The Moors

The beginning of this dream is lost. The first thing I remember is dark, cold moors. There isn’t a house around for miles. No lights. I have a job to do, but I don’t want to do it. Oh god, I don’t want to do it. But I have to. If I don’t do what I set out to do, my life will be forfeit.

            I smile in the darkness, even though he can’t see it, and grasp his hand. I hope my grip is steadier than it feels. The smile feels traitorous on my face. He drinks more. Good. He’s drunk. Not drunk enough to stumble and fall. I have to make sure he doesn’t drink that much. He’s bigger than me, so if he goes down, I have to do it the hard way. The mere thought of it sends my stomach pitching and rolling like the hills over which we walk.

            Darkness coats the moors like paint, but I look up and read the thick spray of stars well. I know these moors and I know where I must take him. It’s not far, but the bitter wind slices through to my bones and slows me. Neither of us has a heavy coat, but that doesn’t bother him. Alcohol is his coat.

            I stretch out the hand that’s not connected to his and brush something hard and rough. The tree.

            I tell him that we need to wait a minute, but I don’t let go of his hand. Don’t dare. I can’t lose him in the darkness. I lean against the tree, wrap my free arm around it and press my cheek to its crusty, craggy bark.

            It’s warm.

            I know what it looks like in the light: Gnarled and twisted, dark and blasted. Its limbs do not reach for the sky anymore; they’re arthritic fingers, curled into knobby claws by time and age. It’s shedding its bark; it falls off in musty-mossy chunks. Wind and water and day and night have worn away the ground around its roots. They rise from the earth like the backs of sea serpents. He trips over them and almost falls. My heart leaps into my throat. But he leans on the tree to get up again.

            “Don’t touch it,” I almost scream. “It’s not yours!” I screw my mouth shut against the scream pressing against the backs of my teeth.

            Technically it’s not mine either, but I bare my teeth and snarl at him silently. He doesn’t notice. He spilled his beer on the roots of the tree. I want to force his head down and make him lick it off, but there are more important things to get done.

            I don’t want to leave the tree. I draw no comfort from its crumbling existence. Its peeling, pointed bark pierces the bare flesh of my cheek and arm, but I grip it tighter anyway. It is still warm, and that’s what I cling to.

            It’s time to go, I say to myself. You have to. Now.

            I let go of the tree gingerly, feeling like I’ve left my heart impaled on one spiny piece of bark. It’s connected to me only by strings, which spin out like thread on spools as we make our way over the moors.

            It’s downhill now, and I know we’re getting close. I don’t hear it yet, and I hope he won’t hear it until it’s too late.

            There is no moon, which is good and bad. Good because there isn’t enough light for him to read the land and, more importantly, to read me. He’s always been good at that, and I’ve been bad about keeping my heart hidden. Bad because I love the moon. I miss the moon. It anchors my heart. It is my eye, my satellite, my safety, my blanket of light in this always-night.

            He doesn’t notice when I begin to hum. He still holds the empty beer bottle and tips it back from time to time, trying to drink from it. We still hold hands. I try desperately to keep my grip from mimicking the clawed branches of the tree.

                        To my dearest forsaken

                        Who the earth now has taken

                        Empty, the bottle drains no more

A rushing, hushing sound begins to drown out my quiet hums. I’ve been down here dozens of times, but that doesn’t matter. I must be still. Because to most, the sound has no source. It creeps and surrounds, blankets and disorients, makes you scared and dizzy. The very air makes the sound, it seems, and it’s warning you like a rattlesnake.

            But I know better. I know how to find the source of the sound. I close my eyes and remove myself from myself. It used to be a lot more difficult than it is now. I throw my consciousness out wide in front of me like a net and find what I’m looking for. Close. Not even a football field away. Relief and trepidation muscle into my mind and I am sucked back into myself.

            Awareness begins to clear the cloud of drunkenness around him and he asks where we’re going. I squeeze his hand in reassurance, which he seems to accept. We walk. I feel the strings attached to my heart begin to pull. I hum.

                        It is true that I loved you

                        Despite the harm now on you

                        Wash us; the river has you, boy

As we get closer, the sound does not grow or change. It gets colder, though, as we pick our way through the blasted moor grasses, down, down. I glance up. The fog kicked up by the water is separating us from the stars. That’s okay. It’s not them I’m wedded to, not their tiny needlepricks of cold white light. I urge him deeper into the mist.

            We may as well already be underwater. It’s bone-cold and dangerously black. The air, the fog, the sound presses on us like silt on a riverbed. Here is where it gets tricky for me. I don’t know precisely where the drop-off is, so I have to tread like a frightened child, reaching out to test the ground with one foot before I take each step. I tell him not to step ahead of me.

            Even though that would be easier.

            But I still have hold of his hand; if he falls, he’ll grip me tighter instead of letting go.

            I can’t let that happen. I can’t fall with him. I can’t.

            The heartstrings, connected to my heart still at the tree, are nearly taut now.

With my next step I reach out, step on nothing but air. I find the edge of the bank, orient myself along it so that we stand side by side facing the yawning crevasse the river has cut into the flank of the moor.

            Despite how close we are to the roaring rapids, the sound is not deafening. That’s because the water has spent millions of lifetimes carving this never-healing wound; it’s cut so deep into the earth that the sound works so hard to reach us it’s tired and weak when it gets here.

            “It’s warm,” he says.

            It is. The poisonous cold is less here, right at the bank, especially when you lean out over the emptiness. The river ran so deep it must have struck the earth’s vital warmth, which it was now releasing. I look down, even though it’s still too black to see even a hand an inch from my face. The water must be boiling down there.

            I let go of his hand.

                        Here on the eve of too long

                        Where you’ll think I have done wrong

                        Waking in fear of you no more

I am scared. I feel the triphammer-pound of my heart through the strings, which thrum and vibrate and send out a frantic, skittery song.

He is quiet. Still. He’s sober now and beginning to guess why we’re here. I have to do it before he realizes how deeply I violated his trust.

            I have to do it.

            I wonder if he can feel the terror and anticipation baking off me in waves.

            I have to do it.

            I will the soft soil under his feet to suddenly crumble and pitch him into nothingness.

            I have to do it.

            I put my hand on his shoulder.

            If he decides to fight, he’ll win. He’s bigger and stronger than me. What will I do then?

            If I move another inch, the taut strings of my heart will snap.

            I have to do it. Now.

            I take a shuddering, painful breath and push.

            There is a terrible ripping from the center of my chest. The pain is blinding. It tears the breath out of me and I fall back onto the bank coughing and gasping. I clasp the sucking hole in my chest, expecting to plunge my hand into gouts of hot, thick blood, but feel nothing. Not even a hole.

            I feel nothing.

            I lie there for a moment and catch my breath. Gazing up into the stifling blackness, I begin to hum again.

                        To my dearest forsaken

Dearest vow I have broken

Afraid of your angry hands no more

River may help me later

                        Sleeping my lost love for you, boy

Song: "Dearest Forsaken" by Iron and Wine

Guitar

I was supposed to be playing classical guitar in a quartet performance of the Nutcracker,* along with a cellist, pianist, and... other musician? In real life, I haven't played my guitar in ages and can't really sightread.

In the dream I knew it was a bad idea to be sucked into this performance without having practiced with the group--let alone looked at the music--beforehand, but I hoped maybe it wouldn't be too noticeable. I didn't even have the music, so I had to read off the copy of the woman beside me, who was singing as a member of either the choir or the audience.

Naturally, I was terrible. Weirdly, it didn't bother me as much as it should have.

*Or perhaps the Messiah; it shifted.

crocodiles and mobsters

I know I say this fairly often, but I really had the most exhausting dream just before waking up this morning. [This is Part 1 and Part 2, since blogger won't let me put in all the necessary labels. Part 3 is below.]

Part 1:

I had a plane ticket to go and visit a friend of mine. There was one connection, and for some reason I thought the hour or so was a huge amount of time. I left the airport and ended up in a national park near Houston (apocryphal as far as I know) known for its crocodiles. I had no car and no camping gear, but I had completely forgotten about my flight and was walking around the campground choosing a site. I felt slightly liberated by the idea of camping all alone, like I was doing something very brave and adult. I guess it was rather brave, since the campground was surrounded by a bayou (of very clear water, weirdly). The water came right up to the campsites, and the bottom sloped down very slowly, giving the impression that you were actually in the water while you were still on land. I didn't see any crocodiles, somewhat disappointingly.

Part 2:

Before I could settle on a campsite, I remembered that I was supposed to be making my connection flight and was now about three hours late for it. I was extremely unhappy with myself, and stressed out about what to do. I hemmed and hawed for a while, and then finally realized that I was actually at my friend's house, having somehow magically arrived there. For a while I was very confused and kept thinking that I still needed to arrange transportation to get there.

She lived in a weird building with a labyrinth of rooms and an assortment of people. At one point I found myself squeezed onto a couch with her (somewhat portly) father and some random young bearded and hatted musicians, all singing and boisterously celebrating their newly-released cd, the product of a collaboration with a lot of high-profile people (including Charlotte Gainsbourg). Her father was getting very excited about the music and the cd, and kept encroaching further into my personal space. It was all completely innocent, but I was getting very physically uncomfortable being squashed, and couldn't think of a way to extricate myself without making a scene. I think he was also shirtless, which added to the discomfort.

[continued below]

pop culture reference extravaganza!

I was in the middle of a very detailed and tiring dream when I woke up this morning, the sort that makes me intermittently raise my eyebrows in bemusement for the next half hour or so.

The dream began with--what else?--a group trip. I was traveling with my parents, sister, and some assorted people who popped up fuzzily in the periphery and then disappeared. We were staying at my ex-boyfriend's parents' house (not their real-life house, but an apartment influenced by some extended family members' apartments in Canada). I was sharing a bedroom (with whom, I can't remember; either my husband or my sister, I think) that I realized belonged to the parents, with a very large white bed and a setup including about three fans. The fans kept turning themselves on, even after being unplugged, which really freaked me out. I didn't want them on because I was cold, but it took me quite a while to work out how to get them completely off.

By the time I got the fan situation resolved it was almost time to get up and around, so I took a shower and was trying to figure out when and where would be best to do the rest of my morning remedial work (what is with this constant issue in dreams of trying to put myself together?). The other guests were starting to gather for breakfast, and there were a few minutes of that annoying back-and-forth about the best way to schedule breakfast and bathroom for all parties. There was that cumbersome feeling of too many people trying to move together.

I guess everyone managed to get ready, because we got to church (based on my parents' actual church, except with uneven, too-close-together rows of metal folding chairs instead of actual pews). I sat down next to a real-life coworker and my sister, but my sister got up at some point to sit with friends, and I was left with the coworker to my left and several empty seats between me and my mother. For some reason I was annoyed with her and wanted to ignore her for the duration of the service, but she kept talking to me about various things (notably whether I had a kleenex). I was uncharacteristically empty-handed in the dream, so I didn't have a kleenex, but she had sidled over in the kleenex search and was sitting next to me. I couldn't get rid of her, but wished she would go away because in the dream I was developing a bit of a mutual crush on the coworker* (sitting progressively closer together in a G-rated way, as is the usual pattern in my "crush" dreams).

The church service finally started, and a group of about 7-8 high school students got up to sing. It started out with an almost unbearable solo by the girl in the center: that almost-inaudible, reedy, breathy voice of a teenager who thinks she can sing because she sings along to music in her room. Soon the others joined in, which made it more bearable and added a bit more volume. They were all swaying and dancing to various degrees, which I found kind of charming ("aw, youthful exuberance"). I knew that my mother was going to freak out, though, and possibly get up and walk out. Their dancing soon coalesced into a routine, and when the group turned around I was startled to see that one of the girls was wearing a dress that amounted basically to an apron, so that her hot-pantsed backside was completely exposed when she turned around. She did a not-quite-expert version of a jiggling "booty dance". The whole effect was extremely jarring, although all I could think was, "that poor girl, why didn't anyone advise her against this?"

When the song ended, the entire audience booed, and a short, stocky, Chuck-D.-esque man in a military uniform took the stage. He began to rail against the dance piece, which he clearly hadn't appreciated either. And he had really not appreciated getting what amounted to a (very short) lap dance by Miss Hotpants/Apron.

Things didn't get a lot better after that. They started running a video showing a Jessica Alba lookalike clothed in a sort of leotard over a printed, almost-transparent full-body catsuit. The catsuit had a really beautiful pattern to it, a kind of leaves/flowers/wheat thing. The girl had water (rain?) running down over her, which was slowly dissolving the print/material of the catsuit (but not the leotard). I gradually caught on that it was an American Apparel ad, for a water-soluble catsuit (??). From what I could understand, it would dissolve and then reconstitute itself. They were hinting that this feature would be useful when one needed to pee, since you could just leave it on (?? yuck). The video ended with what I finally realized was a closeup of the model's (clothed, but barely) crotch.

The dubious church service being finally over, several members of the party went to a flea market. I love these flea-market dreams because they're always so detailed, but I can't remember many of the items I looked at. The thing that sticks out most was a beautiful, elaborately hand-embroidered pillowcase. One side was white embroidery on white, and the other side was a mixture of white, printed border, and white embroidery. The fabric was a loosely woven linen, which didn't seem either all that comfortable or very durable, and there were a couple of holes toward one end of it. What was really noteworthy about it, though, was its former owner: Anne Heche (??)**. While the completely white side had an elaborate embroidery saying "amor", the other side had "Anne Heche" embroidered on it. There was a note pinned to it saying, "soon to be Leah Anne Somebody-or-Other", from which I deduced that the pillowcase was part of the spoils of her relationship with Ellen Degeneres. There was another pillowcase-like object next to it, and I thought it might be Ellen's, and might be similarly beautiful (although I did think it might be a bit freaky to have a set of Ellen-and-Anne pillowcases on my bed). On closer inspection the object turned out to be not a pillowcase but a red Chinese towel. I first looked at the back side, and was thinking of buying it. On turning it over, though, I found that what had looked like two plain panels were actually two photorealistic renderings (in terrycloth?!) of a couple of celebrities in the style of mid-80s Glamour Shots (tm)***.

Sigh. I knew this one was going to go over the character limit for tags....

*Alert Readers should be assured that this is not a real-life development, although I do enjoy this person as a coworker because he tends toward a benign grumpiness that I find soothing.
**Where DO these random celebrities come from? They're never anyone I've actually been thinking about.
***Research reveals they're still in business!

A Dollar Off Sandwiches and Lesbians

I dreamed that BNB and I were finished with work (somewhere I didn't recognize). We went outside and sat on the grass next to the parking lot to enjoy the outdoors. After awhile, we decided to go on a little walk. There was a creek nearby that ran down a gorge or a ravine that was mostly made of gravel. Somehow, it was necessary for us to fix this ravine, because the water had eroded the gravel at some point, making the creek dry.

I don't remember doing the work, but later I looked down into the ravine and saw BNB removing the final stones, which allowed the water to flow down the creek bed again. He looked up at me and I smiled and gave a thumbs-up.

He climbed out of the ravine, and that's when I noticed that in our work, I'd ended up on the opposite side of the ravine from him. Oops.

We walked a little further down the creek bed, and noticed that it became more and more shallow, and eventually I was able to just kind of walk across the creek bed/ravine.

At this point, I was wearing ipod headphones and listening to a funk band with a great female lead singer. I was listening, but while listening, I was also making the whole thing up in my head (I think I was aware that I was dreaming, and was impressed with dreaming self for making up such a cool song). I was telling BNB about the organ solo, and how cool it sounded, but I guess I didn't offer to let him listen. I looked at the ipod and saw that the woman singing was black and had short dreadlocks, but I didn't know her name.

We walked to a record store, which is actually here in BR, and started looking around. There were a couple of guys that I assumed to be DJs, but otherwise we were the only ones there. We went in the back door and made our way up to the front. I looked in the country music section and was disappointed to see that they only had CDs named "Greatest Country Music Hits of the 1960s."

BNB was looking at jazz records, but the owner of the store came through closing up, turning off the lights. We started to leave the store, when an old lady came up to us, excitedly talking about winning a coupon for a subway sandwich. Somehow we knew her, and we knew that we were going to be delivering a meal to her later that evening (a la Meals on Wheels), so we told her to go ahead and get her subway sandwich and she could eat the other meal later.

She was so excited about her coupon, and she kept chanting aloud, "I won a dollar off subway sandwiches, with chips and lesbians!!" We'd just smile and eventually directed her to a subway store so she could get her sandwich. I eventually figured out that she meant Lebanese salad, which made more sense than lesbians.

I was laughing about this mix-up when a man I haven't seen in years came up (he was my high school biology teacher). He asked what I was laughing about, and I explained, but after I'd used "the L word," I wondered if that had been wise, since he's old and conservative.

Weird Time Mashup

This dream is a strange combination of two different periods in my life: high school and grad school.

I dreamed that I had gone back to my high school to attend some kind of alumni function. I went into the dormitory where I'd lived in high school only to find that it had been extensively renovated. This renovation involved restoring it to its original ornate decor (very different from real life, I assure you), and, as a special touch, the heavy, carved oak doors had been elaborately inscribed with the names of the original occupants.

I found my room, which was upstairs, second door from the stairs. The names on the door were lovely, but I didn't recognize them. They were something like A. D. Smith and Mabel Something.

I wandered around the dorm, at one point going into the basement looking for the "trash room." I found it, and realized that the basement had certainly not been renovated, and the trash room was overflowing with garbage.

Later, I attended a performance of some kind. Someone I knew from my grad school days (here's the mashup) was in this show, playing a piece on piano (as far as I know she doesn't play at all). In the dream, I knew this piece, having played it myself. I knew that it was very difficult, with an elaborate accompaniment pattern played in the middle register with the thumbs and forefingers, and the melody played with the right pinky finger. It required lots of delicate touch and jumping around on the keyboard, both of which require absolute control.

I was really impressed with her performance, and during the applause, I went backstage to congratulate her. I found her stretched out on the floor (apparently exhausted by the effort of performance). She was surrounded by family members, her two babies, and a couple of small dogs. As they all swirled around her, I knelt by her head to gush about her playing. I kissed her on the forehead and told her she'd done a wonderful job, and that I totally understood how hard it had been.

(Upon waking and considering the piano piece, I know that whatever she was playing wasn't what my dream self thought it was.)

cinderella strikes again

I find it a little embarrassing to admit to my recurring dream themes, but I had another one this morning in which I was the household Cinderella. Anyway, I was living with my parents, and my sister was there, although I think she was more of a long-term visitor than a full-time household member. I think my husband also lived there, but he was absent for some legitimate reason--I think he may have been working extremely long hours at a demanding job, or maybe he was on a trip.

What I can remember started with me coming to the realization that for quite some time I had been doing everything for all the other members of the household. My wrath was directed primarily at my mother, and I started yelling at her: "Don't you think it's grotesque?! I cook EVERY MEAL, I clean up the dishes, I do the laundry, I clean the house--how can you live with yourself?!" I was really steamed up. When I realized how mad I was, I started to analyze how I felt about each member of the household. My dad was more or less exempt from my anger because he was working outside all day on some building project; my grandmother was exempt because she's 89 years old; my husband was exempt because he was always working and never there. I was a little mad at my sister, but she was somewhat exempt because of her guest status--and anyway, she was staying well away and completely ignoring the discussion, puttering around with a stack of art supplies in the corner. My mom refused to acknowledge my tirade in any real way, which made me even more mad.

I should add that the house we were living in was interesting, some kind of 60s-70s split-level thing with a main living area in a sunny half-basement, where the kitchen was. There were quite a lot of tchotchkes to be dealt with in cleaning, too, including macrame plant hangers.

After the outburst I went off in a huff and was rather proud of myself for taking a firm stand and not feeling guilty about it. I felt like I had made a psychological breakthrough. Then I started to think about the fact that my mother was busy taking care of my grandma, and I wondered if maybe I hadn't been a tiny bit hard on her.

That semi-guilty feeling morphed into some sort of depression whose cause I can't remember. I was still in the same house, with my sister and a friend of hers (random dream person). The friend was visiting and they were going to go to some social function scarily reminiscent of a church-high-school "banquet". The friend had showed us a very expensive couture gown that she was planning on wearing. Although I was depressed, I realized that I should make an effort at sociability, so I said, "that sure is a snazzy dress!"

Shortly thereafter I escaped into a bathroom with a laptop computer. I thought I'd distract myself by looking at ravelry (knitting website, for the uninitiated). I started reading a non-knitting-related forum there, and the avatar of one of the posters drew my attention. Instead of being just a photo, it was a video, showing several women frolicking around at an outdoor house party. There was some kind of "party"/dance music, and some of the women were dancing to it on a trampoline while others were dancing around a pool or jumping into the pool (this was more of an interpretational modern dance than a generic party dance). Someone in the discussion said that they wished they were attending the party, and I kind of agreed, which was a little out of character for me since I'm not much of a party person. The setting was certainly attractive, though, a stone house with nice landscaping looking like it should be in Provence.

I guess I clicked on her avatar or something, because suddenly it filled the whole screen. The view was now inside the house, though, and the women were in really elaborate and colorful eastern European costumes, with equally elaborate hairstyles (the one I can remember was a halo of tiny buns all around her head, supplemented with some kind of flowery decoration). They looked like they were warming up when an announcer came on and announced, in French, that they were such-and-such gypsy group and they were going to be doing a show; he also made it clear somehow that this was in Quebec.

The show started when some very animated gypsy music came on. The most interesting thing was that when they moved, their costumes moved with them. The dancer most visible had a couple of huge chrysanthemum-like flowers on the front of her dress, and they opened and closed and revealed different layers of petals, each with its own color and shape, kind of like a kaleidoscope. I thought vaguely that instead of dwelling on the injustices of my Cinderella-hood, maybe I should have just distracted myself with this first instead, because I suddenly felt a lot better.

midwestern girls

I dreamed last night that I had started dating a boy I had an obsessive but fruitless crush on in elementary school (the one who was messing with the coffeemaker in the other night's dream)*. [Obviously I wasn't married in this dream.] I was at my parents' house getting to ready to go to their church; it was going to be our public "coming out" as a couple and I was stressed out about it, not least because I wasn't sure how I had come to be half a couple with him and because I wasn't sure I wanted to be. Also, he had two small children, and it occurred to me that maybe he just wanted a nursemaid for them. And at some point I saw a picture of his ex-wife and she was really beautiful, which further stressed me out (I was sure he must not be over her and anxious about being compared to her). Oh, and I didn't like his hair very much, but it occurred to me that since he had worn it that way since age 7 chances were very slim that he would be convinced to change it now.

Of course I was trying to pick out something to wear, and at first I thought I had a lot of great choices. The closet was full of similar printed silk dresses, some of which had really beautiful patterns and colors. I was feeling optimistic and planning to wear my red shoes when I noticed that only one dress was wearable--the others were very wrinkled, as if they had been hand-washed and drip-dried, all crinkled and crispy. Also, they had alarming huge 80s-style collars, and the red shoes turned out not to be my actual red shoes but patent-leather things with chrome buckles, which didn't really go with the dresses.

Then to my further annoyance my brain woke me up blasting "California Girls" to itself, repeating the part about midwestern girls over and over**.



*Random people tend to appear a few times in a row in my dreams, then disappear again. I think it's because I'm so puzzled as to why they appeared that they stay in my head and pop in again.
**Apart from "The Sloop John B", I am not a Beach Boys fan.

LASIK recovery at home

I was at home in Far Rockaway after LASIK surgery. I came upstairs from my hiding spot in the basement with my goggles on. I surprised family by being home. My mom was happy I had LASIK, brother, sister and nephew were there. I hugged all of them. I went into the kitchen and saw some guy in the dining room mirror who looked like my father. I went to hug him, but realized as I got closer it wasn't the same person. The cornea flap in my left eye kept coming up. I felt it undo itself. I could see in the mirror that it was flipping up from the bottom and I couldn't flip it back down. I was getting really nervous and wanted to call after hours care. At first, family said to wait, but then I said, "No, I want to call right now." I was calling 411 and asked for Duke and the operator gave the wrong number. I realized I was calling from NY. Decided to use my cell phone to make sure I was calling 919 to ask for Duke after hours number. I remember the number ended in 1111. I was looking frantically for the post-operation paperwork in my bags. I just found the paper and then I heard this song that I had only heard before on a show I was watching on television with my sister.

Fragments

So last night I had all sorts of crazy dreams, which are coming back to me in bits and pieces. Here are a few of them...

-My sister was making Rice Krispie treats (as we actually did in Hawaii). She had put melted butter and some melted marshmallows in a 9x13 pan, with about half a cup of Rice Krispies. She kept saying, "I don't want them to be soupy! I don't like it when they're soupy!" I asked her if she had put in six cups of Rice Krispies, and she said that she hadn't. I tried to add Rice Krispies to the pan and stir everything together, and it actually went better than it would in real life; the Rice Krispies seemed to sort of inflate and look like bars.

-My sister and I were walking downtown, and stopped at a jewelery store to look at the shiny things. Then she brought over a little ukulele, and I discovered I was able to tune it by ear. Then I played "Pearly Shells." She said the ukulele was $30, which seemed like a really good price, but I didn't want to buy a ukulele.

-We were still walking in the city, and it was dark out, apparently just before dawn. I realized that when we had started walking, everything had been light because the artificial lights were on. However, that meant that we'd been up, and walking in the city, since the middle of the night. I asked her why we'd gotten up so early, but I don't think I got an answer.

-I was tidying the kitchen of the last house I lived in with my parents, in Auburn. My mom had placed towels across the stove top, and there were boxes of fruit on the floor, which I understood to mean that she was going to be doing some canning. Then, somehow, a cat fell down the garbage disposal in the sink. The disposal wasn't on or anything, but it was still alarming. Only the cat's little gray head was poking out! I tried to help it out, but I had to kind of grab it by the head and neck. As I was pulling it out, it slipped and fell back in a little bit, but then it was able to get out.

Saturday night

It was Saturday night, and I had plans with friends. My neighbor called to see if I could give her and her boyfriend a ride to the ice skating rink, from which they would then meet up with other friends for a birthday party at the bar. I was headed the same way, so I thought it would work out, but for some reason was hedging a little bit. Then I realized that as I was pacing around on the porch in front of our house, she was too! She wasn't even on the phone, though I was; she'd been hearing my questions as I asked them and just answering them in person. Anyway, I hung up and in person we decided that I would get dinner, and then pick them up at about 6:45.

I went back inside my apartment and saw that it was only 3:21, even though it felt much later and was dusk outside. I found a book that, among other things, categorized every single one of the Star Wars figurines ever made, and somehow thought that my neighbor's sister would be very interested in it for her newborn son. She happened to be out on the porch with a bunch of other people, some of them playing guitars, but was just coming back inside because the baby had awakened. I showed her the book and she was fairly interested.

As I headed across the hall back into my apartment, I saw my reflection in the mirror. I was wearing a powder blue shirt that I realized my mom had sewn for me. It had a swooping round neck-piece/collar; a bust like Lyra's blue dress in The Golden Compass; and a fitted, strappy-looking bodice. At least, it was fitted in front, but as I turned around to look at the back, it gapped a little bit.

When I got in, I sat on my sofa and looked at earrings from my jewelery bag. A pair of silver hoops with tiny little dark blue sequins at the bottom looked awesome, and I thought about wearing them. On the stereo (apparently I hear in dreams, too, after all...) was a skipping CD of an impassioned version of Sting's "Fields of Gold," although it may have been a U2 cover, and had a slightly heavier feel. It made me feel kind of emotional, and I wanted to make a phone call, although I'd already talked to him for a couple of hours earlier in the day. Then my alarm went off, and I woke up still missing him and feeling a little sad.

Earlier in the dream, I was helping a grad school friend with a fundraiser. She was filling an old claw-foot tub with potting soil, with a little footstool in the middle and some other buried things, like a wagon wheel. People were supposed to guess how much just the potting soil on top of the footstool weighed (wrapped in a silver package, I think) and how much the entire tub weighed. At first, she was going to charge $30/guess, but then when I saw the banner she'd made later, it had a little starburst indicating $10, but said "donations encouraged." I don't know how much they were to win if they got it. I took a picture and posted it on my blog, and Curly Sue commented first.