Parallax

I am not good at guessing. Whenever someone tells me a shaggy-dog story that ends with "and guess who it was?" I am going to get it wrong.

I've just given up trying, at this point, because no matter what I say it is going to be a disappointment, so I may as well be funny about it.

My mom just did this to me. My reply went like this: "Mahatma Gandhi. Winston Churchill. John Lennon."

I give up, officially. I'm never going to guess who, guys. Not ever.

The flu has flued away, for the most part - some lingering sinus fuckuppery is taking a while to go away. Snort pfui sniffle.

Had an interesting dream about crochet, of all things: in it, I was given a bunch of odd-shaped handmade hooks that were all twisty and imperfect and very cool looking. I used them to make something that looked like Ponyo. I think I'll have to dig up a ball of yarn and figure out if this is remotely workable in reality - the crocheted fish, that is, not the hooks, since I don't know how to do metalwork. Seems my best crochet is improv, since when I try to use patterns I screw things up.

I think that's a sign that I need more important things to think about, but I'll be damned if I can come up with any. I'm still a bit of a Flu Brain Space Cadet. So much so, speaking of fish, that I went and got addicted to that stupid fish game on Facebook. (If you play it let me know. I need more fish people. How do I get rid of the damn dolphin?)

I am deeply disappointed that I have burnt through all of Connie Willis' books with Oxford historians in them. Especially Blackout and All Clear - I'd have been happy with a whole series of that. Nom nom nom worldbuilding deliciousness. Anyone have any good WWII books to recommend? Light on the combat, heavy on the home front please - I like 'em plotty but not gory. London during the Blitz, especially, would be good.

How are you, internet?

There's a house at the end of the world. There are other houses visible from the roof, which is railed and made to walk on, but all of those houses are slowly fallng apart. The city left behind is an old-fashioned place of cobblestones and gables and shingles, hundreds of years older than the metropolises I usually dream about. The city, too, is empty. One side of the house is on the edge of a small river or large canal; there's a walkway, unrailed, between the house walls and the edge of the seawall which keeps the water out. It would be easy to fall into the canal, and hard to get back out. The structures on the other side of the water are nearly identical, but clearly disused. Behind the house there are fields, left unworked, and behind that is a forest which is slowly swallowing the field. The field itself is beginning to eat the house, which is immense; parts of it at the back have fallen down, there are trees growing in the centers of rooms, breaking the roofs, and their roots push the tile up into heaps.

The rest of the house is still inhabited. Somewhat. ( Somehow... )

I keep having dreams about movies I've watched recently. This time it was Metropolis, which I've finally gotten around to seeing. (And have fallen madly, stupidly, crazily in love with.) Better that than Jaws, eh?

This one I've only got fragments of; I'll give you what I can.

( Close your eyes and begin to relax... )

Dream: Dave decides he is buying a new house and wants me to help him pick one out.
Nightmare: Dave decides he is buying a new house and wants me to help him knock a load-bearing wall out and replace it with brick.
I wake up thinking, I am gonna kill him.

Dream: Something happens and I wind up having to borrow Graham's car to go get help.
Nightmare: After the help is gotten I realize I had to pull the seat so far forward it is stuck there.
I wake up thinking, he is gonna kill me.

Yeah, these happened. I don't understand it either.

I just remembered one of my dreams last night. In it, I had been mistakenly declared dead -- I was off traveling and forgot to phone home, something like that. Anyway, I got declared dead, and there was a little plot with a tombstone and an urn in the ground that had ashes in it, somewhere off in the armpit of Polk County where everyone else in my family gets buried. I don't know what the ashes were OF, since I was still alive and all, but apparently peoples' desire to bury something led to this sort of service being offered. (It amused me to think that they buried a cow's remains, or something, and called it me.)

Anyway, I got mad about this, because everyone knows damn well I want to get dumped into the sea after I kick it, and most of the dream was me making a fuss about wanting to get the fake ashes and putting them in the ocean. Because - and I kept saying this straight-faced, which you know I'd do - I'd never properly paid my respects to myself. Ha.

If I die of vanity, promise me, promise me,
they bury me someplace I don't want to be,
you'll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously,
away from the swollen city-breeze, garbage-bag trees,
whispers of disease and the acts of enormity...

I'm young, eleven or twelve, and I am racing to make it to a special class. It's on a part of the school where people don't ordinarily go - an old building, made by the Spaniards when they were searching for gold and the fountain of youth, and around one side of its foundations there are maybe five feet of sand before the calm water licks the shore. (I get the idea this was in a bay, since the water barely moved - and that it wasn't any bay I know, since the water was not the color of Coke.) I get inside the classroom (which looks ordinary) and we all sit down.

Shift: I'm in a big, fantastically bizarre house that's not American Gothic and not Addams Family and not New York's Carlton Arms Hotel but some weird mix of them all. I am my normal age again, and there are lots of friends around - online ones, offline ones, people I've met, people I haven't yet. Some really exist and some do not. It is nighttime, and there's a proper horror-movie storm going on. Lightning and roaring wind and sideways rain. It's impossible, given the architecture, but this place is enough stories up in the air that it sways in the wind. Some of us go to the attic, to experience this better, and one brings a camera. I'm watching her snap pictures of us trying to compensate for the tilt. We're leaning forward, we're leaning back, we're latching onto each other and the exposed wooden rafters.

Then, suddenly, the tilt becomes a dive. The laughter stops and the screaming starts. It's like the whole building is tipped over sideways. I can see the heavy wooden furniture sliding across the attic, and I can see the sky through the wall - oddly made of rough limestone blocks - that is starting to collapse. For a moment I am afraid of impact, or suffocation. Things land on me, burying me, and while I know they're heavy it feels gentle, like I'm being lost under a stack of pillows.

Shift again: morning, peaceful, with a calm blue sky and quiet water. We're back in the place where the old Spanish building was, but it's in ruins, and I'm pulling myself out from the wreckage of bricks and beams. The people from the crazy house are all standing around shellshocked, scattered among the onlookers and the paramedics and reporters. A dreamperson pulls me aside, puts a blanket around my shoulders, helps me walk away from the mess of limestone blocks.

I knew you'd get out, she's saying, we did the same thing before when we were in middle school, and how weird is it that this happens twice? I look around - the beach, the sky, the mangroves and oaks and palms - and while I'm aware of the fact that one somehow happened in the same place as the other, I say nothing. I just nod, agreeing without being able to speak, and let her lead me away.

Dream:

I'm in a mountainous, cold place, wearing a black wool coat and a brown toque, and the thin gloves on my hands are made of cracked grey leather. I have a backpack I'm carrying around - or maybe it's a smaller sort of bag, I'm not sure - and inside that is a hand-drawn map, a cell phone, a bottle of water, a shiny silver plastic digital camera, and a small red object that works like a two-way radio.

I am climbing up this mountain (waking mind draws some parallel to the opening scenes of Silence of the Lambs, sans the ropes) because within the hour, a friend is going to take off from the airport this promontory overlooks. It is his first flight as a real pilot. A friend of his - a stereotypical grizzled, cynical war vet, old enough to have fathered us - has a superstition: this airport used to be a military base, and the only time people came back all right is if someone watched them leave from this same spot. The vet has drawn the map for me, although I don't know why he can't be there himself. I'd much rather be at the airport, to see the friend off, but this is an important superstition/tradition, so up the mountain I go.

When I get up there I use the little radio, and inform my friend that I'm in place. I ask how long it'll be before he flies out. He says it won't be long, but the computers and machinery used for navigation are organized in a stupid way and he's trying not to give into the temptation of re-wiring and -writing everything so that it makes sense before he goes. I point out there's no time, and I ask if the goofy short-sleeved dress shirt and tie are required. He says they are, I need to stop being silly, there's always time for a quick hack, and reminds me that I have a meeting afterwards. Right, I say, I haven't forgotten - now which plane is yours, and do I get some of those plastic flight pins y'all hand out to the kids?

I hear some static on the radio - some kind of noise picking up from the voices going from cockpit to control tower. They sound confused: they are aware of the radio channels being in use, but can't figure out what we're saying. Friend tells me which plane it is, then ducks out of the conversation so we won't be found out. I click the thing off, look at it. We can't have them listening to us; this is too useful.

The dream shifts and I am in past tense, seeing a memory of mine: I climbed up the same mountain earlier in the year (in a warm season which wasn't very) with this friend and his war buddy. They brought me to a tree-ringed field of short, dry grass. There was a hand-painted sign, a board with two posts, that proudly proclaimed HOODOO VOODOO in the sort of flowery, ungainly cursive often seen at church-sponsored potlucks and community garage sales. There were folding chairs, metal painted to look like wood, with vinyl padded seats arranged in rows along one side of the clearing. There was a massive crowd of people in all types of bizarre dress, amicably chatting with each other, telling stories, laughing. Heading the group was a man channeling Baron Samedi via Neil Gaiman; he had a cigar clenched gangster-style in his jaw and sported a battered black satin top hat at a jaunty angle. He was bare-chested under a threadbare formal jacket, and his skin was dark and shiny.

I looked at the sign and asked if it had anything to do with the Guthrie song. The war vet said yes, and explained it was some kind of code recognition for this group which has been around for a few hundred years, caught plenty of hell, and worked some interesting.. voodoo. It was like a pidgin-English needlesticking version of the Masons, with all the behind-the-scenes power implied. I was told of various events that these people had caused by their talents, and invited to be a part of it. I accepted. Once in, of course, one can never leave. I'm not sure what would have happened to me if I had not agreed, but the cracked wooden altar with bloodstains on top gave me a good guess.

Back on the mountainside: I have left the clearing, for some reason. I now have a shotgun and I am trying to avoid being seen by people in a weird little yellow house, taller than it is wide, since I need to get around and across their yard before ducking back into the woods. They know that our group, whatever the fuck it is, has a fixation on this mountain and those who live there - who bought the land and built their houses knowing about all this history - are a bit... testy about it. I come close to being discovered, but I am rescued in time. The war vet guy reaches into my coat, grabs me by the scruff of my shirt and pulls me back into the trees. Now get up there, he's saying, this is your moment and you can't screw this up.

I find myself in the same place where I was before. The airport is hazy in the distance, a grey blight on a green landscape caused by exhaust fumes and petroleum. I am pulling other things from my bag, arranging objects on the ground, cutting something with a paring knife, tying knots. My bare hands are cold and clumsy. My breath fogs. The point here is for me to send the power up to our person who is safely stowed away in the cargo hold of the plane. If they get to their destination safely, the magic worked. It's a two-man job, not counting the person hidden in the cargo hold, and for this they needed outsiders, which is why the war-vet dude tapped my friend and then they pulled me in. Known members of this group aren't allowed to fly, or drive, or travel anywhere.

I have the small red radio switched on next to me, in silent stealthy listening mode, and I am listening as the plane takes off. If our stowaway is discovered, I will waste the magic, and if I do that it will be A Very Bad Thing. Everything goes according to plan, and I hurry to get ready. I am distracted with preparations - I do not look directly at the plane as it leaves the ground - and feel a bit of shame at that, since watching it lift off was part of what I was supposed to do. When the plane is a dot in the sky, I radio back to both the pilot friend and the ex-Army guy that everything is away and I did my part.

Army guy radios back: that was strong, I could feel it. We'll get something good out of this one. I tell him that I messed up, but he shrugs it off. That's okay, he says. He's a bit disappointed in me for failing the superstition, though. I was supposed to watch the guy go. Ah well, he says, switching the radio off as he meets me, and clapping me on the shoulder with a fake sense of consolation - you did everything else you were supposed to, so if they crash or something, everyone should survive. Implied in this: if something goes wrong, it's your fault, and we'll let everyone else know. You really won't like that.

High poker, low joker, ninety-nine-a-zero
Sidewalk, streetcar, dance a goofy dance

What do normal people dream about?

(Possible causes for this involve the following: watching Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil the previous night, having the news on while I slept, and the military planes that are always flying overhead)

Last night's dream involved some kind of poisoned or otherwise fucked-up water source in a certain small town in Alaska. People were wigging out over this, and there were all kinds of police and dogs and helicopters to try and stave off a riot. If you filtered the stuff through a T-shirt, people thought it would taste like crap but not kill, but nobody wanted to try this out.

According to my subconscious mind, nothing is sacred.

Was rudely awakened around nine due to a 'catastrophe' - missing car keys, and can I borrow yours? In a snit, (I hate being awakened for anything less than murder, mayhem, or arson) I jumped on the chance to actually use my own vehicle, and somehow found myself at a grocery examining soy milk when ten minutes ago I'd been asleep. I don't wake quickly, so that was rather surreal. Came home, and she'd found her keys. How? "I used my pendulum." Okaaaay.

This cooler air has something in it, does something to my head -- I feel less dazed, less asleep. It's fascinating. Everything works, I can pay closer attention, work harder on some random train of thought. I love it.

Random memory: sitting around on a school night, making mixtapes from my vinyl collection. Dropping the needle with skill into the blank space between songs, listening to words, and swapping stories about what the things we heard reminded us of. Mix CDs are so sterile - lasers and unforgiving plastic and cellophane. Tapes were made of the same vital stuffs we are. You could stash one in a backpack, wedge it in a pocket, drop it in a box, throw it on the back dash of the car, kick it under the bed, and if they weren't bent and curled by the sun or pulled out into ribbons by a hungry tape deck, they'd still play.

I can remember all of this so strong I can almost fucking taste it - the feel of my old hardwood floors under bare feet and denim-wrapped knees, the sound of my fish tank bubbling out the minutes, the smell of rubbing alcohol dragged over a record to clean it of dust. Essential oils and incense and tobacco dust and soft quilted Florida night skies out an open window. Palm fronds and overfilled backpacks. A confabulation of elbows and ribs and knees in a bed, trying to be comfortable on the only furniture in a bare room, trying to keep warm in a house with bad heating and drafty windows.

Whack me over the head with the 2x4 Of The Here And Now, please. PLEASE. I can't get away from this confounded nostalgia.

Dear brain:

While I appreciate your attempt at entertainment, apocalyptic nightmares are no fun. Yes, the ninjas were entertaining, and yes, the part where I was defending oregoonie and piperrhiannon from people bursting into our skyscraper with a shortbow was funny.

However. We like apocalypses because they spawn post-apocalyptic worlds. We don't really enjoy the actual event much.

I get to bed at a decent hour and you pull this stunt? I really, really, really don't need it.

Tired but not wanting to go to sleep,
indi.

Dreamed last night that I had some poetry I'd written tattooed on my back by a friendly and slightly mad bleach-blonde chick with huge stompy boots. The tatshop she ran looked like a 1950's motel, and featured large, lush fishtanks.

Having any poetry of mine tattooed anywhere on my person is a very bad idea, since I am not a poet. But now I am thinking of Prufrock and ink-coated needles...