Sunday, July 19, 2009

Blogs Are All About Bloggers

This is a blog, and really there’s only one reason to write one, the belief that the blogger’s own life is so fascinating that it must be very exciting for other people to read about, coupled with the blogger’s need to show off. What, after all, could be more fascinating than me? Take my dreams, please.

The other night I set my alarm for 5:45 a.m. That’s always trouble for me, anything earlier than six o’clock and my entire night’s sleep is ruined. I went to bed at nine o’clock, that’s more than eight hours to sleep in, but no matter. The alarm was set for an early rising, so it was all rolling and tumbling, with nightmares.

I’d had a disturbing but dull one early in the “sleep” period, and it left me sleepless for a good while. Later on, though, I had a doozy.

I was at our house in California, in the backyard, and there were lots of inappropriate people around. The sky was filed with clouds with shapes that no cloud should take, sea shells, whirlpools, real Outer Limits stuff. An old woman came down the driveway, she was selling personal belongings, a poor woman. I felt compassion for her, greeting her kindly, and went to look at her stuff, I figured I’d buy something. I reached in and it turned out that the stuff was crawling with spiders, and I got lots of bites around my fingertips, little red dots. Something like green grass grew out of the spots, and when I pulled it, long strips of grass came out and it hurt like hell. Feeling intense pain in dreams has always been one of my gifts.

I went out front and it was our block alright, but with lots of trees. I saw my nephew Scott, but he didn’t greet me. He was about eight feet tall, wearing a cape, and he walked slowly down the block. I saw a neighbor, a friend of my son’s, he warned me of an approaching cloud. It was shaped like a Christmas tree, and it landed in the middle of the street and went up the block, round cloudy decorations and all.

Back at the house, day care was in full progress. The house now was just a wooden frame, like a giant wooden monkey-bars with stairs and platforms. It was full of people of all ages, but mostly children. I tried to kick some of them out and came across another nephew, but very young.

Spider woman’s old husband came down the driveway and jabbed me in the chest with his cane, saying that I had been mean to his wife. I was worried at first, because he was dressed like a Viking, but then I got angry and told him that if he waved that cane at me again there was going to be trouble.

My cousin Patty showed up, but she was blind. She wanted to show me her new project to make money, she was embroidering maps of the United States. The sample really looked like it had been created by a blind person. She had some children with her.

Then I was back in the house, in a stairwell, but there were no stairs, just little landings at the doorways to the stairwell, three floors. The door on the landing above me opened up and there were several people there, they offered to help me build stairs.

Down the block, I was sitting on the curb next to a fat woman who was eating potato chips. A thousand cows came over the hill, like it was a show, but then there was an explosion on the other side and it was like a tsunami of cow shit. The fat woman was so surprised that she flipped her chips and they got all over my lap, making a big grease stain.

Then the alarm went off. Fascinating, no?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

All those years of drugs and booze have royally fucked up your subconscious, Mr. Fred. But my interpretation of your dream is that it's about growing old, about loss, deterioration, loss of security and love, death and dying. In all, common themes for guys our age I suppose.


-E

fred c said...

Pardon me, Dr. E., but my subconscious was pretty fucked up before the booze and drugs.

I agree, though, with your interpretation of my dream. There's a lot of unresolved fear that goes along with this getting older thing.

Good luck to all of us.

Anonymous said...

Wild yes. I love the Scott part. Makes me shiver.

O----------C

fred c said...

There's nothing like a good dream. Last night I dreamed that me and Bill O'Reilly were at a ball game, just two old Catholic school boys from Queens!