i should try to grow some. in a little greenhouse. they need lots of humidity.

I love sleep, but it eludes me. I started taking kava root extract a couple nights ago which is pretty great because it helps me fall asleep instead of getting all itchy and staying awake for hours. unfortunately it doesn’t last that long and I’m still waking up in the middle of the night. But….it’s better than nothing. I really should go to bed right now, but I’ve been so restless and lazy all day. I haven’t gotten anything done to my satisfaction because I keep getting bored and doing something else. I wish I’d tired myself out during the day. Maybe sleeping on the couch would help. Sometimes I need a change of scenery and I’m pretty good at falling asleep on couches.

dream angus cover

So I’ve been reading through the Canongate Myth Series, my new literary fixation (which will last a while because a lot of the series is yet to be written). The latest one I’ve read was Alexander McCall Smith’s Dream Angus and I highly recommend it. It’s based on a bunch of different versions of the Angus myths from Celtic culture. Angus is a romantic god of love, youth, and dreams who attracts birds and girls wherever he goes and gives people happy dreams. The plot alternates between stories from his life and modern-day vignettes where an incarnation of Angus appears. What’s cool is that despite his divine nature, his spirit is almost broken by his own dreams he can’t control. Anyway, read it.

sloth cover

Next. I was at work and a book was lying all messed up on the shelf and it caught my eye. It was Sloth (by Gilbert Hernandez, one of the creators of Love & Rockets). It’s so good I almost want to buy it so I can keep it…but I probably won’t because I don’t have any money (or shelf space). It’s one of those coming-of-age high school stories about three friends who love rock music. The plots twists in some crazy ways, all caused by each of the characters willing him or herself into a coma. Pretty cool, plus nice art in Hernandez’s typical high-contrast style. But you don’t have to take my word for it….(Cue the rainbow.)

Number one: My maternal grandfather gives me a ride to a new job in an office building in a part of town that I was unaccustomed to and my cousin Lauren tags along for some reason. That’s odd because she’s maybe 16 and we don’t see much of each other. Whatever. Dream. Yes, also this part of town that the office is in, doesn’t exist. So we leave and drive 7 or 8 miles to this place but it seems like it’s farther because on the way I see fields of dust and sparse grasses I don’t recognize. It was pretty, sunny day with fluffy white clouds , which is unusual for my dreams. (Most of the dream take place in the dark or at dusk.) When we get there I’m not sure which building is which because they’re all in a complex of office buildings. So I pick one and we go in and from the inside I got the sense that the building is a lot bigger than it seemed from the outside. There are a million little offices and more cubicles than that arranged in such a way to maximize the space. That left very little room to walk. The narrow halls were lit with nasty dim fluorescent lights in panels on the low ceilings. The walls and flooring were vaguely dirty matte yellow, like they’d been beige originally and time and human breath had changed the color. The ambiance was pretty depressing. I was running out of time before I had to meet my new boss in my new office and I was extremely confused about the layout of the floors so I ran around for several minutes trying to follow the signs and asking people for directions. In the process of panicking, I got separated from Lauren and my grandfather and decided to give up and go outside, hoping they will eventually come outside. While I was inside all those pretty clouds had turned dark and heavy and a minute after I got outside it started pouring. A security guard or doorman pulled out an umbrella and offered it to me and we ran together into an awning at the front of the building. At this point I noticed that the front of the building looked more like a hotel than an office building and I woke up to my name being called.

Number two: In this dream I was temporarily (?) staying with my paternal grandparents and my father. One of my uncles was also there. I awoke on a couch early in the morning when it was still very dark and cold. But as usual, it was hot in the house and everyone was already up except my grandfather. My dad, grandmother and uncle sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast and arguing about something (as usual). I took a shower in the bathroom which had the old pink and white verticle stripes on the wall that were there maybe 7 years ago. I vaguely remember getting dressed; a swirl of fabric aound my head while I was putting on a shirt? I appeared in the kitchen and said I needed a ride to work. My uncle asked when I had to be there. The digital clock on the counter read 8:33. Then 8:05. Then 8:45. So I was like “Shit! I’m gonna be late. I thought it was much earlier that it is.” So my dad takes a map out and highlights a route the the office building. A long street parallel to the one we would take was called “Alexander Grated Parkway” and farther out its name changed to “Alchemy Drive.” I recognized the the street as the one I have passed in a lot of dreams where there is a sewer system with an open creek. I got into my dad’s car and I woke up.

So once a year the monastery hosted free tours for the public who were curious about the religious traditions and architecture in a festival atmosphere. My assignment was to cover the festivities and interview some monks and visitors. Spend the day there, maybe get some funny or enlightening quotes. The monastery was normally blocked from view of the street below it by a huge stone gate with designs painted on it in green. Today the gates were open and thousands of people, alone and in groups walking up and down the ridiculously high stone steps to the bridge that led into the main complex. On my way across the bridge with my camera and recorder, I passed my father and his brother, Reggie who was eating something on a stick and carrying some papers. We waved at each other and my dad acknowledged that I was working and let me move on without too much conversation. I said I’d visit him later. I also passed my cousin and her girlfriend who waved and kept walking. Everybody looked happy and there were a lot of families visiting.

Inside, the complex was walled with heavy stones piled on top of each other and monks in brown robes walked around talking to visitors and tending to little fir trees in tin pots. I talked to some people there, which I barely remember and I assume I took some photos…

The climax of my visit was the visit to the orchard and gardens higher up in the hills. I sat alone in a chair lift that carried me over a wide low valley full of trees. I am not used to seeing mountains so I was so entranced by the sight below me that I forgot my fear of heights. The valley was full with a dense fir forest that seemed feathery-soft. My camera stayed in my lap the entire ride. On the way over, I listened to conversations around me. I can’t remember what anybody said, just that everyone talked unusually quietly. Back on solid ground I found myself in the middle of a very old stone garden rimmed with green vines. The air was cool and moist, but clear and the sky was cloudy as usual in most of my dreams. I spent most of my time there alone at the wall looking over into the valley.  A monk came to me and a couple other people who were doing the same thing and asked if we wanted to know about the trees. He told us that breeding fir trees were the main product of the monastery, like how a lot of European monasteries made wine or cloth. I knew that. I asked why the trees were so small and soft. The needles were feathered so much I could barely feel them. We all sat on the stone slabs and he told us a myth.

A thousand years ago, the man who would later found the monastery lived in the mountains growing trees. Over the decades, he had become famous for a variety of firs he’d bred that were uncommonly soft. He’d been selling them in pots and had filled an entire valley with them. One day God noticed that the man had filled an entire valley with a new type of tree that looked unusual from the sky. He went to the man while he was working in his grove and they sat down on a bench. God asked him where he got off changing trees which were obviously perfect when he made them. Sensing that God had a sense of humor, the man replied “I wanted you to have something soft to walk on when you come over.” God laughed and raised an eyebrow and the man said “It’s your valley, feel free to try it out.” So God became very tall and took a walk through the valley and enjoyed the mist and the soft trees and he said “Yes. Yes I see what you mean. Carry on.”

The monk laughed and so did we.

The Cover of "The Wave of the Future'

So I’m shelving books and doing normal library stuff and through the books of my side of the shelf, I see a lady on the other side of the shelf reading  a blue book entitled, The Wave of the Future. It’s a small, old book with yellowing pages and a dark blue cover with a gold star embossed in the center. I picked up this book maybe six or seven years ago at the library uptown. I was attracted by the title and antiquity of the book, but it was full of  paranoid ideas and religious digressions from Charles Lindburgh’s wife/copilot. So this lady reading the book places it on the shelf, steps back as if confused, then drops dead on the floor. I get that prickly spaced-out feeling you get when something confusing and shocking happens. As calmly as possible, I call over the manager, Michelle who nonchalantly starts to complain that we’ll just have to work around the body because people tend to die in the library and there’s nothing we can do about it. The maintenance crew will deal with it.

I was a little shaken up about this, but I decided to play along and relax because this makes a great story. After a few days, the first body and several new ones are still lying on the floor and people are stepping around them like they would gum on the sidewalk. At this point my poker face is falling apart and I’m feeling pretty uncomfortable with all these dead people on the floor. In her typical monotone voice, the manager complains that the maintanance people always take forever to pick the bodies up. We’ll just have to put them in boxes until someone can take them away. We carry one of the bodies into the back room and try to stuff it into a box. Somehow this body has gone completely flat and limp so it’s light but takes up a lot of space. We fold it twice and box it up.  My notes say that there was some sort of “ad” after this part, but I don’t remember and my handwrtiing is illegible. Wuldn’t be the first time that I had a dream interrupted by a commercial though. Very irritating.

frustration over.

For some reason I was trying to find someone in the desert. I had climbed up a red dune and somehow hang-glided over the desert below me, brushing the tip of an antenna tower with one of my legs. I was hang-gliding over from somewhere carrying two stuffed cats and something else. I fell and landed on red sandy hot rocks with no shoes on. I decided to try flying over again and climbed down a manhole into a cellar. Through the door to the cellar was the foot of a huge red sand dune. I’d run up the dune before, so I tried to scramble up with the thing in my hands but as I reached the top, I slipped. I struggled to climb before I slid all the way down. Then my phone rang and now I’m all discombobulated.

check the shoulderpads.

Last night I dreamed I was trying on a very ugly ill-fitted blue jacket at the store. It had shoulderpads and was a size too big so it was all slouchy on my arms. Very Denise Huxtable. This (below) is hot though, so don’t talk shit. In the words of the great MC Paul Barman, “Lisa Bonet, I’d like a piece of yo day.”

I'd wear that.