Last night I had a nightmare
I am getting over a drastic fever, and slept long and hard. My mind was brimming with excitement, worries, ideas, and potentialities, unfettered by the usual food, alcohol, and social interaction I usually consume. My thoughts we like the bird that landed on Bernie’s podium in Portland: presumptuous, awe-inspiring, and bound to be filled with more meaning and interpretations than they could ever know.
There is a city that only exists in my dreams. That city is wild, dangerous, and beautiful. It has many hills, rains lightly but often, and the streets curve in a seductive and sometimes frightening way. Sometimes the city is Istanbul. Sometimes it is San Francisco. Sometimes it pretends to be New York, as it did last night, but so many staircases and gnarled trees could never weave through New York, I know this even when wrapped up paralyzed in my subconscious.
In my dream, I was meant to ride my bike with my typewriter to a residency at a shop. The city was teaming, I had plenty of time to arrive. So much so that I decided to set up on the street for a while and write a few haiku for passersby. That’s when I realized that my typewriter had been damaged or filled with evil spirits or perhaps it was just mocking me. I would type a letter and it would refuse to move. I would try again and the scroll would fly across the page. Again, and hammers would puncture the page repeatedly. I had drawn a crowd of sympathetic and interested onlookers. I was writing a poem for a beautiful old woman in a long green shawl. She was excited, but getting impatient.
Suddenly, my typewriter was too high up for me to reach, then, writing in all caps in a typeface I had never seen in my life - a strange snake-like bold font that frightened me more than the rest of it’s strange behavior. The crowd started to lose hope as I lost my composure and started to apologize. I tried to explain I would fix the machine then they could find me in the shop; they weren’t buying it.
The old woman was the last to go, as suddenly street traffic started to come toward us. Had the street widened? Where did that bus come from? We got out of the street in time, but she had had enough of me. My bike was hit by the bus, and she ran off into a beautiful treehouse compound. I ran after her, but she spit on the ground at my feet and slammed her door.
Suddenly, two friends were with me Tania and Catalina, in beautiful fur hats. They wanted to visit the apparently renowned fur shop nearby, run by an infamous fur dealer of vague origin. Hasid? Egyptian? They couldn’t tell, and neither could I. We walked through a poorly lit warehouse to find the shop - the warehouse was filled with smartly dressed brilliant looking scientists and scholars, all working busily, all extremely attractive east asian people. They ignored us. We had to ring a bell to get in, and there was a strange commotion behind the huge door. Suddenly a guard leapt into a glass chamber, ostensibly their visual security system, and gave them the OK to heave open the door. We were confused by what we found within.
There were many men - small, hunched over men with dark and worried complexions, struggling to shake themselves from sleep and bring their curled bodies to life. They must have been refugees. They were obviously barely awake, and we were standing in the doorway, them in their furs and me with no idea what I was wearing, staring down at them. I thought it quite unprofessional and inhumane that the owners of the shop would make them sleep this way, in an unheated room, then open the shop to customers while still in such a fragile state. I said, “We should leave. This isn’t right.” Thankfully, they agreed.
Once outside, I thought it would be a good idea to try to climb the tree complex to get back to my crippled bicycle. The wheels were literally crumpled like balls of paper. Astounding. While doing so, we came across a sweet middle aged woman, ruddy complexion, strong stature and thick shining brown hair, who seemed to recognize me, as did her companion (lover?) Cameron Diaz. Apparently, Cameron was familiar with me and my work too, and was very kind. They helped me get my bike on a bus, and went off to walk their dog, which had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Tania said, “I hate to say it because it’s so cliche, but Cameron is so sweet and down to earth.” We laughed.
I was en route to see Nico, who was filming a story about a man who makes his living (and his whole life I suppose) by fighting grizzly bears to get the fish they’ve caught. I arrived instantly, because I was dreaming, and he showed me the preposterously elaborate course they had built to trip up the poor bear and confuse it so much that it would be in a sorry state to compete with the man who wanted the fish. It was built downhill, with strange rocks, other trained beasts, dangling branches, and slippery areas. Suddenly, the bear, huge and gleaming with it rippling coat, was lumbering down the hill. She was obviously perturbed. I through myself to the side, behind an outcropping of beautiful white crystal, and waited for it to pass, barely breathing.
I looked uphill, and one of the scouts gave me the sign that it was clear to move. I reached my had up over the edge and pulled up my head, only to see the wild eyed girl swipe at me angrily. Not furiously, but definitely with some zeal. Then, she ran off down the hill, and all the men started laughing hysterically. Why, I have no idea, but I was not happy. Nico reappeared, jovial as always, and I asked him what he thought of my edits to his narration for another film he was working on (which is in fact happening in real life currently) and he said, “Eh, I swapped my old ones back in. Liked ‘em better.”
I was flabbergasted. I tried to get the other men’s opinions, but they were hardly interested. I wondered about the bear, and I realized I was now very late for my gig, and with a cursed typewriter to boot.
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