Weird Dreams

I fell asleep with my contacts in last night, the thread that tied these 3 dreams together was waking up and imagining that my shriveled contacts were clinging like cats eyes to my eyelashes. (They weren't. They were still inside my eyes when I woke up.)

The First: My apartment was on fire. It was a solid brick building, and as I left the scene I saw the marks of the smoke, streaks of ash wisping out the window frames towards the sky.

I first noticed the building was on fire as I went up the weathered wooden staircase which was smouldering like embers or molten rock. I conducted an investigation and discovered that the building was on fire, kind of from the core, like Centralia, and my house mates and everyone else were packing up their stuff and gathering outside. We had time. It wasn't like my other reoccurring "packing dreams." I carefully selected all that I would need for my daily life (getting ready for work) and a few mementos that meant the most to me. I probably gathered them in a somewhat larger Old Navy Stuff sack or maybe that red bag I bought from Trader Joe's the other day for $2.99. In steps mom. And suddenly, she wants to stuff my sack with everything imaginable. Mementos, stuff I don't even need. She was even willing to fill the other bags I had in my room and carry them down the stairs.

"Let's FUCKING go!" I screamed at her as she hovered at the top of the stairs and I was already halfway down them. I remember screaming at her and swearing in a powerful voice, and I was surprised at my command of authority. But as I saw her up there I knew that if she didn't go fast enough I was going to go up and get her and carry her down the smouldering flights of stairs. I had my heels on. The too big ones I bought the other day at Kohls. And the reports from the other tenants was that the stairway at around the sixth floor was smouldering and starting to smoke. We were on the eighth floor. Small fires were breaking out in people's apartments. It was time to go. And if you spent more than a light-footed second on each stair you would burn yourself.

She made it down with miraculous speed and we met the others outside, in the sun, the safe sun and the friendly Brooklyn block.

In comes Dream two: I am somewhat back in high school. I am valedictorian or something. Some kind of weird honor for being a hippie. I am dressed in a loose-fitting, to-the-floor dress and a cardigan. I think my hair is died auburn (hear Jersey accent here) and permed, long and wavy. I feel like a tool, but Chartis has set it up that I will get on the makeshift pressboard runway and make a speech. One thing - they forgot the podium. There is a podium on the floor but I ask the audience if they will be able to see me and they yell uniformly "NO!" So I sweat up there awkwardly while the auditorium staff runs askew looking for a podium to put on the stage. The young whipper snapper with a-bit-too-long, combed-over, slicked hair, and a dark gray, too-large suit finishes his trying-to-be-charming introduction and I am left up there to kill time. LM comes up to the stage to help me, but it doesn't help. There is a nailclipper involved (?) (Visions of a nailclipper?) As I urgently try to make the crowd laugh. (I should have said a thank you, I thought when I woke up in the morning.)

And then there is my drunk mom. I got her drunk I think. Something happens that they cut my speech short just as I am starting, and I find myself surprisingly disappointed -after what seemed like infinity trying to kill time and make people laugh, the well-prepared, supposed-to-be-inspiring speech seems comforting. But I am whisked off into the hallway, and then come back to take my seat with my family. Some kind of done-before, boring, choreographed dance is going on onstage, like the Rockettes dressed in yellow, with the ringleader dressed up as a cat. Jen is drunk too and slouched in her seat, bored, and exhausted from trying to contain mommy. Mommy's copper colored hair has a previously unseen flair, it halos out from her crown in a heretofore unseen diameter. Her face is ludicrous, and she is so loud. She is insulting me, and the scene just becomes so ridiculous that I decide to enlist the cops who are patrolling the hallway and have her locked up, just for the night. She acquiesces, willingly.

When we wake up in the morning it is almost more disastrous than the night before. We had trapped her in the bathroom, I lead her there and as she was inside the cops, two of them, one nondescript, the other a lesbian, waited outside to trap her. But when she emerges from her cell in the morning she is unscathed, her confidence unwaned. I think she has dressed as a cop, halter and all, and her hair is back perfectly in place -her perfect. We hint at her about last night's fiasco, but she doesn't hear it, and struts confidently to the parking lot, ready to go. I want to get the cop's number, so when she eventually comes down and realizes what I did to her, and tries to kill me, I can call them for assistance. The lesbian cop is the one who takes the bait, and disappears into the labyrinth of her office to write down her number. I am waiting in the parking lot with mommy. She doesn't get it. Why do I have to wait to "thank" the cop? Isn't this all over and done with? She is going to the car. While she goes I run off into the office, hoping she doesn't catch me and follow me. When I get in there it is obvious the lesbian cop is stalling. Its not like she's hitting on me but she just doesn't get it, and if I am in here too long, people, my mom, will start to worry.

Dream three: I am called into the operating room. They have discovered a dead human, is it even a human? A used-to-be human that mummified herself to become a super-human. They have unwrapped what they could of the dressing -bits of grey stick to the cream, seafoam, and peach colored mummified skin. It is thick like Plaster of Paris, and cracked at the joints and other places. I am sick to my stomach but in awe of the fact that this person succeeded in mummifying themself. The doctor is picking off bits of the grey gauze with sterilized tweezers. "But wait...this is not it. This is not why I called you." the doctor says. (Not sure if male or female.) They pull me around to the bottom of the leg, where the foot would have been, only the foot is removed, revealing a golden latticed cross section of the ankle. The leg is hollow. The doctor takes the long-handled tweezer and reaches into the hollow calf. He pulls out a putrefied banana peel. I am revolted and bend over, clutching my stomach. "No, but that is not it," says the doctor. "This banana peel was not putrefied when it was inserted." As my mind wakes to make the realization, somehow said mummy rises and is now walking out the door. (Whether the body is still on the table and it is her soul, or whether she has risen all together is unclear.) She is wearing a hand-died Indian cloth over her head, like a burka, but it is almost a clear, cream colored gauze, emblazoned with beautiful twisted paisley flowers. The flower stems and leaves, almost like vines, are a dark green, almost black. And the flowers, a tiny fuchsia. Even a realistic - well, as realistic as can be on fabric weave - pair of gold-rimmed aviator glasses has been printed where her eyes would be. She looks like a burka-ed terrorist. Everyone is commenting on her ridiculousness, and is scared of her. But she talks to me as Sarah Tyrell would, and I am confident in following her. Well, confident enough to make the first cautious step.

She had stored the bananas (as we walk out the door the doctor is holding up a less putrefied, unripe green plantain) in her leg as back-up fuel. She is truly a modernized human being. (Equipped for a nuclear winter?)

Prospect Park

I'm going to tell you right off that this post is probably something I should have written in my journal, but I'm not keeping one at the moment so this is the next best thing.

I also think, in addition to TMI and lack of guarding my personal space, this experience has a "human interest" underneath that I can't think of an easy google keyword for, so perhaps it is at least a tad of the domain of the not yet trampled upon -yet to form a defined crease in the human brain.

"I spend a lot of my time thinking about_____" is one of OkCupid's open-ended questions. I tried to think of something esoteric enough to compete with other entries, while at the same time not being pretentious enough to turn the likes of me off. I don't remember what I wrote.

But the other day, I finally achieved my nirvana -at least the one I have been attaining to for at least the last couple of months, if not years. A day to myself. A day where I could wake up, and let my mind play, and let my body follow. A day, in other words, where I was just a vessel, an almost unobstructed one, and the life energy could flow through me at will.

Of course I woke up late, ate cereal, and read the paper. Then I made coffee and didn't turn on my music so I could hear the birds in what I realized last night was our own personalized urban forest fortress. (All of the surrounding backyards are overgrown, and our cement-space is oddly lower than the rest, and so the surrounding fence looks monstrous.)

And then I resisted all bait by house mates and friends, tied on my sneakers, and headed out for what, I also realized when my house mate told me to call him when I got back so we could go pick up some food, is adequately termed a Day Run. One where I carry my metrocard, gunnysack, map, and follow the streets.

It was
THE PERFECT DAY. I left a little late, and so the midday sun was one my Senegalese host family would have balked and told me to avoid. People were out for the Cherry Blossom Festival, right down the street. I smelled, and saw every conceivable good memory I have ever had. As I ran through the neighborhoods, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Gowanus canal, the backwards streets where no one lives, Chirilagua, the countryside on the train in Japan...I smelled burning trash and pupusas and the incense Fary lit in the pot while I laid on her bed in a pool of sweat.

And then Prospect Park. I was honestly jittering with life. I was higher than 3 times as high as I've ever been. Every cell of my body was pressing against its walls and making as much surface contact with the green grass, the water fountain with the kid taking too long, the couples sleeping on each others laps. The mom speaking Spanish, and all I could get was she was dishing back her daughter's attitude. The games played, the giant fat families barbecuing, the chubby hipsters with greasy too-long goatees trying to skateboard. I could smile at each one.

And then I realized, "I spend a lot of time thinking about" bombs. Terrorist attacks. Honestly. Every moment, its on the back of my mind. It is a loop that is factored into all of my processing. What if a bomb went off right now? What would I do? Would I survive? How would this situation change? Who would live and who would die? How would we help each other? Who would be helping who? How long would we be trapped in here? I imagine the relationships that would develop between the smelly homeless man with all his bags of recycling, the crazy Wolof woman speaking and singing in tongues to everyone but me, the gangster playing his music so loud I am pissed off for him and how loud it must be in his ears. The woman whose toes I've stepped on five times trying not to lose my balance when I let go of the bar to change the page.

I think of it now, in Prospect Park. Park Therapy, I call it. Just take any disgruntled, disadvantaged single man and plant him in this park on this day and he would be cured. In fact, now I keep my mind out for it. And I see them, all over. Many immigrants. Men. Sitting on park benches alone. Yet here, I don't feel creeped out by them. I could almost go sit with them, but I'm running. And then there's post-park life. But in the park, I decide while waiting for the kid to slurp the giant water bubbles, its heaven. Honestly, if I die, let me carry this image with me on repeat for all eternity.

I get home. I water my flowers. I cook for myself and then have a few beers with Brad and his friend on the roof. And then I go to the garden. But before that, I go to the bathroom.

You might want to stop reading now.

Ok, I warned you. I got my period. For the first time. In over three years. Well, that's almost true. I've gotten some spotting. But all these spottings seemed random. This time, I can almost feel, I know I got it from the park. What does this mean? Am I wedded to the Universal Soul? Perhaps. Its all part of the same thing...my body only comes to life to produce life when its fully alive. I don't know why I have this...but my body is not going to let me produce unless I infuse the life I create with life. All of it.

I lost my period when I went to Peace Corps. Reasons unknown -diet, heat, stress. I think its because I fully relinquished myself -we even talked about it, Jenna and I, in one of the first few weeks, while we biked from Thies to Popenguine. The onion analogy - we peeled back each layer until there was nothing left, and saved the pieces to wrap ourselves back up when we went home. I went further than most others. I've literally been operating my body, even my mind, and my spirit, like a ventriloquist since that time.

But I am coming back. In a way, the powers that be have deemed it. They let me apply for school because they knew there would be no other way I would back off. But now I have been 'condemned' to live here in New York until I hear otherwise. I have been commanded to do nothing but lavish myself and fall in love.

And its working. That's the miracle of my period. I decided to write about it today because its not spotting. It went away the day after, and I was disappointed that, although the park brought on this spark of life, it was soon quelled by the Monday grind. But yesterday something was ruined. And today, I needed to go to Duane Reed. So this period is unlike any that I have had (naturally occurring, not on birth control) in over three years.

Its the miracle of life.