Saturday, August 29, 2020

082920

 I'm not sure where the beginning is so I'll start with the bed frame.  It was old heavy wood with drawers underneath, carved in simple patterns but painted blue & red & yellow, like something from a gypsy wagon.  J had painted it & I felt like it was one of the last tangible items from our time together.  I was worried about the water coming in from the windows behind it.  They were shut, but the wind was strong enough that draughts were blowing the curtains out from them.  Thin white curtains.  Somehow there was a narrow mat of vegetation from the rain guttering on the sill inside with plants sprouting from it.  While trying to keep it from falling behind the bed, I see a City garbage truck driving through my back yard.  This shouldn't be possible & I'm yelling obscenities at it as it squeezes around the corner of my house.  Then I notice everything that should be behind my house is gone.  There are trucks & equipment & open foundations where structures should be.  I am so angry.  I head out of the bedroom & in passing, glimpse that I now have three dogs, but the new one is still just a shadowy face in a closet.  When I get to the living room my phone buzzes.  It's my old flip-phone, but there is a video playing on the little outside screen.  It's a clip from a sitcom & I squint at it trying to figure it out.  I shake my head, thinking this is exactly what's wrong with people, they'll stop in the middle of anything to look at anything their phone tells them to.  When I get to the front door I notice that my kitchen seems so much bigger because my refrigerator & table are gone, having left a radius of dust bunnies.  Believing the people outside stole my stuff, I open the door to demand answers & am stunned to find my whole street is a bombed-out disaster.  Jagged remains of houses choked with ash as far as I could see.  Like a postcard of Dresden in WW2.  And it is freezing.  I hear someone screaming.  As I shut the door I realize I'm dreaming.  I know that I am dreaming, but I think that it only started when I looked at my phone, like a hypnotic suggestion.  I wonder if I'm sleepwalking or if my body is on the floor.  And I think that if I'm dreaming, then I can control some of it.  I want a coat, so there is a closet by the door that doesn't really exist.  I dig out a thrift store McGregor ranch jacket I've had since I was 16 & put it on over my pajamas.  I want things to be different when I open the door, and so everything is verdant again.  My front yard is fenced & covered in Summer vines.  I walk to the corner of the yard to latch the gate, wondering how the trucks made it through without damaging anything.  I wander out to the street & around some parked cars.  I hear an early-Sixties song, like Lesley Gore or Brenda Lee singing something along the line of "I gave my love to the wishing well".  I remember that I am dreaming when two ridiculous humanoid Rottweilers wearing superhero outfits fly by overhead & I mutter, "What the f***?", and convince myself it was an ugly kite.  To have such a creepy dream end on such a stupid image should not faze me in 2020.