I just woke up
Or I just fell asleep..


everything compartmentalized
boxes
boxes
boxes

someone had a front lawn
scraggly grass
kodachrome tricycle
wooden stairs with peeling paint
you know the one

the boxes were themed.
kid box, song box, everyman's box
there was a system so everyone had power. everyone.
they had risers, sofas, spiders, haircuts.
everyone was almost alive.

Ischak, Izsak, Isaac..
He was in every box.

One woman wore a beige leather jacket
she bossed her box
she was a Sheri Tepper archetype

Ischak..

he was so young
so old
so unbearably old
he would stare..

he knew I was there..
I the dreamer, dreaming him.
he knew I was there even if I did not.
the exposition:

last night i went to a small show at a local coffehouse. an intimate little gathering, just some friends there to see other friends perform. and she showed up. her. the girl who a year and a half later i still can't get over. the girl who despite all efforts, i just can't stop loving. a year and a half she shows up. with her new boyfriend.

the dream:

i dreamt about her. no, not that kind of dream. something a thousand times more painful than any meaningless sex dream could be. i dreamt i held her hand. and then we looked at each other. she smiled at me. but more than that. i don't know how else to put it, she smiled at me with her eyes. she looked at me and got that look in her eyes, the one she used to get when we were together. the one that with just one look says, i love you. you make me happier than i've ever been in my life. the look that said i want to spend the rest of my life with you. i wake up in my bed, alone. i can feel myself dying all over again.

I used to dream about her as I was drifting off to sleep, the lateness of the hour pulling me under, into dreams that were dark and lusty and warm.
Now I think of her as I awaken in the brightness of morning, just after waking, but before I can bring myself to pull the covers away and rise.
It's cold and my eyes burn these days.
All of the images have changed. They are in focus today.
My dreams are shifting into thoughts of practicality and improbability, and you know, none of it is pretty.
Not in the least.

-stolen from bittersweets.org


update: looking back now, i think that was the last painful cathartic experience i needed to get over her for good. not just "i'm over you simply because i'm going to shove all memories of you deep into the back of my mind and just not have to think about you" but over. i had this realization about a month ago when my roadtrip buddy going to Austin cancelled on me at the last minute i was hurredly searching for a replacement and asked her. the email i got back wasn't surprising. current boyfriend wouldn't think too much of her road-tripping with ex-boyfriend. of course. but what surprised me was my reaction. the first thing i thought was am i ever going to get the "ex-boy" part dropped from my "friend" title?. wow that felt good.

I just woke up, my eyes are still a bit blurry.
What a dream. It was definitely a scary dream. Almost a nightmare, but not as intense.

So I'm in the North Pole or some ice desert where there's nobody, but me, my brother and some lady -- I think she's some kind of research person. Then there's our guide, the eskimo dude.

He sets up an igloo for us, it's a big one. He, for some reason, puts rocks on the lower layer and then covers it with sheets, lots of them. He says it's comfortable. So anyway, he finishes laying the sheets and it's almost night, but the sun is still there. He was about to leave us when he says: "Beware of the Polar Bears."

We stand there aghast: "What!!?"
"Come back here, eskimo dude!"
He comes back and tells us that there are a lot of polar bears roaming around, they're not hungry or anything, they're just bored and need some fun. They often go into igloos using their noses to wake people up. Despite his briefing on polar bears, we ask him to stay with us and he does.

It's the night and we're all asleep when suddenly I see a polar bear's head trying to get in our igloo. Now for some reason, the igloo is no igloo anymore, it's a Teepee?

The polar bear enters with ease since the entrance is a flap; he's immense yet manages to enter our shelter. I'm petrified and I pretend to be asleep. The polar bear pushes me with his nose as a husband would ask his wife for sex.

Since I'm on the other side of the Teepee and have my back facing my brother who's in the middle, I can't see whether my brother or the research person are there or not. I hear voices outside and it seems to be morning; I've overslept, but the polar bear is still with me.

He's pushing me harder, almost twirling me with his great paws and nose. I try to resist; I continue my immitation of a dead corpse. Then for some reason, I decide to roll my self to the entrance very rapidly like action heroes do in movies and get out of the teepee. I do, but (yet another thing that does not make sense) there's a shower in our teepee and the research lady was taking a shower, so the polar bear proceeds to the shower room of the teepee and she screams and runs out of the teepee where everybody is: me, my brother, the lady and the eskimo dude.

She's naked, so me and my brother quickly take off off our clothes to dress her and for some other reason, we only have pants and t-shirts to offer her.

Now we're fully clothed and the polar bear has found his way out of the teepee.

This dream is too scary! GET ME OUT!!!

I wake up.

For once, I was acutely aware I was dreaming.

I was at some sort of Christian worship service in a gymnasium with my family on my right and Garth Brooks on my left. Everyone stood for hymns, and Garth said something along the lines of "Well, let's break the ice." He grabbed my hand, I took my sister's, and as the rest of the congregation followed suit, Garth began an a capella rendition of Amazing Grace. Slowly, each row began line dancing as we sang, and at the song's end, Garth called out for someone else to lead the next song. To my horror, my sixteen year old niece sang out, "I think I did it again..." and spurred the entire gym into singing a Britney Spears song. Hands were dropped so people could emulate the teen pop star's strip club dance moves. After seeing my big sister grab her cha-chas and shake her booty one too many times, I ran crying from the gym, not even pausing to get Garth's autograph.

I exited the gym into the Himalayas, where I knew I was on a college trip. Icy rain was drizzling over me as I made my way into the one United Dairy Farmers in the Himalayas to buy a 70-page notebook. And it had to be college ruled! The proprietess of the convenience store was from my college, but she was a shrew and assured me that the notebook I needed to complete a research assignment would not arrive for another two weeks.

"We don't get many helicopters up here, you know that." The assignment was due the next day, so I knew I was screwed. I decided to fake my death and went farther up the mountain in search of the Abominal Snowman. I wanted to make a deal with him...deliver fellow students to him in exchange for him making it look like he had eaten me. "Make it look good...just a little blood in my tent will do."

I was a spy, masquerading as an ambassador from another planet, but my true mission was to kill an elderly queen, though I remember thinking that killing her was a dumb idea. I was a terrible spy, though, and I kept blowing my cover, setting off security alarms, and missing meetings with my co-conspirators.

  • We are travelling in a national park of some sort. The group is indistinct—I sense that my parents are probably there, but do not actually see them. A van is parked on the outskirts of a small, rustic town, in the high desert West... the scenery is all scrub cedar and pinon pine, sagebrush and the dry, sandy soil common to much of Northern Nevada and much of the Great Basin. We have stopped for food, a rest break and so on.

  • Very confusing sequence — unusual rooms — far more people are present than exist empty spaces and rooms to hold them... Something of the tension in the movie, Female Perversions hangs over all of this, but perhaps that is true of most of my dreams.

  • I meet up with an autistic child who has unintentionally injured another traveller. I help the child hide in an arts and crafts gallery, tucked in among the various decorative items.

  • A handsome black man is powerful in this town, and discussing how he doesn't much believe in God. Something is happening with local clergy, and as an agnostic, he is mistrusted and feared.

  • Image of a room with maps. Our first view of the "mayor" is that he is reclining on a stone window-ledge, dreaming, or singing to himself — an aide comes to the window, carefully wakes him, and he climbs back inside to handle some emergency, perhops related to the clerics and perhaps not.

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