Sunday, January 15, 2017

That Perfect Dream State


I attempted to write down everything I could recall of the dream I had this morning just before waking instead of letting it fade quickly, as I usually do, before my day begins. Here goes....

I was trying out for this Fluevog film/variety show of some kind. I was a finalist with 5 other interesting, odd folks. We chatted a bit in a small room and then began wandering around. Then somehow, briefly, my kids were in it instead of me, but that didn't last long. Then when I was back in the show instead of my kids, I kept sneaking off to smoke cigarettes (which I haven't done in many years, which was also true in the dream, but I couldn't stop myself despite knowing I was supposed to stay on set). I kept sneaking off to a bistro place that was full of oddities and antique junk - kind of like this old weird kind of a mall place with a bumpy brown brick floor in my old hometown (which was called MacArthur Village, but which doesn't exist anymore), but it was way more filled with stuff (so much you could barely get through, like an upscale flea market) and creepier - like if that old space had become an overwhelming junk boutique. And there were French doors and patios off this one part, where I kept trying to get, that felt like New Orleans, but I knew it was Alexandria.  And that part was upstairs, and there was a creepy elevator I had to use because I was using my old platform walker thing to get around again (the one I used right after hip surgeries), so I couldn't use the stairs. And there was an old sales lady in a red suit with a sparkly brooch, who moved slowly but who had long manicured nails, who kept trying to call the elevator for me, and it didn't ever come when you wanted it, and when it did come, it was slow and you weren't sure if it would even move or if it would trap you in. But I was late getting back to tryouts and managed to get into the elevator, but I accidentally left my platform walker outside of the elevator doors upstairs. I didn't have it in me to go back through the ordeal of the elevator and go back to get the walker once I made it to the first floor because there were a few fat flying spiders in the elevator that kept attacking me, and one got caught in my big curly hair for a moment which freaked me out. So I managed to limp around the first floor and find a cane amid all the weird junk in that place and hobbled myself back to the Fluevog tryouts. When I got back there, I found there was this carpet-like thick fake snow everywhere (tons of it - it looked fake but tranquil), and we were about to have some fancy esoteric photographer do a photo shoot of us each individually. And then we were going to have to do a short stand-up monologue of some kind after that, and I had no idea what I was going to say. But I convinced myself that surely I could think of something interesting to say on the spot. Then the guy in charge started in trying to tell us all the important stuff we needed to know, and this other finalist guy who looked like TJ Miller wouldn't stop loudly talking to me and showing me his iPad, interrupting the important guy, and he wasn't getting my eye-dagger hints to shut up. The director guy got mad at him, and I backed away to distance myself from the trouble. Then we were back to waiting on the photographer guy, and it was dark now with spotlight-lit areas and I started playing with the snow blanket stuff they had spread out for the photo shoot - even covering whole cars and large swaths of land - and then I accidentally ripped it while rubbing it around to see how thick it was, so I mushed it back together to pretend I hadn't done anything, and I walked into a Fluevog store that was part of the set somehow, and I tried some pretty shoes, with diamond-shaped designs in the leather, on my hands.