I woke up at 2 am with my contacts on. What follows is part of the dream I'd been having. I then woke up again at 6 am with another very vivid dream. I determined to write both dreams down, then and there. I went back to sleep. The second dream has been lost to the vastness of memory, while the first remained in portions.
--- ---
Amy and I were riding these machines--half pogo stick, half hovercraft--through what appeared to be the jungles of the Amazon. The water was blue and clear, the foliage green, almost neon green. We would soar up, then float back down towards the water. We were flying uphill over a little tributary, a noisy stream flowing over rocks. The forest was narrow, squeezing in on both sides. There was hardly room to pogo. [The Amazon really is beautiful--you should go sometime.]
We made it down to a cabin by the edge of the river. There was a man there--our tour guide perhaps. We left our hoverpogo machines and were going to get into a little boat of his. As I was walking to the boat, I saw a large wasp. The wasp landed by my foot. Then there was a loud, incessant buzzing sound. The man said to me, "That wasp stung you." I chose not to believe it, so he pointed it out to me. We both bent over and looked at my foot in the shadows made by our bodies. There was a pink blister forming on the top of my foot, between my first and second toes. We watched as the blister grew.
"We have to get the head out," the man said.
Deep within the blister, you could see the head and antennae of the wasp. The wasp's body lay next to my foot, buzzing loudly.
So that's how the wasp stings, I thought. It takes its head off and stabs it into you, and its body falls and lies there, buzzing loudly, an alarm to notify you of what it's done.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The clouds eclipsed the eclipse
There was a lunar eclipse on the 21st, slated to be visible to most of the US, including the Utah Valley, where I live. The weather decided not to cooperate, and while much of the rest of America got to witness it, I was left clouded.
--- ---
I wait outside,
watching expectantly;
I curse the weather and
the well-placed streetlamp.
I need just one single, simple
clearing--one open patch of sky
the size of a dime--
for perhaps a minute or two,
then you low, happy clouds
can go about your business,
masquerading as spring rain
over the tailend of winter.
--- ---
I wait outside,
watching expectantly;
I curse the weather and
the well-placed streetlamp.
I need just one single, simple
clearing--one open patch of sky
the size of a dime--
for perhaps a minute or two,
then you low, happy clouds
can go about your business,
masquerading as spring rain
over the tailend of winter.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Last night I was lost at sea
A dream.
--- ---
I was trying to board an airplane, a very nice and fancy aircraft. We were on a rolling stairwell that had rolled right up to the outer doors. The night was menacing. There was a storm brewing; it was windy and starting to rain. You could see through the clear clear windows inside the plane, watch the few people filing their carryons and the flight attendants shuffling past them. There were many empty seats. This was the first-class boarding area.
Each passenger was let on one by one. Amy was in front of me. They brought her inside and I tried to follow, but a flight attendant behind me grabbed me by the ankles so that I tripped. He said, "No! This flight is full." I lay there on this corrugated metal grating, struggling, kicking at his hand. The plane began firing its engines, and I shouted over it. The flight attendant couldn't hear. I watched as the plane began taking off. There was still a line of people behind me. As the sound of engines moved on, I told the flight attendant, "That's my wife." He and some of the others in the line gave me a blank stare. "I know she's a lot prettier than me, but she's still me wife."
At this, the attendant grabbed me--I had my backpack on--and we somehow caught part of the plane. We had jumped the plane, and were now dangling on the outside. The plane dipped up and down and I saw the black sea coming towards me and then away, like I was a flying fish, gyrating in the air. The wind blew my hair slick back against my head. I felt it also pulling against my pants and so I took them off for fear of getting blown off, and watched them flutter down to the dark ocean. Then somehow the attendant got us inside. I was in boxers, so he found me a pair of jeans, waist 33 Rustlers or something. There were a little big but fit fine, and I remember thinking that I shouldn't have dropped my jeans in the ocean. When I looked in the mirror I realized I had a different button-up shirt on, so he must have provided me with a new shirt as well.
Well I didn't stay with the plane. I was left in the ocean, floating far and wide and swimming and trying to find my way back home to southern California. I'd wake up and smell salt and drift back to sleep again. The one constant was the thought and voice of my flight attendant. He was like my guardian angel. I remember how he had tried to do his job, then tried to help me. I knew he was still trying to help me, direct me along the right currents. After days--and I knew it was days due to the rising and falling of the sun--I finally found myself soaked with not saltwater but freshwater and I realized I was in a river. I floated past some reeds and an airport, and I saw the plane that I had been on. I knew at that point that the plane had been landed for days now. I also knew right then that I no longer had my backpack. [The camera zooms in on a black backpack floating in the ocean far away from the protagonist. It then zooms out to show calm, empty waves in all directions and some squawking seagulls circling around it.]
So I did some amazing business. I turned around. I was able to backtrack through the currents and the freshwater and saltwater until I discovered my lonely lost backpack. This took more days. I lost track of all time, but still had the overseeing watch of the attendant to keep me going. Once I found the backpack, I suspected that once I dried it out, everything within it, including all electronics, would still work.
I floated again past the reeds and the airport. This time I kept going, further and further until I ended up in a foreign but somehow recognizable upscale LA neighborhood. It was on a hill. The river flowed like a road, straight to it. The chimneys of nearby homes were made of strange objects, like couches and large red bottles perched on top. I began walking.
I walked through automatic gates into a beautiful mansion-home with a rock facade. This was where I was supposed to go. Everyone knew I was coming. I came inside, exhausted, hungry, and strangely dry. I sat on a couch. There were six or eight people lining the couches: media people, my agent, etc. No family.
"You've been gone for nine days."
It was like I was lost and sea, recovered into another life. I didn't recognize anyone. Then some woman showed up, dressed in black, with a handsome new boyfriend. What was she doing here? She came rushing in like a mother coming to rescue her long-lost son. Did these media people think she was my wife, and notified her?
So I stumbled back to work. I had a workstation on a long, faux-wooden church table. But I when I came back, there were workers lining many church tables. Two girls were sitting there in my old spot, staring at the same monitor. They looked up at me. It seemed we had become a call center.
I took a seat at the opposite church table, where there was an opening. I decided to make some spaghetti. I was hungry. I had this very interesting broiling-inspired method, where I had steam from one pot rise up to cook the base of another, white colander-looking pot. I burnt the spaghetti very quickly. It looked awful. People were staring at me. But I mixed it around with the sauce and it ended up looking better. It tasted fine.
--- ---
I awoke.
--- ---
I was trying to board an airplane, a very nice and fancy aircraft. We were on a rolling stairwell that had rolled right up to the outer doors. The night was menacing. There was a storm brewing; it was windy and starting to rain. You could see through the clear clear windows inside the plane, watch the few people filing their carryons and the flight attendants shuffling past them. There were many empty seats. This was the first-class boarding area.
Each passenger was let on one by one. Amy was in front of me. They brought her inside and I tried to follow, but a flight attendant behind me grabbed me by the ankles so that I tripped. He said, "No! This flight is full." I lay there on this corrugated metal grating, struggling, kicking at his hand. The plane began firing its engines, and I shouted over it. The flight attendant couldn't hear. I watched as the plane began taking off. There was still a line of people behind me. As the sound of engines moved on, I told the flight attendant, "That's my wife." He and some of the others in the line gave me a blank stare. "I know she's a lot prettier than me, but she's still me wife."
At this, the attendant grabbed me--I had my backpack on--and we somehow caught part of the plane. We had jumped the plane, and were now dangling on the outside. The plane dipped up and down and I saw the black sea coming towards me and then away, like I was a flying fish, gyrating in the air. The wind blew my hair slick back against my head. I felt it also pulling against my pants and so I took them off for fear of getting blown off, and watched them flutter down to the dark ocean. Then somehow the attendant got us inside. I was in boxers, so he found me a pair of jeans, waist 33 Rustlers or something. There were a little big but fit fine, and I remember thinking that I shouldn't have dropped my jeans in the ocean. When I looked in the mirror I realized I had a different button-up shirt on, so he must have provided me with a new shirt as well.
Well I didn't stay with the plane. I was left in the ocean, floating far and wide and swimming and trying to find my way back home to southern California. I'd wake up and smell salt and drift back to sleep again. The one constant was the thought and voice of my flight attendant. He was like my guardian angel. I remember how he had tried to do his job, then tried to help me. I knew he was still trying to help me, direct me along the right currents. After days--and I knew it was days due to the rising and falling of the sun--I finally found myself soaked with not saltwater but freshwater and I realized I was in a river. I floated past some reeds and an airport, and I saw the plane that I had been on. I knew at that point that the plane had been landed for days now. I also knew right then that I no longer had my backpack. [The camera zooms in on a black backpack floating in the ocean far away from the protagonist. It then zooms out to show calm, empty waves in all directions and some squawking seagulls circling around it.]
So I did some amazing business. I turned around. I was able to backtrack through the currents and the freshwater and saltwater until I discovered my lonely lost backpack. This took more days. I lost track of all time, but still had the overseeing watch of the attendant to keep me going. Once I found the backpack, I suspected that once I dried it out, everything within it, including all electronics, would still work.
I floated again past the reeds and the airport. This time I kept going, further and further until I ended up in a foreign but somehow recognizable upscale LA neighborhood. It was on a hill. The river flowed like a road, straight to it. The chimneys of nearby homes were made of strange objects, like couches and large red bottles perched on top. I began walking.
I walked through automatic gates into a beautiful mansion-home with a rock facade. This was where I was supposed to go. Everyone knew I was coming. I came inside, exhausted, hungry, and strangely dry. I sat on a couch. There were six or eight people lining the couches: media people, my agent, etc. No family.
"You've been gone for nine days."
It was like I was lost and sea, recovered into another life. I didn't recognize anyone. Then some woman showed up, dressed in black, with a handsome new boyfriend. What was she doing here? She came rushing in like a mother coming to rescue her long-lost son. Did these media people think she was my wife, and notified her?
So I stumbled back to work. I had a workstation on a long, faux-wooden church table. But I when I came back, there were workers lining many church tables. Two girls were sitting there in my old spot, staring at the same monitor. They looked up at me. It seemed we had become a call center.
I took a seat at the opposite church table, where there was an opening. I decided to make some spaghetti. I was hungry. I had this very interesting broiling-inspired method, where I had steam from one pot rise up to cook the base of another, white colander-looking pot. I burnt the spaghetti very quickly. It looked awful. People were staring at me. But I mixed it around with the sauce and it ended up looking better. It tasted fine.
--- ---
I awoke.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Mathematics
I like to think that the sum of human experience--
every emotion, every exhilaration, and every defeat--
can be inhaled with each
ordinary, unspectacular breath.
Some-
times
I drive the highway on a
boring, busy afternoon, some drab lunchbreak from work,
and my life bubbles within me;
the heaving air halts on its way to my lungs
and triggers streaming thoughts
that flash like a strobe light,
crash around like bumper cars
or a pinball machine:
I see
a snowcapped mountain I climbed in the warmth of autumn,
bathing in the swelling salt of the Pacific,
leaping from bridges into low rivers,
watching childbirth with hands gripped,
numb with fright and excitement--
all these smiles upon all these faces,
icicles that grow like stalactites over my doorway,
bloodied noses, casts and stitches,
summer blowing its humid air into our deteriorating house
along with a symphony of crickets
and the sweet smell of a just-cut ballfield,
modern buildings rising like phoenixes
from the tombs of old structures,
and so on.
I am not the first
nor the last to recall these memories,
to breathe these slivers of eternity.
These experiences are intimately mine,
yet communal, shared,
like a jumbled storyboard
pieced with images from countless different films,
as if every single ceaseless second--
all sixteen frames' worth--
was made of
heartbeat fragments from other lives,
in technicolor.
There's reincarnation all around us.
Every breathed particle a small bit of everything else,
every taught or inherited trait a subtle homage to
countless others.
The very nature of life is cyclical,
and we are entangled within it,
looping back around,
rising up then lying down.
Moment follows moment, life follows life.
Just like that.
every emotion, every exhilaration, and every defeat--
can be inhaled with each
ordinary, unspectacular breath.
Some-
times
I drive the highway on a
boring, busy afternoon, some drab lunchbreak from work,
and my life bubbles within me;
the heaving air halts on its way to my lungs
and triggers streaming thoughts
that flash like a strobe light,
crash around like bumper cars
or a pinball machine:
I see
a snowcapped mountain I climbed in the warmth of autumn,
bathing in the swelling salt of the Pacific,
leaping from bridges into low rivers,
watching childbirth with hands gripped,
numb with fright and excitement--
all these smiles upon all these faces,
icicles that grow like stalactites over my doorway,
bloodied noses, casts and stitches,
summer blowing its humid air into our deteriorating house
along with a symphony of crickets
and the sweet smell of a just-cut ballfield,
modern buildings rising like phoenixes
from the tombs of old structures,
and so on.
I am not the first
nor the last to recall these memories,
to breathe these slivers of eternity.
These experiences are intimately mine,
yet communal, shared,
like a jumbled storyboard
pieced with images from countless different films,
as if every single ceaseless second--
all sixteen frames' worth--
was made of
heartbeat fragments from other lives,
in technicolor.
There's reincarnation all around us.
Every breathed particle a small bit of everything else,
every taught or inherited trait a subtle homage to
countless others.
The very nature of life is cyclical,
and we are entangled within it,
looping back around,
rising up then lying down.
Moment follows moment, life follows life.
Just like that.
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