leaving caulkin hall

one time i had a dream that i had to go out into the snow to post a letter. it was very important.

while i was walking out the door of caulkin hall, i slipped on some ice that was hidden beneath the newly fallen snow. on my way down i sprained my ankle. it hurt. 

i continued walking to the post office and mailed the letter. when i got back my ankle was hugely swollen. and, it was very sore. i came inside and took of my slippers. i probably should have worn boots in the snow - but i was in a hurry. i got some ice and put it on my ankle.

i decided to spend the rest of the week-end listening to classical music and eating cereal. fortunately, i had plenty of milk.

cinnabar backfisch

one time i had a dream that bubbles's sister, cinnabar backfisch, was still alive and invited herself over for a visit.

one thursday afternoon i was returning from the store with a package of yarn (i was going to knit a sweater for cousin delling who was going to south africa after university), when i noticed that one of windows was open and missing its screen. i thought there might be a break in, or possibly -- and honestly, more likely -- bubbles was up to something.

when i walked into the kitchen, i saw cinnabar backfisch sitting at the table. she was leaning back in the chair with the front legs lifted off the ground. she asked me where i had been and how long i intended to let her sit there without offering her anything. i opened my mouth to greet her, but she interupted me and asked if i wanted a cup of coffee.

i told her that she shouldn't drink coffee because it would stunt her growth. she laughed at that. i noticed that she had used my cappuccino machine and had left a huge mess in the kitchen. there was milk foam surrounding the machine, grains of sugar across the floor, and a fine grit of ground espresso in a trail on the counter from the container to the coffee machine. i was afraid to open the fridge and see what kind of damage she had done.

when cinnabar noticed the package in my hands she asked "what have you got for me?" i told her it was yarn to knit a sweater for my cousin delling. she wanted to know when i was going to knit a sweater for her. i told her i didn't know her address, so i didn't know where to send it. she asked if i had ever heard of email. i was going to tell her that you can't email a sweater, but realized she'd only reply "yet" and decided not to say anything at all.

when i went upstairs to put the yarn in the closet, i also went into the bathroom. cinnabar had been there too. she had taken a shower and helped herself to my linen closet. she had dripped water everywhere, used my toothbrush, and left her dirty towel laying on the floor. it was very annoying. i wondered where bubbles himself had gone off to.

i came downstairs and found cinnabar sitting in the kitchen, with a cheese sandwich -- she used my best wensleydale -- doing a crossword puzzle from the newspaper. i asked her what she had been up to lately.

she said "a little of this, a little of that." she said she was in town to go to the swiss army knife convention. i asked how long she would be in town. cinnabar said "not too long. i don't like to get bogged down, dude." then, she asked if i could give her a lift to the train station on saturday morning. i asked her what time because i was going to the opera on friday night and would be out late. she said "around noon, then." i agreed. i told her that she could use the guest bedroom, but she said that she preferred to sleep on the couch.

i wasn't sure where bubbles was. cinnabar said that she would call him. he didn't answer, so she left him a voicemail. then she started texting people and essentially ignored my attempt to make conversation. occasionally, she'd nod her head and say "right." when i'd take a breath.

bubbles called and told us that he had a gig in buffalo (it was last minute) and he wouldn't be home until the next week. he told cinnabar that he was sorry that he missed her (i suspect he was only partially telling the truth) and that he hoped to see her soon, and that she should check out buffalo sometime.

i asked cinnabar if she wanted to go out to dinner. we could go to the new greek restaurant that everyone was raving about or we could go for alsatian food. she told me that she wasn't a vegan anymore, and that she had ordered chinese food to be delivered. when i asked what she had ordered, she told me to calm down because she was "gunna" share.

after dinner, she said she had somethings to take care of and would be back later. she came back a few hours later with a few packets of chips and some lemonade. she opened the chips and they spilled out across the coffee table. cinnabar put her boots on the coffee table (perilously close to the chips - you could feel the germs jumping from her feet to the chips) and turned on the inter-dimensional tv and flipped around the channels. she asked if i had some sheets for the couch because she was tired and wanted to get some sleep.

the next morning she was gone before i awoke. however she used my toothbrush and the last of the toothpaste. her dirty clothes were on the bathroom floor with another dirty towel. she spilled nail polish on the window sill. there were a pile of dirty dishes in the table (she made herself an omelette). i didn't hear from her all day and i guess that she was checking out the swiss army knives. she had told me while we were eating dinner that she was looking for a particular knife with a saw with 42 teeth, and she thought there might be a dealer of them at this show. that night i went to the opera.

when i came home that night, all of the lights in the house on. i figured that she was having a party and expected to see drunk people jumping out of the windows. instead the house was very quiet. i walked into the kitchen and found cinnabar and her friends sitting on the floor in a circle playing spin the bottle. my bundles of yarn were on the floor. they had unwound them and were wrapping one another up in the yarn. some of them had little crowns made of yarn on their heads.

i was quite happy to take her to the train station in rhinecliff the next day.

she was headed to renssalaer station. when she got on the train, she said "i'm blowing this popsicle stand." 

naaktgeboren zonderbroek

one time, i had a dream that my original ancestor in the new world, naaktgeboren zonderbroek, arrived in new york.

he was dutch. he woke up on the beach. it was on the banks of the hudson river. the tide had pulled him upstream and planted him near the roundout. it was morning. the sky was overcast and there was intermittent drizzle that tickled his cheek. he wasn't wearing any clothes. while he was wiggling around, trying to stay afloat in the tremendous waves, the currents and the wind pulled off his shirt and knickerbockers. at one point he found a piece of the wreck and tried to use it to float. it was pushed out of his hands by the current.

after he awoke, he got up and walked along the strand. there was no one around. all he could hear was the sound of the rain hitting the stones. he wondered how he was going to survive in the vast wilderness. then, he looked around. there were grape vines everywhere. he saw pear trees and wild apples. there were blueberry bushes and strawberry runners. there were raspberries and mulberries. he saw dandelions and wild onions. all of these he could eat raw. with further inspection, he noticed that the river and the creek were teaming with, especially, shad, but also many other fish. he tasted the water and found it sweet. there were rabbits and ducks. he didn't know about turkeys yet, but they were there too. there were mushrooms and sunflowers. there were wild beans growing and squashes and pumpkins. there were melons and cherries. the trees were dropping walnuts and hickory nuts right before him. the wild bees were making honey that was good to eat.

"i might starve here alone and by myself," he thought. "who will do the cooking?" he wondered.

you see, back then, he was sort of sexist.

typing, typing, typing...

one time i had a dream that i had to keep typing and typing.

it was after midnight and i was still typing. the fan was spinning and the frogs were peeping. the moon was shining on the rocks. my eyes were weary and the pages were flapping around. it didn't matter what i wrote, as long as i continued typing. i wanted to turn out the light and go to bed, but something held me captive and i couldn't escape, even though i had to get up early.

the little letters started to dance on the page. they were like miniature sylphs leaping on the paper. they turned with the curves of the font. when i awoke the next morning and read what i had wrote, it was all gibberish in asterisks and quotation marks.  

finally, around two in the morning, it was finished. everything was silent. i brushed my teeth and went to bed.

dance

one time i had a dream that we met before the thunderstorm while the moon was waxing gibbous. 

it was in the meadow by the mountain monastery.

who's walking who?

one time i had a dream that bubbles was watching a moronic sitcom called who's walking who? it was about two college students, langley and amber, that had a dog walking business, called "pooch movers" in denver, colorado.

it was a rainy saturday afternoon. bubbles was in the library swimming around in his bowl. i walked in and caught him watching this show. i asked him why he was filling his mind with this kind of trash when there were all of these great books around him.

bubbles said that he found it strangely entertaining. he said that he was going to turn on the interdimensional television, but decided to flip around the channels on regular tv before he made the switch. as he was doing so, who's walking who? caught his eye. it was very low budget, strictly one camera and no studio audience (the laughs were created by showing the episode to a large room full of people and recording their reactions), but he enjoyed it. at first he thought it might contain some interesting ideas. it didn't. it was completely mediocre. it was filled with stock characters, predictably dull plots, and very corny jokes.

in the episode that bubbles was watching, langley had been out walking three dogs, when rover -an irish setter- took off after a rabbit into the park. langely chased after him. rover followed the rabbit into a patch of poison ivy (i asked bubbles if they even have poison ivy in denver. he said he wasn't sure). all of this action took place off screen and was implied in the dialogue. what they did show was langley with a severe case of poison ivy. it was so bad she had to expose as much skin as possible to the air, so she spent the whole episode in a bathing suit.

i mentioned to bubbles this was just an excuse to show off the body of an attractive young lady in an exploitative manner. bubbles told me that i was too accustomed to the expectations of the masculine gaze.

in fact, bubbles claimed, he was challenging the orthodoxies of gender performance through his understanding of evolutionary ecology. the most important thing about the show is that no animals were harmed in the making of it. the supposition of dominance in my argument was, of course, expected as it has become a normative mode of description bordering on reification. however, the attuning of the feminine with the triumphal potency of nature imbued the narrative with a teleological integrity.

isn't this still creepily voyeuristic? i asked bubbles. you're sitting in the library in a private mode with the further distance and protection afforded by your fishbowl and watching the bare flesh of a young woman. how can you deny the imbalance of parity?

bubbles reminded me that he was merely watching the images of the actress portraying langley in the show not the actual person. secondly, he drew my attention to the pustules and rashes on her skin. although it was depicted with reddish make up, the intention was to signify that there is a painfulness associated with the rawness of uncovered primordial truth.

- so, then you're suggesting that there is an original and immutable set of axiomatically articulated verities, or verity, that trumps the reality of class generated values, understandings, and perspectives? i asked. isn't this essentialist?

bubbles said that it superficially might appear so, and admitted this was a problematic aspect of his progressive nature. however, by making an argument entrenched in the authoritative independence of radical muliebrity and the vigor of self-assertive maidenhood, his propositions were fundamentally revolutionary -or at least at sufficiently at odds with the bourgeois homosocial superstructure - to pass.

anyway, bubbles said, he mainly liked watching the theatrical dogs on the show. he said he felt a kinship with his fellow animal performers. they were really good at sight gags.

the oldest man alive

one time i had a dream that the oldest man alive told me the secret to his longevity.

he was very creaky and walked with a shuffle. he revealed to me that the key to his long life was to keep himself immersed in the flavour of butterscotch.

he gave me a dime, too.