Hitchincock Steamboats
In case you were wondering how my mind operates. Fragments of a dream from July 2011.
Dreams
Ugh Sandwich
Took liquid ibuprofen with a fork.
I made a biscuit sandwich with lots of butter (so much that it seeped through to the crust), bacon and cheese. I set it in the cabinet and when I pulled it down to microwave it, webbing and bugs — not spiders exactly, something like large black mantises or ants standing upright — stuck to one side of it. I wiped it off and put it back, not realizing I was placing the plate right in a spider web. I took it down again and the bugs were back and there were twice as many, and a bite had been taken out of it. I was so frustrated I started crying and tossed the plate aside, yelling at Momma about it and behaving as if the whole thing was completely unavoidable.
— April 2, 2012
Booking It
Cruising, looking at houses in the middle of the night. I’m sitting in the backseat to the left. My parents are arguing about where we’re going. All the houses we pass sit very close to the road and almost all are on sharp curves. I tell them the place we’re headed is flooded and trashed but they don’t hear me or don’t care. Once we arrive, it’s obvious there isn’t any electricity and we leave the doors open and light candles to see by. There is now an older couple with us.
We begin digging and making piles of stuff we want to take home. I grab a very old book and study it. It was originally published in 1815 but this printing is from 1821. The cover is clay or similar and embossed or etched with red details and a man’s portrait. Most pages have numbers handwritten in blue ink at the bottom and there are hastily scrawled notes in the margins. The book is in a dark red/maroon wrap made of either leather or soft canvas, about twice the size of the actual book, ties hanging from the right flap meant to keep it shut. I think the ties are too stiff to use without snapping. Someone had written on the wrap — more numbers, I think — but it’s long since worn away. I know that it’s worth at least $1,000 because I’m familiar with the first edition, so I carry it with me into the front room. The old man with us recognizes it and says that that copy wouldn’t go for less than $4,000 and that he would buy it off me right there before mentioning that it could be worth as much as $7,000. I turn him down and hold onto it until we leave.
— February 17, 2011
A couple things worth noting: This was at the height of my family’s Pawn Stars addiction, and (unrelated) I had become obsessed with finding my mother’s copy of Night Shift, convinced it was a first edition. I never was able to flush it out.
Stage Fright
Forced into doing a school play where I play second to the teacher’s “Sarah.” I’m meant to be the leading lady with one song where I lament about work before catching the eye of the lead, played by B. We’re late and instead of rehearsing the teacher decides to run through once with a paying audience. Outside the cafeteria, I put on my makeup and start going over the song but as it comes time to walk in I can’t remember enough of the words and back out. Flustered, I explain how I can’t bring myself to ruin the show further and the teacher steps in herself. Green screen effects are filmed on set and people grumble about it. One woman points out how the teacher’s topless in one scene (she’s drifting across the screen, acting as if she’s underwater) and another surrounded by kids squawks back at her that of all the things in the play, that’s what she’s upset about? They get into an argument about how mothers shouldn’t be ashamed of their bodies and I slump back in my chair.
I’m at a table with a bunch of rednecks who blame me for the play falling apart. They’re all in plaid and chewing snuff. One of them admits I would have been a better fit for the part. I hand the script over to the only one holding his tongue, who tells me he’s going to draw up an outline minus the songs so we can keep everything organized. Leaving, I pass him sitting at a typewriter and he hands me what he’s got so far. I walk up behind B. who’s carrying his dog Maggie, used during a green screen scene, only now her flowy red hair is cropped and white. She appears frozen in flight. He stops to chat with a woman and an old man missing his legs sitting in a small tub of sand on a bench. I stop and smile and they agree I should’ve been in the play. A large dried out insect — a bee or a fly — whines beside them and flexes its wings. They laugh, but everyone else flees and mutters how “that thing’s going to kill somebody.” We board a bus to leave, and I relax a little knowing the play wasn’t a disaster because of me.
– December 28, 2012
© Dennis Skley
Stone Jaw
At a school function at the same table as Trey Parker and his girlfriend. A gaggle of girls are chatting farther down the row. Students are acting as waiters and taking orders but no one ever asks us what we want. I’m given a chicken sandwich smothered in green peppers when I see Trey’s left and people are filing out. I can’t remember whether or not I put my cell phone in my bag, and since our bags were collected and I don’t know where they are, I head towards Magnitude from Community intending to ask him. He’s sitting with his arms folded and his head down. There are three boxes of food in front of him that I assume he’s supposed to deliver. I set my cash down and he grabs it not realizing it’s mine, so I shove his boxes under a pile on the floor as I rummage through my pockets. He accuses me of trying to steal from him and says he thought I wasn’t like the others, waving the slip of paper at me that I’d written on earlier (we’d been directed to write affirmations or something at the beginning of the dinner). I start retching and stand over the nearest trash can. He says I’m acting. I gag that I have a panic disorder, pulling pieces of chewed paper from my mouth, but he’s already leaving.
Outside, I wander around in the rain with my hand over my mouth; it has swollen to the size of a softball and my tongue is poking out. A blue van I recognize stops ahead of me and someone waves at me from the cracked door. Sarah jumps out so I follow her. She stops to reassure her younger sister at the bus, and when she turns and sees me she screams. [Liz] catches up to us and starts crying, pleading for someone to help me as I’m clearly in pain. A nurse pulls me back inside and jabs a needle into my jaw, three spots on each side. She leaves me in a tiny room to fetch meds and I’m tempted to look in the mirror but can’t bring myself to do it.
– December 28, 2012
I woke up with a sore jaw and my chin and lips felt bloated and hard to the touch. This was the first of two dreams I had that day, the last I recorded for the year. Here’s the second.
There Was an Old Woman Who Lived Under the Couch
An old lady in blue with a matching blue bonnet rides down the road on a tractor. It jerks and pops and comes to a stop, almost throwing her off. She clambers down and kicks a tire. It’s raining. A man, a neighbor I don’t recognize, helps get it going again and she rides home in the downpour. Cut to the woman in our house, no taller than a pencil standing on its end, living amongst the garbage under our couch. We decide to give her a doll’s rocking chair, something to occupy her time. I get on my knees and call to her. “Excuse me!” But the chair is now a white kitten, which she coos over and accepts with tears in her blue eyes.
Company’s coming. We’re told to clean under the couch, even though no one would see the mess. I worry for the old woman; I don’t want to uproot her. [Liz] refuses to move the VHS tapes she’s let pile up, and I stalk off to the kitchen where I find Robin Williams hovering over the sink. I ask him for a shovel.
The white kitten is now black and has emerged from beneath the couch to chase our shadows.
– September 17, 2012
c. 1840s
Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Collection
Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library
Housesitting
Somehow, I don’t know how, I find myself housesitting for Amanda Palmer.
I can’t tell if we’re in NYC or Boston, but the view from the second floor apartment is incredible. The walls are purple and in the fading light it almost feels like I’m underwater. A pug scampers in and out of the kitchen, where most of the action happens. When I first step in, I’m confused. I’m suddenly too tall for the room and the ceiling, well …
© Kevin Botto
It looks a lot like this. I duck, then I realize the cutouts are just the right size to fit a person’s head. There’s minimal furniture – a fridge, a chair in the corner, an end table. Molly Crabapple is there, brewing coffee and swearing when the percolator spits at her. I look in the fridge and find the two soggy tacos I made the night before. Mark of RENT fame straightens his scarf and announces he’s on his way out, and I ask if I’ll be able to take a cab to Columbus. I get some funny looks and decide it’s best to stay put or prepare to do a lot of walking.
I’m alone now. I sit in the corner against a potted palm, mulling over what I brought to read, trying to plot what to write in my journal. Neil Gaiman arrives that evening and we share a lovely meal. The sun is cresting the skyline when he leaves, nary a word spoken between us, soft pink light filtered through the tattered curtains and lighting up the kitchen wall.
I wake to the same pink light creeping across the sheets.
– June 14, 2012
© Kyle McCluer