beautiful, funny, sad & true

Yes, you read that correctly.

That phrase originated in last night’s dream, naturally.  In order for the dream to make any kind of sense at all (which it won’t), you have to know that when my brother and I were teenagers, we used to call each other ‘cork’ as a funny insult.  It was a harmless word that sounded vaguely dirty, so we really felt like we were getting away with something.  It was never meant as a genuine insult, it was always used in a tongue-in-cheek way, as in, “Take three, cork!”

In the dream, Brother and I were our current ages, and we were visiting Dad at his old house along the river in Vancouver.  We were upstairs in his bedroom, and he was talking to us about something, but we weren’t particularly paying attention.   Brother said to me, in a sotto voce ventriloquist way, barely moving his lips, so that Dad wouldn’t overhear, “Don’t forget to get the you-know-what.”  We were standing next to a large bookcase, so I thought Brother was referring to Dad’s collection of risqué books and soft-core pornography.

“I remember,” I whispered, gesturing ever so slightly with my head and eyes toward the bookshelf.

“Don’t forget about the check,” he corrected.

“I didn’t forget about it,” I said, faking anger.

“The check is coming to you,” he said.  Apparently Mom was sending a check for me to give to Dad, and I was supposed to call her to let her know when we arrived, so that she could send it.

“I know it is,” I replied, a bit stronger.  “Shut up. . .Power Cork!”

We took a beat while that ridiculous phrase hung in the air.  I chuckled quietly, to show him that I was just as surprised by what had come flying out of my mouth, and repeated under my breath, “Power Cork.”

We both cracked up, and that’s what woke me up, still laughing in my bed.

This morning, I had a short, funny dream that took place in the kitchen of a house.  The point of view is like a movie.  I’m watching myself take part in the action.

* * * * *

A woman (a friend of mine from PDX who also happens to read this blog) is standing at the sink washing vegetables.  She is listening to music on a little stereo on the counter.  I sneak up and stand silently behind her.  She starts to sway her hips to the music a little bit.  I surprise her by putting my hands on her hips and swaying with her a little bit.  She turns around and gives me a mischievous smirk.  I raise my hand to brush a bit of her hair from her face.  She reaches for the counter, grabs a leaf of Romaine lettuce, turns toward me and throws it in my face in a hilariously flirty way.  We both crack up laughing, and she turns back to her cooking.  I step to the fridge and grab the entire head of lettuce, rip off a bunch of of leaves, crumple them up and drop them on top of her head.  She laughs and turns back toward me.  We are about to kiss, but then I wake up.

Romaine et roman, non? Le sigh.

This morning’s dream was unusually verbose and intense.  I slept fitfully after staying up until three a.m. to listen to all of my friend’s radio show, and my dream reflected my restlessness.

* * * * *

I’m in my childhood home in Yakima to visit Mom.  I’ve decided to stay at her house temporarily since Stepdad’s death, so I’ve brought a bunch of my furniture with me and set it up in a pleasing and particular way in my old bedroom.   It’s late at night, and I’m straightening up a few things before going to bed.  Finally satisfied, I pull back the covers, crawl in, and turn off the light.

When I wake up – in the dream – everything seems strange.  The bed is facing the opposite direction, and the furniture has all been rearranged in a way that Mom had suggested I try.  I sit up in bed, and there is stuff piled on top of every available flat surface.   Stepmom appears at the door, which is particularly odd, and asks, “Did you get anything for your birthday?”  Something in her voice tells me that I should be looking around the room for new items.

“I don’t think so,” I reply, “but let me take a look.  I just now woke up.”  She leaves the room,  and I sit up in bed to look for things that weren’t there before.  A telephone rings – a land-line phone, which I haven’t had in ages – and I pick it up, realizing that it’s one of the gifts.  I put the phone receiver to my ear and hear a constant stream of gibberish and advertising.  I listen for about five seconds, then place the receiver back on the base, with a considerable amount of difficulty.  Thanks, Stepmom, I think to myself.  Thanks for the gift I didn’t want. Hoping that the other gifts aren’t just more of her cast-offs, I look down at the carpet, and notice that it’s patchwork, instead of the purple that’s on the floor in my room.  I’ve awoken in my brother’s room.  Just then, Brother walks in and sits down on my bed.

“What’s going on?”  I ask him.  “I went to bed in my room, and woke up in here, and my stuff is all rearranged.”

“You need to get up now,” he tells me.  “Everybody’s expecting you.”

“All I want to do is sleep,” I say.  “I got about two hours last night.”

“Well, sorry, but. . .let’s go.”

I grumble and get out of bed, but I only make it about two feet before I have to sit down on the floor and lean my back against the wall.  Brother is not pleased by this, but he sits down next to me.  A kid about seventeen years old walks into the room and sits down on the other side of me.  I have no idea who he is, and instead of introducing himself, he says to me, “Your brother says you can do accents.”

“Yes, I can.”

“Well, do one.”

“Why?”

“Cause I want to hear it.”

I lapse into an Australian accent.  “What if I don’t feel like doin’ it?  That’s gotta count for somethin’.”

He laughs a little bit.  “That’s really good.”

I go back to my normal speaking voice.  “Thank you.”

He scoots in front of me and reclines against my legs, which makes me really uncomfortable.  “Dude.  What’re you doing?  Get off.”

“Use your accent,” he says, and stays put.

I lapse back into the Australian accent and say exasperatedly, “I didn’t ask for that, and I’m not playin’ along.”  I stand up from behind him, and he falls backwards a bit before regaining his balance.  I turn to my brother and ask, in my normal voice, “Who the hell’s he?  I don’t need this crap.  I’m going back to bed.”  I stand up, walk to the bed, and climb in, rolling away from Brother and the kid so that my back is facing them.  I pull the covers over my head, and I hear footsteps next to the bed.  An old man with huge Coke-bottle glasses leans down by my face and peers at me.  He blinks twice and speaks in a shrill voice.

“Where’s your driver’s license?”

“Who are you?”

“Your driver’s license?” he says, more firmly.

“Who the hell ARE you?”

Brother walks over and motions for the man to leave me alone. I am starting to lose my cool, and Brother knows it.  The old man leaves, and two middle-aged women appear in his place.

“What’s this about?” I ask them.

“We think there’s something wrong with you, and we want you to be okay,” one of them says, gesturing toward the other.  “She’s going to call the doctor now.”  The second woman picks up the land-line phone.

“I’m sleep deprived, that’s all,” I say irritably.  “I don’t NEED a doctor, I need sleep.  I’m not responsible for anything I’m likely to say to him.”

The doctor walks in and stands beside the two women.

“How the hell did you get here so fast?!”  I yell.  “She only just now picked up the phone, and she didn’t even SAY anything!  This is ridiculous.  I have to use the restroom.  Excuse me.”

The doctor looks at me and says to the women in a low but clearly audible voice, “He’s in a ‘baric’ state.  We’d better let him rest up.”

I walk to the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror to inspect myself.  The walls are painted dark green, and the large sink has been replaced with a tiny yellow one.  There are flowers everywhere, and a small candle is burning on the counter.  I turn the faucet handle and the water comes on full blast, sending water all over the counter.  I turn it off quickly, and try again for a normal water flow.  I rub my eyes and scratch my head.  I look and feel disheveled.  I stay in the bathroom for a few moments, flush the toilet so they think that’s what I was doing, then I open the door and walk out to the living room.  I lie down on the floor and curl up on my side.  Brother walks in and crouches down next to me.

“You can’t keep acting like this,” he says.  “You’re pissing people off.”

“Oh, is that right?” I say, very sarcastically.  I raise my voice so that everyone in the place can hear me.  “SORRY, EVERYONE.  SORRY I’M PISSING YOU OFF.”  I lower my voice to an acidic snarl.  “I’m sure that’ll do the trick.”

Brother raises his left hand to massage his furrowed brow.  “Don’t do this.  You haven’t even seen Niece yet or anything.  She wants to see you.”

“I want to see her too, but first I just need some sleep.  I’m not doing anybody any favors by seeing them when I’m in this state of mind.  Is the doctor gone yet?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he says.

“Thank God.”  I stand up and walk toward the back of the house to find Niece.  There are lots of strange people in the house, like servants and gardeners and cooks.  We’ve never had servants, or gardeners, or cooks.  None of this makes any sense.  Mom’s friend walks by and give me a hug.  “What’s happening?”  I ask her.  “I seem to have gone through the looking-glass, and everything is super weird now.”  We turn and walk toward the back door, and she keeps her arm around me for longer than I want it there, so I maneuver my way out of her grasp.

“It’s better with me here, though, isn’t it?” she asks.

“It certainly is,” I say, choosing my words carefully.  “We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you.”

I walk out the back door and see Niece and Mom trying to get the attention of Mom’s five cats.  Niece wants to pick one of them up, and Mom tells her, “Here, try shy Saghra.”  I arrive next to them just as Niece cradles Saghra in her arms.

“Wow, she’s huge, like a tiger cub,” I say.  I reach out to pet Saghra, and she slowly raises a single claw, which hooks deeply into the skin of my left index finger.  “Damn it!” I mutter a couple of worse expletives under my breath, since Niece is standing there too.  “Stupid cat.”  I unhook her claw from my finger and run into the house to get a bandage for the bleeding flap of skin.  Brother is inside, and I push my way past him.

“What happened?” he asks.

“Something’s wrong with everything today.  I can’t even pet a cat!”

I storm off into the bathroom and bandage my finger carefully, though I know the blood is going to fill it up before too long.

* * * * *

For the record, it should be noted that the following is the transcript of this morning’s dream.

I’m driving in a newish white Ford van, on a road trip with with my brother.  The van is full of our stuff and a baby that we’re taking care of for some reason.  We park the van in front of a hotel room and we unload our suitcases and go inside to our room.   I wake up in the morning to find that during the night, the baby unloaded a huge turd and smeared it all over the end of the bed, which prompted my brother to pull the white down comforter over the top of the mess and made the smearing even worse.  He’s packing up and preparing to leave.  “Gross!” I say.  “You can’t leave it like this.  You have to at least pull the sheets off so the staff knows to wash them, but you really should wash them yourself.”  He pulls off the sheets and leaves them in a pile on the floor.  We grab the baby, walk out the door and climb in the van.

We drive to a park on the east side of Portland.  There is a Mexican culture festival happening in the park, which we’re both excited to participate in.  When we arrive, the so-called festival turns out to be one little food cart selling tacos and stuff, with hundreds of people milling around the gigantic grassy park.  No events or anything are happening.  We look around and see a batting cage at the opposite corner of the park.  We are a bit let down by all this, and I tell him, “I’m out of here.  I’ll be back to pick you and the baby up later.”  I drive off in the van, never to see either of them again.

The dream’s location changes, and I’m walking around downtown Portland by myself.  I decide to walk through the basement levels of each of the buildings I come to.  This is an exhausting endeavor, and I wonder to myself if I should maybe change into a different pair of shoes.   I meet a friend along the way, and we walk together into a nice hotel and ride the elevator down to the basement.

The ‘basement’ is a circular room, dimly lit from overhead, with lots of food stalls around the edge that have bright neon signs above each of them.  We are standing in the middle of the room, spinning slowly, taking in the sights, when a couple of rough-looking men approach us and tell us we should leave now.

“We were,” I say.  “We just got a little bit turned around, is all.”  We walk away toward the staircase this time, and the men follow us.  We race up the stairs and out the front doors of the hotel.  When we get there, everyone is staring at us.  It seems they think that my friend is my brother, and that we have abandoned the baby.  The news of this has spread quickly through the city.  We decide to go ‘on the run’ until such time as the general population figures out that we’re innocent. . .much like The Fugitive.  I tell him that we should go to my van, which is parked nearby.  We run to it, climb in, and drive away.

I find myself in the lobby of the San Francisco airport, alone, exploring it.  They have redecorated it with dark red carpeting and slightly lighter red walls, which looks surprisingly good.  I see a couple of drums sitting on the floor unattended, and I walk toward them.  Someone appears from behind a swinging door, grabs the drums, and carries them back through the door to a tiny concourse for private planes.  I follow him through the door to see if he’s alone or with a band.  If he’s with a band, I want to see if they’re people I know.  I take a few steps and stop.  The drummer is catching up to his band members, and I can’t see them well enough to tell if I know them or not, so I turn back and walk through the door into the lobby.

The dream’s location changes to one of the light industrial areas near the south end of the city, and I park the van and step out onto the sidewalk.  I see a small crowd forming, and they are yelling the name (“Dan!  Dan!”) of someone I don’t recognize; a local politician or TV news personality.  I turn away from that crowd and see a musician friend from Portland, Chris R., walking down the street.  He tells me he’s playing with his full band, but that I should be ready, because he may call me up to play guitar with him.  We walk over to the venue and are hanging out backstage with his band, raiding the small food table and drinking bottled water.  I tell him about the band I saw at the airport, and ask him if he knows who they are.  He doesn’t,  naturally, since I don’t even know, and I laugh and say, “Enh, they were probably just a local cover band anyway.”  We all laugh.  Just then, the announcer gets on the PA system and proclaims that it’s time to start the show and that he’d like to introduce Chris, with no response from either Chris or the crowd.  Someone tells the announcer he should say the name “Chris Everson” instead, and he does, then turns back and asks the person, “Why?”

“That’s his rap persona,” the audience member replies, “and that’s who’s performing tonight.”

Chris puts on a bright yellow pullover rain jacket and a curly, black wig that’s bleached blond on the top.  He runs down the aisle through the middle of the audience toward the stage, and I’m right behind him, wearing a pair of yellow bike gloves.  I clap my hands together and yell, “Woooooo!” to get the crowd going, which miraculously seems to work.  I see Justin from MellowBand in the third row, so I join him there.  ChildhoodFriendJason appears in the pew behind me (the seats in the first few rows are dark wooden church pews) and I tell him to come up and join Justin and me in our row.

The dream changes again, and I’m back in Portland.  By this time, I’m definitely on the run.  Even as far away as San Francisco, I don’t feel safe.  I’ve been driving and flying for days without seeing any friendly faces, and I keep hearing news stories about the Portland men who abandoned a baby and then disappeared.  I drive and run all day, and at twilight I walk toward a community baseball field.  I sit near the back of the small bleachers, among a small crowd of other people.  I see a few friends mixed in with the crowd, and I move to sit near them.  They’ve heard the news, of course, and they seem frightened and surprised to see me, but I reassure them by telling them that not one of the allegations is true, and that I’m waiting for the metaphorical storm to pass before I come out of hiding.  My friends are relieved by this, and a couple of them hug me.  “You can’t imagine what these last few days have been like,” I tell them.  “It’s been horrible.  I want nothing more than to go back and make everything right, but I know I can’t do that yet.  I miss my brother, and I hope the baby’s okay.”  I tell them I should probably be on my way, though, because “you never know.”

It’s now ten o’clock in the morning.  I’m driving toward downtown Portland along Interstate 84 (which is called Interstate 205 in the dream) and trying to find a place to park within walking distance of the Coliseum.  I see my friend, the one with whom I’d explored the basement of the hotel downtown, walking nearby and I yell over to him to get his attention.   I tell him that I’ve seen some friends, and that they showed their support for us.  He tells me that he has good news for me; after all this time and hassle, the authorities have realized their mistake, and they’re going to just let us go.  “That’s great!” I tell him.  “Where do you want to go?”  He climbs into the van, shuts the door behind him and rolls the window down.

“How about we go downtown again and look at some more basements?”

“You’ve got yourself a deal!” I say, and I drive off in the direction of one of the bridges that will take us downtown.

This morning, I had what was quite possibly the stupidest dream I’ve ever had.  Thankfully, it was also one of the shortest.

I was in my kitchen making chicken-flavored ramen, but I wasn’t doing it in the way a normal person would.  I got a bowl from the cupboard, set it on the counter, and carefully placed the dry clump of ramen noodles into the bowl.  Then I opened the packet of seasoning and, also very carefully, poured the contents in a small, neat pile over the top of the noodles.  Then I went to the stove and turned on the burner underneath the teapot, which was already full of water.

As if this wasn’t a stupid dream already, I decided to inspect my handiwork with the noodles and seasoning, so I poked my nose right next to the bowl and peered into it.  Everything I saw there seemed satisfactory, so I straightened up and moved the bowl onto the stove next to the warming teapot.  It was then that I noticed (pause for dramatic effect) that. . .I had spilled a bit of the seasoning on the counter.   That’s when I got perturbed and woke up.

What are you doing to me, Brain?  Why do I have to waste my precious REM time on this ridiculous pabulum?  Not only that, Brain, but you of all brains know that I have a blog, and that I’m gonna write about this, and that you’re not gonna end up looking too good when it’s all over.  There are tens tons tens of people who will read this and agree that this is well below your usual dream standards, Brain.

I’m not threatening you, I’m just saying you can (and should!) do better than this from now on.