Dream: A Mess of History
Saturday morning:
My dad watched the worker clamp the junction box to the end of the new conduit. The empty garage was clean enough to be new, but they'd lived there for years. My dad wanted a new light in the other room, switched from the garage. He explained to the worker that there was supposed to be a relay on the switch, and the worker said he'd didn't have one along. He walked to his truck outside.
(He may have picked up a semi trailer under one arm and shaken it until a bunch of girders slid out like uncooked spaghetti, which still wasn't the right part.)
Brownstones and ancient brick apartment blocks formed a lazy corner on the hilltop. I stood in the cobblestone courtyard between them where two lazy streets had stopped for a nap. I liked this part of the city; it had the restrained bigness of pre- steel-framework prosperity. I looked slowly upwards along the bricks and spied a face in a third-floor window. Pale freckles burnished her fine features. She was gorgeous; I couldn't help staring. From my angle, I couldn't see anything above her cheekbones, framed in shallow arcs of black hair. Her lips moved in silent words, apparently spoken to the breeze outside her window. I couldn't work out what she said, but I realized it was nemoren. I was startled, but that had to be her... didn't it?
I tried to follow her unseen gaze to the industrial district below the hill. The autumn light burned clouds the color of falling leaves, narrow streaks across a white sky so brilliant it blurred the edges of the buildings. Everything was oddly hazy, and I asked a pedestrian whether there was a house fire.
"No," he said calmly, "the city is burning."
In a flash, I remembered talking to my father when I was much younger, maybe 12 or 14. "Dad," I'd asked, "what color is the smoke from burning bodies?" I looked again at the patchy sky.
gunn strolled down the stairs and waved hello. I stopped her for a moment. "I'd like to get together sometime," I said, "just to hang out. How about..." now's bad... she's got plans, and anyway the city's burning; we'll be in September crunch soon at work, so that's no good; then Ensemble has rehearsal madness till the Fall Concert; Lego League; Christmas; then she's got the crunch for the end of first quarter... "April?"
I left the courtyard with a friend, searching for the source of an echoed voice. A few turns brought us to a foot bridge overlooking the market, where the assembled crowd watched a film projected on the wall of a building. We caught most it. A short reenactment, the sort made for TV news, it recounted the deaths of three local superheroes. It had the colorized look of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, obviously decades old. I barely caught the end of the first hero, but I'm pretty sure she was flying in a capeless dark purple jumpsuit. The second was killed by the spear-horn of a lurking beast.
The last--a man with a white suit and a red cape--flew across the rooftops. A squat water tank opened its eyes just after he passed and fired its harpoon through his chest. The hero jerked to a stop, caught by the trailing harpoon line. Hovering over the street, he unleashed his famous blue waves of force at his assailant. Energy waves snapped the cable, and he freed himself from the weapon. The hero flew back to the roof where the tank had ambushed him, but saw no sign of it.
A metallic chattering from behind caught his attention, and he whipped around. Dozens of tiny water tanks, two feet on a side, stood in columns around him. Their hungry eyes smiled as their mouths opened and groaned shut again. (They reminded my dream self of Marshie from Homestar Runner, without the bite from his head.) The baby tanks leaped. He threw his arms and head back to launch skyward, only to see the bottom of the mother tank bearing down as she pounced from a girder high above. A nest of baby water tanks swarmed over the helpless hero, chanting their mother's name as they devoured him.
Pam and Elizabeth arrived at my parents' place to chat over dinner. I was excited; I haven't seen them since high school. (Both attended the church where I grew up. Pam never liked me; none of the church kids did, except maybe Caroline. Elizabeth, Pam's older sister, was nice to everyone, me included. She was also a fox. (Though, aesthetically, she was more of a Duchess, or as close as a middle-class Midwesterner can get without a lot of pretension and a fake accent.)) Anyhow, they were both very pleasant.
The dining room was in the wrong place, and it was cluttered with stacked boxes and British Naval Cable (which my parents' house isn't), none of which ever quite got in the way. I opened the front door just as gunn coasted up to the house on a black bicycle. She hung her helmet and coat by the door, then joined the others at the table. Mom began serving dinner, but I had to get something from outside.
The weather was nice, so I wore a t-shirt and khaki office slacks cut at the knees into ragged shorts. Two or three inches of old snow covered the grass, which meant it was cold, so I was also wearing a pea coat and huge black combat boots. I did whatever I was doing outside, then tromped back into the entryway, embarrassed about my silly clothing. The girls in the dining room smiled, and there may have been some friendly giggling.
The reception hall was crowded after dinner, mostly strangers my parents' age. We watched a movie of highlights from last year's golf outing. My father teed off with an unpracticed swing, cut to a young black man cheering from a wheelchair, cut to strangers eying a final shot. The last of it was an old man with a club standing at the edge of an earthen pit. Walls of damp sand met in sharp corners, like an unfinished foundation. Scattered weeds and stunted saplings grew from the lumpy floor. The hole was in the middle, and he had to put from the top.
The crowded hall forgotten, a blond woman in a safari outfit stepped through a doorway in an earthen trench and into a rectangular pit of pale yellow sand. A male friend followed her, dressed in subdued travel gear. The last man through was a Native American porter carrying water or camera bags for the couple. They admired the frescoes on the walls, black lines and clay-red blocks, sweeping triangles of orange pollen. The woman made a comment about what they meant to the tribe that painted them, but the Native American stepped in to correct her.
He explained in broken English that it told a story of his people's early hunters. Their planes (I imagined them flying CS Desert Foxes) ranged far down the coast of eastern China tracking sperm whales. "They found Hong Kong floating only five feet above the ocean," he said; it wasn't clear whether it was the ancient Native American planes or the island of Hong Kong that was floating. The pilots tracked the whales back from the coast for several years, and eventually found their spawning grounds.
"For the pod?" the woman asked.
"No," he replied, "all the whales. All the sperm whales everywhere. Make pods later." That's why they got the best catch. (A History channel animated map of eastern China unfolded in my mind, whale arrows slowly branching in the sea while thin yellow arrows arced above them.)
The dazed woman try to keep up. She'd been hoping to discover some minor artifact for the anthropologists to enjoy, but this was huge. It was also marine biology, completely outside her realm of experience, and she had no idea who to ask. Maybe everyone knows that all the whales in the world spawn in the same place.
"You mean," said the man, "[something or other] [some French word]?"
The Native American replied in fluent French, clarifying some detail.
My dad watched the worker clamp the junction box to the end of the new conduit. The empty garage was clean enough to be new, but they'd lived there for years. My dad wanted a new light in the other room, switched from the garage. He explained to the worker that there was supposed to be a relay on the switch, and the worker said he'd didn't have one along. He walked to his truck outside.
(He may have picked up a semi trailer under one arm and shaken it until a bunch of girders slid out like uncooked spaghetti, which still wasn't the right part.)
Brownstones and ancient brick apartment blocks formed a lazy corner on the hilltop. I stood in the cobblestone courtyard between them where two lazy streets had stopped for a nap. I liked this part of the city; it had the restrained bigness of pre- steel-framework prosperity. I looked slowly upwards along the bricks and spied a face in a third-floor window. Pale freckles burnished her fine features. She was gorgeous; I couldn't help staring. From my angle, I couldn't see anything above her cheekbones, framed in shallow arcs of black hair. Her lips moved in silent words, apparently spoken to the breeze outside her window. I couldn't work out what she said, but I realized it was nemoren. I was startled, but that had to be her... didn't it?
I tried to follow her unseen gaze to the industrial district below the hill. The autumn light burned clouds the color of falling leaves, narrow streaks across a white sky so brilliant it blurred the edges of the buildings. Everything was oddly hazy, and I asked a pedestrian whether there was a house fire.
"No," he said calmly, "the city is burning."
In a flash, I remembered talking to my father when I was much younger, maybe 12 or 14. "Dad," I'd asked, "what color is the smoke from burning bodies?" I looked again at the patchy sky.
gunn strolled down the stairs and waved hello. I stopped her for a moment. "I'd like to get together sometime," I said, "just to hang out. How about..." now's bad... she's got plans, and anyway the city's burning; we'll be in September crunch soon at work, so that's no good; then Ensemble has rehearsal madness till the Fall Concert; Lego League; Christmas; then she's got the crunch for the end of first quarter... "April?"
I left the courtyard with a friend, searching for the source of an echoed voice. A few turns brought us to a foot bridge overlooking the market, where the assembled crowd watched a film projected on the wall of a building. We caught most it. A short reenactment, the sort made for TV news, it recounted the deaths of three local superheroes. It had the colorized look of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, obviously decades old. I barely caught the end of the first hero, but I'm pretty sure she was flying in a capeless dark purple jumpsuit. The second was killed by the spear-horn of a lurking beast.
The last--a man with a white suit and a red cape--flew across the rooftops. A squat water tank opened its eyes just after he passed and fired its harpoon through his chest. The hero jerked to a stop, caught by the trailing harpoon line. Hovering over the street, he unleashed his famous blue waves of force at his assailant. Energy waves snapped the cable, and he freed himself from the weapon. The hero flew back to the roof where the tank had ambushed him, but saw no sign of it.
A metallic chattering from behind caught his attention, and he whipped around. Dozens of tiny water tanks, two feet on a side, stood in columns around him. Their hungry eyes smiled as their mouths opened and groaned shut again. (They reminded my dream self of Marshie from Homestar Runner, without the bite from his head.) The baby tanks leaped. He threw his arms and head back to launch skyward, only to see the bottom of the mother tank bearing down as she pounced from a girder high above. A nest of baby water tanks swarmed over the helpless hero, chanting their mother's name as they devoured him.
Pam and Elizabeth arrived at my parents' place to chat over dinner. I was excited; I haven't seen them since high school. (Both attended the church where I grew up. Pam never liked me; none of the church kids did, except maybe Caroline. Elizabeth, Pam's older sister, was nice to everyone, me included. She was also a fox. (Though, aesthetically, she was more of a Duchess, or as close as a middle-class Midwesterner can get without a lot of pretension and a fake accent.)) Anyhow, they were both very pleasant.
The dining room was in the wrong place, and it was cluttered with stacked boxes and British Naval Cable (which my parents' house isn't), none of which ever quite got in the way. I opened the front door just as gunn coasted up to the house on a black bicycle. She hung her helmet and coat by the door, then joined the others at the table. Mom began serving dinner, but I had to get something from outside.
The weather was nice, so I wore a t-shirt and khaki office slacks cut at the knees into ragged shorts. Two or three inches of old snow covered the grass, which meant it was cold, so I was also wearing a pea coat and huge black combat boots. I did whatever I was doing outside, then tromped back into the entryway, embarrassed about my silly clothing. The girls in the dining room smiled, and there may have been some friendly giggling.
The reception hall was crowded after dinner, mostly strangers my parents' age. We watched a movie of highlights from last year's golf outing. My father teed off with an unpracticed swing, cut to a young black man cheering from a wheelchair, cut to strangers eying a final shot. The last of it was an old man with a club standing at the edge of an earthen pit. Walls of damp sand met in sharp corners, like an unfinished foundation. Scattered weeds and stunted saplings grew from the lumpy floor. The hole was in the middle, and he had to put from the top.
The crowded hall forgotten, a blond woman in a safari outfit stepped through a doorway in an earthen trench and into a rectangular pit of pale yellow sand. A male friend followed her, dressed in subdued travel gear. The last man through was a Native American porter carrying water or camera bags for the couple. They admired the frescoes on the walls, black lines and clay-red blocks, sweeping triangles of orange pollen. The woman made a comment about what they meant to the tribe that painted them, but the Native American stepped in to correct her.
He explained in broken English that it told a story of his people's early hunters. Their planes (I imagined them flying CS Desert Foxes) ranged far down the coast of eastern China tracking sperm whales. "They found Hong Kong floating only five feet above the ocean," he said; it wasn't clear whether it was the ancient Native American planes or the island of Hong Kong that was floating. The pilots tracked the whales back from the coast for several years, and eventually found their spawning grounds.
"For the pod?" the woman asked.
"No," he replied, "all the whales. All the sperm whales everywhere. Make pods later." That's why they got the best catch. (A History channel animated map of eastern China unfolded in my mind, whale arrows slowly branching in the sea while thin yellow arrows arced above them.)
The dazed woman try to keep up. She'd been hoping to discover some minor artifact for the anthropologists to enjoy, but this was huge. It was also marine biology, completely outside her realm of experience, and she had no idea who to ask. Maybe everyone knows that all the whales in the world spawn in the same place.
"You mean," said the man, "[something or other] [some French word]?"
The Native American replied in fluent French, clarifying some detail.