(no subject)
In my first dream, I am given the option of splitting an apartment in Florence with Nick. I am trying to decide whether or not to do it. Nick isn't the most rational choice of roommate - particularly when considering that we will be sharing a one-room studio apartment - but I also feel like at least I know what I'm getting into. I suspect, at the very least, that it will be interesting. Once split the rent is one hundred euros monthly plus utilities, and that itself has a strong attraction. I don't know what reason I have to stay in Florence for long, but I do understand how remarkably low that is. I have begun to want to rent an apartment or a house somewhere anyways. On a map, the place is about five or six kilometers to the east and slightly north of the city center. I estimate that it will take thirty minutes by bicycle, since it must be above the floor of the valley. I decide, based on economy, to accept and hope for the best.
I wake up at three fifteen in the morning, feeling no longer drunk. I seem quite well-rested but have nothing to do but go back to sleep. My hands smell of sugar infusions. I turn on the lamp to see that they're still prettily stained of grapes, from making grape juice. I wash my hands with soap in the bathroom, which does nothing, then return to bed. I make a point to remember my dream, but a second, more detailed dream that follows reduces it to that single, final item. Lurking in the back of my memory are other, stranger scenes of a haunted wartime Florence-Venice: traversing courses made through the crushed skeletons of bombed buildings, playing on the fear of spirits in the Oltrarno, swimming oil-skimmed and rat poisonous canals, meeting the tranquil priestly aura of Jimmy Morrison (my friend, not the musician). It is all a confusion though. Within ten minutes I am back asleep, and after a number of hours I make a second dream. I like this dream because it is vivid and takes me through a panorama of typical dream features. Some dreams are out there, meaning nothing, but this one is centralized and makes a point to contain regular motifs.
In my second dream, Anna Lauren is telling me something her mother has related to her about a family friend's problematic romantic life. Previous to this I have been flirting with some girls who don't exist, so amused I suggest that we are in similar trouble. I do not get away with saying this: she reacts to my comment and demands a clear explanation. When I try not to give one, she refuses to speak to me. This is not a realistic situation in either of our actions, but it does extend some internal legitimacies. We are sitting on the storm wall in one of my dream Gulfports (which usually resemble in atmosphere the elaborate children's zones in casinos - only aimed with liquor and gambling at entertaining adults, who enjoy everything with honesty). In front of us is a narrow strip of washed-up sand. To our left past a line of cars is a seafood restaurant featuring food gambling. Food gambling is an entire subject of its own - ingenious - it seems lifetimes have been consumed in its tempting treachary. Though I am usually involved in other matters while dreaming in funland-type Gulfport, it lingers there as background comfort of a good world of good things, growing in detail. Here there are artificial lights and the unmitigated celebration of greed. In the sand below the storm wall I find a postcard with the copy of an oil painting shrunk onto its back. The painting is of a long, narrow-bodied fish turning around open-jawed. The fish is blue-gray. Below it in orange letters are the words Grape Fish, its common name or personal name. The feeling inside me indicates there is but one.
Because she will not talk to me - Anna, who has never done this - the best thing for me to do is let resentment fade. I ride my bicycle across the reconstructed highway bridge to Biloxi. Now I've forgotten about the environment of our dispute, mistakenly believing that it happened in Ocean Springs in my former house in the late morning. This is why I cross a bridge, and it is midday. Before arriving at the excellent Biloxi aquarium I find myself on Pass Road passing the three-story mall, which I haven't been in since a previous visit to Biloxi. Biloxi is also different here: it is Biloxi-colored and -shaped, but like New Orleans near the riverwalk. After double checking the bicycle lock, I wander the mall in search of a cluster of small stores that vend rare and unexpected assorted items. The owners of these stores buy in lots from estate auctions and try not to discover what they are selling. They believe this is an essential element to proper mercantilism. Through years dedicated in this creed, they do not allow themselves to be found surprised when you offer to purchase, for example, a paleozoological picture textbook of holograms. This is another reoccurring dream-inspired location. I like this idea of places existing consistently but exclusively in my sleep.
The rest of this mall is overly large with high, chambered ceilings, and department stores face the interior at plate-glassed diagonals. Planted tropical trees filling the corridors are misted by timed sprinkler systems that, when activated, produce the quiet sound of imitation thunder. In reality, however, quiet thunder only accompanies misting sprinklers in the produce aisles of supermarkets. After confronting a map centered between two such potted trees, I am unable to positively identify the stores I desire. Following an enormously exciting escalator ride, I place a refrigerator magnet onto the alarm sensor of an emergency exit door and, inflated by my resourcefulness, exit to the roof. I think this is failproof, and no alarm sounds. From where I'm standing I can see a historic Baroque clocktower. Somebody is on a scaffold below: a thin Italian man with a bushbrush moustache wearing a ratty gray jacket and t-shirt hastily stuffed into elastic-waist trousers. I think he is the blend of a minor actor I like and my mechanic, whimsically dressed. Through the zoom of my camera I can get a good image of him. One hand of his is in front of his right eyeball, and like pincers he opens and closes his fingers. I know he has been watching me since I entered the roof and is pretending to squash me between the thumb and forefinger. I take his picture, though I'll delete it after the briefest inspection. The picture doesn't have a very good composition. I never like photographs I've taken through a zoom. I cannot shake the opinion that a fakeness has been enacted by frame cropping. It feels only like a bloated, enlarged exposition.
I leave the mall by bus, since it happens by. This bus has thick walls like a stone building with deep windows. By scaling up while it's parked I squeeze into the vacancy of the window and hitch a free ride back to Ocean Springs. It stops again at the corner of my old street and General Pershing. Now I squeeze myself out of the window, returning the driver's look through his hexagonal passenger side mirror with a glare. His look I cannot interpret. It does not change when I glare. It shows no shock or anger. I worry that when I am traveling about in public and use glares as if supremely irritated a person I know who thinks I am a good, mild person will come by. Then I won't know whether to continue acting offended or display entertainment. What a monster I am, huh?
The sun is now setting. As it was when the bus passes, my neighbor's house facing mine is on fire. The couple who live here are the Millers; they are very decrepit people. In reality it may be that they're now bedridden or hospitalized or dead. What happened here is that Mrs. Miller, who has diabetic, passed out some hours earlier with the stove lit. When her daughter came by to visit them, she found flames consuming the carpet, sofa, and reclining chairs and smoke pouring from two open front windows. As I approach I find my father and grandfather carrying furniture into the yard. My grandfather is wearing one of Mrs. Miller's black '60's wigs and acting comical in it. He seems younger and more vibrant than I've seen him in fifteen years. On the porch I take his picture with my father framed on the right and the open door illuminating fiery wallpaper behind him. His smiling mouth displays dentures not firmly set to the roof (a sight one can never acclimate to). I hope and believe it will be a very good picture, since there is no second chance.
Then, though I now doubt the credibility, the fire recedes and can be extinguished where it's retreated to in an empty corner of the master bedroom. This is the first time, awake or asleep, that I've been in this room. I have gotten almost this far before and felt the tremendous nervousness of approaching death's common quarters. The two walls comprising the corner are blackened but not eaten. To discredit the Millers' explanation, additionally, I do not see fire damage in the kitchen. We make them sit down and tell us again, now calmly, just what happened to cause such a fire. They begin - and again with blood sugar and the stove. Somebody points out that Mrs. Miller is not diabetic. As official sirens approach, an argument brews. I find as exiting the house a postcard glued center on the front door, below the peephole. In it a beast swims after unseen prey, its forebody curving backwards with limbs extended. Subtitled to this is the green-lettered name, Grape Cat. Using my powers of dreaming, I think back to the postcard under the storm wall in Gulfport, illuminated by streetlamps, water-damaged and sandy. Existing in both scenes, I inspect the two in their environments and wonder about them. I leave as the door opens to admit firemen and policemen. Important memories are not made by hesitating. What stays with you for life are moments of your unhesitant action. That is why I leave.
When I cross the street I find Adam and Jinny crouching on an overgrown mound in front of the azaleas. When parts of our yard began to cave in, my father once purchased a quantity of dirt to fill the hole. They left the dirt in front of the azaleas, so all we had to do was bucket or barrow it back a short ways to the hole. For some reason I was never given, however, this was delayed for several months, and the mound settled and grew cutch grass. As children we immediately saw it in terms of king-of-the-hill games, and I can recall rolling around on it with my dog, who though male and a dog I once considered to take as a lover. I was not old enough to understand what this entailed. I've also read a footnote in a book suggesting that child-dog amour is a healthy event in a boy's life. I consider it an oddity and that child psychologies are themselves disturbingly undermining, to be studied as a separate anthropoid species. "Yes," one should say, "I was once a crawling thing, neither man nor monkey." One day, I returned from a drive in our Honda, which became my first car when I got a license. My mother parked the car along the side of the house by the azaleas. The mound we should have hit was gone. As it was only a mound of dirt I never thought to ask how it departed, though something of my daily life felt absent. My dream reminded me for the first time in many years about the mound, as well as a bushy tree my mother later planted here, which she liked to trim, which now is dead. Anyway, I never inspect this mound while dreaming because Adam immediately stands and approaches me, containing his temper.
They have, like me, been housed in my room. However, following unforeseen events he, Jinny, and I have been removed to sleep in a mobile home resting in the west yard. Like apes the three of us fall to huddled, crouching positions while talking - more and more I also drop to a crouch just whenever. It's indefinitely comfortable. A rabbit hops by which I make a half-successful grab for. Somewhere in my lunge I spot the oddity of its movement, the unintelligent look of pestilence in its reaction, and a big, maggoty wound in its back which my hand is quickly approaching. The sick bunny falls onto its belly by its weakness, while I manage only to hardly touch the open spot. It is thoroughly revolting. Pus and wriggling worms get on my hands. I go inside to wipe it off, my stomach instantly a mess. During distractions involving another alternate telling of the mobile home ejection story, this stuff gets more on me. I stare in morbid curiosity at a larva on my shoulder turning as if to address me, and here I decide to wake up. I wake up with its curling brown body emblazoned in my vision, under which airbrushed letters spell, Grape Worm. Perhaps a cyclic food chain has been invoked. Perhaps grape-type creatures maintain an exclusive food web.
I wake up at three fifteen in the morning, feeling no longer drunk. I seem quite well-rested but have nothing to do but go back to sleep. My hands smell of sugar infusions. I turn on the lamp to see that they're still prettily stained of grapes, from making grape juice. I wash my hands with soap in the bathroom, which does nothing, then return to bed. I make a point to remember my dream, but a second, more detailed dream that follows reduces it to that single, final item. Lurking in the back of my memory are other, stranger scenes of a haunted wartime Florence-Venice: traversing courses made through the crushed skeletons of bombed buildings, playing on the fear of spirits in the Oltrarno, swimming oil-skimmed and rat poisonous canals, meeting the tranquil priestly aura of Jimmy Morrison (my friend, not the musician). It is all a confusion though. Within ten minutes I am back asleep, and after a number of hours I make a second dream. I like this dream because it is vivid and takes me through a panorama of typical dream features. Some dreams are out there, meaning nothing, but this one is centralized and makes a point to contain regular motifs.
In my second dream, Anna Lauren is telling me something her mother has related to her about a family friend's problematic romantic life. Previous to this I have been flirting with some girls who don't exist, so amused I suggest that we are in similar trouble. I do not get away with saying this: she reacts to my comment and demands a clear explanation. When I try not to give one, she refuses to speak to me. This is not a realistic situation in either of our actions, but it does extend some internal legitimacies. We are sitting on the storm wall in one of my dream Gulfports (which usually resemble in atmosphere the elaborate children's zones in casinos - only aimed with liquor and gambling at entertaining adults, who enjoy everything with honesty). In front of us is a narrow strip of washed-up sand. To our left past a line of cars is a seafood restaurant featuring food gambling. Food gambling is an entire subject of its own - ingenious - it seems lifetimes have been consumed in its tempting treachary. Though I am usually involved in other matters while dreaming in funland-type Gulfport, it lingers there as background comfort of a good world of good things, growing in detail. Here there are artificial lights and the unmitigated celebration of greed. In the sand below the storm wall I find a postcard with the copy of an oil painting shrunk onto its back. The painting is of a long, narrow-bodied fish turning around open-jawed. The fish is blue-gray. Below it in orange letters are the words Grape Fish, its common name or personal name. The feeling inside me indicates there is but one.
Because she will not talk to me - Anna, who has never done this - the best thing for me to do is let resentment fade. I ride my bicycle across the reconstructed highway bridge to Biloxi. Now I've forgotten about the environment of our dispute, mistakenly believing that it happened in Ocean Springs in my former house in the late morning. This is why I cross a bridge, and it is midday. Before arriving at the excellent Biloxi aquarium I find myself on Pass Road passing the three-story mall, which I haven't been in since a previous visit to Biloxi. Biloxi is also different here: it is Biloxi-colored and -shaped, but like New Orleans near the riverwalk. After double checking the bicycle lock, I wander the mall in search of a cluster of small stores that vend rare and unexpected assorted items. The owners of these stores buy in lots from estate auctions and try not to discover what they are selling. They believe this is an essential element to proper mercantilism. Through years dedicated in this creed, they do not allow themselves to be found surprised when you offer to purchase, for example, a paleozoological picture textbook of holograms. This is another reoccurring dream-inspired location. I like this idea of places existing consistently but exclusively in my sleep.
The rest of this mall is overly large with high, chambered ceilings, and department stores face the interior at plate-glassed diagonals. Planted tropical trees filling the corridors are misted by timed sprinkler systems that, when activated, produce the quiet sound of imitation thunder. In reality, however, quiet thunder only accompanies misting sprinklers in the produce aisles of supermarkets. After confronting a map centered between two such potted trees, I am unable to positively identify the stores I desire. Following an enormously exciting escalator ride, I place a refrigerator magnet onto the alarm sensor of an emergency exit door and, inflated by my resourcefulness, exit to the roof. I think this is failproof, and no alarm sounds. From where I'm standing I can see a historic Baroque clocktower. Somebody is on a scaffold below: a thin Italian man with a bushbrush moustache wearing a ratty gray jacket and t-shirt hastily stuffed into elastic-waist trousers. I think he is the blend of a minor actor I like and my mechanic, whimsically dressed. Through the zoom of my camera I can get a good image of him. One hand of his is in front of his right eyeball, and like pincers he opens and closes his fingers. I know he has been watching me since I entered the roof and is pretending to squash me between the thumb and forefinger. I take his picture, though I'll delete it after the briefest inspection. The picture doesn't have a very good composition. I never like photographs I've taken through a zoom. I cannot shake the opinion that a fakeness has been enacted by frame cropping. It feels only like a bloated, enlarged exposition.
I leave the mall by bus, since it happens by. This bus has thick walls like a stone building with deep windows. By scaling up while it's parked I squeeze into the vacancy of the window and hitch a free ride back to Ocean Springs. It stops again at the corner of my old street and General Pershing. Now I squeeze myself out of the window, returning the driver's look through his hexagonal passenger side mirror with a glare. His look I cannot interpret. It does not change when I glare. It shows no shock or anger. I worry that when I am traveling about in public and use glares as if supremely irritated a person I know who thinks I am a good, mild person will come by. Then I won't know whether to continue acting offended or display entertainment. What a monster I am, huh?
The sun is now setting. As it was when the bus passes, my neighbor's house facing mine is on fire. The couple who live here are the Millers; they are very decrepit people. In reality it may be that they're now bedridden or hospitalized or dead. What happened here is that Mrs. Miller, who has diabetic, passed out some hours earlier with the stove lit. When her daughter came by to visit them, she found flames consuming the carpet, sofa, and reclining chairs and smoke pouring from two open front windows. As I approach I find my father and grandfather carrying furniture into the yard. My grandfather is wearing one of Mrs. Miller's black '60's wigs and acting comical in it. He seems younger and more vibrant than I've seen him in fifteen years. On the porch I take his picture with my father framed on the right and the open door illuminating fiery wallpaper behind him. His smiling mouth displays dentures not firmly set to the roof (a sight one can never acclimate to). I hope and believe it will be a very good picture, since there is no second chance.
Then, though I now doubt the credibility, the fire recedes and can be extinguished where it's retreated to in an empty corner of the master bedroom. This is the first time, awake or asleep, that I've been in this room. I have gotten almost this far before and felt the tremendous nervousness of approaching death's common quarters. The two walls comprising the corner are blackened but not eaten. To discredit the Millers' explanation, additionally, I do not see fire damage in the kitchen. We make them sit down and tell us again, now calmly, just what happened to cause such a fire. They begin - and again with blood sugar and the stove. Somebody points out that Mrs. Miller is not diabetic. As official sirens approach, an argument brews. I find as exiting the house a postcard glued center on the front door, below the peephole. In it a beast swims after unseen prey, its forebody curving backwards with limbs extended. Subtitled to this is the green-lettered name, Grape Cat. Using my powers of dreaming, I think back to the postcard under the storm wall in Gulfport, illuminated by streetlamps, water-damaged and sandy. Existing in both scenes, I inspect the two in their environments and wonder about them. I leave as the door opens to admit firemen and policemen. Important memories are not made by hesitating. What stays with you for life are moments of your unhesitant action. That is why I leave.
When I cross the street I find Adam and Jinny crouching on an overgrown mound in front of the azaleas. When parts of our yard began to cave in, my father once purchased a quantity of dirt to fill the hole. They left the dirt in front of the azaleas, so all we had to do was bucket or barrow it back a short ways to the hole. For some reason I was never given, however, this was delayed for several months, and the mound settled and grew cutch grass. As children we immediately saw it in terms of king-of-the-hill games, and I can recall rolling around on it with my dog, who though male and a dog I once considered to take as a lover. I was not old enough to understand what this entailed. I've also read a footnote in a book suggesting that child-dog amour is a healthy event in a boy's life. I consider it an oddity and that child psychologies are themselves disturbingly undermining, to be studied as a separate anthropoid species. "Yes," one should say, "I was once a crawling thing, neither man nor monkey." One day, I returned from a drive in our Honda, which became my first car when I got a license. My mother parked the car along the side of the house by the azaleas. The mound we should have hit was gone. As it was only a mound of dirt I never thought to ask how it departed, though something of my daily life felt absent. My dream reminded me for the first time in many years about the mound, as well as a bushy tree my mother later planted here, which she liked to trim, which now is dead. Anyway, I never inspect this mound while dreaming because Adam immediately stands and approaches me, containing his temper.
They have, like me, been housed in my room. However, following unforeseen events he, Jinny, and I have been removed to sleep in a mobile home resting in the west yard. Like apes the three of us fall to huddled, crouching positions while talking - more and more I also drop to a crouch just whenever. It's indefinitely comfortable. A rabbit hops by which I make a half-successful grab for. Somewhere in my lunge I spot the oddity of its movement, the unintelligent look of pestilence in its reaction, and a big, maggoty wound in its back which my hand is quickly approaching. The sick bunny falls onto its belly by its weakness, while I manage only to hardly touch the open spot. It is thoroughly revolting. Pus and wriggling worms get on my hands. I go inside to wipe it off, my stomach instantly a mess. During distractions involving another alternate telling of the mobile home ejection story, this stuff gets more on me. I stare in morbid curiosity at a larva on my shoulder turning as if to address me, and here I decide to wake up. I wake up with its curling brown body emblazoned in my vision, under which airbrushed letters spell, Grape Worm. Perhaps a cyclic food chain has been invoked. Perhaps grape-type creatures maintain an exclusive food web.