The search
December 31st, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
In a thrift store, I’m looking for tap shoes but can only find roller skates.
Giants
December 30th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
I am in a video game. My goal is to carry a very heavy bomb into a house and set it off.
I arrive inside the house after much struggle against evil, meaty birds. Joel is there and helps me to realize that the bomb must be placed on the house’s “bomb button”, which occupies most of its single room and is painted like a bull’s eye, to explode. Both of our straining finally gets the contraption hoisted onto the button. I decide, and Joel agrees, that we should probably get away from the bomb before it explodes.
This proves difficult. It is with a feeling of release that we realize that, because this is a video game, it really doesn’t matter. We resign ourselves to our fate.
When the bomb is scheduled to explode, however, the house turns into an airplane and takes off with the intention of crashing nose-first into the spot where the house once stood. Again the momentary panic, again the cautious release. Joel is agreeable, if high-strung.
It all makes sense now
December 29th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
Ira Glass is a pseudonym for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Home again
December 29th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
I have arranged to fly to Claremont for a few days (almost certainly influenced by the story my aunt, Maia, told about a person who could not handle her family’s idyllic year abroad and had to fly home a few times). I am in Suite Lady Death with Eric, Harry, and possibly Graham and at least a few other people. It’s night but warm and we are enjoying ourselves. I cannot be comfortable, however, because we are technically forbidden from our rooms during winter break (this is true).
A sweet relief
December 28th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
I have received my grades for the fall semester (actually, I have not, but they were probably posted yesterday). Although I failed all three of the individual sections of chemistry, I received a “G” for the course, which means I was passed but only out of pity.
“I passed chem,” I say.
“Fuck you,” says Tall Sam.
Additionally, Leslie decided not to leave Mudd after all.
The Tournament
December 27th, 2005 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
My mother informed me that while we were to be in California, (we are not actually going to California) I would be competing in a debate tournament there. I protested – I didn’t even know the current resolution and I had no duo partner. When I talked to Sean, I mentioned that I would be going to the tournament and he told me he would also be attending. It turned out many members of our team would be going.
I arrived nervously at the airport, surprisingly alone. I realized that I had no luggage, but reasoned that I could buy a suit at a thrift store down there. It also occurred to me that my shoes, decrepit blue snakeskinish pumps, were inadequate. Fortunately, there was a little second hand shoe store at the gate. I searched for replacement shoes, finding many rubbery clear plastic ones but nothing appropriate in my size. I settled on some clear plastic flip flops right as the final boarding call was made (although I didn’t actually hear a call I just saw people hurriedly boarding) but didn’t have time to pay for them, so I just took them.
When I got to L.A., my mother picked me up from the airport in a stretch Limousine. This was very embarrassing and unnerving but she explained that it had been surprisingly inexpensive and perhaps the only thing to be found at the car rental place. Many other people slowly filled the car.
At the tournament, I found myself in a large room. Many people in the room had instruments; mine was a violin. I knew the event was impromptu, but what we were doing was sight reading music. I sat in the front row and sang. An adjudicator strolled down the rows of chairs, listening. At one point, everyone got sort of confused and stopped, and only Gillon was left singing. This made sense to me because I knew Gillon was an excellent sight-singer. I worried that being in this event meant I would not be able to compete in HI, the only event for which I had anything prepared. After we finished, I returned my violin to Rosie or a friend of hers.
Outside the room my vision became very poor. I was hungry, and found many cans and boxes of soup near concessions, but was unable to tell their varieties because of my bad eyesight. I overheard a nearby conversation in which a girl asked her friend if she would need to pick up her sister, and the friend replied in the negative. I worried about how I would get home, but remembered that I had my mother’s rental car in my purse.
I reflected on my last experience of transportation: I had been biking, going very fast down a hill, in a position that was really just lying on the ground stretched out on my stomach, but somehow accommodated a bicycle. I had needed to climb a hill, the climax of the story. (Then I partially woke up, but forced myself back to sleep to finish. However, I can’t remember anymore.)
(The memory of this dream seems connected to another that I feel certain I must have had weeks or months ago but does not appear to have made it to Dreambox. I will relate it now.)
I was in a white car, in a traffic jam, maybe again with the debate team in California. I had to get out of the car for some reason and got onto a bus, leaving the car on the road. The bus took me a very long ways to an official building with a fancy, decorated interior. It would be a while before another bus could take me back to the car and the team, which was a problem because I had gotten quite separated, and probable also a problem for the other cars on the road with my car. This was very stressful. Some disgruntled people found me in the building.
Falling dream
December 27th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
My parents and I are on top of a mountain. I decide that we’ll take the short route down and just jump. The city comes closer and worry about a splattering, instant death begins to preclude awe.
Fortunately, I have a plan. I guide my parents through the windows of what is probably the tower in Berlin near Alexanderplatz. We alight on a small, interior ledge and lean against the wall, looking down and breathing.
A helicopter comes by and visibly banks when its pilot sees us. Many other, smaller helicopters come to join it. I beckon to my parents and search for a door to some stairs or some equivalent escape. I find one locked door. I’m lucky, so it opens anyway. I find myself in a stairwell when the door closes behind me; my parents are nowhere in sight.
A young woman comes up the stairs and I hide. I surmise by her USC shirt that she must be ascending to some research facility above. I’m wearing my Harvey Mudd garment, so I behind in by climbing the stairs behind her, trying to look collegey. She does not notice because she’s talking on a mobile phone. I avoid detection as two threatening men in suits ascend and pass through the door to the level I entered on. Safe but worried for my parents in the hands of the threatening men, I buy new clothes and try to blend in among the streets of what is probably Berlin.
I receive word and perhaps evidence at separate times that both of my parents either jumped to their deaths from the tower or were executed for trespassing — the facts are ambiguous. I spend the rest of my life in a little bay town in Mexico.
(Waking and sleeping again yielded an alternate ending:)
My parents find me while we are walking around on the warm, populated (Parisian?) streets. They were given a very harsh talking-to.
Bainbridge poverty, or: Going home
December 25th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
My family and I are near Agate Pass Bridge about to cross to Bainbridge in the camper van. My father tells me that he and my mother tired of Latin America and decided to drive home. It only took a few hours, he says.
I climb out of the van and onto my bicycle (accurately depicted) with my cousin, Zoe (who is here in Mexico with my nuclear family) so that we can make it onto the island a mite faster while the van waits in traffic.
We arrive at Kevin’s house and Zoe asks me something about the cigar I am smoking. I reply, in Spanish and with an air of defensive righteousness, “es marijuana”. I then try to stow the lit cigar in my leather jacket, a task made difficult but not impossible by its lack of pockets. (I have actually never smoked.)
Looking at Kevin’s house (which actually looks a lot more like Barbara’s), I decide that it would be rude to show up now, so unexpectedly, and that Zoe and I will wait for the van to come by and pick us up. We expect this to take some time, but it comes immediately.
I am on my bicycle again near Waterfront Park in the middle of the night. Both my tires are suddenly entirely flat. I walk up to Winslow Way and see Adriadne standing near Esther’s. I can see that she did not get the job she applied for and has evidently made her mother angry enough that she cannot live at home (in reality, she lives at Western).
She is embarrassed when I greet her and asks, “Do you hate me?”
“No, of course not.” (The truth.)
I put some money into the bucket full of water and some money that she has set up in front of her.
Later, on a crowded evening, I walk past Ariadne again and she has a new ploy: she began a few days ago not speaking at all. She offers passers-by who donate to her survival fund to choose a word to add to her strictly limited vocabulary. She writes these words on a whiteboard tacked up behind her. The board contains a few simple words now like “do”, “is”, “the”, and “can”.
I recount my sighting of Ariadne to Ariana, who is very concerned until I tell her that Ariadne was using a whiteboard. Ariana tells me that Ariadne, if she was needing to ask for money on Winslow Way, could not afford anything less reusable than a whiteboard.
Some parade
December 24th, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
For some reason, it’s logical that a Westie who’s generally in charge of things like this will organize a contest of sorts between Tony and myself, the former championing cheap whisky, the latter cheap wine. On the day of the event, the population of West Dorm floods from a building nearby into the courtyard. I drink a glass of cheap wine to scattered applause. Tony drinks a shot of cheap whisky and suddenly falls to the ground in a drunken stupor, still smiling in his deceptively obsequious way. I find myself voting along with the majority for cheap whisky.
My parents are suddenly there. I lead them to my room, through a mess of artificial, garish spider webs. (Actually, because I kept waking up during the night, I had to lead them there many times. Sometimes I lead them to a different room, sometimes I was alone, sometimes we used walkie-talkies.)
A parade begins at West but suddenly ends up at Winslow Way near Isla Bonita (which looks something like Pasadena). We walk very far, often on top of buildings, always near tall, glass walls.
Late
December 23rd, 2005 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
I wake up at school to Sam informing me that I’m very late to my meeting with the rest of the semester’s CS60 grutors. I feel very guilty. (I woke up at this point and continued to feel guilty until I looked around myself and found that I was in Mexico. I reasoned that, even if the meeting were real (I still wasn’t certain if it was) there would be no way for me to get to it in time.)
I wake up at school to Sam informing me that his previous appearance was just a dream and I’d missed the _real_ grutor meeting.
“I’m very disappointed in you,” he says and leaves.
I feel guiltier and try to figure out a way to absolve myself. (The same waking sequence occurs as I discover I’m in Puerto Morales.)
(This same sequence, without Sam and probably about other meetings, occurred several times in the night. Each time, I woke up, felt guilt, found I was in Mexico, and convinced myself it didn’t matter either way.)
Somehow, Suite Lady Death (Eric, Harry, Graham, and myself) didn’t get back into West after the semester and at least Eric, Harry, and I have been moved into Linde or Case. Our new dorm is underground and much like the cabin of a small sail boat (like Ariana’s former neighbors’).
It is 11:00 PM and I have not started a creative project of some sort that was due at 10:45. The project consisted of a dramatization of an ancient myth and a gift for Reuben (who has a room in West but lives in Linde). I cross a large lawn and descend into my new dorm’s entrance. I pass through a kitchen where I see Eric, who nods at me in his diffident-but-assertive way. I cross into a medium-sized, entirely black room that consists of a stage and a large machine capable of hanging gifts on hooks and rolling them away on a cable for storage. Kevin Goetsch is there and seems to be my partner in the project.
He presses a button on the wall to call forth in the machine the hook from which hangs our gift for Reuben: an ornate, hand-carved, very large, wooden picture frame (like the one my father just gave my aunt Maia for her birthday). Kevin then informs me that we’ll be acting out the myth of Prometheus’ bringing of the fire and begins to demonstrate. He runs back and forth across the stage carrying a torch and dodging a series of evil creatures, including a pair of green, bulbous things that look like snowmen with square eyes and skinny, rectangular mouths.
All of the creatures are costumed borrowed from others’ dramatizations. We will have to ask all the other groups to play the creatures.
I try to tell Kevin that there will be no part for me to play. I also reason that the story would be more interesting if it incorporated plot elements from a story told every year at 4-H camp.