bluishorange

the dreams begin before i fall asleep.

though i’m aware that i’m still awake, the words on the page will start to change as i drift off, or my surroundings will warp just a bit.  instead of a glass of water on the coffee table, there’s a half-filled cup of iced chocolate milk, with a paper napkin floating on the top.  instead of todd andrews and his pickle magnate inheritance case, the sentences i’m reading mean something else, something not-quite-right.

once sleep actually comes, the dreams launch full-force, intense and emotional.  they happen in several acts, i know, and i am always me and always the main character.  besides that, though, i never remember anything else.  when i wake up, pillow- and sheet- and blanket-prints covering my skin, all that’s left of the dreams is a feeling of resignation, of sadness, of frustration at being permanently stuck in a bad situation.

i think it’s because they cut the tops off all the trees outside my windows.

paraphrasing, of course, the note i left on rob’s car in the parking lot this morning:

hi, rob macgregor!

how’s it going? once at summer camp i ate a whole lot of triscuits and cheese in a can two nights in a row. i’d like to think that it was the triscuits and not the cheese in a can that made me very sick, but in my heart of hearts i know that’s not true. it was the cheese, rob! the cheese! hey, do you think that way off in the future they won’t have any more cars from the 1920s and 30s, the vintage models? and then when they make movies about the 20s and 30s they’ll have to use CGI for the cars instead of real cars? that will be sad. yoda was much better as a puppet. as i sit here in my car next to your car, the red route has come all the way around again. once i was all by myself on the red route and the driver was playing “baby got back” really, really loud. it was kind of awkward, hearing about the anaconda on the bus when it was just me and the driver. well, that’s it for now!

love, alison

on the back of the note i wrote:

you know how on “mathnet” when they had a witness or someone in the car and george would drive and kate monday would have to sit in the back? and how she had to roll down the window and open the door from the outside when she got out of the car? that must have sucked. it was los angeles, though, and not so hot. maybe she could just have kept the window down because it was nice outside. that kate monday. boy i tell ya.

i got out and put the note under rob’s windshield wiper. i was back in my car with the keys in the ignition when i realized that it looked like it was going to rain, and the ink from the pen i’d used bleeds when paper gets wet. so i slipped the note into a sandwich baggie i found in my car and returned the note to rob’s windshield. hopefully, nobody will steal it. it’s a good note.

(rob, if the sun comes out and melts the plastic baggie onto your windshield, i’m sorry in advance.)