things and other things
11/27/19
A dream in which Madonna organizes a group of topless protesters on the street. She asks them if they are comfortable doing what they are doing before leading them in a chant of social bullshit, social bullshit!
A clash with traffic cops and cars turning at an intersection
March 3, 2016
He can’t sleep. His ear hurts. His body rages. He kicks and jerks. Punches and rolls. Eleven at night. I lay on my side. His feet press into my back. He cries. He shouts. Refuses to calm down. At first she is strict. Her voice stern. Go to sleep. I repeat. You need to relax your body. Just try to sleep.
No. He yells.
We doze. We must. We drift off. My stomach knots. A fist of anxiety wedged. Thick. This is when I normally lose control. The wave of panic washing over me. Covering my shoulders. Fogging my head in despair. Loosening my bowels. But it doesn’t come. I breathe into my nervous stomach. Slow breaths. Allow myself to feel this nervous fist. This anxious twisting. Allow myself to feel it and be tired. To feel it. To be tired. To drift. To be prodded and kicked by my raging son.
Our frustration turns to sympathy. She tries to soothe him. Rubs his back. Still he cries. Three hours pass. Breathing. The words I am awesome appear in my brain unbidden. My stomach and anxiety don’t worsen. It doesn’t let up, but the balance never tips. Never lose control. She says I should just go downstairs to sleep. One of us should sleep. He wails, no. But I go and lay down. The guest bed. Dark. Quiet outside. The street light through these gauze curtains. A drink of water. A lecture in one headphoned ear. Recomfort myself. Allow myself that anxiety. That nervous bundle. Breathe into it and fall asleep.
April 4, 2016
A dream in which the big toe on my right foot was coming apart. A large open wound, viewing the bone. No blood. Just aged flesh. A dull ache. Hopping on my left foot trying to keep the right toe from disintegrating. In my mind, heading towards a doctor.
April 4, 2016
We blew bubbles outside in the wind. Warm and wind. He chased them through the yard. Climbing onto the chain link fence. Trying to catch them. Climbing onto the air conditioner and jumping off. We played soccer tag. If we got hit by the ball we were frozen. Trapped in jail. Only to be set free if we were hit again by the ball. This time the ball was electric of fireball powers unleashed by Lego ninjas. He ran from me. From the back yard. In a long circle around the front of the house and back. Climbing the small tree by the garage.
We did cartwheels. Me remembering, then trying to teach him how. Putting his hands in position on the ground and then trying to help him kick his legs up and over him and back down to the ground. I did it, he yelled. Now I can do cartwheels!
This morning he zipped his jacket by himself for the first time. Smiling.
April 4, 2016
Over the weekend.
Are monster trucks real?
Yes.
What? Who drives them?
I don’t know. People.
People like Erich?
Erich?
Yeah. Cuz Erich is a cool dude.
March 13, 2019
A dream in which we are at a Baha’i retreat. I am searching for my son. From room to room, events to events. Chewing a pizza that I cannot bite through and I have to keep putting more in my mouth to try to bite through it so that it doesn’t make a mess. He is always a few minutes ahead of me. I find his coat. I find his shoes. He is in various play areas.
My son and I wait in line at a Jamaican restaurant. Old white man after old white man cut ahead of us ensuring that we never get to order.
March 20, 2019
A dream of falling elevators.
March 6, 2019.
A dream in which I tried to organize a music show at a large junk yard auto mechanic. Post industrial remnants scavenging in the night. Searching for friends amongst crumbling homes.
A dream in which I hold the hands of both my partner and of my son as we sit together and watch and wait for a world-engulfing wave of green to envelope us, nullifying as it swallows all of existence.
– written April 11, 2018.
April 15, 2017.
Three dreams.
Upstairs the registers were run by staff unknown to me.
Dreamt I was on a light rail train. In the front car. All was glass windows for viewing, including the floor. We sped out over Chicago. I could see the buildings beneath the water. Submerged. Dizzying with their height and the depth of the flood. A day bright with sun. Warm and blue sky. The other passengers laughing with apprehension of the clear bottom of the train.
She says, The thing that bothered me when I saw my house down there is that I know I left my door closed when I left. But now it’s open.
12/16/16
On the train. The planes and angles of his face. The lay of his hair. The shape of the rims of his glasses. His profile.
An instant reliving. I am in an apartment. In the living room. A group of us from the corporate music store I work at. We are gathered for our monthly movie night. It is night. Our host sits in a chair. His sister draped over him in his lap. We are confused.
A break. One by one those gathered slip off to the kitchen for drinks and food. I remain seated with a friend, Rex, and a man known as The Claw. With the planes and angles of his face. His glasses. His hair smashed by stocking cap. He is a giant of gangle limbs sunken into couch cushions. His head leaned back in inebriation.
He speaks in rambles and incoherence. Sometimes the volume of his voice falls so low we have to lean forward and strain to hear his words, then sudden bursts of excitement, speed and volume. A chaos of inflection and cadence. Rhythm and meter.
When he casually mentions that he’d like to kill us, we join the others in the kitchen.
After seeing this stranger on the train. And this memory resurfaced. I dream. I dream of him. I dream that he chances upon me in a bookstore. He as he may be now. He and his wife. The bright lights of this corporate bookstore. Standing between wooden shelves. He approaches from behind, says – boo. And I jump. He is older. But still those same angles and glasses. The lay of his hair. Yes that was me on the train, he says. He and his wife smile friendly.
Dreamt I was asleep in bed. Then half awake. Run my fingers through my hair. I feel something thicker. A knot in my hair? A tangle? I grasp it. Pull sharp and quick. Pluck. I feel it loosen and free from deep roots. A long black fibrous stem. With burst of white roots at the base. A plant growing from my scalp now next to me on the white sheets of the bed.
February 8, 2016
Things said to me while I dreamt I was taking a German class at a community college.
That bike is like a tutor mobile.
That bag makes you look like a dad.
Signing up for an account before class starts is like twenty percent of our grade.