A Treasure Found at Home

five twenty in the morning
eyes open
ears open to the crash bash drive of trucks
in the fruit-packing district

mind still in the dream
the bad dream
the leaving me dream
the not caring dream
the stupid, what was i thinking dream
why even dream such a thing

next those girls come waltzing in
the screaming girls
the wall-building girls
the name calling girls
the speak another language girls
why did i try for so long

i kick them all out

in their place come taxes
the more than i though taxes
the didn’t plan right taxes
the have no money taxes
the grow up quick, here i am taxes
how did i screw up so badly

one thirty six in the afternoon
eyes open
ears open to the mumble whirr of the office
under the bridge

mind still in the dream

• tomato soup
• mac’s mac expertise
• moshing leprechauns
• chai
• twitter
• design your own duvet cover
• secret, the dog, played fetch with me at work
• meowers, aka galahad, cuddling with me in the morning
• distance, breathing room
• blue
• sunroof
• the ferry
• pretzels
• knowing i made the right choice
• kiki’s new home

i had a dream last night that felt, upon waking, was a continuation of the dream from the other night. what i didn’t mention was that in that dream i thought about moving to another room in the dorm, but it was a much much smaller room and i would have to give up my private bathroom and large closet… in fact there wasn’t a closet in the smaller room at all, and there was barely room for a twin bed. the room i was in originally, and decided not to give up, had room for a queen sized bed and the closet was probably half the size of the bedroom.

when i was talking to my acupuncturist about the dream, she reminded me that house (including dorms) are representative of ourselves and our lives. by considering moving to the smaller room, and having the other girls tell me i should, was about feeling that they were trying to restrict who i am.

so last night i dreamed i was getting married. i have no idea who it was i was marrying, but i think he was fun and easy to be with and a good friend. anyhow, it was the day of the wedding and my bridesmaids were nowhere to be found. they just never showed up. there were two who showed up, i think one was hamster_grrl, and the rest just… nothing. no calls, nothing. they hadn’t backed out, they just weren’t there. they’d all bought dresses (which were bluish?) so they knew they were the bridesmaids and knew the day of the wedding. i was unhappy, but also had a feeling of something else. i’m not sure how to describe it. i wasn’t distraught. i guess it was a feeling of being very unimportant. of confirmation that they’d agreed for some other reason than because they really like me and who i am and want to support me.

i’m getting hit really hard with the “not good enough”s again today.

last night i had a dream that someone who didn’t like me much decided to move into the room next to mine. we were all in college living in the dorms. the room she moved into was the room i had to walk through to get out into the hall. she started crying to all our mutual friends about how horrible i was and how i kept coming into her room. they all knew the path out was through her room, but all started to lecture me on finding another way (why not go through two other people’s rooms, the long way, instead?). they were all angry that i would lock my door and not let her into my room, but she couldn’t lock me out of hers. not one of them saw that she set the situation up. that she chose to move in there, knowing that was my way out.

i woke up frustrated and angry and feeling attacked, dwelling on my continued mistrust and misunderstanding of the actions of some people irl.

then i got to work!

there is a woman here who knows nothing about her computer and she takes it out on me. when i ask her what something does, she treats me like i’m an idot. “I. Click. On. IT,” she says slowly, “Do I have to repeat myself AGAIN?” she doesn’t let me finish my questions and isn’t able to tell me what is supposed to happen when she clicks on “it”, but she wants me to fix it for her.

i know it has nothing to do with me. that she just needs someone to take it out on, but i would so much rather be out enjoying the sunshine while it lasts. and that crazy dream where everyone was angry just primed me to be really stung by her attitude.

thankfully, s reminded me that i’ve been doing a great job and the learning curve here is steep. there is so much i can do now that i didn’t know how to solve just two weeks ago.  it’s true, but i can’t help but hear that voice that always tells me i should be learning it faster! (so good for my practice!)
tonight is acupuncture and i’m going to tell her i feel really ucky and i need the magical, “i’m good enough and gosh darn it people like me!” needle.

last night i had the strangest dream i ever dreamed before. mmm mmm la la la.

ok, last night i did NOT dream everyone put an end to war, though that sure would be nice.  instead i dreamed that i finally met leelo, and that we understood each other in a way that a lot of others didn’t. i dreamed he let me hug him right when we met. i think this dream is much more about how i feel trying to interact with my women’s circle than any hope that i have some special magic autism-connecting power. i can’t comprehend the disconnects i see and it really makes me feel i’m not neurotypical.

anyhow, later in the dream i had my hair all done up and got too close to a candle. i burned it all off in big chunks. *sigh*

well, at least the dst ending this weekend will keep me up at odd hours over the weekend so i won’t have a chance to dream such things. must test the servers at 11 (don’t ask me why they’d break in reaction to something that was about to happen, but whatever) and three, which will be one minute after 1:59am sunday.

there was a lot going on in my dreams last night.

there was some sort of revolution building. and the mall was four blocks deep. i met my mom for lunch after almost leaving the mall, but coming back. after lunch i met with the revolutionaries. scott, their leader, was talking about things. and i was falling in love with his second hand man, but we told no one. not even each other, though we both knew. i stood next to him, strong and supportive.

but, they were captured! and burned alive in the local cafe. they burned a few people and it was very sad, then it was time to burn the man i loved. scott’s brother (why he and i weren’t being burned wasn’t clear) was next to me. i crying when they brought him out. then the put the burning shirt by his feet and doused him with alcohol (tequila? they were clearly mexican, even scott). i started to scream and scott’s brother held me as i cried and my heart broke and i struggled not knowing what i could do; losing the man i loved and having to watch him burn alive.

i left after he died and didn’t stay for scott’s execution. later we all met at another restaurant and were sad together. everyone was calling scott ‘che’ all of a sudden. scott’s brother told me they didn’t know how much in love me and second were. (in my dream, he didn’t seem to have a name.) they took me in as family.

then, suddenly, as happens in dreams, i was a french woman of some status traveling through mexico. i stopped for food and the chairs were all tilted so that you could only really lean against them and not sit flat. they had big cushions that slipped against the seat. i ordered a small glass of wine because everything else was beer, and french women like me do not drink pivo (which is the russian word for beer, i realized once i was awake). an american family drove up in a van just as the people seated behind me were finishing up. the american dad was played by the guy who plays the dad in 7th heaven. that guy recognized one of the people who were leaving as someone famous. he begged to let his children meet him, and the guy agreed. first the 7th heaven man blessed the car of famous guy and family. then he and his kids got in. the inside was some sort of recording studio. the 7th heaven man blessed the turntables and mixer and then declared that he was going to steal them next. he stacked a turntable on a mixer and walked out. he put them down in his mini-van. he turned to walk back to get the other turntable and no one was stopping him because we were all too surprised at what was happening.

that’s where i woke up.

i wonder what it all means.

there was a serious tornado in collin county last night. i’m so glad i don’t live there anymore. anna is up the road a bit, so i wouldn’t have been hit, but it’s the reminder that this stuff happens every spring. last time i was there it was still pretty much a small town with a lot of trailer homes and older buildings. that might have had something to do with the degree of destruction. what i like about this article, though, is how everyone is named… it’s from a local paper. nice to know you can look in the paper the next morning and find out how your friends and family faired in the previous night’s storm.

i also got a link to this fan-tastic! video in my inbox this morning. it’s the evolution of dance in six minutes. performed by someone who, at first glance, seems like he might be an unlikely choice for such a thing. i sure wouldn’t mind sharing a dance floor with this guy, though. it was all i could do to keep from laughing loudly here in my cube. i’m sure the only reason i wasn’t dancing along is because i’m sitting down. oh, just you wait until they raise my desk up to where i can stand up and work (i’ve been thinking of asking them to do this since a says it’s the only way she could work without aggrevating her rsi).

my dreams last night were all about being at ‘work’. in that world, i worked in an old munitions factory or something like that. everything was light brown mud coloured. the factory was closed or closing and huge. there were ghosts and at times i think we may have been dead ourselves. the general feel was not so much morbid, though, as precipice-ish. closing. ending. on the edge of rebirth. i felt a genuine connection to those who were left with me, but we had certainly left a lot behind and were really sort of closing up shop. it’s unclear if we were just moving on and the plant would remain open with another group of people or another purpose or if just we were leaving and it would go on with some of these dead people running it and continue being generally useless… no, not useless… more it seemed like whatever we were making was like beating our head against a wall. i guess that’s close to useless, but there was certianly an aspect of hopeless frustration as well.

as i write this it does sound morbid and listless, and while those feelings were there it wasn’t what i took away from the dream. it was more a feeling that i’d be leaving those things behind and was setting things up so that those left who didn’t feel or notice the morbid listlessness would be taken care of and have ease of living, at least in terms of the factory.

edit:
rob concurs:

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The leaves on the persimmon tree outside my door are growing so fast I swear I can see them expanding right in front of my eyes. Like them, you are in a period of almost maniacal fertility. The ripening process is so elemental that you may feel as if unpredictable forces of nature have been unleashed inside you. As long as you keep your sense of humor about it, however, nothing too out-of-control will happen. At worst, you’ll resemble a funny monster with a brilliant future, like an awkward kid destined to grow up to be a cute genius.

what is it about a spring morning in the city? i’ve lived in sf proper for three years and still the rattle rattle rattle sqeeek of a bus passing me on a dry april morning recalls me to england.

days when i took off my shoes to feel the cool grass of a city park and still wasn’t yet willing to give up the sweater wrapped around my arms and shoulders like an apology for having to wake up this early.

i wait for the train to work this morning. if i close my eyes and listen to the sounds of trucks banging down the street and beep beep beep back up the street, then all that’s missing is the rutabaga rutabaga rutabaga of fellow travelers and the knowledge that someone has gone off to find us coffee and croissants. if i just close my eyes i can be in victoria station one more time, waiting for another train to moss covered cemeteries and forgotten names etched in stones nearly worn smooth with time.

the only cemeteries i spend time in now, however, are those full of names i’ve heard since childhood. men of legends like grandpa pete. women who feuded are lain so close that if their arms could still stretch out they couldn’t help but touch. two fresh mounds wait for warmer days when sod and headstones can be set.

and we all hold our breath knowing before spring is over we will have laid one more to rest under the tree. i dream of london and st. petersburg, but my heart is in barberton and if i could go anywhere right now it would be there.

> 5 Things

• open toed shoes
• blue wrappy thing
• white rose
• french toast
• ‘favourites’ list on itunes
• chai
• parking spot near station
• still hot water left after housemates’s shower

last night cujo came to the door as i was writing a letter with a glass dip pen and itunes shuffle was playing some song from the ’40s.

the time warp theme continued into the night as we shared with each other dark stories of the north… erh, uh, that is, stories about high school or college, mostly.

then in my dreams last night i knew what i was dreaming had already happened and i was just re-experiencing it from another point of view. not that it had already happened in waking life, but i knew the results of the situation and knew i was sort of in an instant replay. (i’m not really sure what it means that my cousin loney won a fishing contest by catching a huge red octopus in the middle of a river and using a smaller black octopus as bait.)

i dreamed last night of dancing in the forest in cathedrals made of tall tall trees.