I made vaguely cryptic notes this morning after waking up, but I’m still not completely clear on all the details.
I was living at my grandpa’s house with my mom and Mari, and there was something about “leaving the house for the first time when Nightline comes on.” I was rinsing dust off the brown pants I rarely wear when a person from high school, long forgotten until I saw her picture again in the midst of packing, showed up.
I also told people (in a dream) about nightmares I had been having about eye charts. There were loud dogs outside and another psycho man running around and I just murmured, “I knew I didn’t want to live on the southwest side of town.”
Now, a collection of dreams from previous nights:
11/15: My boss gave me a Sit ‘n’ Spin and I was, of course, deliriously happy.
I visited DRC in his Comotara home. A strange man outside wailed and wailed, so I took shelter inside. He had to go throw pots, and I did him a favor by going to KU and getting some clay for him.
I was either in a large arena or an airport and I ran into the mayor.
11/16: Kathleen and I were playing in my new house when we discovered that it had a whole additional level in the basement. We walked into one room and it was very much like Larry’s Piano Bar. There were nine circular booths, like the corner one in Angela’s where Linden, Jaime, Matt, and I had lunch last time Matt was in town. I heard Kathleen squeal, “Oh my God! You have to make them leave the dance floor.” We turned the corner and found several rooms with 1970s dark wood bunk beds. I reasoned that the previous owners had a Little League team spend the summer with them.
Al Gore was hawking Suzukis for Carbanc.
I took an elevator to New York after returning curtains to JC Penney’s.
The airlines would charge passengers who went to the bathroom within five minutes of takeoff an additional $2000.
11/17: Lael sent me an e-mail entitled “however; angle 2.”
11/18: I was running with a flashlight on my grandfather’s road, dodging between cars.
NPR was going to feature the Village on All Things Considered, but I couldn’t get in touch with Lael to tell him. Then I couldn’t tell if they HAD or if they WOULD, and I was stuck in a room without a radio. I went to the website to see if I could listen to it that way, but I couldn’t. I wondered how I’d document this brush with fame.
Lael, Kathleen, and I were living together in a two-story Riverside house built in the 1920s. The kitchen was at the base of the stairs, and the stairs leading upstairs had a parallelogram of wood over it, looking rather stylish yet guillotine-rific. Kathleen and I went upstairs where the bedrooms were, and she had me stand in a corner. “You just stand right here and amuse Lael.” Then Kat brought out a life-size blue puppet, kind of an Asian-looking man in a 1950s Ward Cleaver hat, and turned on the power to it. Every five minutes it would turn its head towards me and clap, and I’d just giggle and clap right along with the puppet. “Just perfect.” So, like clockwork, the puppet and I giggled and clapped our hands.
I dreamt that Carmody and I were on a road trip to nowhere in particular. It was night, of course, and we got to a meadowy spot. There was an accident on the other lane: a semi moving a silo, in its entirity, had toppled over. A young woman had been partially impaled by part of the metal roof. Three police officers carried her; her face was wrapped up in a pleather coat. I told Carmody that if anything should happen to me, I would prefer not to be swaddled in pleather — I like breathing.
First World Trade Center dream — it only took five days after the attack for it to hit the dream world. Of course, I haven’t been remembering dreams, so I could have blocked them out earlier.
I dreamt I was reading the list of those killed in a big coffeetable book of victims. Each page had three or four people on it, each with a little photo, information about them, etc. I started recognizing a whole bunch of people from elementary through high school years and I just couldn’t bear it.
I’m debating a redesign of my site, but I know for sure that I will soon have a handy-dandy Celebrity Index. Let’s face it, there are probably about two people that read this (if that many) that actually know anyone I mention. I’m too lazy and it’s just too invasive to make a list of all those “common people” like myself. But if I, someone you in all likelihood have never even met, announce loudly at a fancy soiree, “I had the most horrifying dream about Lawrence Welk,” then you probably can at least be amused at my esoteric reference if nothing else.
So, this task involved going back through past entries–over 270 of them. I’ve done that, but in the course of doing so, I’ve noticed that I failed to put very crucial celebrity dreams in here.
How could I have forgotten to tell you about the one where my neighbor and I were double-dating Darryl Hall and John Oates (I with Oates, the dark-haired one; she with Hall). Of course, all I can remember is being not pleased with the whole situation (I didn’t want to date either of them) and I distracted myself from Oates’ amorous overtures by digging in the glove compartment. This dream would have taken place in spring 1996 or so, I’m guessing.
And how could I possibly have neglected to write about the marriage of Judith Light (Angela from Who’s the Boss) and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails? That was a particularly disturbing dream.
By going back through the entries, including the ones from the 1990s, I had people I haven’t seen in years on my mind last night, I suppose. I dreamt that I started my new job. There was a large welcoming banquet (not all for me, mind you, as a whole lot of other people were starting work that day too). I found Chris J and Michael W, and I ran to Chris and tugged on his cream-colored cable-knit sweater (it was cotton, not wool, that cheap-ass bastard). “I thought about you all the way through Legally Blonde,” I lied, “and about how you never thought I’d ever amount to anything.” Michael, at this point, was quite scared and did not exactly want to be around the full display of the love-hate relationship we had. Chris, having shunned becoming a lawyer like his father, now carted around acetyline tanks. “Oh, how nice for you. I thought about dropping out of school to become a trucker, but I didn’t.” I put on my best better-than-thou routine, as usual, since Chris actually believes such nonsense. We then were to climb up a series of stairs: they stretched across an entire twelve-foot or larger expanse. They had slender rails, and it looked straight out of some Cocteau or film noir movie . . . perhaps The Third Man. At this point the dream turned into black and white. I can’t remember anything else, but it was damp, dark, and musty.