Escape and Disguise

Dream Installment #8: Escape and Disguise

The dream (nightmare) starts with William and I going to an anti-war protest in Seattle. I was explaining my opposition to the war to David when I heard that they were rounding up people who were against the war and putting them in terrorist suspect camps.  When we got there they split up men and women and walked us through glass showers that were next to each other, leading into the camp. Before entering the camp they either whipped us or put a noose-like contraption around us to shock us. William went first, and I saw what happened to him. You could see people getting whipped through glass. I was in a small cell with my "family" (I think we were family by virtue of being in a cell together, not my actual family). We were all in cages and emaciated. 

We came up with an escape plan. We hid in an empty shower room and then hopped up onto a ledge and climbed into a vent. At this point, the group was myself, and two others (William was one of them but he'd kind of morphed into a different person). We kept avoiding getting caught. The original escape plan was to climb into a dog's intestines and then have the dog carry us out. 

--- flash of a commercial for a red pill that would make you invisible --- 

A brief period where the vent we were crawling through to escape was underwater (very scary). But mainly it was just really small and hard to climb through. We came out of the vent, but not out of the entire camp, just out of the worst enclosures. We hid in bedrooms while patrols of little girls that looked like they were in South Park walked back and forth. One caught us but we bribed her with a "carbon" sequined head band. 

We finally made it out into the city. we were walking around and we could hear news stories about escapes from the camp (us).  My family and I were all dressed in punk/slightly steampunk clothes to look less like we'd just escaped from a camp and then we picked up a fedora and decided that we should disguise ourselves by wearing preppy and fancy clothes. We were walking underneath the viaduct in Seattle when I saw Molly and Jimmy driving around in a car looking for us. They saw our punk clothes and Molly recognized me, and I knew they would come try to find us. But if anyone found us we would probably have to go back to the camps. 

We came across a little cafe/restaurant. I had  meal with a woman in there in Spanish. I showed her that my tights didn't fit and that I tucked the feet into my socks under my skirt. She gave me something that worked.  My partner convinced me to go back to the restaurant and ask if I could work there. The restaurant people wondered why I didn't want to have another baby before I started working. I said I wanted to have a job for a while again and get a routine before I had my second baby. It was hard to tell what parts I was lying about as a disguise and what parts of my story were real. It was a wonderful job. 

note: Most of this is directly copied from what I wrote down when I was half asleep/still in the dream. I completed some of the sentences, but the reason it's so long is because I was still mostly in the dream world and able to write down a lot of details.

Dream Fragments Part 1

I wanna say how I record my dreams: I've tried several methods. I've tried keeping a pen and a paper by the side of my bed and then taking time in the morning to try and remember them. I've tried telling other people. For example, this winter when I was home I had Maia come into my room before she left for school every morning to wake me up and ask me about my dreams. But she would forget them too by the time she came home. So, since I'm a faster typer than I am at handwriting, and I always fall asleep with my computer in my bed (watching 30 Rock), I just have a running draft in my email that is called "dreams" and it has fragmented bits of whatever I type when I'm half asleep. Whenever I'm lucid enough to open my computer and I remember my dreams I type whatever I can before I fall back asleep.  I think the fragments are sometimes the best, but generally for re-telling it's more intelligible if I complete the sentences and such. But, I don't plan on painting them all, so I thought I'd share a couple fragments (not to be analyzed too deeply please haha).

All in one night I had the dream about the man who said it would all go to hell, the dream about the raining rainbow pepper, and two others. They all took place in a setting kind of inspired by all the Downton Abby I was watching at the time, but it was generally much dirtier and involving the street market. All four are in my drafts, but here are the two fragments (unedited) that I haven't painted: 

"I was a servant in an english home and I was leaving to go on a trip and I barged into a room after no one answered my knocks, even though i knew someone was in there, because I'd forgotten my birth control and pocket book. I got in huge trouble with the snooty woman, who was having sex with her husband whom she hated. Then I talked back and she shouted for help and I yanked a lump of skin between the husband's legs and he helped in pain and then we joke about how weird and lumpy he was, but then she told me to run or i'd get sacked. I was running around the house trying to avoid the mom, and then she caught me and walked me around the house and garden, making me tell her how beautiful it was. Then I climbed out the window and as I was walking down the street I decided i really wanted to drive, but i had no car. I ran into a friendly woman who asked me if i would like to come for dinner. i said yes. I saw a fat baby by the side of the road and went to play with it, then i thought it was giving me flees. I wanted to take it with us, b/c who leaves a baby by the side of the road, but the parents came back right as we were leaving."

and 

"bad talking other butler and little sister the size of a baby and we were overheard"

I have more fragments I'll post later... lots of them are quite funny, also embarrassing  but I think these ones are interesting because that night was so fruitful with dreams, but also there was a certain consistency to them.

False/Start/Fall/Tart

Just a little series of word arrangements my mom and I thought were amusing last summer.

I don't owe you anything!

For some reason I've had the image of myself sitting across the table from myself shouting "I don't don't owe you anything!" back and forth stuck in my head... And I find it really funny. I don't know why, but I just think it's hysterical.

Jellyfish/Snakes -- 3 Stories

Dream Installment #7: Jellyfish/Snakes -- 3 Stories

This dream was particularly strange because it felt so much like a series of movie shorts. Three movie shorts to be exact. In all three I was in the same one room wooden house. And I was a character from the Israeli movie "Jellyfish":

"Jellyfish" is set in Tel Aviv and the woman who I was in my dream played a caretaker. I watched that movie back-to-back with "Tiny Furniture". Both movies, particularly in conjunction in one another, left me feeling a bit existential and unsatisfied.

As this woman, in a rickety old wooden house I led three lives. In the first, the room was beautifully well-kept and decorated. It was my younger sister's wedding (not Maia, just a fictional younger sister of the dream.) I was laying on mattress on the floor with my mom, watching her twirl in a beautiful wedding gown, but all she could do was complain about all the work she had to do. My mom and I weren't having any of it.

The second life was in the same room, but the walls were unfinished wood, and the whole house felt old and flimsy. I was scrubbing a toilet in the middle of the room for a long time.

In the third life, the same room had been painted so that it was suitable as a school house. The room flooded so we all went outside.

I decided that since the room was flooded we should all just go outside and I'd teach everyone an Afro-Brazilian dance I'd learned. Then we looked down and the shallow water was filled with snakes.

I woke up with spider paranoia.

Riding the Hammock Subway

Dream Installment #6: Riding on the Hammock Subway

This dream and painting are from summer-- I just haven't taken the time to scan and post it.

As I walked out of the hostel I was staying at in NYC, I saw two Reed graduates whom I'd known as a freshman and found very intimidating. They were walking towards the subway and I could overhear them talking about Reedies I knew. I caught up with them and asked what train I should get on to go to a good shopping neighborhood. They rudely directed me onto the wrong train and I foolishly followed their advice.

The car I'd gotten onto was packed. I had to sit on the back of some dude's chair, which for some reason he was fine with. Slowly, about half the car emptied and everyone left looked haggard. I knew what those expressions meant-- they were commuters just like I'd been in high school. Just instead of a ferry and bus ride, they were stuck on the long train ride home. "So, there's nowhere fun to go shopping out here, right? We're outside of New York now, huh." I asked. "Yeah, you should definitely get off at the next stop," someone replied.

So I did. A very unusual stop.

I had to walk carefully along the edge of the track to the "train" waiting for me. School children getting off of it easily walked passed me, while I clung to the guide rope. "Just tangle yourself so you don't fall in! It's the only way back to NYC!" they informed me. As I imitated the commuters around me, wrapping myself into the net, all the random junk I always carry around in my pockets and purse fell into the river below me.

On the bright side, I managed to save my wallet, and when I got used to the terrifying movement of the hammock over the river, I found it to be a very beautiful ride back towards the city.