(I have an important appointment today so of course I had a series of nested dreams where I woke up and tried getting ready only to fail miserably.)
It starts always the same way, I get up and go take a shower. Then I accidentally flood the bathroom, or panic because I’ve overslept and it’s only ten minutes until my appointment. One time my sister asks her friends to barricade themselves inside the bathroom just to spite me and they all smell and have greasy white people dreads. Another time there’s a dozen workers dressed in bright orange, staring at me from the bathroom window. A couple of times I just fly away and start having sex with people on the streets, because that’s what I do when I’m lucid dreaming.
I dream that Harry Potter doesn’t want to be Harry anymore, much to his teachers’ dismay he gets rid of the scar and the glasses and goes on to live as a tall, slender Frodo Baggins wearing capri pants.
Then I dream that I’m eating lunch at the beach, I’m wearing jeans over my one-piece swimsuit because I’m not comfortable showing my legs. I go to the bathroom and try to pee, but realize I’m on my period and I’ll have to take off the swimsuit. Now I’m sitting on the toilet wearing a hoodie, then someone walks in the bathroom; I recognize him immediately, he’s Oprah’s son. He just won’t leave, he’s looking at me and I know I’ll have to sue him and his mother.
I dream that my sister is back; I want to go buy a new planner because mine has ran out of pages, how did I not notice? But I need to go to the bathroom first and my sister has locked herself in it. I try to poop in an empty cereal box on the balcony, but there’s a hailstorm and it’s just too much.
I dream I’m in a school bathroom that is on a lake in a large underground cave (reminding of this other dream). There are three toilets, one sitting totally in the open, one in a cubicle with walls so low people walking by make eye contact with you. And finally, a regular stall that is the most popular. I’m currently sitting in the middle one, trying not to look up at people. A girl tells me I peed on my shoes. I finish quickly and walk away, a centaur looks out gravely from a tunnel in one of the walls. “Hello, Firenze,” I say to him. I feel guilty for still liking Harry Potter so much.
I dream that I’m staying at a hotel. It’s pretty quiet until a mom with a bunch of kids arrives (or maybe she’s a teacher?). Nobody in their group is wearing a mask and I’m pissed about it. One of the kids, about eleven years old, brown hair, gawky, eats one of my stickers. I forgive him.
Next morning I’m roped into shooting a documentary. The film crew drives me to a town sitting on a hill, they go on about how it’s much smarter than building on a taller mountain. I’m pissed about that too. I stop at a local store to buy some snacks, everything is outrageously expensive. I’m told we are going to shoot on a beach next, I’m upset because I just want to go home. Plus I got my period, along with the snacks I have to buy pads. I go looking for a bathroom and can’t find one. The crew is growing impatient.
I dream that I’m running late for school, I get quickly dressed in an oversize pink t-shirt and jeans. My mom is waiting for me in the car, she’s driving. Wait, I say, I think I got my period. I rush back inside and to the bathroom. My jeans are a mess. As I’m stripping down my cat jumps on the toilet and starts peeing, a focused, almost painful expression on her face. It’s too late to get to school by now. My parents ask me why I didn’t go, I change the subject and tell them everything about the cat instead.
Now I’m in bed with Corona. I feel fine, I don’t have any symptoms, but my test came back positive and and now I have an app that counts down the days until I die. I’m terrified, I don’t want to die, but all I can do is lie in bed and wait. Six days pass, nothing happens. Maybe there was a mistake? Hopeful, I venture out of bed. My legs feel weak, out of practice. I peek into the living room, ask my family if I could maybe go back to the hospital and be tested again? They tell me to go back to bed and wait to die in silence.
I dream that the whole family is at a beach village, one of those Greek sea places with white houses and blue roofs. The sun is shining and it’s clearly summer, still groups of children are coming down stairs and alleys singing a Christmas song, I know it’s Greek because I recognize the world “aletheia”. Another group is singing in… Hebrew? That can’t be right, they don’t celebrate Christmas. Maybe they’re Copts.
As more and more relatives arrive I yearn to go back home and avoid them all, I beg my dad to drive me and he refuses. I walk instead, looking behind my back to see if he changed his mind. I fall asleep on a bench and when I wake up Dad has brought me home on his bicycle.
I want to take a shower but there’s a tray of burned cheese burgers in the bathroom, the smell is foul. My mom sits next to me on my bed and puts some sort of rust colored lotion on my face. Meanwhile, my brother is telling me that Dad is gonna take down our shower panels, that upsets me so much I throw a little, pathetic tantrum.
We sit around the table to eat dinner, both my grandmothers are here. My late grandma G. is slouching back on her chair, she looks like she has no bones and is about to plop on the floor any minute, like she’s made of jelly. I’m explaining to the both of them what 3D glasses are, isn’t it marvelous, I say, how everyone can now see holograms? They don’t really understand the concept. I say, imagine a big red billboard with the name of your favorite supermarket. With my glasses I also can see… I fish around for an actress they would recognize,
I can also see Sofia Loren projected on the billboard, waving at me.
After dinner, my brother attempts to hack into my phone to see if I ever visited a certain city. He’s not gonna find anything, I say confidently. He finds a panoramic photo that looks more like a painting. It’s from my point of view, it looks like I’m sitting in a shabby room. He changes the prospective and we gasp: on my lap there’s a dirty rat with a syringe stuck in its neck. It’s a terrifying close up.
Next I go to the store because it’s my old coworker S.’s birthday and we are planning a surprise party. I buy birthday cards and balloons from him, he doesn’t suspect a thing. I really need to pee though, and I’ll have to hold it because it’s not hygienic to use a public bathroom, Coronavirus and all. I can’t remember my credit card pin, I look it up on my phone, it’s the old Motorola my mom owned in 1997. It’s broken and I can’t seem to fix it and I really need to run home and pee. S. tries to fix it as well, he hands back something that is not my phone, I really don’t care, I grab it and…
I dream that I’m staying at a woman’s house in northern Europe, this woman might or might not be Meryl Streep. She speaks something similar to French, but not quite, I think I might like to learn this language. In her bathroom the sink, toilet and bathtub are navy and yellow, her hall is carpeted like a hotel. I spill trail mix all over the carpet and frantically look for a vacuum cleaner.
I dream that I’m a Hobbit, but Middle-Earth is empty and destroyed. My friends and I fought the Nazguls, our throats were slit and we woke up as modern humans. Our land is still there though, in a parallel dimension at the other side of my school. Sometimes when students ride their horses they can see the horses of Middle-Earth running on green meadows, alone and free, like they’re on the other side of a mirror.
Desperate for a way back, I locate a portal in NYC. My friend C. is there, she wants me to read her new novel. I tell her the story is a bit offensive towards Boris Johnson, doesn’t she know he almost died of Covid? Now she’s (UNDERSTANDABLY) mad at me. I take her back to my house and introduce her to all my cats, including a playful black kitten and two white and gray old fellas, they knocked over their litter box and it gave them a pink eye each.
My mother announces that my sister, her boyfriend and our neighbor S. (who as usual looks like a child) are all moving in. That upsets me so much I start insulting my sister via texts. I need to shower but I waste time being cruel to her, it gets late and people start coming inside the bathroom, because school is about to start and looks like this bathroom is the way in. I can’t close the door because the lock is a broken zipper and my cousin laughs at me for it.
I decide to use the smaller shower at my house. I throw everyone out, start to undress and feel a small hand grabbing my waist. I’m freaked out because that’s not my hand. It’s my neighbor, so small I didn’t notice him, hiding in the bathroom and being a creep. I throw him out too. Then instead of showering I grab my dad’s hair trimmer and give myself a haircut. The result is ridiculous, but I reason it’ll look okay once I get a perm.
I dream that I’m watching a TV show / possibly living it. It’s about three friends, the main character is played by Melanie Scrofano. They are at a party and it’s late, one of the friends goes to the bathroom and then calls her dad to come pick her up. Little does she know, her dad will drive to the party, he’ll never meet her mom, and she’ll never be born.
(No, they are not time travellers. This made perfect sense in my dream.)
With one of the friends erased from existence, she is replaced by another girl, Asian, who has four legs so she looks a bit like a centaur. They live their lives for a while and then the party happens again. The four legged girl goes to the party, then calls her dad… I start shivering, but it’s inevitable. It will happen again and again and again.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 