confluence of events

My cat Lily yowling constantly on a cool Tuesday evening... I'm about to go nuts when my other cat Thompson starts yowling too, from downstairs. Outside the wind is mellow and pushing a lovely Ocean calm into my second story bedroom. I'm trying to work on this new writing project, high on Vicadin, Fat Tire and now I've switched to my trusty Sierra Nevada. Intermittently I'm chewing chunks of Bret Easton Ellis's brilliant new novel Imperial Bedrooms into the mess within me and ringing his paranoic style for all the inspiration it's worth (no small amount). There is a gaping hole in my mouth where blood has clotted over but occasionally surprises me with a stringy, iron-tasting dribble down the back of my throat.

Downstairs A Place To Bury Strangers is jamming at max volume. Fuck my neighbors (nothing personal).

I tip my beer but not before thinking that something urgent is transpiring somewhere in the forest of neural pathways etched into the meat between my ears.

The sun is down, it's 8:05 PM and although the chemicals and cool air are causing my fingers to lag a bit my mind is racing. I've got to get this down, got to get this down...

Two A.M. Corridor is the story of a bartender and the people he surrounds himself in an attempt to make the easy buck, get the girl who is already been explained to him is off limits and somehow avoid the frenzy of supernatural chaos that may or may not be the power behind one of the world's biggest hotel chains. Good luck Ray, you're gonna need it.

dreeee-min

Dreams
Funny...

A couple weeks ago I inexplicably had this old 80's pop song in my head.

For weeks.

Dreamin' ("I'll be dreee-min, dree-min"). I knew the artist was someone that had been a beauty queen or actress. I remembered sitting in the Little Theatre at Palos South ~7th grade and hearing this on a radio in a hallway - the memory was in fact similar to a dream in its ethereal opaqueness. I couldn't remember who sang it, and at the times throughout the day when it would surface in my consciousness,, I would vehemently swear I was going to go home and use that handy little iTunes store to figure out who it was. I would always forget because, honestly, it's a nostalgic indulgence. I mean, admittedly, I did, when it entered my realm of awareness, like the song. Not in a "I Like this fucking song kind of way," but it had a kind of haunting melody, even for a throw away pop song. Anyway, enough of me coming to terms with saying in public that I like trite drivel and onward to the phenomenon.

More recently it popped into my head at work somehow and my friend Manny, pop-master, knew it. "Vanessa Williams is stuck in your head?" or something similar was his question. We laughed about it.

Now I wake up this morning (no no no, this afternoon! I don't get to say that all that often anymore) and I am, for like the 10th straight day or something, bowled over by my dreams. I mean, I have always hungered for dreams and other's dream-related stories, but I have not really had many dreams to remember in waking life IN YEARS. And yet, I'm sitting here today and I can tell you what I dreamt yesterday in clear, vivid detail. And now this afternoon I woke with another one. So I ask, has the song "Dreamin" and figuring out who sang it somehow unlocked my dreams for me? If so, I would like to state here and now so that Ms. Williams might read it if, her career now long since over, she is googling herself and comes across my meager blog. Ms. Williams, I would like a dream where Penguins are elected into office in the United States. I would also like one where I punch Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the face. Thank You Ms. Williams.

Now, here is yesterdays dream to a "T".

10/02/07

I dreamt about leaving work to try and run down the street to the Albertsons (that Jewel to you Midwest folk) to buy Oreo cookies because in real day to day life they have become what I call work-crack (see below for definition) and I had failed to bring any. So instead of driving I hoof it and discover a little White Hen (that's a 7-11 type stand alone convenience store for you cali folk, a type that does not exist here as far as I've seen) and I duck in to buy oreos and wait in a line behind some bizarre, almost thuggish characters and when I finally get up to the front to pay the guy has short reddish-brown, greasy hair of medium length slicked back behind a backwards turned mesh-in-back ballcap and is smoking a cigarette. he rings me up and we somehow start talking about money or our mutual lack there of and then when I walk out onto the sidewalk and head back to work I find two, One hudnred dollar bills on the sidewalk, just sitting there, neatly placed. I look around and pick them up and start walking and then I hear the sound of an approaching skaeboarder behind me. I get this ominous impression like it is the skateboarders money that I have taken and I try to move faster because now there is this encroaching hostility over taking me, but as I move I move slow because my legs are stuck in this weird, cross-legged style sitting position, even though I'm standing, walking no less. Then the dream ends with me frantically looking over my shoulder at the encroaching, faceless skateboarder.

Hopefully this will mean I find $200 bucks in real life (Wink Wink Ms. Williams. Or, shit, maybe Ms. Williams controls dreams and, (mind racing to find a Ms. Williams counter-point) ahh, Paula Abdul governs reality? NOOOOOOO (throws his arms up in the arm) NOOOOO! NOOOOOO!

Glossary:

Work-crack: whatever food or substance you turn back to repeatedly during work days to comfort and propel you through. Some examples would be coffee, oreos, vodka, crack, whatever the individual in question prefers.

If anyone cares (and how could you after this long-winded nonsense. Geez, I should really take a tip from Dan Brown and make ever page a chapter, or is that every chapter a page?) I'll post today's dream later.
Currently listening:
20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection
By Marc Bolan
Release date: 20 August, 2002

The big fish

I stepped out of the shower this afternoon and while doing some deep breathing exercises I usually try to step into my day with for the first time I think ever I felt something behind the mask of the ego scaffold I so adamantly stick to.

I felt a quiet. Not an introspective quiet but a vast ocean of calm underneath the clothes I dress myself in when I step out of my mind and onto the stage where I interact with all of these other marvelous souls. It felt raw and primal and... powerful.

I'm going back in, after it, and suddenly I understand what David Lynch called the 'big fish'.