I had to teach a life drawing class, and it was completely out of control. There was someone painted entirely in red, an older man was preaching about Jesus in the classroom, and another middle-age guy sat in the left-most seat in the front row and pretended to be the teacher: "But seriously, let's start this class. I'm your teacher." I, of course, was quite scared and intimidated since I can't draw, much less draw the human figure. So I left, and someone gave me a speech on how all students have a right to learn, especially these two guys who lived in Mason Hall (right above the classroom).
I was in some compartment (truck or tractor cab?) with Grandpa and two women. One woman (sort of Marlo Thomas-ish) opened the window and "let the air in like old times." Somehow I ended up driving Grandpa and Matt in a pick-up, and we were at an intersection much like that of US-50 and Hutchinson's airport road. Grandpa was talking about close calls, and I made it across the highway with one close call that wasn't terribly close. Then Matt and I were in a room outside Puff Daddy's courtroom. Matt was eating these slate blue caps (like you might use in a toy gun). "Does Puff know you're eating his candy?" I asked Matt, then Matt told me that "what this really is about is state's rights."
Then I was in a lawyer's office writing "Ahcroft" (I knew it was Ashcroft, but was purposely spelling it wrong--I don't know why) painfully slow in D'nealian cursive. Every letter had to be just perfect, and I traced letters over and over. Then I went into the bathroom to take a shower. When I turned on the water, warm water came out initially. Luckily, I wasn't in the bathtub when the excrement came out. It was like someone flushed and it went directly into my bathtub instead of the sewer. Somehow I knew Attorney General John Ashcroft was behind this attack. Rather than deal with it, I woke up.
Postmodern Village had two songs were nominated for Grammys (in two different years). I went over to Lael's to talk about putting out a CD, and he lived in a smallish house surrounded by gates.
I had a lot of little fragmentary dreams about starting up fake diaries for the girlfriends of punk band members.
"We need more villages," someone said in a Pizza Hut ad as I was digging in my closet for the right pair of pants. I looked up, and it was an ad featuring a small town. A sixty-something woman hopped into her Lexus and drove down the dirt road to her square dancing lesson. I was not impressed with the commercial and knew it wouldn't do well.
There was some awards show (I have no idea what for) with a very long hallway. Jon K. and John J. were there. Kathleen and I rode up very long escalators and looked in empty rooms.
I followed Olga and Valeria into some house. We all then sat on the floor and talked about preschool faculty for next year.
Then I was at the Center, herding all these pissed-off seventh graders into a big group to do their African Masks Arts Partners project. They heard they had to make two masks each and got quite irritated. After that project got started, I left. Linden was in a room just watching the parking lot. It was dark out. A white car drove by, then I went out to mine. I spotted a blond girl, a lot like Rachael, sitting in a red car. I got in and asked her who she was. She wouldn't tell me. Then Beck got in the car and asked for a refill on his drugs. He pulled out a small bottle of mouthwash-looking liquid and handed it to her. She drank it all; Beck was crushed. She told him to get off drugs and get a fuckin' job because he was going to be a daddy soon. I told him I might be able to help him find a job. We were in motion now, and we drove by a Thai restaurant. Then I got out at the gas station (one of those ones with no attendants) and noticed it had caught fire (in a small area). I pulled out the fire hose and pulled the alarm, thinking I might be able to contain it until the fire department got there. An hour later, the fire was out and still no fire department. Then I noticed a storm coming (even though it was still dark), and suddenly I was in a Target or Wal-Mart. As the storm crept closer, the items on the shelves changed to home decor things. It looked like a Bed, Bath, and Beyond after the transformation.
I dreamt about metababy.com nearly all night long.
I watched some awful TV movie with Ricki Lake breaking down under the pressures of sexual harrassment and quitting her job to dedicate her life to exercise and the pursuit of thinness.
Mari took me to a parking lot to show me her broken-down abandoned car and to admire how somebody stole the engine. There were flies all around. Then Rebecca (preschool teacher) distracted me somehow, and I then went to TG&Y and bought some very nice art deco dumbbells. Two Vietnamese guys were buying swimsuits. Mom and Dad told me I should take a class on how to use my dumbbells, but I reminded them I had exercised before. Then I left them and went to McDonald's. Two DJs were running the store and they gave me a big shopping bag full of candy. Then Brian H. came and ate the rest of my hamburger. Then Mom and Dad ate the rest of my fries.
Last night I traveled quite a bit, of course, only in my dream.
Mom, Dad, his coworkers, and I went to Boston. We had to ride the subway to Philly to catch our flight back. For some reason, once I reached Philly, I went back to Boston to have lunch with Mom. I don't know why she didn't come with us in the first place. Then I started to feel very guilty that I didn't stay and help Dad carry the luggage.
Somehow, I ended up in London. I had toast and strawberry jam at a sidewalk cafe, and I just sat there thinking how delightful it was to have toast and strawberry jam in England. It was pretty cheap too, even given the conversion rate (which I estimated to one US dollar to 1.64 British pounds*).
Then I moved to downtown Wichita and took several walks around English, Main, Lewis, and Market. They had torn down most of the buildings.
* Actual exchange rate at the conclusion of Feb. 23, 2001: 1.456 British pounds to one US dollar.
Mom and I went to a sale hosted by Johnny Paycheck's Estate Sales, and Mom found several things she wanted to buy. We had to go back a second time, and that's when we noticed the boxes on the floor. I found three pieces of Arny's pottery (they looked nothing like his real work; they were orange tiles instead of bowls), but they had no price on them. We asked the lady working the sale, and she had to call "Mr. Paycheck." We never really heard back, so we just spent a lot of time waiting.
Someone and I had a discussion about whether Gary Coleman was technically a midget, dwarf, or little person.
I got sleep! Unfortunately, I dreamt about two of the Backstreet Boys. So are the cruelities of life.
Something about "Jenna, the best defensive player ever" was printed in the paper
Jay, his girlfriend, Traci from high school, Nick Carter and that Brian guy from the Backstreet Boys, Matt, and I were on a trip together in Texas. We went to some science museum. Traci and I wouldn't go down the tight and scary curvy slide (it was as curvy as those "silly straws," but you couldn't see where you would end up), so we climbed down the stairs and went into the planetarium. They weren't doing a star show, but the walls were like those awful 60s videos--full of moving lava-like patterns. There Traci and I just talked about all sorts of things (in reality, I haven't seen her in six years, and this is first dream about her since then, at least): how stupid Brian is, how unfair that we have to babysit the Backstreet Boys, how awful and scary that slide was, etc. We then left and met up with the gang again. Nick was going quite insane, like he was on speed, and saying that I should sleep with him because then I could say I slept with a Backstreet Boy. I told him that really wasn't a goal of mine. He then ran off, saying there were plenty of girls who would say yes. Traci and I looked at each other and shrugged.
I ran to McDonald's to get food for Traci and myself, but couldn't find her house. I looked in the phone book, but it was missing almost all the names it should have in there. I was around the Central and Maize area.
I was then at the Center, and helping clean out a room. A teacher stopped by and asked for some handouts, but noticed the yellow tissue paper in the bathtub: "When I call about a class project, that's the paper I want." I told her it wasn't a problem. I went into the computer lab where Traci and Priya were cleaning and rearranging things for Traci's government class. I helped out by changing the fonts to 6 point Courier (there were no other font options). I then remembered I had Traci's lunch in my car and offered to go get it for her, saying that it hadn't been "that long" since I got. She said not to worry about it. Matt came in and said he needed help with the room with the yellow tissue paper and bathtub. I followed, and asked where Linden was. Matt said he just didn't know about him anymore. When we got the room, there was only one lamp on the corner. We piled everything into the bathtub and moved it into the hallway.
I was bedridden. My slate blue velvet drapes kept slowly falling off their hooks and rod. I called the Shapiro house for Dan. Caryn answered the phone, and I told her I was returning Dan's phone call. Dan answered, and gave the phone over to his friend Zack (who reminds me an awful lot of Jack) after a few pleasantries. Zack said he was going to do some drawings for Seen, and I said okay. I didn't see how had anything to do with me, but I was patient. I couldn't go anywhere. I just kept looking out the window while Zack was talking, and I noticed the house next door was four stories tall. They had all the lights on and the curtains wide open, so I could see inside. They had awful starving artist oil paintings on every wall. I got off the phone with Zach, congratulating him for getting into Seen. My drapery fell completely off, and my black sheer drapes, completely at the sides of the window, blew in the light breeze. The guy next door looked like a mixture of Anthony Hopkins and Martin Van Buren. He appeared in the window of the third floor, and angrily pulled his draperies shut. He then peered out a small opening, saw I was still watching, and then stormed off, shutting off all the lights in the house. I couldn't stop watching, but I also couldn't move.
Mom, Dad, and I were on vacation, and we were driving to Eureka (not Eureka, Kansas, but somewhere else--straight east). We kept talking about what we would do after we got to the lake, where we'd go from there, and all that sort of stuff. I kept saying that it was okay if we didn't drive all that way in one day. We stopped for the night, and Dad's beeper went off. He was needed back at work immediately, so we had to turn around.
Something about a tamborine made out of chicken bones.
I got sleep! About six hours in a row!
I didn't remember any dreams, but here's a winner Jake had last night:
Tim Robbins was starring in a remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, and Burger King had promotional toys. He went there with his mom and stole a black ball that arms and legs folded back into it; the package had a very sleek and stylized font on it. Then he and his mother went to the fabric store.
I still can't sleep for more than an hour at a time because of all my illnesses. (I've got two going at the same time right now, and the contraction of coughing really helps the other one make my life even more miserable than usual.)
I dreamt the Center moved to a nineteen-floor building, and I asked Howard not to move my office from the corner of the eighteenth floor. It had an attached bathroom and private bedroom, so it was heavenly. Then I went up to the nineteenth floor, and they told me that there had been a murder or a suicide attempt and no one was allowed up there. The doors were dark cherry wood and lined with burgandy drapes--very Victorian.
"Tell Matt I'm ready to go to Chicago now."
I was entertaining some guy in my room by going through blaxploitation movie trading cards with movie review quotes on them.
"We kidnapped your new wife and made her a stewardess," at least that was the message on the answering machine. I was trying to help this man find his brand-new wife. The kidnappers also left a poster of his wife dressed in a kimono advertising flights to China.
I was out at the farm and helping Grandpa find the right gloves for the job.
I had to hammer nails through a man's shoes into his big toe through the tip of the shoe so they'd stay on. The man told me it didn't hurt.
Something about visiting West Dallas. The note I scribbled as I was falling back asleep looks like "West Dallas nights."
I got a backorder from CDNow consisting of eight cans of chicken and two college textbooks (one on medicine and one on accounting). I didn't want to go through the hassle of returning them to CDNow, so I went to the university's book buyback and tried to sell them there. The book-buyer-backer asked to see my college id, which I presented even though I hadn't taken a class there since I graduated. He left and ran it through the computer. Then he came back, looking quite stern, and I started to cry.
"You're not in the computer, you know why? When was your last class?"
"I haven't been here since I graduated with my Master's. That doesn't mean I don't still want to learn. Can't a non-student buy textbooks and then sell them back? I bought them for personal enrichment."
"Oh, are you reading Isaac Newton too?"
"Well, no . . ."
"Yeah, I knew it. We get a lot of you types in here."
"I am reading Darwin's Evolution of the Species."
"Sure. We're not buying your books. Get out of here."
So I went back to work and had Caryn (our business manager) get me a copy of the invoice. It was for 9/08/99, so I immediately started to write a nasty letter asking them why they didn't cancel that backorder 1 year and six months ago.
I should be heading to work soon, but The Third Man is on and Orson Welles is about to be all smug and smirky on the ferris wheel. I can't leave before the cuckoo clocks.
Last night I dreamt that Mom, Dad, and I were going back to Boston. We fought about what day it was. I told Mom I needed to go to the bank. We then looked out the window at the "exquisite cottages," a "quaint" shopping district full of cutsey crap: it was night, but we could still make out the image from all the Christmas lights. I pointed out that there was a reason we didn't go.
Another dream: watching TV? Flashes of Queen Elizabeth II, Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray, and Tucker Carlson. I think I was watching TV with Kathleen.
Mom, Dad, and I were some fancy-schmancy bookstore (somewhat like the Coop at Harvard). There was a cinemaplex attached, as I was wandering around there looking for the rest of the books, there came a voice announcing how many feet I was away from the theater doors. I assumed it was so you'd have to buy a ticket for the movies. I went to the ticket salesgirl and asked how to get to the rest of the books. She then pointed me in the right direction.
There was something about a movie called "Mandingo II." Damn you Jon Stewart for bringing up "Mandingo" last night on the Daily Show.
Anne Carroll's BBQ: Anne (a former professor of mine) had a barbeque and Matt's last semester poli sci professor was there too. I asked Brooks where I should move the trash to -- by the staircase to the basement apartment or by the door to the kitchen. I think the house was somewhat like Carmody's backyard. He told me to just leave it, but I already had the bag in my hands. I got BBQ sauce on my fingers and was quite repulsed.
Then I was inside a living room not unlike Mimi's (the grandmother who hated me). I was on the couch with someone, watching all these children come in and out the front door. I just remember thinking that I was glad they weren't mine.
On one of my websites, the "administration" (webhosting company or service provider--I'm not sure) had lost one of my journal entries. Then they found it, printed it off, and photographed it at the bottom of a box with two snails in it. When I saw it, I was incredibly confused because I couldn't figure out from where the snails had come.
Some guy in a business suit made photocopies of his arm. He was still wearing his suit, so he was just photocopying his sleeve. Weirdo.
There was something about a large group of us wandering through an abandoned school.
It's been a long time since I rock 'n' rolled . . .
2/9/01 - A boy with hydrocephalus was written up in a glossy magazine because "his breakfast cereal told him to kill people." He had killed a young girl named Cera or Cara because the breakfast cereal had told him to do so. He refused to stop eating the breakfast cereal because the voices would go away and he was afraid of being lonely. The picture of the boy was quite disturbing, and I remember even now.
2/1/01 - I watched a group of rowdy kids, behaving like they were in a mosh pit, assemble in the dark around the circle in front of the Summitlawn house. I called the police, saying that they were assembling without a permit. They smashed the window of a car in, and shortly thereafter I noticed two papers sitting on the front lawn. "Now they'll think no one's here and that we're on vacation," I fretted as the police did nothing. I then fell asleep (yes, I have dreams about being asleep), then woke up to the police (on the phone) asking me for my name. I refused to give to them since they didn't help me at all and hung up.
1/27/01 - A 13th century saint became best friends with an orphaned glassblower--she was only 7, but quite skilled. The orphan died, and a gilded gravestone was placed with the words "Gentle Orphan" in an Art Nouveau script, even though she died sometime in the late 13th century. She had created a birdbath made out of blown glass, and that birdbath was placed over her grave. The saint had passed down, through the centuries, a concern that this birdbath was impeding her ascension to heaven. In the year 2001, the birdbath was removed.
1/3/01 - Dream fragments: "this is what it looks like when the birds go down for night." People shuffling like drugged bumper cars in the street while the heavy woman in Depends cries in her bed, ashamed and upset that the critics were mean to Toni Morrison today. She then praised Dr. Woods for standing up to them. He wondered how she knew. She had matched up the anonymous email addresses, and in came a parade of sullen thirteen-year-olds wearing their email addresses around their necks. "If someone sees you watching . . ."
12/13/00 - From my other journal: "Last night's dream included Brian H. in a wheelchair. I don't think he had legs."
11/28/00 - I fell asleep after watching the last part of American Beauty after dreaming about four lawsuits set into motion by Bush and Gore within one hour. Gore was suing over cheesecake, and I started saying "Yeah, let's let the winner of the cheesecake contest win. The cheesecake that sets up first is the winner." They both yelled at me for opening the door to check because that destroyed the results.
11/26/00 - I jumped out of a moving car just before it blew because I remembered I was in a dream and wouldn't feel pain.