(12/18/1999)"What every scientist dreams of--cannibal microbes!" was in all the headlines and newscasts. A woman scientist had been doing research and the next generation of bacteria in the petri dish--little baby microbes--were red cannibal microbes and they attacked the mother bacteria and ate her up. Then they became little black beetles, allowed to roam free in the Duane Reade. The lights were turned off in the store for the beetles, which didn't like strong light, and people were given flashlights to look at them walking up boxes. (product boxes) I was with Elena. African tribes were bathing in the canal. Some sort of religious ritual. Elena said, "You sure have gotten fat." And I said, "After I got off the meth I gained some weight." She said, well, that's good and bad. We had to get the N train shuttle which went from Queens, and a car had dropped Harper off to soon, because she said 9th Avenue was OK, and the car dropped her off at 9th Avenue in Queens. She was complaining. I walked down a shortcut from Ave B, through a construction site, to Avenue A, only to walk right into a new store/studio space that was full of artists. One side of the room had a table with tons of boxes of Dunkin Donuts stacked on it. A girl I didn't know named Colleen was having the party, and was glad I was there. The people's art was terrible, but they thought they were good artists. I didn't show mine because I didn't respect their work. A fake guru from India, a very thin old man with white hair was serving the meal. He didn't take vegetables, only meat, and 3 pieces of chicken, and 2 pieces of some other kind of non-red meat. The girl didn't want me to leave, but I had a plane to catch. I was in the plane and it stopped over in Richmond, Virginia, which was just half a block from South Carolina, the street I grew up on, so I asked the pilot if I could get out instead of flying on to NY and transferring planes and going back to South Carolina. He said it'd be OK, but not to tell his boss. He drove down the highway under an interstate ramp and let me off. Dora was there waiting for me at a restaurant table. My glasses were broken right across the middle, and the lens was cracked in half too. I tried to screw the little wire pin into the front and it came back out and curled all over the place. I tried to glue them but they fell apart. Then we were in a boat, and I tried to put in my contact lenses. One was big, the size of a soccer ball, and looked like a globe. (the world). I couldn't get it in my eye. The next one was clear, but hard like glass, and I couldn't get it in either. I was looking for blue Popsicles, but they were out, so I told a stranger that red were almost as good.