropical Park, which had 
   been in operation since 1931. . . .

   That day Calder opened, I notice, is 19 days after my day at 
the races the Saturday when I promised God I would never again bet 
on a horse.  And the airplane trip kind of reminds me of the film 
*Saratoga* (1937), only from a “generation later” perspective -- 
these things discussed in *Crystal Revelation*.


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