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12:20:2003 Entry: "Ann : The Past Day and a Half"

The Past Day and a Half

It was just such a weird damn night.

The night before last while lying in bed, I had been ruminating over in my mind some response to Stan's Floydian entry. This processing turned into a dream in which I was in a record store similar to Wax Trax in Denver, but different (it's the record store I dream about that doesn't exist anywhere except in my dreams, but it's the same record store in every dream)...there were lots of vinyl LPs. I was (naturally) in the Pink Floyd section. I was going to buy The Final Cut. Then Stan starts pulling out all this Dehydrated Floyd (thank you to whoever came up with that term somewhere on the internet, I cannot claim it but I think it is brilliant without being cruel like 'Pink Fraud') that he was going to buy for himself, but he didn't want to pay for the CD I wanted to get along with the ones he wanted. Hrrrmph. OK, so I was left buying it myself. End of dream.

So I thought that day when I woke up, that I will buy The Final Cut, you know, sort of a conscious effort to do what you did in your dream. Stan gets off of work, we head out to do an errand and go to Borders. In the Target parking lot, Tim calls us on the cell, Stan reaches for the phone and is blindsighted and nearly gets run over by a car. Stan, of all people, was being a stupid American on a cellphone. I found that amusing. But at least Stan has the decency to talk in the lobby of the store, not walk up and down the aisles gabbing away. Tim decided to be a bad boy and miss some absolutely dreadful sounding birthday bash for the assistant principal. He snuck out the back door of the school he works for and vanished, then called us to go out to eat with us instead, as we had asked him last night, but at that time declined because of the previous horrible commitment. As we were in the store, in every aisle there was a woman talking on a cellphone. Every single frickin' aisle. 'Find one in every aisle,' said Stan. 'You'll see.'

It took me four tries (Borders East, Borders West, Exclusive Company and finally Barnes and Noble) before I finally found a copy of The Final Cut. And I did buy it myself, but then again, Stan wasn't buying anything either. But I suppose if he does want any Dehydrated Floyd in the future, he will have to buy that for himself. The dream will be true in the end.

At dinner, Stan told a strange story of when he was a kid, he bought a strange book with an elephant and a swasticka on it, and it disappeared soon after, probably confiscated by his dad, Gordon ('Can't have the boy readin' this stuff!'). Ironically, if he had grown up with his biological dad, Richard, the book would probably have been cherished. I told Stan maybe the book was some sort of symbol sent by his dead biological grandfather. And Stan, I really don't know whether I should go there...I'll leave that end open to you.

As we were eating, I started getting extremely hot. I had no idea what was happening, but I was burning up. I thought maybe they had the temperature turned too high at Laredo's, but Tim said he was cold and Stan wasn't hot in the slightest. Usually I am the one who is coldest.

I started discussing the topic of how we can travel back in time to talk to ourselves in different times of our life, to give advice. Have you ever experienced something where you feel like you are getting guidance from someone? I think it's from a shade of yourself from the future. Like before we moved to Madison, I knew that it would either be a very good thing or a very bad thing, and it was both. I think that's because I could perceive my future self. And when you meet someone that seems so familiar, it's not because you met in a previous life, but because you are remembering them from the future. That gave way to a topic of a certain...ahem...woman...we knew once. When we first met her, she seemed so familiar, but it was only because our experience with her was so intense and emotional and painful that we were remembering into our future. That in turn gave way to a realization that when we knew her, we were so vulnerable. Our vulnerability lay in the fact not that we were new to Madison (and starting graduate school and all that rot), but that we were without music. It was the time after we moved and we had sold back all our vinyl. We had no musical foundation. I had even so much as denied I even liked music to a jerkass professor of mine (who would have excoriated me for liking the kind of music I liked anyway, so there was no great loss in his deception, but rather amusing to see his confusion of someone of a creative mind denying music). But once we started to start buying music again (CDs), the...certain...ahem...woman...started becoming less and less significant in our lives. And once I seriously got back into music again...she was gone. We had started a new home in Madison, but without a musical foundation, it was a house built on shifting sand. Once things started falling into place, musically, discovering new stuff, but most importantly, rediscovering the old, things improved dramatically.

Back at the dinner. We discussed a very humorous topic which I cannot repeat here because it would offend too many people and I do not want to be a flame target. However I mention it because it relates to the prophetic nature of conversation that we were having earlier, because later that night we would encounter something that harkened back to this not-suitable-for-internet-journal discussion. It was all very amusing. And very Seinfeldian. Right out of a Seinfeld skit. Like if Seinfeld was in Madison instead of Manhattan. And if Seinfeld was even more risquee and provocative. The Bleeding Edge. And that's all I'll say about that.

On the way home, I saw the gallery that is holding my work hostage (The Director quit, the organization or estate decided to close it, and I've been a paranoid wreck lately wondering if I'll ever see my paintings again as they couldn't be gotten ahold of) had a light on and people were milling about. I told Stan to pull over, that I had to go talk to them. As we got out of the car, a plane flew overhead. It seemed so low to the ground, like it would crash, but it was just coming in for a landing. It was spooky. I told Tim that I always dream of planes falling out of the sky. If I didn't have a generously-sized Margarita for dinner, I don't know if I would've been bold enough to do what I did as far as the gallery. I definitely felt a bit out of character. Maybe it was my future self giving me courage...heh. I started talking to people I've never seen before in my life, acting very charming and all. It was a graduate student MFA show opening that was 'renting' the space for the night, and I was able to talk to someone who could help me with my hostage situation. Hopefully. I'm usually not that bold. But I just thought, what the hell, these are my paintings held hostage here, the hell if people think I'm some party crasher ('who were those strange people?'). No, I put on the charm as opposed to the pissed off angry punk or the shy little artiste. Tim and Stan were quite amused. And I felt so damn fake.

At home, I was still hot. Tim and Stan both felt my forehead and hand. I was quite hot. I was burning up. I was not sick, though. There was nothing wrong with me...I was just burning up.

Which brings us back to this morning, listening to the radio and hearing that the shuttle Columbia was about to land in 13 minutes, feeling impending doom, and then an hour later, hearing the tragedy unfold, and how it had 'burned up' upon reentry. What I said about ourselves visiting us from the future...it's not a psychic thing. It's something else entirely.

Hard to work on stuff today. Listened to the radio a lot. Called Stan at work. Called my mom. Called Tim.

Listened to The Final Cut again, and decided to read the lyrics. Got to the last page, and something strange struck me...it was put out on Columbia Records.

Weird.

By Ann @ 20:27 PM CST:12:20:03 ..::Link::..