Dreamed Davie and the Raccoons

Dear Dream Drob,
I was asleep and dreamed these things:

Christy and David on a bus going somewhere, I'm in the seat in front of David, he's sitting next to a woman we both know. We're all making up a song together, but David keeps giving the woman hugs, like they're best pals. I think he's trying to butter her up.

We arrive at a mossy bus stop, with walls made out of bricks and wooden drawers. I take my gum out of my mouth. I start pulling the gum apart and notice it's getting bigger and bigger. I think it's because I'm getting more air bubbles into it. Now I have a huge ball of gum that I can throw. I throw it somewhere! It's evening in a park, lawns and lamps, and some stretches of sidewalk.

David and I follow it and he throws it into the bushes! A Miyazaki raccoon emerges from the plants with the huge gum in it's mouth. He's an old man raccoon next to another younger one. Oh! No! That raccoon could die if it eats the gum, I think! So, loudly, in my best dog trainer voice I say, "Drop it!" The raccoon drops it. Then I say, "Stay... stay..." and pick up the ball. I throw it away in a trash can thinking maybe I saved it's life.

Spaceship thunder magic bauble laughter *clikpop*

[Proffering my brainbody to science, I dozed off many times (despite the buzzhumtaktak of the machine) while I was supposed to be completing puzzle tasks. Each of these dreams(?) happened in just a few seconds before I was beeped at and awoken for missing an answer.]

A sweltering hot desert, low shrubbery, dry, baked earth, high sun. Yellow. Agony, pain and shouting. "I" (looking like a hollywood movie star) drop to my knees, tears streaming. Dust and mud are caked to my body. Drying blood. I scoop into my arms the body of someone very dear to me. My child? Love? Mortally wounded? "Nnnooo!" I choke and gasp. "No noo!" The deafening noise of an enormous jet engine rises above and behind me. The heat and light from the spaceship/sled distorts the landscape in ripples of energy as it blasts off over my head and into the air. Rumbles that shake the earth! Screaming noise! "It can't be!"

"They still have my range rover!" (...the spaceship...?)

*bbeeep!* oh, gah. Near, the ball is near! Far. Far. Pause. Near. Pause.

A woman, running. Stumbling in fear and panic. I can't see clearly, everything is shaking; maybe I'm running, too. It's night. She is being chased by a person that wants something she is carrying. She comes up against the rail of the bridge, overlooking a vast, calm river below. Dark; street lamps reflected in the water. In the same motion with which she collides into the rail, she casts the sought-for object out and down. The precious thing (a ring? bejeweled and bewitched trinket?) It tumbles through space, slowly. I watch it fall, thinking:

"But, how will she retrieve it? What power does she possess that will allow her to get it back?! Because: she must!"

*bbooop!* wut? Ak! Far! Near. Click. Pause. Near. Near. Pause.

Christy, sitting on the hardwood floor of her room, looking up at me with a pout-frown. Full sunlight pours through some window, saturated colors. She says in a false whine, "I'm not stupid!" I had teased her. We hold our expressions for a moment before laughing deliriously. The bed is yellow. Her eyes are blue blue. She lets her head fall sideways in mirth.

*beeepp!* Jeez! Near. Near. Near. Pause. Blink.

atmospheric jiggles

Yup, that's exactly what they were. I walked outside of the garage where we were playing music (the lady did not appreciate it bleeding through her walls). It was at the edge of the city, the east side, but not with all the stigma surrounding the social/economic status of the east side, it was just a place where you could look down on the city and the volcanos.

The sun was setting just to the north and above the volcanos which it never does or ever will...

So the sky was this fantastic warm color, but there were these outrageous and specific forms in the sky, kind of like wispy clouds but not clouds at all. Instead of gas they were light.... wavey grids of rainbows. All the people were in the streets looking at the site. I was trying to call my friends, distracted by being unsure of who it would be appropriate to call.

We knew we were witnessing something that had never happened before or again.

Ocean depth to mountain high

We're filming a movie. I think. Maybe I'm an actor, or maybe I'm just working on set. I'm in a large hall, like a dinning hall, in the dark — I see a shadow move and realize that someone else just entered the room so I try to hide next to a column. They cross the hall but look back and can see me in the ambient light from the hallway, so they turn on the lights. Dangit. "Oh, Eric, let's go — hey we need these set-up! You didn't put these 1,200 tables and chairs away did you? Ha, of course not." It's Vanessa, with a co-worker now. (Or maybe Neotha... with Anna? Megan?) I follow them.

...

This is a boat. A huge boat? I'm in the water... or in a tiny boat, a life boat. Something falls into the ocean and sinks. I feel the vastness and enormous depth of the water. Are we filming?

...

At some point, I visit the home of someone I work with on the set. I meet her girlfriend, who is grumpy when we arrive. They must have just moved here, there are loads of things peeking out of boxes on the porch.

...

Leaving (the set?). I pull away on my scooter, my father is passenger. We laugh at the line of more than a dozen scooters that are rolling out next to us, linked to one another as if a train, and towed by a very small car. We pass them; a couple of cars pass us. We are heading down a winding road through the mountains, could be Colorado, could be northern New Mexico. The sun has set, the world is darkening. We come to a curve on which the stripes suggest that the road goes right, but I think I see a truck going left up ahead — I choose right. I chose wrong. Luckily I stop before I edge of the dirt lot that the road became. Phew. Oh no, here comes the scooter train behind us... there is no way they'll figure it out. Sure enough, they come flying into the dirt lot, narrowly avoiding us, but also able to stop. We are angry, "what the fuck were they thinking when they painted those lines?!" We continue down a couple of miles, and go to a building. Wooden. Hanging out with unnameable friends. Find out that someone's girlfriend works at a pizza place (maybe the same couple from before); she'll bring me vegan pizza. Just what I need. She arrives with a bag of a dozen gourmet slices. I want nothing else in the world right now. Plenty of laughter and friendliness.

Portholes

I am the next one up at the poetry slam. My whole class of girl poets is performing. Not a problem I think, I'll just go through the poems I have memorized and choose one. I can't think of a single poem. I start getting a little worried and my waking brain kicks in, "maybe my 'poems' are songs" I guess that I could poet a song, but I keep trying to think of something else, I tell my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Vanderlip that I have to go into nature to collect my thoughts, then I hike up into the dark wood behind the stage.

I come to a lake surrounded by black rocks. There is path of rocks out into the water that lead to a boulder. I walk out the island and look into the lake. There is a man with no legs swimming in the water below me. He looks happy. His red flannel shirt tails float around nothing. I wonder how he's swimming so well.

Somehow I know that he is not alive. He is a ghost of someone who lost his legs in the lake. Then I am aware that he is with another ghost, but she is invisible because she died in the lake. I think that I could probably write this down and make a poem out of it. More tourists come up the boulder and I leave, but I get freaked out when I touch the water because it's had dead people in it.

I return to my impending poetry performance. It's over, and my teacher tells me I'll have to perform in tomorrow's show. I am relieved and disappointed.

Later I am attending a writing workshop we're reading a poetry example from the Wilderness Charter School (where I went to high school) The poem is mine. It's very Lorca-esque with references to animals and the color green and some nice little surreal moments. I remember I wrote in in another dark wood by a little stream.

I realize I am watching a film of the writing workshop. It's of my college class. In it I am soliloquizing some important idea and I get a good reaction from the class for showing my solidarity with whatever it is. Then the cameraman leaves the room, and so do I and a bunch of my friends because we're still in the video. We come to a door labeled "Campbell Club" and "Cooks." All of my friends are either members of the Campbell Club or have the name Cook. We go in. It's a bathroom. Cool.

We leave and I ask my friend what he thought of the poetry example in class. I can't hear what he says but I think he didn't like it that much, I dig out the paper and look at the back. My copy is the original and has the rough draft on the back. I read it. It's so bad, so ridiculous that I don't want him to see it, I hide the worst parts with my hands. He falls asleep at the table and because I'm in a movie from the past I kiss him and tell him I love him.

The End.