you can borrow my hoe

one time i had a dream that my pet-fish, bubbles, kept offering to loan garden tools to ms. rathangan, a lady from my neighborhood, even though she didn't want them.

one afternoon in late december i was walking to my house. it was around twilight which comes early in that time of the year. people were turning on their xmas lights. ms. rathangan was in her drive way with her binoculars. she saw me coming and walked over. she writes books about falling stars.

she said that my pet fish bubbles is a bit of jerk. i nodded yes, and asked her if he was pestering her with the rhetoric of his end of the world cult. she said that her father had been a politician and was into that sort of thing, so she was used to that. she didn't mind it. she told me that bubbles kept offering to loan her gardening utensils.

bubbles, every time he saw her, would start a conversation. he'd tell her that if she wanted to borrow his rake she could, or if she needed a hoe, she could use his, or if she needed a hose, she could come over and borrow his. last week he put the wheelbarrow at her disposal. then, she said that he always calls her "meggers" instead of just meg, which is her name.

i said that maybe he likes her and wants to ask her on a date.

she giggled at that. she shook her head and said that it wasn't that. bubbles was kind enough, but she really didn't do much gardening in december, since the lawn was covered by snow and the ground was frozen. she just wanted to know if there was a reason why he specifically was obsessed with her lawn, or if he was like that with everyone. i told her that it wasn't just her.

when i asked bubbles about it, he said that he was just trying to be friendly. he asked, rhetorically, why everyone in this neighborhood was so touchy around the holidays.

i reminded him that all the tools he was offering to loan out are actually mine not his. he started to mumble about the evils of property. 

the learned men and women

one time i had a dream that a group of scholars contacted me regarding my uncle cuthred's theories on bablyonian archaeology. they wanted to know his opinion on a certain controversy that was in all of the newspapers.

i wrote back to them that uncle cuthred had been dead for quite some time. they said they would come over and check out his writings. in fact, he was well dead before i was born. i had inherited his books and papers, but they were fairly disorganized. the scholars told me that i needed to catalogue them in an orderly manner and arrange them in a coherent fashion before they could be studied. they seemed to loose interest when i told them they were in old wooden whiskey boxes in no particular order.

they told me i hadn't done a very good job of arranging them, and that i would never make it as an archivist or an archaeologist. i told them i mix mustard. they said that explains it. they called me an ignorant craftsman.

my pet fish bubbles was going to lay some working class theory on them from his cult when they announced that they were leaving. they suggested that i get cuthred's papers in order soon.

we're not ghosts

one time i had a dream that i was sailing on a ship that was guided by angels. they were good angels who got us safely to a harbor. we had got lost at sea during a storm off the coast of cape cod.

the angels appeared as soft lights and harps and voices singing. the captain had been washed overboard, so the cook took command of the ship. he told the sailors to follow the voices.

when we hit land we were in halifax, nova scotia. the voices turned to violins. when we told the people there our story, they thought we were ghosts.

Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen

one time i had a dream that i was in berlin in 1989 when the wall came down. 

bubbles didn't have much to say about this. 

bonneteau

one time i had a dream that i discovered the manifesto of the tree elves. they felt that they did not receive adequate attention.

my pet-fish, bubbles, told them that they should go on strike. they said they weren't sure how to do that. bubbles told them that since the weather was only a social construction, they should change it.

they laughed about that. they tried to explain the weather to bubbles by playing three card monte, or as they called it, find the lady. he had to guess what card they were thinking off, and where it was located.

they shuffled the 3 cards around on their little table. bubbles said that they were thinking of the ace of spades, and he pointed at one of the cards. the dealer elf turned it over, and it was the ace of spades.

all of the elves started giggling again. the dealer elf said very good, but he was thinking of the joker card, and that it was in my shirt pocket. i checked my pocket and, amazingly, it was. i didn't even know it. at first, bubbles accused me of being a shill, but when he read my body language, he could tell i was surprised.

the elves had a good laugh at bubbles's expense, but they refused to take his money. bubbles was especially annoyed by that refusal, and tried to get them to go three out of five. they said the game was over, and that if this was canada, they could get put in jail even just for playing for fun.

do you have a staring problem?

one time i had a dream that couldn't get the red elves to stop staring at me.

it was vachement annoying.

bubbles, my pet fish, said that these sort of luminous events assemble and dissipate, especially in thunderstorms, and it is best to not let them disturb me.

i told him that i was trying to avoid maple trees, because that's where they like to congregate.

bubbles said that i was a paranoid little freak.

grandmother moon

one time i had a dream that the moon was my grandmother.

my pet fish bubbles said that she controls the tides.