lorenza

one time i had a dream that the famous american actress/musician/model, lorenza, recieved a shipment of my mustard.

the man from the desert

one time i had a dream that the man who came out of the desert wanted to have a word with us.

my pet-fish, bubbles, wanted to know how he was able to survive so long with out water. he told bubbles that he knew of underground rivers and hidden pools. he said that certain roots contained a great deal of syrup and he would eat them. he also told bubbles he knew a technique that allowed him to collect the dew in the morning into a funnel and that would also yield drinking water. bubbles was very impressed -- and so was i, actually. 

the gaze

one time i had a dream that i met a lady who used a crystal ball.

she would stare into the orb and eventually visions would appear. sometimes they revealed to her distant events. other times she could look into the past and discern the causes of events that were not apparent in the moment itself.

occasionally, she would look at the current hour and use the orb to understand the connections and disconnections of the present. she would be able to comprehend the meaning of relationships between the most unlikely of events such as the falling of the leaves and the size of the bubbles in the boiling waters of the tea kettle. she would trace tiny filaments of the past into the present and see the web of knotted jewels that surround us and form our minds.

my pet-fish, bubbles, asked her if she could predict the future with her crystal ball. he was thinking about his results at the pachinko parlors. she said that it was possible, but that she rarely did so.

bubbles asked "why?"

she told him that the future is always flickering and the forms were less concrete. when people payed her to know the future, they generally wanted solid answers that would retain their form. all that she could offer them was vague, unnamed, emotions, flickering pigments, and geometries of time that collapsed and reformed.

bubbles told her it didn't matter. he said that he knew one day the working class would rise up and seize the method of production. the surplus value created by labor would return to the proletariat and eventually the state would wither away. history would reach a conclusion.

bubbles said that her notions of diachrony were flawed -- as was evident in the crystal ball's inability to generate any synthesis in predicatively equivalent forms.

the crystal ball lady said this sounded very spooky and full of conjecture. 

bubbles said she should trade in her crystal ball for a sewing machine, a bicycle, a wristwatch, or a radio.

she said that she'd have to wait and see. her name was alexandra.

birthday

one time i had a dream that it was my country's birthday.

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.