Dreambox

Where am I and what is that brown bear doing in my front yard?

May 28th, 2006 by Christina Russell; one comment

(My apologies for writing this in past-tense)

Katie and I were going to a Shins concert. I was supposed to meet her at the ticket booth. When I arrived I realized I had forgotten the tickets. The woman at the counter said there was nothing she could do. As she said this, I felt my body shrinking, so that her face was increasingly distant.

The bell rang, and droves of Chinese students left a lecture hall adjacent to the ticket booth. I noted that these people were my age, but that that was impossible because they were in college at the University of Washington.

I left to find Katie. I was overwhelmed with sadness that was completely irrational. Lost, I found myself at the top story of a Crate & Barrel-themed apartment. The rooms were so fluid that each apartment just gave into the next, so that in order to get from room to room I had to walk through the private living spaces. At the end of the hall the faculty from Bainbridge High School was holding a wake for a deceased teacher. Everyone was sobbing. I was fearful that people would mistake my tears for mourning, when in fact I was– obviously– going through an existential crisis that no one there could understand. I didn’t like the teacher that had died and all of the students there only showed up for the free food. I saw Kristen Gore run by with some food item dipped in hummus. I sat on a white couch and when I stood up the entire thing was covered in blood. I tried to escape, but each room just gave into another. I jumped off of a staircase, but fell up on a ledge, unable to control the forces of what I knew to be gravity.

At this point the setting changed. I was in the kitchen of a large rambler home, on a hill. Outside, a large brown bear with a harness was standing on its hind legs. I knew my mom and my brother were in the house, and that it was inevitable one of the three of us would have to confront the bear. I followed a car outside through a tight round-a-bout. I was then in the car. It was part of a car commerical. Over the voices of the commentator (“Sleek..sophisticated..performance-driven..hugs every turn”) I Patti screaming. She was preparing to fight the brown bear. I jumped out of the car and ran to her. Raccoons and other obsticles jumped out at me in order to prevent my mother’s resuce. I thought momentarily about a movie that had run at the Lynwood about the man who understood the brown bears. He had died. Also, Sean had liked the film. I watched as Patti ran.

(I was woken abruptly by a telephone call from Arthur Yang)

Really, we should have seen that he would come to something like this

May 22nd, 2006 by Adrian Sampson; 2 comments

I am at the LGI (actually a hybrid between the LGI and Harvey Mudd’s Galileo Hall) where some sort of show is about half-finished. Matt Wohlford is there. He and I negotiate heatedly. One audience member, in one of the two front rows, has been poisoned. I hold in my hand a substantial quantity of lotus root, the only antidote to the poison. Matt holds a large, carrot-shaped glass vessel filled with the poison (the vial is, in fact, shaped exactly like the trophy in _Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit_), a colorless liquid.

Matt has a well-reasoned argument that justifies doing nothing. For some reason, it seems somewhat logical, albeit tragic, to me that we should let the poisoned audience member die. This, he asserts, will save the lives of the rest of the audience, a belief he is so certain of that, if I enter the auditorium to attempt find the poisonee and administer the lotus root, Matt will break the glass carrot in the middle of the audience, poisoning a good portion of it.

While thought-out and almost plausible, this begins to seem ridiculous to me. Regardless of the consequences, I reason, I must save the poisoned audience member. When Matt goes away for a drink of water or something, I and at least one other person, perhaps Ariana, run into the auditorium. We jump on stage and instruct everyone in the first few rows to eat a small slice of lotus root, which is exactly like jicama (it is probably not actually like jicama). This way, we’ll be sure to give the antidote at least to the right person and, if Matt does break the vial, we’ll save a few of the people most likely to be poisoned. I expect Matt to rush in at any moment and hope that empathy will get the better of him. He does not, although I somehow see him in the foyer, pacing back and forth, telling me what a mistake I am making.

After the administration of the lotus root, the audience begins to stream out of the building. I follow them. Outside, it is a warm night; the sky is clear. We are on a large, well-trimmed grass field. There are buildings at the edge of the field and their light illuminates the grass but little else. The ground is wet.

I am following most of the crowd. As I run, I hear footsteps gaining just behind me. I turn to see Matt standing a yard or two away. In a sudden, instinctual move, I leap at his chest or throat, emitting an inhuman — more catlike — roar of rage. This seems to surprise me more than him, though. In the middle of my leap, Matt opens his mouth and spews forth a torrent of clear liquid (more, in retrospect, than could possibly have fit in his mouth). Clever bastard! He held the poison in his mouth just for this sneaky maneuver. As the poison strikes my face, I wonder whether I have enough lotus root for both of us.

Nosey the High School Cat

May 22nd, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments

I had taken Nosey to school with me (this could not at all be related to a conversation I had earlier in the evening about bringing cats to college). She was being very docile, not squirming at all in my arms or freaking out when people played with her. I kept telling people how cute she had been as a kitten, even though it was clear she was still very cute. Someone commented on how golden her fur was.

I set her down on a desk I was sitting at, which was where the washing machines in the 200 building custodial room actually are. Since she had been keeping pretty still, I didn’t pay very close attention to her and when I looked back she was gone.

I searched many classrooms for her unsuccessfully, eventually asking some teachers and office staff to look out for her and let me know if they found her. I considered the possibility that she might have walked home.

dreeeeams are my reeealityyyy…

May 15th, 2006 by Alexa Seidl; 2 comments

i spent the whole morning thinking this was a dream. i dreamt last night that sean forsyth sent me some sexually explicit text messages that freaked me out. the words “stoked” and “get down” and “nipples” were included.

then i found my phone. he did actually send them to me (by accident, i’m assuming) late last night, and the reason they seemed unreal was because i was in a very very deep sleep when i was awoken by them. strange.

Changes

May 11th, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; one comment

I was with my mom upstairs in the boys’ school, which was higher contrast and more scary than it actually is. I told my mom how scary the building was. I realized that this must mean the boards were taken off the windows, and wanted to tell Cynthia. I found her walking on a lower story in thickly high-heeled shoes and yelled down to her that the boys’ school had been opened.

Kris had come to Bainbridge unexpectedly to attend Once on this Island today. He had changed much in appearance, growing taller, growing longer and more feathery hair, piercing his ears, and wearing dangly gold diamond-shaped earrings, purplish ballet slipper-style shoes, and other women’s clothing including a colorful belt that he said he had gotten from David. He asked me how he looked and I took a moment to assess things and then said “fancy”.

Oh yes I remembered another fragment: On the stairs by the bathrooms in the 300 building, I saw Sean McCotter and said hello to him twice in a row. This was somewhat embarrassing.

Bicycle Race part II

May 10th, 2006 by Kris Skotheim; no comments

I am in the HUB lawn (at UW) with Sam and Remmington. We are in our cycling jerseys on our bikes; there is a race today around steven’s way (the main road that circles around UW campus). We walk over to the registration tent on the edge of the lawn and get in line behind two bikers from oregon, one of which was the points leader for the category C men this cycling season, and a kid in a wheelchair. I wonder for a minute how he is going to enter the bike race until his wheelchair turns into a recumbant bike and he rides away. I realize how foolish I had been – of course he can ride a recumbant!

Sam registers before me and rides off towards Drumheller fountain. The person handling the registration takes my name and my (fake) age, then I give her a dollar for the registration fee. She hands me back three quarters and I, confused, realize that I must not have given her enough. I hand her a $5 bill and she hands me back $4.60. I am dumbfounded by this and after spending a while staring at the pile of $1 bills and dimes she has just handed me, I ask her how much the registeration costs. She responds that the race is free to enter.

She obviously has a crush on me. Happily, I ride off to join my teammates, but we are soon riding through the campus of Lewis and Clark (in Lewiston, Idaho).

It’s Today

May 8th, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments

I was taking the AP Biology exam. I needed help on one of the essay questions, so the proctor took me outside to help me. I was gone ten minutes and on returning saw several people, including Tina Saludos, leaving the room, finished. Something caused me to need to leave again, and the proctor (a pushy man) took me on a tour of the grounds, which included an old abandoned building with many poor children with rips in their clothing playing inside. I told him I needed to get back to my test but he insisted that I see some more sites. I also ended up watching a video Shanti had made.

Finally I returned to the testing room to see that I had finished only one of the four essay questions, and had about thirty seconds remaining. I stared hopelessly at the second prompt, swearing profusely and loudly, as Nanlouise, standing behind me, counted down the seconds. I tried to think of an appropriate book to use to answer the question (hm, that’s not biology) but was soon forced to turn in my incomplete test.

Also I looked at a slideshow of pictures on Flickr that showed a performance Kris had been in as a sad clown. I might have taken the pictures.

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