Anxiety
October 31st, 2006 by Alex Walton; 3 comments
Iowa
October 29th, 2006 by Alex Walton; no comments
Cassie and I are in Iowa looking for Zach Savich and some black coffee; Minnesota’s coffee is far too pale. We run through miles of corn fields alternating who has to run in front and knock them down. Gradually the corn becomes drier and more dead until we emerge on a street corner. It is an exceptionally busy street corner for being in the middle of a corn field. The traffic lights are constantly yellow and everyone is honking. Cassie tries to walk across and is hit by a school bus out of nowhere. I see that the bus is driven by Barak Obama and shout “You motherfucker you fucking killed Cassie you worthless piece of shit!” Barak Obama shouts in German which startles me. Cassie is bleeding little pieces of pencil lead.
Then I am abruptly in Padelford with Devinatz who is trying to teach topology to me on a pocket sized chalkboard. The window keeps clattering shut and I ask him if he knows where I can get black coffee; he says he has some if I will wait. He leaves and in the meantime I realize that his office is actually a perfect cube and probably this means he is gay. He returns with a barrell of crude oil. “I don’t like crude oil” I say. “This is coffee the way my daughter makes it!” he says. I am flabbergasted and take the elevator downstairs to the rainforest, where certainly they will have some coffee. They do, it sits in pools at the bottom of every tree. I bend over and drink some and remember Iowa and Cassie. I fill my pen with the coffee and sit down to write a letter to Zach. I don’t know what to say to him so I write in the passive about Cassie’s death. I write in iambic hexameter which is awkward but I think that Zach will be impressed. In the letter I seal a smaller envelope full of wine and the lyrics to “Nobody Knows My Troubles But God” which I regret, remembering that Zach is opposed to dairy products.
Science!
October 28th, 2006 by Adrian Sampson; no comments
My family and I are at a picnic on a ridge formed mostly out of earth but partially out of a large, concrete wall, atop which is a railing. A young girl approaches us and asks me if I purchased my sandals in a giant bundle at a discount. She is right, so we laugh. She is embarrassed and leaves quickly; as she does, I realize that, with all their electronic components, it’s odd that I could obtain so many sandals so cheaply.
For fun and on an impulse, I go swinging on the railing over the concrete wall. The group of five or so scientists about a hundred feet below me begin to sing me a silly song. I assume they are ridiculing me and return silently to sit with my family. On my way there, though, it is explained to me that the song is the scientists’ way of inducting me into their secret society. I am the only student ever to have been so inducted. Good; at last I have succeeded at something.
I walk down to the water’s edge (exactly like Coleman Dock) to speak with the scientists, who include Prof Saeta. The main activity of their secret society is solving nifty mysteries. They show me two brown bottles filled with ice. One is cast into Puget Sound. It sinks quickly; a voice immediately bubbles up commanding us to locate the hidden lair of “Abraham T. Lincoln”.
After hours of swimming and many wrong turns, we do so. It’s a small, fenced-off area at the edge of the Sound. Lincoln has left an important message for us. I ask the scientists whether I should let the world know of our discovery; they tell me that this mystery was a relatively uninteresting and unimportant one compared to their everyday work. We cast the second bottle into the Sound.
The Music
October 25th, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; one comment
Julian Skotheim was playing the guitar. He was very good. He looked like Kris when he had the ponytail, and had a complex question to ask me. A girl (Sara Sheridan?) took the guitar after him and also played well.
A singing group which I thought might be “Unleashed!”, the a cappella group with which I have been singing. I watched them and did not consider singing with them because the concert either had been planned before I joined, or was taking place in the past.
In which the protagonist is an insomniac
October 21st, 2006 by Alex Walton; no comments
There were upwards of 5 dreams last night; I remember some of some.
1. I am with Ariana and (I believe, though they didn’t say anything) Joel and Lizzie. We are walking down a dirt road in a place that feels like a dry farming valley in southern California. We are hungry and carrying manuscripts. By the side of the road, sitting in an odd assortment of white plastic chairs at various tables, are some old mexican men. Ariana says that we should sit here and eat. They have tomatoes chopped into 1/4 inch wedges and sprinkled with herbs. The food looks good but I am resistant, because I don’t think that we are welcome here. She insists though “The tutors are already sitting, down, see?” and sits down. I (and the other two people) sit and begin to eat the delicious tomatoes. More old Mexican men arrive and began to speak to us and grin. We don’t understand. Then the very bad thing happens and it turns out we are sitting in the middle of a family reunion/meeting for a very creepy, very messed up family. Many of them are blind but all in a sort of different way; one boy, about my age, has sand all around his eyes which are blue-ish white and hideously oversize. He gets very close to me and I feel uncomfortable. They are mostly all autistic, too, and shouting. I don’t remember what happens next but I think somehow we leave on foot, and after going somewhere else I wake up.
2. I am walking by a supermarket which has four lines of people outside the automatic doors. I feel very good about life, partly because my watch is being exceptionally good at keeping time. I pass the supermarket and am in front of a brick wall when an enormous (bigger than a semi) truck/trailer/thing roars towards me at full speeds. Truly I can’t communicate how long and huge it was– it had a space in the middle with a motorboat loaded in, and was filled with jeering, angry 20-something men, mostly who looked like frat boys. They were screaming incomprehensibly and lunging out of the windows and throwing things. I was certain they were drunk and insane. At any rate they were trying to run me over. There was a girl standing near me and I shouted at her to get out of the way then ran over and tried to protect her. I pushed her out of the way and the truck nearly hit the brick wall. It backed up and tried to hit me. At this point I was certain there was nothing accidental about it but there was a terrifying lack of motivation for what they were doing– terrifying in the way that dealing with someone irrational is terrifying. I am just screaming uncontrollably at this point [but apparently not in real life-- which is good.] and after they try once more I manage to run back towards the supermarket and hide behind two girls who are standing in line. I try to talk to them about what’s going on– ask them for help or something– but they think that I am the insane one and are afraid of me. They apparently don’t find the actions of the frat-boy-driven-boat-and-semi-thing irrational at all. This is even more scary. The last thing that happens is that they park the thing and get out and start walking towards me & the supermarket. Then I woke up.
3. Cassie and I (and Jay?) are in a hotel room. I remember the electronic key card lock. We are making fun of our chances to win the lottery and joking about how dumb it would be to win the prize. Then we win the prize. Or, Cassie does at least, and she turns, looks at me, and says, “Oh my god, Alex, do you know what this means?” “No.” “It means we can take that road trip to meet that Spanish man I told you about.” We laugh hysterically! We are going to take a roadtrip! The prize is an old beat up van. The very wealthy people standing all around us look enviously at us. Something seems wrong with the whole situation but I agree to go on the roadtrip and so Cassie and I get in the car and drive through the hotel door. We appear at the Pompidou Center in Paris. “FUCK!” Cassie swears. “I hate art.” At this point I am confused and kick the car for its lack of cigarette lighter. I think to myself “the French will never respect me, my shitty car, or Cassie.”‘
4. I am running down by the river (which is also Marine View Drive S, near my old home) and looking for someone who is apparently the mother-to-be of my child. I am also trying to get to school and jumping through people’s backyards. It is frustrating to be multitasking this way, and I feel ineffective and lost. When I get down to the water finally there is a raft that takes me back upstream. Something goes horribly wrong and I realize that there’s no way I’m going to find my s.o. and that really all this has been a big trick on me. I throw away my tiny red backpack. Everything is dark blue and a few other people appear in the raft. I don’t want to talk to them.
Set Theory & Death
October 20th, 2006 by Alex Walton; no comments
I am trying to talk to my dying father on the telephone but he only wants to talk about squash and set theory. I promise him I will read his dissertation, and try, but it is written in Hebrew. He will only let me talk to him about anything else if I finish reading it. I keep trying to interject about how he’s going to die soon, and I love him and all, and I appreciate that he taught me how to bake cakes. I also hope that he will reveal to me his lifelong secrets, like when he learned (apparently) learned Hebrew.
When he dies I am shouting “I don’t understand your use of phi on page 28B!” I am convinced he has died because I couldn’t understand him. My brother tells me that I should have let him read the set theory paper, because he is an actual mathematician. (It’s clear I am a fake mathematician in the dream. I submit untrue papers under a penname.) All we have left of my dad is his pumpkin pie recipe and half a frozen pumpkin which he has been saving. My mother is strangely absent from the dream but I think that maybe she had already died.
Nothing Exceptional
October 19th, 2006 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
I wake up in my dorm room at friday harbor labs and walk to the dining hall, where I have breakfast (eggs and potatoes) with Jose and Vil head for the labs. My professor lectures me for a while, then I walk back to the bathroom in the dorm and get into an old bathtub with unpolished silver lion feet and peeling white paint to take a shower. My professor walks into the room and we start talking in Mathematica code. After a while, my roomate comes in and he starts talking in mathematica code too.
Only when I wake up for real do I realize that at no point in my dream was I or anybody involved in the dream wearing clothes and at no point did this occur to me as odd (awkward).
I fell asleep at the Allegro, dreamed
October 19th, 2006 by Alex Walton; no comments
That the water in my body was all converted to corn starch and caffeine, and that I no longer could function as a physical entity, so they built efficient, ecologically awesome cars out of me (using the caffeine and the fact that I had basically become a big ball of energy) and Cait tried to make pancakes out me (using the cornstarch). The pancakes were alright, but I had a hard time enjoying them. They were out of tune.*
*I think maybe I need to apply this idea in real life. This salad is okay but it is a little out of tune. Play that C again.
(Later) I have two short dreams: In the first I am the set builder for an opera by Bach; I am visionary and paint a set that is miles wide. I am using systems of precipitation and condensation to paint the large area; the paint of a certain color evaporates and then rains down. Sometimes I am caught in these rainstorms, and I shout and throw my hands up.
In the second (very brief) I am in Paris in a small apartment. There is a solar orrery turning above my bed, and I am smoking a cigarette. When I breathe out the smoke is caught and spun in the motion of the planets. I watch it swirling around a blue-green Neptune which is the size of my thumb. The bed squeaks as I adjust my posture.
Adventure
October 18th, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
I embarked on some sort of tradition-steeped, group-led adventure which I did not fully understand. Christina Russel, who had been on one of these adventures before, clued me in a little. She would be asking for bigger personal challenges along the way, through means of a monetary or ticket-based system.
We were on a mountain, crossing a crevasse or something by means of a bridge made from approximately the same type of wood as the McCarty dorm furniture. To my left, the ground appeared very near, but to the right it was hundreds of feet down. This did not seem impossible. I was a little scared of dying, and clung to the edge.
When we reached a stopping point, I broke character (although I’m not sure what my character had been) to ask Leah (I think) if she had brought a sleeping bag. She replied that she hadn’t, but that she had a blanket she could use. I told her I thought that might be kind of cold. It turned out that many members of the adventure group (myself included) had not brought sleeping bags.
We dropped by an indoor bathroom facility, where there was more confusion.
–
I was walking on the UW campus with three other people, one next to me and two behind. A fifth person approached and asked if any of us were in the ROTC program. I told him the girl behind me was. He advocated peace.
Lemons, murder, Marie Antoinette
October 17th, 2006 by Alex Walton; no comments
It is night time and I am running away from home. I have with me: the White Album on vinyl, a spool of microscopically thin black thread, and a bottle of wine. I am running away because I am being framed for the murder of Ernest Henley. I try to get in touch with Jenny (my alibi) but her voicemail message is just a Roman Catholic sermon in latin, and it does not end, so I can’t leave a message.
Soon I realize I have run all the way to Greece. There is a little house made of stone and olives pinned to the door with pushpins. I am still afraid of the police and so I go in; inside is Jenny and Marie Antoinette, and they are wearing the same frumpy clothes. “We have been to a fashion show!” they say and start to dance to a Bach cello suite. Jenny is singing the words to “The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth”. Soon they sit down to try the ouija board I’ve made for them. They are exceptionally drunk and can’t do it properly. I help them but find myself drunk, too. We take down a bunch of jibberish and laugh hysterically. I am now unworried by the situation with the murder for three reasons: 1) Marie Antoinette is dead. 2) Jenny has set outside a pile of hats she no longer wants. 3) Everyone knows, I reason, that the Greek police are completely incompetent– just look at those James Bond movies. [note: the obvious logic of this is lost on the conscious.]
Because I am no longer worried I go outside. I am pleased to see that I really am in Greece: there are gnarled olive trees and the wind is blowing. I find one olive tree growing out of a slab of stone. It has all colors of olives and lemons as well. As I pick a lemon from the tree Russian police (one of whom is actually Daniel Bruhl [The Edukators, Goodbye Lenin]) shoot tiny bullets through my hands. I tell them that my hand has fallen asleep, and could they please stop. They do. They look confused, and I start running again.