Saturday, July 3, 2004
DREAM: Names changed to protect the dead.
Stan and I were driving around in an old 70s car like some of the ones we used to have. I think we were with a couple other people, but I don't know who they were. I think we were in Milwaukee. Or maybe Racine. Someone suggests that we stop in on someone ('Chuck') that I used to know in a very indirect way (our moms were friends...he was several years older than me...and he died probably almost 20 years ago at the age of 29 from a heart attack.) I really don't want to stop in on this person as I barely knew him and I felt we would be intruding. I suggest we call him first to see if he's home and wants to see us. We start driving toward his neighborhood, which initially looks like an area in Madison near the employment service, (Ruskin Ave). But as we drive down Ruskin, it takes on a more rural look and it somehow looks familiar to me. The houses are very cheap and shoddy and painted white (I have reocurring nightmares of small, frame white houses). We go into one and there's a bunch of people there, in a hallway, with a bunch of doors. All the doors are flimsy (made out of plywood) and painted white. I realize these aren't just rooms, these are apartments inside this little house. Everyone living there lived in a small room. I'm rather mad that no one called Chuck ahead of time to see if he wanted to see us. Stan goes into one of the rooms--it's a bathroom and he uses it. I'm waiting outside the door for him and a woman who is shorter than me (around 60, short curly hair) comes up and tries to get in the door but Stan has it latched. I told the woman that someone was using it. She said that lots of people use it. I realize that is THE bathroom for the entire place; no one has a private bath in their apartment. I guess somebody we were with also knew Chuck and they start talking. Chuck invites us into his tiny apartment where he and his girlfriend/wife live (he was married when he died). They have aquariums full of spiders. I remember seeing an ironing board and it sort of separated the rest of the room from where they had the spiders. Chuck had a tall, scraggly friend there with him too and this doofus hick was laughing at us to Chuck not thinking we would see him. I did not want to be there, but fortunately I think I woke up.
I find this dream disturbing because I dreamt about a dead person I hardly knew and never think of. Chuck's whole family--his mom, 'Julie,' especially--was simply tragic. I remember my mom telling me tales of when they played with a Ouija board when they were girls, and Julie asked it who she would marry. The Ouija board went Ha Ha Ha Ha. This could be taken that her marriage would be a joke, which it was as she got divorced, or that she would marry a Hank. (I don't think Hank stuttered, though). Julie and Hank divorced when Chuck was young, (Hank was a worthless drunk) so I guess Chuck was probably the first person I knew that was being raised by a single parent. I remember Julie having cat-eye glasses with a beehive hairdo. She looked like a caricature of people like that from the 60s. The only real memory I had of Chuck was when I was a little kid and he was a little older. I was at my grandmother's house in Racine and my mom had invited some of her friends over. Julie and Chuck were sitting on a couch and Chuck kept eating cookies. Julie kept asking Chuck 'how many of those did you take?' and Chuck said 'only two' each time. Not much parental control there. I think Chuck became quite a fat kid. The only other time I remember Chuck was when we were both teens and he drove me, my Mom and Julie to one of our mom's friends house for a gettogether (boy, did I feel out of place....all these ladies in their 40s...and you know, I'd still feel out of place if I was my age now back then). I think Julie raised Chuck at her parent's house, but eventually her parents had to go to a nursing home. My mom told me that before Chuck got his driver's license, they would ride their bicycles over to the nursing home to visit them because she couldn't afford taxi fare (like my mom, Julie didn't drive either). After her dad died, he willed the house to her with the stipulation that Hank couldn't set foot in the house. Chuck married rather young, fairly shortly after high school as I recall. He obviously invited Hank, his father, to the wedding, and the only place Hank could stay after the wedding or reception or whatever he came for was at his ex-wife, Julie's house. He slept on the couch that night, and when everyone woke up in the morning, Hank was dead. How odd is that? Dying for your son's wedding...at you ex's house? But it gets stranger. Years later, Chuck is helping Julie clean up her house (yes, the house Hank died in a few years before, that she inherited from her dad). It's a hot day and he's up in the attic cleaning it out. Chuck suffers a heart attack from the heat and dies. I'd say the house was cursed, or maybe Julie's dad put a curse on it because she allowed Hank back inside. Several years ago, Julie died. My mom didn't hear about it until months after when another friend told her.
Posted by Ann on 07/03/04@11:02 AM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?
Thursday, July 1, 2004
The visual component...
...that was missing from my previous post.
Or something like this.
Posted by Ann on 07/01/04@11:06 AM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?
Vintage Dreams
I was in a large building like a hospital or campus building or museum. It was several stories high and I needed to go up to the 2nd floor where they had a cafeteria. I bought some sort of foofy desert with mint and chocolate, but not after the guy working behind the counter gave me taste tests of other flavors.
I also remember being in a house with Stan's mom and aunt. It was a multi-level house, and it was sort of a side-by-side duplex constructed in the 60s or 70s. It had a large entrance way that I felt was unnecessary for a place with only two units. There were a bunch of retired/elderly women milling around there. One I remember had fake blue hair with feathers. Later in the dream she turned up missing, and then a man came into the dream asking where she was, saying she had disappeared. Then she reappeared and her hair had white roots that had been dyed burgundy brown, and now it was curly. Very odd dream. But not as odd as the next one:
So I was driving with Stan, presumably in Fort Collins, and saw someone's pickup that we used to know a long time ago, 'Rene.' I can't remember the 'real' color of his pickup, but I think it was white and awful olive green. He also had a VW microbus that was an awful orange color. Very 70s. But in the dream, his pickup was a mix of those ugly 70s shades, olive green, orange, gold, with horizontal stripes encircling it like somebody's bad retro web page design. On the back of his pickup there was a sign that read 'Spay and Neuter Your Vintage Pets.' I thought this hilarious, and still in my waking moments I am laughing over it. We pulled up along side his van and yelled into his car window, 'What is a Vintage Pet? Is it dead? Is it stuffed?' I can't remember what his answer was.
Posted by Ann on 07/01/04@08:25 AM CST ..::Link::..A Whisper Inside.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
A Three-Thirty in the Afternoon Ritual watched intently by the retired crowd, usually turned up at full volume.
What is Jeopardy, Alex?
Posted by Ann on 06/30/04@10:43 AM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?
Dreams With Footnotes
First dream, last night, early, around 12:45 am
I was at home and feeling rather sad. I don't know why. Stan left for work. I was doing the various things I do in the morning, drinking coffee, watering plants, organizing stuff to be mailed, whatever, and I hear someone at the back door. It's Stan, back from work, early. I'm surprised to see him and ask him if there's anything wrong. He says there is, and says that his job doesn't exist anymore, that he was fired. It is such a shock to me, that I wake up in a start. The thing is, though, I don't know if it was the shocking dream, an unbearable dream to have to continue dreaming, that woke me up, or if it was the sound of kids outside (little assholes...where are their parents?) shooting off firecrackers. I usually don't dream this early in the night, or if I do, I don't remember them. Maybe being woken up prematurely by the little assholes outside enabled me to remember the dream I was having.
Second dream, later in the morning, maybe 6 am or so.
My dad was selling license plates on eBay1. I was looking over a list of what he was selling and to whom, and he had sold (get this) a Hawaii 'Indian Island'2 plate to Peter Jennings3. The address was 'New York, NY' and his email address was something like jennings@jeopardy.com4. I was so surprised, and I was saying, 'Dad, you sold a license plate to Peter Jennings! THE Peter Jennings! Peter Jennings bought your Hawaii license plate!' Can you imagine Peter Jennings buying license plates on ebay? Can you imagine Peter Jennings buying *anything* on ebay?
Well, I can see by that dream I'm already gearing up for our trip to the front range in Colorado this year, psyching myself up for the 3:30 Jeopardy ritual every day, the tv turned on loud because my dad can't hear very well. Oy. Thank heavens we have LOTS to do there and places to see...having to just 'visit for the sake of visiting your parents' would be pure torture if I had nothing to do but sit and chat with them and endure Jeopardy.
Which brings me to my dream a couple nights ago. In this dream, I was wandering around Fort Collins. There's this special place in Dreamtime Fort Collins (that doesn't exist in reality) that is sort of Black Lodge5 in nature. You can only access it by a certain passageway, and that is often hard to find. It is located somewhere between East Laurel St. and the Library, but if you go to that general area (in my dream that is, not in reality, this does not exist in reality) does not guarantee you will see it. You have to find the special entranceway first, and it's not always available in the dream. I remember having lots of dreams where I never find it. Other dreams I find it right away. Very strange. I found it this past dream. It's a place that is very impoverished. Lots of old buildings without paint, something that looks like it's out of the civil war era or Appalachia or something. The area is low-lying, flood-prone. And it is very hard to find your way out of it once you're there (waking up helps). I have lots of dreams about places that don't really exist in Fort Collins. They stopped for a while, and I'm starting to have them again. I could literally create an entire map of these places as it is so vivid in my mind. Reocurring dreams are so strange, it's as if we actually create an entire reality that has fixed properties that can't be changed since we can go back to it dream after dream and it's still the same.
1In reality, it is STAN who is selling his license plate collection from when he was a young nerd boy on eBay, not my dad. My mom doesn't even let my dad touch her computer. Getting my dad superimposed for Stan...weird....they're nothing alike, in fact, their birthdays are exactly 6 months apart, Stan a Taurus and my dad a Scorpio.
2The hell? OK, the only thing I can think of is that in addition to the license plates Stan is selling, he is also selling these metal license plate-esque tags from his old high school's politically incorrect sport's team, The Yuma Indians.
3One of the few things that my dad and I agree on, is as far as news anchors, we both like Peter Jennings. My mom, on the other hand, doesn't. who knows why...some weird idea that he's anti-woman or something. My mom--a feminist--? What? Who knows what goes on in parents' heads
4Jeopardy. That's all my parents watch. Jeopardy. Must be a retired person thing. Seinfeld should've done a bit about this when he would visit Del Boca Vista...coming to his parents home and what does he find at 3:30 in the afternoon? Parents huddled around the telly watching jeopardy, intently, not allowing you to talk to them for the fear that they miss a question (or is it answer?).
5From Twin Peaks
Posted by Ann on 06/30/04@10:17 AM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?
Monday, June 28, 2004
I am a stupid moron.
Yesterday, Stan and I went to Pug Fest (a gathering of some 30-odd Madison-area pug owners and of course their pugs) at one of the local dog parks, near where Stan works, actually. We brought Lucifer Sam.
And I forgot to bring a camera.
Id...Idi...Idiot.
He threw up on the way over. Probably because Mommy was driving ('cause Stan was going to meet me there since he was working that day) and Plato wasn't with him. At first, he seemed a little nervous about being there, just keeping to the edges of the field. Then he started to pal around with another black pug and his owners, until he wandered so far and he wondered where we were, then he came running back to us. We kept pouring water on him so that he wouldn't overheat...although he was probably handling the heat better than the fawn pugs who have that noxious thick undercoat. All the fawn pugs were panting ("happa happa happah haaa") a lot, and it reminded me that I REALLY DO NOT MISS that rasping noise we heard every summer when Hieronymus was with us...he was an especially loud raspy panter. Then he started playing more with the other pugs. It was so fun to see him interact with "his kind". He also seemed to respond more to other black pugs as opposed to fawn ones...so it really makes me wonder how dogs perceive themselves.
The sweetest thing was, though, is when we got back home. We were all pretty pooped out and lied down on the futon. Plato and Lucifer Sam didn't just sleep next to eachother, they slept with eachothers heads on eachother. They were so glad to see eachother...Plato missed Lucifer Sam (Plato gets bad separation anxiety, not so much separation from us, but separation from the other dog in the house) and it was as if LS was telling Plato that he's still his buddy dog, despite all the pugs he met that afternoon.
Posted by Ann on 06/28/04@09:58 AM CST ..::Link::..2 Screamers.
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Amazonite
link: my gemstone jewelry