Paris Adventures

Several people from the program are with me on the RER out of Paris. We try to get off, but realise at the last minute that the only exit is at the very back of the train, so we all run, dodging passengers, and hop off. Jessica is the last one and gets stuck inside. She waves to us sadly as the train goes back in the direction it came.

I am visiting a family in France; I must find the correct piece for the symphony to play before the evil conductor (the architect of the Basilica of Sacre Coeur) find the piece he wants the symphony to play.

I have been speeing in a tree. I wake up and sleepily roll over. My vision in very fuzzy, and I can't make out what I am seeing, but after a few seconds I realize I am laying beneath a veil. Sitting on the branch directly above me are two cats. They are frighteningly close, peering at me intently with very animated expressions. I am afraid they might attack me, so I meow at them. They jump down and frolic around, and I come out and play with them.

Someone comes in my room at the MEC while I am sleeping and says, "Look at all this stuff spread around here! It's like you've moved in for a month. How are you going to get it packed up and moved into your other room by noon?" It is 10:30 in the morning. I thought I was supposed to stay in the new room for a week, so I go down to the front desk in my pyjamas to ask if I really need to switch rooms. I ask the a lady I do not recognize, and she tells me, "You have to ask your friend." I look around and Alex is sitting on the couch. I go and sit down next to him, asking, "What are you doing here?"
He doesn't answer, but I don't remember asking the question, so I ask, "Why did you tell them to switch my room?"
He answers, "Because you can sleep in my room."
"And I'll be sleeping...?" "
On the couch," he replies. There is an awkward moment, because I didn't know he had a couch in his room so I hadn't been expecting that answer, and he said it like I shouldn't have asked the question. Also, the couch he is referring to is the one from the computer lab that is comfortable for about two peole to sit on, but certainly not for sleeping.
"Of course," I reply.

Sixième Promenade

Tim and Connor come to my house and steal half of the pot of water I have just begun to boil. This is fine with me because then the rest boild much more quickly for my couscous. Then I notice that they have stolen a page of notes that I was using to study for the final. I chase then down, and Connor says, "But you don't really need it!" I look at the page and discover it is actually a useless page about Charles de Gaulle, not the important page I thought they had. They also have my bar of chocoloate that is in a tiny ice cube tray. Breaking off half of the tray I say, "Actually, you kep those notes. And I'll tell you what. I'm going to give you this chocolate too. But not because I like you! It's because I know you need it as much as I do."

Jazz Ensemble

I knock on Robin's front door, trying to pick something up before she leaves for the competition. She lets me in, and Steven leads me in to the living room. I hear jazz coming out of the other room, across the outdoor cooridoor, something I can recognize, and I ask who is playing. Someone listens for a minute and says, "Well it must be Brianna on first trombone it it sounds like that..."
Sometime later I wander over to the room where the jazz is coming from, to find Devin, Matt, Julianne, Kari, Gracie, and Mr. Babcock/Steen lying on their backs on the ground in their pajamas, knees bent, playing their instruments. Someone tells me, "That isn't Devin, that's Devin the newest freshman, who took on second chair." I walk among them; Mr. Babcock/Steen is wearing briefs over bike shorts.

Park

I am sitting in a park just off Ambaum, it has been raining and I can see the ocean through the firs. Water drips off of the branches into a birdbath, catching the sun and my eye.
Nearby three boys, around twelve years old each, gather around a computer behind me, reseaching other parks to go to. They ask me what my favorite park was when I was their age, and I think. I tell them about Lincold park, Seahurst, and Discovery park, but obviously they already know about those. I think harder and can almost remember my very favorite park, but I cannot remember what made it so amazing, or where it was.

IB Tests

I sit in the corner of a cluttered school hallway with Matt, Andrew, and Anna. I start to make a commetn about how they must be relived, when Mr. Harrington sticks his head out of a doorway just behind me and says, "Alright, I can take one more for HL Art, and one for colonial Indonesia". As I hesitate in surprise, Anna jumps up for Art, and Andrew claims the Indonesia test. I laugh, only half joking when I tell Matt I wish I had spoken first, and then sadly realize that I know nothing about the subjects.

Fever 2

I am shopping in the department store on the HUB lawn. Coming out of a slight trance, I find myself pawing through racks of baby clothes and pull away, disgusted with myself. Then I change my mind, deciding I might find something cute for my cousins' kids. As I walk past one of the checkout counters, I hear a woman say, "Oh is it seven o' clock already? I'm sorry, I didn't realize you would be closing- have you already shut down the registers?"
The chashier responds that no, they haven't shut down the registers, they can still ring up purchases. This is good, I make my way forward with an armful of baby clothes, but then remember that I must have left my jacket in the bathroom. I throw the things down and rush to the bathroom, trying to get there before they close. I run to the last stall and there is my ratty black sweatshirt and sunglasses case, on the shelf above the toilet. I grab them and turn, about to run back out, but the sleeve of the sweatshirt dips in the toilet, and at that moment the automatic flush is activated. I pull on the sweatshirt as it is sucked into the toilet, hoping the arm with not rip off.

Fever 1

The new Harry Potter book came out with its movie simultaneously.
The movie is playing in my head and I am forced to watch, but in order to not ruin it completely, I am determined to read the book along with it.
I am also in the movie, or the world, I think, and all the characters slide around on vines draped between decaying green ruins. I find it difficult to keep up, both physically, and with my reading. I get frustrated when the events around me deviate from the events described in the book, and as I wail to Hermione about it, I almost get struck by a curse.
I lose my path through the vines cris-crossing up between the tall walls, and my vision begins to fail. I can no longer make out the words of the book and I have no idea what will happen next. I get the feeling that the words are rearranging themselves.

Waking Fever Dream

"They caught her off the coast of..." was all I got, but I understand that in this world women are born from the ocean, living and growing there happily. However, the beautiful ones are sought by men, and sometimes caught. They are taken to shore and trained, for the purpose of having no purpose.

Her destiny on land is to be beautiful, nothing else.

What is this

In my dream someone talked about vomitting and so I vomitted.

I tried to fix a chair that was coming loose from the ground but I couldn't until the front desk woke up for the morning. I pulled a wrench from my pocket and detached a borrowed wrench from it. Ariana stopped me.

Teacups and Marbles

Reunions have lost all novelty in my family. Every birthday, major, and minor holiday the clan collects in someone's hurriedly cleaned house to celebrate a bloodline that thins as the old men's hairlines grow sparse. The cousins sit in Auntie Loree's living room staring at a smattering of marbles on the floor. We grow bored and decide to play a game. To do this we shrink and take flight. Disneyland is fairly easy to locate because it has also shrunk and is currently located somewhere in the nap of my Auntie's rug. We scan the park and decide to head for the teacups. They are colorful and we strap ourselves in knowing very well that we may lose our appetites. It is a beautiful contraption, this teacup ride - no longer like the traditional one, it is four stories high and made of colorful balls. In addition to spinning around, one must hit the white balls and send them through a central funnel.

Eat the pill

Saturday sends discrete messages to the feet of swing dancers manque; my partner and I feel the fast beating of jive-love in our soles and souls even before we reach the door to Century Ballroom. We flounce through the entrance early only to discover that tonight is movie night at the swing club, the film is fittingly, Swing Kids. Zach and I never had a problem with disrupting proper behaviour with our swinging flare, and so we take mats off the ballroom wall with the intention of later kicking them aside to dance as "extras" in the movie. The ballroom, which now resembles a middle school gym, is becoming crowded with shapeless, gray, and sullen young people, they sit on their own mats as the room darkens for the film. Splayed out under and around the mats, our group grows quite tired and everyone falls asleep. The movie police do not appreciate this and wake us up with flashlights and angry grunts. Our rebellion began in the form of another treacherous nap. Because we had fallen asleep twice, Zach and I were kicked out. We performed a coquettish charleston until reaching the doorway to the hall where we subsequently burst out laughing with our lungs and with our feet. The movie police heard us and we ran into a hidden corner of the hallway by an abandoned room.

As we were hiding, a lithe, tanned boy came out from the main hallway. Startled and amused, we watched as he did a strange little dance. He threw a bottle to me and asked, "Will you rub this on me?" I thought this rather forward but I did it anyways. The lotion was unremarkable and produced white lather as any other skin product would, it even had the ubiquitous "microbeads" that acne treatments advertise - but the boy's back reformed itself under the foam into what could only be described as a full eight pack.

I woke up in an abandoned factory to see many children clustered around an old yearbook. The boy is among the crowd and shows me his photos - he looks considerably different - now neatly proportioned, Japanese, and pale, he bears no resemblance to the previous boy except for his smiling manner, which I note is a rarity amidst all the children. Akira is his name and he is the brightest and most genetically modified of all the children.

Children are produced here in the name of science, they do not have feelings but instead learn to imitate them with the help of the assistant director of education, an earnest but haunted looking man. He allows me to watch the children's imitation session. He puts a hand on Akira's shoulder and smiles. He draws the name of a feeling out of a hat. I suddenly understand that the assistant director of education is ethically opposed to the operations of the factory and has in the past offered Akira the chance to kill himself. Akira could not comprehend the magnitude of this act, ate the pill offered and threw it up in a retching cough.

Despair is the feeling, and the children do their best to communicate it. Much of it is overwrought. To a person used to the quiet melancholia of existential angst, it appears too disruptive for honest despairing, but the act is remarkable if not believable. Akira stands alone on top of a yellow ball holding a yellow glazed sun. He does not make any noise for despair; the assistant director talks to him, hands him a yellow pill, and walks away as the boy eats it. I wake up for the last time as he falls off his yellow orb.

Impressions

Is this a graduation party? Wow, it's in a pool. Everyone crowd onto this boat, it's time to go.

Enter: green, murky, shallow swamp. What's this, a wagon train of canoes? Where are we going? Oh look, a snake. How cute. No, don't get out to catch it. Oh well, at least the water's not that deep. Holy shit, get back in the boat! THAT one's humongous! Look!... wow ... look how it swims in a spiral... I'm pretty sure snakes that big don't grow well in water this shallow.

Ah, back at port. Hey, look, another group of people. Wait - that's - that's us! No, no, stay back. Look, they're going in the buiding. We can watch them from this overhang here. Damn, we're trapped in some sort of time flux. How do we get out? No, we can't ask our past selves! That'd completely screw up the space-time continuum! What are you thinking?



Wow, this place is really kind of dark. But look at all these fish and reptiles and such! No, sorry, I don't work here. Hey, Kevin, nice store. Boy, it sure is dank.



Maybe if... if I angle my way across the lawn here they won't notice I'm gone... no, they're telling me to get back in line. Dang, college campuses are too open. These people seem nice enough, but I can tell they've got something nasty planned for us.

What? I'm a finalist in some stupid talent competition? Fine. I don't know about the rest of you, but my goal is to not win. Oh? My turn? Well, I was already up here. I can't really turn back now.
What is a ball to a puppy?
Is this some sort of analogy test? No, wait. That's simple... a toy. That's right, I'm supposed to be trying to win. Now maybe if I kneel down amidst these small children and look introspective I can gain get some of the audience to like me. Let me study this book. Here.

Well, now that that's over with I can- wait, what? we have to go to kyra's musical? Dang it, I thought I was finally free to do what I wanted. What, we're ALL in it? Um, okay. Let's get in this capsule-shaped thing and drive there.

Okay, I guess I'll get in costume and pretend I know what I'm doing. I hope Mrs. L.H. isn't mad at me for not coming to any rehearsals. Kellen seems to have a decent idea of what's going on, I'll follow her. Whew. This is ridiculous, but it's not that bad.







I like this house. Some of you should stay outside.

It's got to be here, it absolutely has to be here... I'm sure I left it here in the other dimension... quick, the wind is picking up, we have to find it before the universe collapses. Try turning on and off all the lights and here, hold this. Shit. Electricity's gone out.
No, no, I know it was here... goddamnit!
I know this is where I left it!
I know, I know, it's time to go,
running out of time
but
I know it's here