A Long One For A Change

Posted on July 9, 2020July 9, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I dream that there’s a phone game I’m really looking forward to play, it’s deceptively simple and cutesy but I’ve been told the plot has a rather dark turn.

Thing is, I can’t possibly concentrate on the game because my life seems to be going fast forward: I blink and a few hours have passed, try as I might I can’t remember what happened in those hours. These flash forward episodes keep happening as I try to go home, when I finally get there years have passed, my dad is old now and has long white hair.

And then time fixes itself, I guess, because next thing I know I’m on my bed playing the game.

The plot is about a young girl with pink hair travelling with her master, a medieval knight. The two are attacked in a village by the game’s bad guy (really well written, engaging backstory for him). I see that he has much more experience points than my characters and a sense of dread washes over me: I watch helpless as the master is brutally murdered and the little girl is dragged to prison.

It’s me languishing in that cell now, after years and years my old friend and neighbor S. rescues me and we go home together. There’s a long carnival parade outside my building, the music is deafening.

I’m once again in my room and my phone is ringing. It’s my cousin. “You can come back to the store for three hours tomorrow,” she says, “but then that’s it, you’re fired.”

“What?! Why?!” I ask, flabbergasted.

They are moving the store to London. And I can’t afford to go with them, I wouldn’t be able to pay rent. The next day I stand on the long bridge that crosses the Atlantic and cry as I look at my cousin, Boss Lady and my coworker S. walking past the gate that goes into London. I beg them not to leave me.

“Farewell, farewell,” says S.

Sorry, Suranne!

Posted on July 5, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I dream that I’m watching Suranne Jones on TV and out of curiosity I look up her age. Google says she’s 71, and I think that’s not true, that can’t be true. I look up again and she was indeed born in 1948.

More than anything, I’m impressed that I got the math almost right in my dreams, I never seem to do that in real life.

Twenty Years Later I’m still Heartbroken About That Doll

Posted on June 27, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I dream that it’s raining and I’m looking transfixed at a toy store window. On display there is a secondhand Skipper doll, just like the one I had as a child. I walk inside and ask how much she is, the owner says 45 bucks. I buy her. The owner leads me to a basement where he’s keeping a dozens vintage porcelain dolls. I think I recognize some of them, as if they were mine in a past life. I tell the owner about how my father maliciously decapitated my old Skipper (this happened IRL). Moved, he takes a tiny paintbrush to add some details to the new one, make her extra special for me.

*(photo by Annalisa Bianca Fornasier on flickr)*

Then I dream that my siblings and I are children again and we are moving to a new house. We decide who gets which room, we sell all our plants. We dismantle the old kitchen. Deep down I’m sad to leave the old house and I know I will miss the local stray cats. I’m relieved when I wake up and realize I’m not moving after all.

When You Hate Your Family But Quite Like Pretty Girls

Posted on May 2, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I hear my siblings whispering, I know they’re plotting something. They bully and gaslight me and my father joins in, so I have no choice but run away from home. I can never come back.

It’s soon lunch time and I’m hungry, I find and open diner and order pizza, I’m asked to sit in a corner because of social distancing measures. The owner rolls her eyes at my pizza and says next time I should order a proper meal; I feel humiliated.

I call my therapist because I badly need some help, the voicemail says I’ll find her at the local park after 6 P.M., sitting in a plexiglass box for, you guessed it, social distancing. But at this point I can’t even remember what I was mad about, and I go back home.

My sister and cousin are forcing me to compete in a quiz show, filming takes place in a basement several floors below a local supermarket. We are brought to a room where a bunch of girls are getting ready, putting their makeup on etc. My sister teases me for never wearing makeup, she says I’m insecure and a coward.

I decide I’m not gonna compete after all, I walk in the middle of the room and announce to everyone that I’m quitting. The producers are saying I simply can’t, I should actually be the first to go on stage, but I take the escalator and leave.

One of the producers is following me up to the ground floor, she is a pretty woman with a black bob, green clothes and triangular eyelashes. She is telling me that I could win a lot of money, don’t I want money to buy… (she looks around in the dark of the abandoned supermarket floor) a Venetian mask? I say I’m not interested.

As I walk home I’m joined by my cousin, who was kicked out of the quiz show in record time. The woman in green is still following us, she says it’s because her car is parked nearby, but she looks sad and worried and I feel guilty because maybe she’s gonna lose her job because of me. I take her by the hand (so soft!) and ask her if she would like to stop somewhere for tea. She looks me in the eyes and smile. She really is beautiful.

Eerie Shopping, Eerie Cooking

Posted on April 10, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m inside a hospital with my mom, the ceilings are too high and the corridors are dark. I need to buy a pair of headphones, we look around for a store and end up in what soon we realize is a well stocked supermarket built entirely inside the hospital. We have a shopping cart now, mom starts picking snacks and coffee, the products are lit with artificial, sterile light and the ceilings are so high you can only see blurry darkness above you. There’s a general feeling of unsettling quietness. We finally come across a pair of headphones, mom says they’re too expensive (they cost a little more than 10 bucks) but I buy them anyway.

We have hired a professional chef to come cook dinner for us, it’s a chubby lady with a 1900s pompadour. My parents order pig stew and she gets to work extremely slowly, and while we wait she shows us a picture of the pig she’s cooking: the animal has a sad look in its expressive eyes, its head is bowed under the foot of a man standing triumphantly above it. I decide I’m not gonna eat the pig, even though the finished product looks juicy and smells really good. I order fried prawns instead and I watch as she tosses them into boiling oil along with big blue raspberries.

I never get to eat any of it, the morning after I try to remember why and I see myself as a young woman cheated on by her husband: to get over my sadness I end up sleeping with a beautiful lady guest who wants to recruit me as a spy. Now I’m so hungry I can’t stop crying, I start tossing things and yelling at my poor sister. I also need to pee so badly.

Pandemic Sure Has Added Another Layer of Anxiety To My Recurring Dreams

Posted on April 4, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m grocery shopping with my cousin, we find an aisle in the supermarket stocked with every kind of face masks: they are expensive, truly outrageously expensive, common surgical masks cost 20 bucks apiece and there’s one single N95 mask, orange, that costs more than 600 bucks. Still, we’ve been looking everywhere and we really need those masks, I want to call my dad and ask what to do but once again I only have an old phone on me. I look for “home” on the contacts list and a stranger answers: he’s using my childhood landline number, I feel weirdly angry and protective.

We go to my cousin’s place and have fried fish and chicken for lunch. Then I go to school and my old philosophy teacher is there, but this time he’s teaching math, even better. He’s graded yesterday’s tests, on mine I only wrote down half of the answers and that half I copied. He’s really angry with me, he asks why, oh why am I so bad at math? I explain it’s because I’m smart, I’m so smart that in primary school I never learned how to study, everything was so easy. And now that math is difficult I cannot study to save my life. He says he doesn’t believe me.

I go back home and around the dinner table I explain the situation. I say I cannot even be bothered to learn my classes’ schedule. My mother is very worried, she says I’ll need to do something if I want to pass my finals. I say that hopefully this pandemic will be over soon, I’ll be back to work and won’t have to go to school ever again. Who cares about my finals anyway? Everyone is shocked and angry at me.*

My sister who’s also at the table sends me to fetch her boyfriend’s dog. I walk to town and start looking at every person walking with a dog, hoping to recognize her. I eventually find her, she doesn’t look at all like his real life dog but she’s limping just like her. She’s pooped all over herself and has to be rushed home to get washed, as we wait my sister and I walk into a stationary store. I hope to find stickers but only find pretty notebooks.

*I want to point out once again that I’m an adult, I’ve been out of school for 15 years and I definitely passed my finals back then. WHY DO I KEEP DREAMING ABOUT THIS.

Trains and Cars and Superpowers

Posted on March 28, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m at a train station trying to get home, there are some classmates with me. We check the timetables, only find one train going the right direction and it’s still hours away. There are only a few people around, I know today is supposed to be the town festival but everybody is quarantined at home.

As we climb the stairs to go look for the ticket booth, a classmate stops me. Wouldn’t I like to rent a car instead, she asks? It’s a service provided by the local hardware store and it’s only 16 bucks. I accept.

Now Steven Universe is the one who’s renting the service: along with a car it also offers a complete superpowers package. You only have to cover your body with transparent film (food wrap, basically) and you can jump very high and even fly. Steven is enjoying his new abilities and takes the chance to kiss a girl, but as soon as she feels the film on his lips she pushes him away, disgusted.

Steven is so upset he jumps on his rented car and crashes against a wall. At the hospital, while his body is in a coma, his spirit wakes up and doesn’t realize what happened; wearing only one of those backless hospital gowns, he skips around and dances outside in the garden.

I Want To Go Back

Posted on March 14, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m at Venice’s train station, trying to get back home. According to the board there is one super fast train that goes straight to my town, it belongs to the church and one ticket it 380 bucks. I cannot afford it. As the train is about to leave the price suddenly drops to 160, and I still can’t afford it.

I wait for a slower, cheaper train, and finally I’m back home and can hug my parents. I have an electric fan going in my room even though it’s only march, and my underwear drawer is empty because my cousin stole them all. I tell her I want to go back to work even amid the outbreak.

Boss Lady calls me, says I can come back as long as I take a shower before going home from the store. I download a shower from the Sims game, the outdoor kind that uses bottled water. It’s so small I can carry it in the palm of my hand, Boss Lady is fascinated by it.

Work Day

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Decade Dream Journal

I’m late for work, and I don’t even have my coat because I came home for lunch wearing my employee jacket. As I rush out in the cold my sister is sitting in front of the TV watching Sailor Moon.

In town I come across two old ladies, they are hanging outside an ice cream parlor and talking about phones. I stop and invite them to visit my store. They ask me if I’ve already done my homework. I say,

Ma’am, I’m 33.

The store looks exactly like my home, but there are a bunch of desks in the living room, with girls sitting at them working. Boss Lady calls to announce she’s running a fever and will have to stay at home.

I go to my room, where my cat is sleeping. Just then Boss Lady arrives even though she said she wouldn’t, and she looks pale and sick, with bags under her eyes. A coworker whispers to me that she looks horrible, B.L. turns around angrily and asks what we are talking about. I try to look innocent and say we’re just really worried about her. I go back to my job which is apparently cooking, and we are using Bluetooth plates to share recipes.

Now I’m watching (or living?) a movie about an Indian woman flying to Italy to visit her children and grandchildren. Her plane crashes, killing her husband. She is confined in an embassy, where she has a series of wacky hijinks with ladies of all nationalities.

The woman wants to reach her family in northern Italy, but a massive flood is stopping her. Meanwhile her family is watching the flood on the news: the pets recognize their owners’ grandmother on TV and leave on a crazy adventure to try and rescue her.

DECADE DREAM JOURNAL