beautiful, funny, sad & true

My friend B and I are sitting in his gray Mazda pickup truck in the parking lot of my old apartment building in northeast Portland.  The two of us are getting ready to go somewhere.  It’s twilight; the sun has gone down, and the sky is still light, but it’s quickly darkening and a few bright stars are clearly visible.

He turns and looks out the rear window at the bed of his truck, and at the smallish grassy area just beyond the parking lot, on the edge of the hillside.  “I wish those guys wouldn’t do that,” B says.  “I wish they wouldn’t leave their outdoor gas burners on all night.  I’ve talked to them about it before, but they keep doing it.”  I turn and look then.  The back of his truck is completely blackened and burned away, and the tailgate is missing.  He always backs into the parking spot, because the front of the truck is where the engine is, thereby making the front much more important, and it probably won’t run anymore if it gets burned the way the back of the truck is.

“Look,” I say, facing to our left and pointing in the direction of downtown.  “Look at all the buildings that are on fire.”

“You’ve never said that before,” he says.

“I know,” I say, nonchalantly.  “I thought maybe I had, but then I realized I hadn’t.”  We look at the burning buildings, multiple blocks apart from each other, from downtown clear out to my neighborhood, all burning in the same way.  I point out the buildings and count them.  “How many are there?  Let’s see. . .three. . .four. . .five. . .six?  It looks like they’re all along Broadway [Street].”

Suddenly I notice some flames flickering at the tops of the bamboo trees next to the parking lot, and the little sandwich board sign advertising ‘apartment for rent’ is burning too.  “Look at that!” I say.  “It’s getting closer now.  We should tell somebody about this.”

We sit in silence and watch the flames for an incredibly uncomfortable amount of time.

* * * * *

My alarm clock went off just then, and I almost had a heart attack.

While writing this, I was struck by the way we decided, ‘We should tell somebody about this,’ and then just sat and watched for such a long time.  It had an almost Waiting-For-Godot aspect about it; in fact the entire dream sorta did.

VLADIMIR:  We can still part, if you think it would be better.

ESTRAGON:   It’s not worthwhile now.
Silence.

VLADIMIR:   No, it’s not worthwhile now.
Silence.

ESTRAGON:   Well, shall we go?

VLADIMIR:   Yes, let’s go.
They do not move.

Wow, it seems like every time I go a day or two between entries, and I’m planning what to write about next, I always have a super-weird dream that fills in the gaps nicely.

Last night’s dream I don’t remember linearly enough to tell it all, but what I do remember needs to be captured, so here you go.

I’m on tour with a band, and we’ve just played a show in Denver, on our way to Salt Lake City.  We each drove separately, for some reason, and I’m out in SLC, looking for a place to eat dinner.  I park at a restaurant, walk inside, and see a glass of DewFromMountains on the table, and to me that means only one thing:  Ozzy Osbourne must be here, somewhere.

Sure enough, he walks around the corner just then, and I introduce myself.  “Hi, I’m Todd.  I’m a guitarist. . .YOUR guitarist!. . .(pause). . .Kidding!  Zakk Wylde is totally your guy.”

“Zakk doesn’t play with me anymore.  I found a new kid who’s fourteen years old, and he’s amazing.”

We end up hanging out, eating dinner together, and then he sort of comes along with me while I check into my hotel room and everything.  I start to unpack my clothes and guitars and amps and stuff, and I call one of my bandmates.  “Hey.  You’ll never guess who I’m hanging out with right now. . .Ozzy!  Osbourne!. . .I know, it’s crazy.  Hey, what time’s our show tonight?”

“It’s already over.  You missed it.”

“Get OUTTA here.  It is not.  Over.  It’s only 5:30; what kind of show is over by 5:30?”

“This one.  So we’re packing our stuff up right now.”

“That’s so lame!  Well, sorry about that.  I guess you guys can just split the money between you, and leave me out of the pay for this one.”  I hang up and tell Ozzy that I missed the show.  I tell him that my mom lives here in Salt Lake City (which she doesn’t, really) and that we can go eat and do laundry at her place.  The dream changes, and we’re at my mom’s place.  No one else is home, and I start to pile up my dirty laundry.  Her tiny little kitten (which she doesn’t really have) starts to run through the room and claw at our clothes and guitars.  I tell Ozzy, “We need to keep that kitten out of here.  He sprays, and he’ll destroy all our stuff.”  I grab the kitten and put him next to the back door.

I walk back into the other room, and find a T-shirt that one of my bandmates has made, for us only, to commemorate the tour.  It’s white, with a bunch of colored boxes with comic-style writing that tells inside jokes and rhymes.

“B_ _ _ _ _ fails!”

“7 + 5/2 – (the ‘square root of’)12 = Rawk!”

“And B_ _ _ _ _ is not a dork!”

I start to tell Ozzy that I can’t remember where I left my rental car, and that I’m worried about how I’m going to meet up with the rest of the band.  He laughs and tells me that I’m welcome to crash at his hotel room if I need to.  “Thanks,” I say, “but that won’t really solve the problem.”

That’s all I remember.  You can tell this was a dream because I was actually looking around for a place to eat while I was in Salt Lake City, whereas if I was awake I’d be heading to the Sego Lily Cafe over in Bountiful, which is my favorite cafe ever.

I need to start taking drugs, so that I can have an excuse for all these weird dreams.

OneYearAgo

I’m in a fairly nice restaurant with two friends, both of whom are musicians.  One is from my very first band, so he will be called IronHorse.  The second is the violinist in IrishBand, so he will be called Violinist.

The carpet in the restaurant is hunter green, and the tables, chairs and curtains are white.  We are sitting at a table talking, and then I stand up and walk to the bar to place an order for us.  When I’m finished, I start to put my stack of credit cards back into the clip in the back of my cell phone case.  A guy standing next to me in line reaches over quickly and grabs onto the cards, but I stare him down and keep a tighter grip on them until he finally gives up.  He walks to the ashtray-slash-garbage can, lifts the ashtray lid part, and reaches inside to rummage through the receipts that are on top of the garbage, to find out who I am.  Even though my receipt isn’t in there yet, I realize what he’s up to.  I walk over, grab all of the receipts and take them to the bartender, telling her, “This guy over here is stealing peoples’ identities.”  She gives me a strange look, but she takes the pile of receipts, and I turn and walk back over to my two friends.

I start to collect my wallet, phone, et cetera, and put it all into the pockets of my suit jacket for safekeeping, then I walk back to the bar and pick up what I ordered, which was a large plate of French fries and a bottle of blue wine for the three of us to share.  I set it down and notice something on the ground, so I get down on my hands and knees to investigate it.  Just then, a woman comes over and lies down on my back, with her arm around me.  She rubs my chest and speaks softly into my ear.  She is a prostitute (she is naked, after all; I forgot to mention that) so I decline her advances.  She slowly moves her hand down my chest and stomach to my hipbone, which she begins to rub rhythmically.  I maneuver myself out from underneath her, and go back over to IronHorse and Violinist.  Not used to being rebuffed, the prostitute says, “I promise it’ll be nice,” to which Violinist, staring at her naked body, responds, “It already is!”  She realizes she’s getting nowhere with us, so she walks to a different part of the room.

At this point a guy motions to me to come talk to him.  I grab the half-full (or half-empty, depending on your outlook) bottle of blue wine and go over to where he is sitting against the wall.  He is a short, stocky white guy, with close-cut brown hair.  He is wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt [lots of people nonchalantly call them ‘wife beaters’, but I hate that expression] and a single silver chain around his neck.  On his right hand is a large silver ring in the shape of a dollar sign, which fits over two of his fingers, a bit like brass knuckles. [Minus the clothes and jewelry, he looks like the real-life former manager of AcousticTavern where IrishBand regularly plays.]  He is surrounded by approximately twenty guys, two-thirds of whom are black.  Each member of the group is wearing a bright blue hooded sweatshirt with a white zipper.  They silently watch me as the group’s leader stands up and walks over to me.  He tells me, in a jovial but not exactly friendly voice, “I saw what happened with that guy a minute ago.  I want to help you out.”

“Oh really?” I asked.  “In what way?”

“Well, you could be a part of our little group here, and you wouldn’t have to worry about things like that happening.”  He places a huge wad of folded bills into my hand.

“I appreciate you doing that, but you really don’t have to,” I say.  “I’m sure that was a one-time thing. . .uhhh, occurrence.”

He smiles.  “Maybe so, but it can’t hurt to have more friends, right?”

“It sure can’t,” I say, and put the money in the inside pocket of my suit jacket, next to my phone.  My pockets are bulging.  I turn toward the group.  “You guys want some wine?”  I pull the cork out of the half-full bottle, and hold it out in front of me.  Everyone stares at it blankly, in silence, not sure what to make of its blue color.  I chuckle and say sarcastically, “Well, don’t everybody accept at once.”  I put the cork back into the bottle, tell them that it it’s nice to have met them, nod my head slightly to the gang leader, who has moved back to his original place against the wall, and turn and walk back to the table to rejoin IronHorse and Violinist.

I look over to see that the guy who tried to steal my cards is sitting by himself in the opposite corner of the restaurant.  He is pretending to read a newspaper, but I catch him glancing over at us.  I tell my friends that we should hang out until that guy leaves, but I’m secretly worried that he will try to attack me once we get out of the restaurant.  IronHorse turns to look out the back window of the restaurant, which faces into a large parking garage, dimly lit by orange neon lights.  He suddently becomes agitated, and Violinist and I look in the same direction.  There is a gun fight of sorts happening out there, among five or six different people standing about eight feet apart.  The guns are tiny, and they don’t seem to be doing any damage, but it’s hard to tell for sure.  The three of us walk to the window and peer through it.  The participants in the gun fight are teenagers, and since it’s one-thirty in the morning, they are taking advantage of the open space, running through the empty levels of the parking garage, playing a dangerous game.

The kids run out of view, but we can still hear the sound of the guns, and of the kids’ voices as they laugh and yell taunting threats to each other.  We run out of the restaurant and down the stairs to the lower level of the garage.  We see no one, but we slowly realize that there are many more kids playing this game than we thought, and that we are completely surrounded, albeit at a distance.  We have unwittingly stepped into the center of a circle of kids, and some of the guns are obviously real.  We walk over to stand behind a large, round cement pillar, to figure out how to get back to somewhere safe.  There is a group of guys sitting in the shadows, and a nearby neon light which had been off now begins to flicker on slightly, illuminating the guys.  I recognize the blue sweatshirts of my new-found cohorts.  The leader guy is sitting cross-legged on the ground, and his black bodyguard is sitting next to him on top of a large red rubber ball.  One of the guys in the group says to no one in particular, “He spotted us.”  I smile and gesture widely with my left arm.  “Of course I did.”  The leader walks over to me, and his bodyguard somehow manages to roll the ball while still remaining seated on it.  The leader smiles in that jovial-not-friendly way, and we do that cool knuckle-punch thing that macho buddies do.

I am thinking to myself that before long, I’m going to have to tell the leader that I have no place in a gang, and I can’t imagine how I’d be a beneficial member to the group.  I’m much older than the rest of them, for one thing, and more importantly, I know absolutely zero about the code of the street.  Perhaps that’s exactly why they want me in the group, though.  I could get into places that would very likely be inaccessible to them otherwise.  I’m hestitant to bring it up with him at this point, though, because I have absolutely no knowledge of the protocol for a discussion like that.  Do I pull him aside and talk to him on his own, or do I have the discussion there in front of everyone?  Do I hand him back the wad of bills he gave me?  Do I owe the gang a favor in return?  Will I suffer some sort of retaliation if I attempt to leave the gang?  These are the types of things I’m thinking about.  I’m not worried, I’m just trying to think of all the different options, and directions in which the conversation might go.

That’s when I woke up.

There was one other scene, I think it was in the parking garage, that I wasn’t quite able to recall.  Some sort of interaction between us and the kids.  Or maybe it was between us and the credit-card-stealing guy. . .? Anyway.  Pretty interesting dream.

This is going to be one of those dreams that makes less and less sense as it goes along.  You’ve been warned.

* * * * *

I’m in Portland, and I’m hanging out with Justin and Lara, two musician friends who are also from Portland.  I’m driving the three of us to see the Dandy Warhols in a little tiny club that is in the upstairs of a weathered three-story house, above a tax place and a living space.  I have my huge cello case in the front seat, and Justin and Lara are sitting in the back seat.  I park the car outside a nearby house, and we run into a drummer friend (not anyone I know in real life) who lives in the building.  We talk for a while, and I ask him, “Is it okay if I bring my cello inside?”  He agrees, and I take the cello out of the front seat, put the seat back into its normal position, and shut the car door.  DrummerGuy unlocks the front door of the building and leads us upstairs into his apartment.

The apartment is a very clean old three-bedroom place with hardwood floors, a sofa and chair that are olive green and look extremely comfortable, and a large bookshelf filled with books and CD’s and various other things.  He shares the apartment with four other people, one of whom is a drummer too, because when we walk in, the door to the bedroom on the right is open, and the light is on, despite the fact that no one is home.  A set of drums is clearly visible in the middle of the room.  The guy leads us to the left, into his enormous room.  His drums are in the middle of the room, and he has about ten little tiny splash cymbals of different sizes.  I’ve never seen someone use so many (one or maybe two is what most people use) so I set my cello case down, grab a drum stick and start playing them all to find out what they sound like.  He says he’s thinking about selling some of them, and asks if I’m interested in buying one.  I say I might be.  Lara says she wants to get going, so she and Justin and I say our goodbyes to the drummer and go for a walk through the neighborhood.

The so-called neighborhood is really an insular collection of houses and tiny businesses.  [It’s similar to the real-life clump of houses and apartments in southwest Portland that is on the hillside across Interstate 405 from the university, and is only accessible from one street.]  We are a bit early for the show, so we step into a record store and look around for a while.  I walk to one of the corners of the room, to find that the room actually connects to a larger department store, so I walk through the small door and step into the store.

This appears to be an employees’ entrance or a fire escape route or something, since it puts me into the very back corner of the department store.  There are rugs and bath towels, and various home decorations on the shelves.  I’m taking a look around at the layout of the store, when someone calls me by my middle name.  I turn and see a man in his fifties pushing a sort of homemade wheelchair, which is a large, gray plastic milk crate on wheels.  It is stuffed with pillows and blankets, and there is a small, slightly deformed black and white cat who is propped up vertically, reclining on a pillow against the side of the crate.  The man gestures toward the cat, to let me know that the cat is the one who had spoken to me.  I walk over to where they are.

The cat repeats my middle name and says, “Do you remember me?  Andrew Fischer.  We were in middle school together.  I have Down’s Syndrome.”  [For the record, I did know someone by that name when I was in school, but he didn’t have Down’s Syndrome, and he most assuredly was not a talking cat.]  I tell him it’s good to meet him, but that I don’t remember him from school, and that to my knowledge, no one in my school had Down’s Syndrome.  He seems quite certain that he knows me, though, so I decide to stay.  He has a sweetness about him that is apparent from the first moment I meet him.  His wheeled crate is large enough for me to sit in, so I climb into it, facing him.  His blue cat eyes are extremely large, and one of them is quite misshapen, and looks very different than the other eye.  He has mucus dripping from a place on his forehead, and looks a bit grotesque.  It seems that movement is quite difficult for him.

He has a very clear speaking voice, and he asks how I’ve been, and what I’ve been up to “since middle school.”  He is particularly interested in hearing about my musical endeavors, and when I tell him that I’m with a couple of my musician friends to see the Dandy Warhols, he mistakenly assumes that I am a member of the band, and he gets very excited.  I ask how he’s been.  I forget his name and call him Ross by accident.  He gives me a strange look and says, “It’s Andrew.”  “Sorry,” I say uncomfortably, “I know someone named Ross, and it just slipped out.”  He smiles and says, “That’s okay.”  He starts to become tired, and I look at his caretaker and ask if I should leave.  The man doesn’t answer, but I can see that Andrew the cat is becoming very weary from the effort and excitement of a conversation.  His eyes are almost closed; poor little guy.  I tell him I’d love to have his address, and I reach into my shoulder bag for a pen and notepad.  I can’t find them, so I stand up and climb out of the crate.  His caretaker asks me something, and I find the notepad.  I turn back toward Andrew and say, uncharacteristically loudly, “Okay, buddy, lemme have your address.”  He had fallen asleep, and when I spoke so loudly, I startled him awake.  I lean in closer and say quietly, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry to scare you.  But I want your address so that we can write to each other.”  He smiles slightly, and says, “That’d be really nice,”  and then falls back asleep.  I turn to his caretaker, with the notebook open and the pen ready.

Lara and Justin return at that moment, and I introduce them to my new friends.  We all stand and look at the sleeping cat, and that’s when I wake up.

It happened again.  I woke up at a little before five o’clock this morning, to the sound of two raccoons in the bushes cooing at each other and making sweet, sweet love.  Le Sigh.

After they had both finished and had the raccoon equivalent of a cigarette, I was finally able to get back to sleep.  I had a dream that BoringFish had been married to Eddie Van Halen (of course), but that she had recently split up with him, so she wanted to go out on a date.  She was wearing a little black dress, ready for a night on the town, so we were flipping through MessengerGodAlternativeNewspaper and deciding what to do, when we saw an advertisement for “Beautiful, Funny, Sad & True”, which appeared to be some sort of escort service.  “Did you see that?” she asked.  “Yeah,” I said, flipping the page back so we could look at it more closely.  We couldn’t believe it, and both burst out laughing.  Just then, her mom poked her head over BoringFish’s shoulder, and made a comment like, “Well, that’s the difference between [something] and poonanny.”  (How I wish I could remember what the first thing was!)  We were both uncomfortable with her mom watching us, so BoringFish turned to me and asked, “Do you want to look at this later?”  I smiled and replied, “Yes.  And no.”

Then I woke up to my alarm clock.

I hit the snooze button and fell asleep again.  My dream was in darkness, but I could feel a cat walking on the bed.  I was lying on my back, and I could feel the cat walking all around my left side, behind my pillow next to the wall, and then along my right side and settling itself next to my right hip.  I opened my eyes in the dream, and there was an orange long-haired tabby cat there.  I started petting it.  Was that my childhood pet Mickey, visiting me from beyond the grave?!

I guess I’ll never know, because I was awakened just then by someone walking down the back stairs of my apartment building, and down into the laundry room.  At 7:00 in the morning.  What the huh?

I can’t remember the third dream I had, but it was interesting enough that it got me out of bed to write all three of them down.  If I remember it later, I’ll add it.

[EDIT:  I remembered it!  Here it is. . .

It was a movie trailer, believe it or not, for a movie called “Broken.”  There was a background of pictures of war, and a plane crash, and things like that.  The film was kinda blurry (on purpose) and digitally zoomed way in, so that we could read the red letters that would fade in and out with every new phrase:  “Broken. . .when it seems. . .like nothing. . .seems to work anymore.”

That’s it.  That’s the third dream.  Nice, snappy little tag line, eh?  JBJ’s gonna love it.  Reminds me of “In space, no one can hear you scream.” and “All he wanted to do was gleem the cube. . .till they killed his brother.”  Awesome.]

Sure wish I could just sleep through the night, like all of you normal people seem to have no trouble doing, but then I guess it’s my lot in life to suffer, in order to keep bringing you this Great Art.

And now I’m going to be really late to work.  I’m supposed to be there already.  Yikes.