Drifting Tranquil in the Cosmos

In my dreams my lover and I floated on our backs in a translucent sea. We held hands to keep from drifting apart.

“I don’t want you drifting away again,” he told me.

I stared up at the night sky and watched the heavens open. Clouds parted to reveal impossibly huge and colorful plants spinning in their orbits. Stars showered toward us. I shuddered at the skeptical and he laughed at my amazement. Sea kelp fettered seductively around my ankles but I was not afraid.

I saw us from above, his astonishingly dark hair and my blond tresses branching around our heads like the rays of little suns.

Catholic Dreams, Creepy Rituals

Every night before I go to bed I try to get through one rosary. Not because I'm religious (I'm really pagen to the core), or even technically Catholic but because I find this ritual soothing and well, creepy...and as you probably have already realized, I love creepy rituals.

When I was in second grade I begged my parents to put me in Catholic School. I was obsessed with the religion, after all, it worshipped a goddess and as a nun you could live with your girlfriends and be married to a husband who was perfect and all encompassing yet absent. It seemed ideal.

I quickly learned that most of the nuns at my school were bitter and butch with sharp tongues and a quick hand. Escaping that hand meant learning to blend into the background and become invisible. I did this by joining the choir, at mass I was conveniently in the balcony where no one could notice that I might cross myself with the wrong hand or genuflect clumsily.

I think my nightly Hail Marys and Our Fathers might come to an end. Last night, I fell asleep about halfway thru and awoke with my rosary gripped firmly in my palm. The indentation of the crucifix was so prominent it could have caused stigmata. Something I begged for in second grade. I dreamt that my sister Scotti and I attended an all girls Catholic school where we were required to walk across broken glass. Scotti would carry me screaming to my bed and patiently pull out huge shards of broken, bloody glass from the soles of my feet. She never complained about her own. "We have to escape. Your going to have to run quietly" she told me. "I can't carry you the whole way". She gestured to a girl sitting on the bed next to mine with what looked like acupuncture needles embedded in her skin. At a closer glance I realized that they were sewing needles, some still had small pieces of silk threaded thru them. The girl rocked back and forth, her eyes were vacant and staring. "Its going to get worse" Scotti said. We escaped the dorm room after a brief scuffle with the mother superior who I consequently beaned over the head with a brass candlestick holder. I think I killed her. How many hail marys will that be, I wondered as we tiptoed out of the abbey in the dead of night. Confession is going to be hell.

Stewards. Chickens of the Sky.

I rarely if ever dream that I'm flying. Last night I did fly. Fortunately, it was done in the usual way, on a plane. I was starting a shortlived career as a flight attandant for a tacky, unknown southern airline called "Bicentennial". Their logo was a cannon drapped with the confederate flag, a daunting site on any runway.

After this dream I have new founded respect for all flight attendants. You'll soon realize why. As a stewardess, I would have preferred working for Garuda, the Balinese airline. The stedwardess wear purple Thai silk and pass out orchids you can pin on your lapel. Instead I found myself, as the underdog, cleaning the flightdeck between flights. I'm not sure if flight attendants do this but someone does, and well, its not the glamouress career I had expected. The airline, being southern and cheap had filthy planes with seat covers that resembled fake sheepskin, like the kind you'd see in a Camaro. The flight attendants were responsible for laundering these between flights. In order to remove the seat covers, one had to remove the headrest, also not unlike a Camaro. I stowed the headrests in the luggage compartments and lugged the seat covers to a laundry facility that was located in the airport and was apparently there for this exclusive use only. I did this by myself since the head steward informed me that he refused to clean...at all. He said this with arms folded across his chest, perfectly manicured fingers drumming on bicep. I didn't argue. After all, he had taught me to preform emergency evacuation procedures as a dance, not unlike the Macarena. We at Bicentennial, apparently specialized in this onboard entertainment.

When the flight started I was horrified to discover that I had failed to replace the headrests after covering the seats with their newly laundered but vulgar seatcovers. All but one was absent, and the passanger with the one remaining headrest had conspicuously raised it to its full height, making it obvious that no other seats had them. I was fired on the spot. In retaliation, I put on the music of Amir Diab over the intercom and announced that the plance was being hijacked by unruly Egyptian pop stars. Then I ran.

Careers in the afterlife

Once my long-widowed grandmother awoke to find my deceased grandfather standing by her bed. "Maurice! Your here. So tell me what's it like?" (in the afterlife)
"I'm a barber." He enthusiastically replied.
"A barber!" I can just picture the tone of disapproval in her voice. "You never wanted to be a barber before."
"I know, but I love it."
Who would have thought that a man who had little hair in life would be cutting it after death. Makes you wonder.

Last night I dreamt that I was at my childhood home. I was late, which isn't unusual, and I came screeching up the driveway to find our sprawling lawns covered with wildlife. Deer bounded over pristine hedges, sprightly bobcats walked regally amoung them. Small black hedgehogs slept in clusters, their bristly fur was covered with dew drops big as crystals. I was surprised to find my father in the kitchen reading the paper instead of in the driveway with a .22 rifle draped across his lap, which was his usual residing place when I returned home late.
"Dad, did you see all the wildlife outside? What's going on?"
He gestured with the stub of his cigar and beamed at me. The bruises and agespots which was his normal complexion toward the end of his life faded before my eyes. His long legs, those which I hadn't seen since a child were crossed lazily in front of him.
"I see 'um, beautiful." He was more thrilled by my obvious childlike wonder then of the spectacle outside. Still not sure if he could walk, I ran outside and picked a huge amethyst colored mushroom, one of many that dotted the lawn.

I brought it back inside to share with him. We stared at each other, the fungus momentarily ignored. "I just love you so goddam much." he told me, his cowboy drawl filled me with memories.

"Whats it like, daddy?"

"I'm a teacher now, I teach kids."
"Really?" I couldn't take the hint of perlexity from my voice. My father, though a brilliant man, never graduated from high school.

"Soon I'll be on the board." Apparently this was some sort of promotion. "Looking forward to it, but in the meantime I love what I do. I teach kids about the outdoors, about wildlife." He gestured outside again with his cigar. Apparently this wildlife spectacle was for me. He beamed again at me, so proud of his celestial present. My father was a lifelong hunter. He loved animals, but loved them most hanging from the walls, as decreative rugs, or wrapped up in white butcher paper in the freezer. This new "ecologist" dad would take some getting used to.

"I love what I do" he repeated. Who would of thought?

I love you to daddy, and miss you so goddamn much.

Biological Clock?...I Bought Mine on Ebay

First of all, I don't know if I even believe in the whole mom thing. I mean I think I always wanted babies. Docile, cute, and snotless babies. Babies you can put in the crib and forget about when its time for recess kind of babies. In kindergarden, while my school mates were drawing themselves in spaceships as astronauts or in pink tutus as ballarinas, I drew my face in a hospital window, having yes...babies. Then nothing. Slowing approching perimenapause and babyless as all get out. In the quest for success in lower middle class bohemia California; whoops I forgot to have kids. Who would have thought? I may be in my thirties now, but I think I'm basically still out at recess.

However, the doll dreams are haunting me right now. In fact, not just me, but I seem to be sharing it with all my girlfriends, like some obnoxious STD. We dream of dolls, black dolls, politically and anatomically correct dolls, dolls in swadling cloths, bleeding dolls, squeezed too hard dolls, suffocated and hungry dolls. What's with all the dolls anyways?

As a child I was often afraid of my dolls, afraid they'd be more cunning and vindictive then I. I would imagine them walking a strange and disjointed dance across the room, ready to stab me with little knives in retaliation for not playing with them enough. Now I dream of babies who turn into dolls and haunt me in retaliation of; not birthing them? Of choosing a stressfree life instead of a life filled with soccer games and tupperware?

My most recent one took place in a small cabin on a train. Angelina Jolie dropped her adorable baby Zarhara on my lap and left. Explaining that she had errands to run. I told her to take her time, after all it was a dream and I had all the time in the world, right. I cradled Zahara in my arms, inhaled her scent, stole kisses on those beautiful big cocoa lips. I got so lost in this blissful nurturing that I realized I was probably late for an appointment I had in another dream! I pulled Zahara away from me and found that it wasn't a baby I was holding but a flacid African folklike doll. Shells and tradebeads were sewn roughly to resemble a face.

Some have suggested that its my biological clock. It may be but its ticking is mighty slow, and it has an annoying, buzzing alarm. I think its used, worn out, slow, and well just generally off. Like I bought it on ebay.