Visitation
November 29th, 2006 by Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley; no comments
I was in a room with someone female, possibly my maternal grandmother, although her identity is irrelevant. I heard guitar music coming from a nearby room so I went in, and found my grandfather playing guitar. This was extremely terrifying because he died two weeks ago, and also there was something wrong with his mouth.
I left the room to ask the female person if she could hear also hear the music. She could, and we went in and found it was actually a visitation.
(And then in what I think was a different dream…)
My grandfather (still dead) was sitting on a stage in front of an audience of loved ones, including me and my mother. My mother talked to me about how the dead really can come back, although most people don’t believe it. My grandfather addressed me from the stage. When he finished, I wanted to tell him I loved him but someone else said it first, so I only echoed.
(I awoke certain I had just communed with the dead, and disappointed that it had to be in the form of a dream so it would seem unreal.)
Bicycle Mutiny
November 29th, 2006 by Alex Walton; no comments
In this dream I believe I am an eight year old girl. I believe at the beginning I was lucid enough to make that choice of gender.
We are in the parking lot after school. Cars are picking other kids up, but we, arms stretched out over banana-seat bicycles, are on a mission to buy more bikes. We ride down a gravel hill which bends west. It’s cold. There is some mutiny within the group, and I am involved in it. I believe I am the two-timing traitor to the current group politic; we struggle in the street and my 8 year old feminine self draws a switchblade on someone’s son. (I am way more tough than any of the other boys and girls.) At any rate, we make the shady bicycle purchase from a man in a little red shack. Apple trees, splayed out like spiders, have limbs reaching all around, and he listens to the radio.
Another Waking Dream – Early Exposure
November 29th, 2006 by Matt Wohlford; no comments
I’m lying in bed watching my roommate getting ready for school an hour and a half early. He puts on some bizarre looking shoes, explaining to me that these are the shoes he was talking about when he described his high school attire to me early last month. He proceeds to bust out an essay he’s just had returned to him with a mediocre grade. He bitches about the vagueness of the teacher’s complaint as to his “misplaced punctuation.” Then he leaves.
I wake up. The view is the same. Brian is gone.
I hop out of bed and install myself in my throne (a bowl-like chair). I’m aware that I’m probably exposing myself to the room because I’m only wearing boxers, but it doesn’t matter because Brian is gone.
But then he hops back in the room! His super early preparation was real, but the shoes and the essay (and any interaction whatsoever) were mere products of my quasi-asleep brain! Fuck. He had just brushed his teeth and was spinning back to grab his comb.
I quickly readjust my boxers.
Jesus, Jose, Vil
November 28th, 2006 by Kris Skotheim; no comments
David and I are walking into town to meet Jose and Vil at the ferry; they are returning from a weekend in Victoria. At the intersection near the highschool a brown pickup truck stops and the woman in the front seat opens the door and introduces herself as ____ (I remember that when I woke up I remembered her name – something like “victoria” or “margeret”). Vil and Jose get out of the back of the truck. Suddenly, the reason that this strange woman stopped is no longer mysterious.
Somebody is nailed to a large, wooden cross (Jesus?), but instead of being nailed by his hands and feet, there is one, large nail through his chest. I don’t think he’s alive. There is blood everywhere, and all I can see is his bloody chest. This scene turns into a small painting that hangs itself up next to other similar scenes.
The Tarp Game
November 28th, 2006 by Jenny Crimp; no comments
I sit on the edge of a flat rooftop of a house between several taller apartment buildings in the city. I am very warm, because the late afternoon sun is reflecting off of the brick buildings surrounding me. In front of me, a large blue tarp is stretched out tightly between the apartments level with the roof I am on. It is so shiny that looking at it hurts my eyes. There is an announcer and two contestants, a girl and a guy, in the center of the tarp. They are on a gameshow which is being aired over the radio, but they need one more contestant. The announcer tries to tempt me to join, listing all of the fabulous prizes I could win, including a huge flatscreen TV, but I am wary of their offer. I make a comment about how fishy this seems to the guy and girl. The announcer gives me a dirty look and begins the game.
I know something is going to go wrong, so I step out onto the tarp as the girl begins leaping towards a target on the tarp. Her motion causes me to slip and fall, which causes the tarp to bounce like a trampoline. That causes the girl and guy to fall down, and we are soon bouncing around this giant shiny blue suspended tarp. I try to stop my motion to lessen the bouncing, but the tarp is too slippery for me to stick to, and instead the bouncing gets worse. We all bounce to the edge and are flung off, just managing to grab onto the tarp before we can fall to the ground, some thirty feet below. All the while the announcer comments on our actions, completely unaffected my the motion of the tarp. S/he walks to the edge where my fingers are stuck in the metal rings of the tarp and looks down at me, holding out a microphone and asking how much I want the digital camera.
Foggy Day
November 26th, 2006 by Jenny Crimp; no comments
I ride with my dad in the car towards Des Moines. It is very foggy, and we scan the fog for Alex on his bike debating whether he would be ahead of us by now or behind us. We decide to stop at a diner along the side of the road, reasoning that if he is behind us he will catch up to us there, and if he is ahead, he will be going in the opposite direction.
Across from the diner there is a shack. I venture inside, where there are many hammers and other tools a blacksmith would use hanging from the walls and workbench. I reach up to the highest shelf and pick up a hammer, which I find disturbingly heavy and worn. The two people in the hut cringe and tell me the wolf is coming and I should get out before it’s too late. I judge that it is already too late and hide in the cupboard while the others climb on top of the shelves. Eventually I hear voices. It is the Realtor and she is leading the prospective buyers to the hut.
“The yard needs some landscaping,” she says, “but the guest house is really charming.” I debate whether to wait until they find me or confess and hope I won’t be punished too severely. I step out, facing the woman in the mauve skirt suit and boldly announce that I had just wanted to mend my bracelet and I was just about to leave. They all stare at me silently as I push past them into the yard.
Back at home I look out at the fog-covered Puget Sound. As I watch, first the fog retreats, heading north, then the water is sucked out too. I am puzzled at first, wonering why the Sound is so shallow, and then realize that a tsunami must be coming. I wonder how I can possibly escape on foot.
Sonnets (or tryptophan) shake up trouble
November 24th, 2006 by Alex Walton; no comments
Jay dislikes the crown of sonnets I send to him for review. He crosses out two or three at a time because they “do nothing!” They are actually really great, so I am disappointed that Jay has such poor taste.
We are going to a Webley show and also trying to arrange a group photograph. I get excited when I look at my watch at 11:11. My roommates are there and look thoroughly unenthusiastic. At night, we cross the San Francisco bridge. At Webley, we go through a series of doors to a conference room where he sings hate songs for Donald Rumsfeld. I exit into the woods because I have to pee, but just end up walking around in the ferns with my pants unzipped shouting to no one about Rumsfeld.
In Olympic National Park, I drive our blue van. In the back, the girls from Cocorosie are playing with two tiny cheetahs, and Ariana is doing a jigsaw puzzle contentedly. Suddenly the door comes unhinged from the car and falls off. (Cocorosie disappears.) I stop the car and get out. Other cars stop, including one that just passed us, which strikes me as totally unnecessary. I worry we are blocking traffic but somehow cars wedge themselves past. We take the car to a mechanic Ariana says she knows, who pops the door back on for 10,000 dollars. Ariana’s insurance covers 5,000 of it. As we wait outside the door to a classroom, I try to read the mechanic “Sleeping on the Wing” from “Postwar Polish Poets”. He is mildly enthused about this, but every time I get close some error occurs– I am on the wrong page, or the poem was actually a different poem by Zbignev Herbert, or something. I am foiled about ten times before I give up and realize that it isn’t in the book at all. The mechanic (who has grown long, curly hair) sighs and shuffles his feet.
I walk into an airport at night. I am trying to fly from Houston to Seattle, but haven’t found a flight yet. The airport is large and busy with little children. I have an important secret, and am carrying a portfolio of sonnets with comments from Zbignev Herbert.
I speak with my father. It comes to light that my brother has been having sex in our van, somehow utilizing a band-aid which was left there. This is apparently related to the door falling off. I express outrage about the $10,000 charge on the door, but Ariana points out that her mechanic friend didn’t charge any labor cost. I concede that to be true though the logic troubles me. I take a drink from the water cooler and wait in a lobby. Lindsey tells me she hopes I’ll drink absinthe with her. I am repulsed and say I never will, but drink absinthe from my sleeve (where there is a hidden pouch of it) when she isn’t looking.
I run through an old style dormitory with the same secret. Outside at least a thousand children throw fox-tails past the window. What I am getting done must be finished by the time they realize I exist. (Is it recess?)
I am back in the airport, hiding under a brown cardboard box. I shuffle along the floor as if the wind was blowing me. This way I will not be discovered, and can return to Seattle on a tiny jet which the mechanic, in collaboration with my brother’s girlfriend, has prepared. Once on the plane I receive many letters of congratulations (and a few condemnations) from my relatives, but they are disguised as court summons.
Wild Garlic
November 23rd, 2006 by Jenny Crimp; no comments
Riding in the the silver honda with my mom and dad, my mom comments on how well the new windshield wipers work in the pouring rain. We drive into a forest, along the edge of a ravine. The car vanishes and I walk along a winding, muddy path to the school bus where I live. I see some white things poking out of the mud. I pull one out of the ground and discover it is roasted garlic. There are many more bulbs of wild, roasted garlic growing all around me, and I pick up as many as I can carry without squishing them.
In my grandmother’s living room, Gail Kolpack shows me the fancy pop-up origami card she just gave to my dad for his birthday (which is actually in August). it is impressively folded from one sheet of paper with two cranes at opposite corners. It has a humorous remark inside something along the lines of “This is the distance between us when we dance”. I think about this and conclude that it must make sense because my dad is a terrible dancer. I feel bad about only having garlic to give to him.
Like hell we kick plants
November 22nd, 2006 by Alex Walton; no comments
I work a long time at a desk with many angular, spiny potted plants. The work is dull. Joel appears. Everything goes completely insane. Some sort of klezmer-surf-dance music plays at exceptional volume, and Joel and I dance on the desks, holding many ridiculous body positions for a few seconds each. Then we kick all the plants off the desk and computer keyboards & monitors as well. I understand that this is somehow offensive to all parties involved in the Watergate scandal, from Woodward and Berstein to Nixon himself. Clearly I am sticking it to the man. Men, even.
Tend to your shit!
November 21st, 2006 by Matt Wohlford; no comments
Brian’s alarm clock is going off but the fucker is just sleeping right through it! He’s not even moving!
“Fuck! Are you going to get that?”
Then I wake up to discover that I’d been talking to an empty bed, and the clock was mine. How embarrassing.