Matt and I got into a fight at a book sale. We stood on opposite sides of a low bookcase, screaming at each other. We threw a few books from the top shelves at each other.

It was 3 AM when I, in a fit of desperation, turned off the television, to attempt sleeping. I woke up from the book fight dream around 4:30 AM, realized I only had three more hours, and groaned. I then had some dream about database design.

Before going to bed, I watched a rather amusing and creepy movie on AMC called 13 Ghosts. Essentially, Dr. Plato Zorba, the esteemed scientist of the occult, dies and leaves his haunted house to a heavily-mortaged family–his nephew’s. Plato is not the only odd name. The daughter’s name was Medea (which I didn’t catch until after they asked the Ouija board if Medea was in love–the spirits thought it was a stupid question and so did I), yet her love interest’s name was not Jason. The son’s name was Buck. Medea and Buck–what an odd combination of names for siblings, until you consider that they were named by Cyrus and Hilda Zorba. I think it was one of the first movies to master the art of depicting ghosts–in their transparent and ethereal way–on screen. The most disturbing image for me was not Mario the ghost with his meat cleaver, but the headless liontamer who kept “looking” for his head in the lion’s mouth. I then fell asleep watching Scooby Doo. There’s a certain carry-over of the creepy ghost story, but surprising little. It was more the aura of poverty which forced the Zorba family to endure the ghosts of their dead uncle’s home. The spiders, floating fork, and windstorm are also likely related to the influence of 13 Ghosts.

In a dream last night, I watched a Partridge Family Biography special. Towards the end of their career, they collaborated with Richard Rodgers (of Rodgers and Hammerstein). After performing on stage together with another singing family (I don’t know where they came from, but this family was attempting to escape the rural poverty which was so apparently a major factor in their lives), Keith Partridge (David Cassidy) threw up his fringed arms and said, “This isn’t working.” Then he left the stage.

I went into a dressing room and attempted to check the door to see if it would lock. It didn’t seem like it would as I was trying to lock it from the outside, but it made a much more secure closure once I got in the stall. The room was a strange combination of dressing room/bathroom: long white cabinets (wooden, with obvious neglect, but not in that decorator “weathered” sort of way) used to have sinks, but didn’t anymore.

There was a fierce windstorm. I was in the old house, looking out the master bedroom window at the cul-de-sac. Nearly all the cars nearby had been disturbed by the wind. There were two vans in the middle of the circle that had crashed into each other: they were white vans with blue logos and I intially thought they were Center vans. About three or four other cars littered the circle. I felt completely awful: my stomach ached, my head pounded, and I was slightly dizzy. I told Mom, who was lying in the bed, that I simply couldn’t do anything today. We actually were in the middle of a move, as I discovered in a panning camera move that allowed me to see outside without being outside, and the two vans were full of our belongings. The logo, which I previously believed to be a column, was actually a white roadway with a blue background. We were moving into the Peters’ house. My car was in Nicole’s driveway and had not gotten blown by the wind. After seeing this, I went to my room. I had at least six plastic stacking tables all on top of each other. I was looking for my four-CD poetry collection. I moved the stack of tables and saw a murder of brown spiders (I don’t know what the special name for a grouping of spiders is, so I’ll just use “murder”). They had woven a web around two dirty forks, continually feeding off the residue. I put the tables back and tried to pretend I had never noticed the spiders. I put in the new 5-DVD Biography series on French existentialists that I had bought for $40. I was not happy to learn that I had bought the French version, so I had essentially wasted my money. I only comforted myself by thinking about how well I would sleep with French in the background. (I have a tendency to doze off during French movies–I’ve only stayed awake through Weekend, Breathless, Jules and Jim, and, after about five attempts, The 400 Blows. I fell asleep at least five times during Last Year at Marienbad.) I was quite amused to see that all music was provided by Pere Ubu; there was an interview with them which was the only part in English.

I dreamt something about Karrie and Olivia, but I don’t remember anything except their presence.

I woke up from a fifteen minute nap only slightly refreshed.

In the dream, I was living in a house built like a capital T shape, suspiciously in a semi-Asian style like the Center. In the wide crossbar of the T, I fell asleep on the couch of the living room. I was covered, not with blankets, but with the remnants of 8.5 x 11″ paper after nine 2.125″ circles had been cut out of them. I was buried in baby blue shards of paper, yet not whole sheets of it. (You know the dough that’s left over after using cookie cutters? The pieces of paper were like that.) I was watching some inane homosexual high school soap opera until I fully woke up in the dream. I realized (in the dream) that I had just had a dream about the lead character in the soap opera, a slightly ethnic boy of eighteen, who uttered some stupid punchline. The show ended, credits rolled, and I became aware suddenly that I was late for my dinner appointment. It was 4:18 pm, and I thought that the clock had to be wrong. Then Star Trek: The Next Generation came on as it did everyday at 4:18 pm and I knew I had to move and get going. I clicked off the television and stood up, but I could not stand up straight. It was as if I was heavily drugged or drunk. My head spun, or the room did, or both. I ran (for some reason), swerving and weaving like young boys who hold their arms straight out pretending to be airplanes. I was aware suddenly that I was naked and soaking wet, as if I had just gotten out of the shower, and I worried if anyone had seen me through the windows. I thought about drying off in my sheets, because I had made it to my room, but I remembered that the bathroom was certainly to the north of me. Directly west of me was the closet. I collapsed on a loveseat in my room. I heard the echo of water running outside and figured Jon J. had left the sprinklers running. I did not know if he was coming back or not; then I became terrified of being locked in and not knowing the alarm code to disarm the system.

I dreamt that Stephanie brought the rest of her key lime pie to work for a special snacktime treat.

Grandpa wanted me to learn how to shoot a gun in case I was ever attacked. I was in the old house, on the landing between the two flights of stairs, shooting out the front door. No one was there. I used up all the ammo, then I went downstairs. Mom was cleaning out the room that was my playroom when I was a kid, later her craft room, and later my bedroom. She had a huge decorator’s basket and she took my two guns away, hiding them under the scraggly peacock feathers. There weren’t nearly enough to hide the guns, but Mom seemed satisfied.

I had gone to Sam’s and bought a huge box of candy (probably a bleed-through from that Dexter’s Lab commercial about winning a year’s supply of Airheads candy). I was brushing my teeth, then I was going to eat candy and fall asleep. My mom was in my living room, talking to me as I took my candy into the bathroom with me. She told me that eating candy after brushing my teeth was the stupidest thing she had heard in a while.

Someone and I were shopping for a birthday present for Bev, but we had no idea what to get her. For some reason, we were rather limited to the four aisles or so of groceries/housewares at Target. I found a cobalt blue trashcan and laundry basket set that I thought was cute; whoever I was with thought some laundry detergent would be a nice touch.

Lael was a detective of some sort, and was getting ready to confront someone about a stolen manuscript in the apartments across the street and a touch south of Olive Garden. He had all the proof he needed: a CD-R of the manuscript and audio tape recordings talking about stealing it. After that, he was going to join us at IHOP. Joel, Bev, Matt, and I waited on him, and when he showed up, he wasn’t very happy and refused to talk about it.

I was in the old house and Matt’s band was playing at the playground. We walked there, he played one song, and they realized they couldn’t do much with Adam (the drummer) out of town. So Matt and I went for a walk and ended up back at my house. I remembered that my car was still parked at the playground, so we went back to get it, and talked about where Adam had gone.

Nelda wanted me to set up something on the website where people could request what they really want in life. She thought it would be interesting, but Howard didn’t want it to be published.

I had to find a picture of Marilyn Monroe in a particular movie (called Up in Our Town or something) for the newsletter. When I went to find Jake to ask for the DVD cover, he was on the phone with Joel E. There were a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink, including two empty tuna cans. I went to wash them, but there was a dish that was for Joel that had a cup of sour cream and a cup of cheddar cheese mixed in it with a light dusting of potato soup mix on top.

I was in the kitchen of the old house, reading the newspaper. Mom and Dad came in: they had gone on vacation. Mom sarcastically said, “we left the lights on in the garden just you like.” She knew I normally hated that because the lights would shine in my bedroom and I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I told her that I had a blindfold now and it didn’t matter. She seemed a bit put off that I wasn’t irritated. I really was quite apathetic.

I was a banker (hah!) and I was tabulating the different rates I could invest $2000 (another hah!) at: a savings account would earn me 1.4%, a three month CD would earn 3.6%, etc.

All I remember is that I was directing a movie or music video and the star ate the set. “My god, he just ate the scenery. Is that postmodern or what?” I shrieked.