BI dream that I’m watching a (rather bad) teen movie when I recognize the place it was shot at: it’s the park near where I live! And you can even see my building behind it! I laugh because it’s supposed to be a magical place but I know the sad truth.
Then I dream that I find a phone in my room, I think it’s my sister’s at first but it’s not, it belongs to a stranger. How did it get here, did I pick it up by mistake? I’m late for school already and I don’t know what to do, should I wait for someone to call? More importantly, it’s raining and it’s October outside and I’m so relieved summer is over.
I dream that I receive a spam call while I’m talking to the vet on the phone. The two somehow get connected and the vet has to waste twenty minute convincing some guy she doesn’t want a new mobile subscription. She is understandably very mad at me for putting her in that situation.
I dream that one morning I find a line of booths along the road just outside my window, a dozen or so of them. They have a seat and screens for people to make video calls, I assume especially old people who don’t own a smartphone. Behind each booth there’s a young employee ready to help. I realize this would have been a great job for me, why didn’t I apply? Maybe I can tell the phone company they didn’t get my resumé by mistake.
I dream that I’m on a school trip. We stop at a kiosk in the middle of a forest and I buy a strawberry pastry. I’m really tired because I didn’t sleep last night, I don’t think that I can go on, I want to go home instead. There’s another girl who’s equally tired and wants to go too, she’s really cool and I might have a crush on her. The teacher, a short guy with glasses, suggests we take a plane, but that’s a bit excessive. A train, maybe? He offers to drive us to the train station.
I’m not wearing my shoes −just flip flops on socks− and cool girl doesn’t have her phone, we left them insode the school bus. There’s no time, the teacher says, you’ll have everything back tomorrow. And off we go, we’re expecting to see the train station, but he drives us all the way to town. I go directly home and fall asleep.
The morning after I realize my shoes are still missing, I’m so angry at the teacher for making me leave them behind. I try to text cool girl before remembering she doesn’t have her phone. I frantically start looking for my old classmates’ numbers, then I wake up for real and I’m so relieved to realize the shoes are safe and sound in my closet.
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 it’s Christmas and I’m typically upset about not receiving any presents. I storm in my room and brood a bit, yell a bit at my neighbors for blasting far-right propaganda from their windows. I know I need to go shower, yet I waste hours playing Pokémon on an old Game Boy Advance. I feel so bad for procrastinating. My brain is like mush.
I finally get up and step in the shower box, I struggle not to just sit down and brood some more. No, I need to concentrate on the task ahead. My grandma is there too (now the shower is the size of a large room with black marble walls), she’s standing on a stool and trying to take a picture from a slit window, she says she wishes her phone had a better camera. Well, I have a better camera!
The ocean is on the other side of the window, blue and shiny and I start taking pictures. Now the shower is an open space on the beach and the walls are bamboo. I feel guilty about leaving the water running, but the sun is setting and I need these pics for my Instagram. Beach goers try to shower and I shoo them away. Two men are painting the wall of a building with Michelangelo’s frescoes, I take picture after beautiful picture. The beach employees are trying to stop me. The water is still running.
I dream that I’m watching Lindsay Ellis doing a Glee tribute episode. She’s the main character on Adventure Time, she and her fuzzy animal sidekick arrive on postapocalyptic Earth, mostly destroyed but still functional. She stops at a bar, drinks a coke, and that’s when she finds some old VHS tapes with Glee episodes! Lindsay’s gonna sing now, I can feel it.
I dream that I’m running because I’m late for Uni. A girl stops me inside the subway and asks me if my name is [insert my real name here]. Yes, why? I ask. My old glasses shop called her because she happens to have my same last name, and what do you know, she also just happened to walk across me!
She hands me her phone.
Hello?
I say.
How long have you had your glasses?
a male voice asks.
Uhh, about two years?
It’s just a guess. And it’s too late when I realize my guess was wrong.
I dream that it’s my brother’s birthday and I bought him hand cream and mints. My sister hasn’t bought him anything so I win.
We decide to go downtown to look for a present, we walk out the gate and realize we forgot our masks. My sister runs back in and fetches two yellow fabric ones. It’s raining and as we walk through the park we notice that the people sitting at the picnic tables don’t have umbrellas and are getting soaked. I explain to my sister that those are German tourists, they don’t bother with umbrellas because where they come from it rains all the time anyways, it’s a bit like Londoners.
We arrive at a clothes stores, my sister shows me how to hang our bags from special magnets sticking from the cash register. It’s such an insider trick, I think, you can really tell she worked in a store before. My old Nokia is in my bag, one of the salesboys is looking at it with interest. It’s still a really good phone, he says. He starts chatting and telling us the story of his life, it’s very boring and we have to remind him to go help the long line of customers that has formed. One of the customers is a woman called Napoleon. She’s missing an eye.
I dream that everyone I ever worked with through the years is in my house. A former boss is looking for a phone, I only have a novelty landline shaped like a clown.
We sit for lunch and my parents start fighting, everyone is looking at me with pity, like suddenly they understand why I have issues. I try to talk to them but my sister is having another tantrum and nobody can hear me. There are glass shards on the floor and I start sweeping them. My dead grandpa is there.
In the evening I go to see a show. My cousin is sitting at the ticket booth, she tells me an inside joke, her manager is upset. Inside the theater a 40s movie is playing starring Miley Cyrus. Next to me is sitting the movie’s director, he tries to touch me inappropriately. I get up and go sit with my cousin, he’s very upset.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 