Philly Toast?
October 30th, 2005 by Sean Fraga; no comments
i am in a city that feels sort of like philadelphia but isn’t. i am in a restaurant with my sisters. this restaurant serves only toast, which is apparently french toast, since they make it by pouring batter into molds. they have an extensive menu and are very busy.
i can hear my parents yelling at me from outside the restaurant; they’re displeased that i’m in the toast restaurant because my grandparents are here and i don’t see them very often. although i protest, my grandparents pay for the toast.
the scene shifts and i am in the raised stone courtyard of a library. there’s a rise around the edge, that you can sit on. my family leaves, and i’m alone with a woman who i figure out is a freshman at UPenn or some other university near there. this is not an interview, but she tells me about the business school. i politely do not tell her that i am not interested in business.
eventually i find out that she grew up on nantucket. “what must that have been like?” i ask (my grammar in dreams is suspect). she tells me that she told boys to fuck off.
the sun rises and hits the glass on a building on one side of the courtyard. at some point in the dream i have cut my hair and am confused when i wake up with long hair.
Inside The Beltway, Inside The Bedroom.
October 7th, 2005 by Sean Fraga; no comments
I am standing in a Safeway that I know is in the DC area–I have never been to a grocery store in DC but presume that they look roughly the same–when I spot a man I know to be Joe Biden–I do not know what Joe Biden looks like (apparently he looks like this; he did not look like this in my dream)–standing by an endcap display and holding a box of something, likely ice cream cones.
I’m sort of excited to see Joe Biden, since he’s a senator and thus famous for DC.
The checker (I am at a checkout stand) indicates that I am to go ahead with the next step of the checking-out process, which I understand to mean I am to drive toro (my saab) onto this platform that folds out of the check-out stand, much like the ramps on metro buses, except (obviously) it is car-sized.
For some reason, the controls for this platform are located in the base of a display that is keeping roast chicken warm. A friend of mine stands by the controls and operates them, folding the ramp out at exactly the right speed. The ramp is black plastic, and does not appear to have any sort of support, but I don’t doubt that it will support toro’s weight.
Once the ramp is extended, I walk towards toro, who is parked between the roast chicken display and display of tulips. I am about to drive him towards the ramp when the scene shifts.
I am standing in my bedroom with Adrian and a boy who looks to be about 16 or 17 who I identify as Joe Biden’s son. I don’t know if Joe Biden has a son. I also identify the boy as being Jonathan Hallet (simultaneously) despite the fact that he looks nothing like Jonathan and is in, fact, a precise image of the red-headed junior who is always wearing a blue track jacket advertising Greece.
Adrian and I talk about how much he is enjoying teaching Japanese pre-school/kindergarten. I am able to either see–or perhaps he mentally transmits?–an image of a preschool classroom, with lots of small Japanese children running around. Joe Biden’s son/Jonathan Hallet/Greecian Track Jacket appears unphased.
The three of us then talk about open doors.
My room looks like my room except the armchair near the window has been rotated 90 degrees towards the south.
Extemp at Concrete Disneyland
June 29th, 2005 by Sean Fraga; no comments
This was a huge tournament–triple-flighted extemp, seven speakers per panel (compared to nationals: double-flighted, five/panel) and it was held on one level of a very concrete, very upscale-corporate Disneyland. The buildings themselves were grey, and three stories high, with sliding glass doors and were set close together, with just cobblestone footpaths between them.
I exited the stairwell on the wrong floor and was somehow in the middle of a Beauty and the Beast playground.
Later, we (the team?) took a shuttle to help a single mother and her daughter move into their new house. I left to use the bathroom, which had flat-panel screens on the toilet and counter. These were so absorbing that I stayed in the bathroom for a long time–so long that I worried that the team had left and that I had missed my speaking position.
I came downstairs to find the daughter asleep on the floor. Outside, down a stone path was my team. I was the seven speaker in the third flight, but woke up before I had to compete.