Unblocked, I felt greatness? c. September 26, 2007

In order to get to my section of the dormitory/hotel, I must climb a series of stacked slabs or blocks of granite. As I am climbing, one comes loose and the whole thing starts to tumble down. No one is injured but there are many close calls. As the granite blocks for my section fall down, all of the blocks to the entrances of the other halls fall as well. Everyone attempting to get back to their rooms is a bit traumatized.

We are diverted to another section of the dormitory/hotel. We are walking in a cluster like a tour group. We end up sitting around an indoor fountain with lots of greenery: very hotel/mall-like. We are instructed to make badges out of felt, glue, and safety pins. The objective is to define greatness for ourselves and to share that with the others: define an aspect of greatness, imagine an action that could lead to greatness, and put a firm deadline on completing that action. Not grasping the assignment, and still stressed from the avalanches, I spend most of the time gluing scraps of felt together in an aimless manner. I overhear the directive again and realize that the project could be approached from a different angle. The instructor gave an example and the date she used for the deadline seemed like a hint to me... that the point of the exercise was to realize the greatness already within. I found the whole thing patronizing, but I oblige and date some of my deadlines in the past... before I get to the future ones, I run out of time.

Alarm clock goes off.

Half baked c. September 2007

I've been having anxiety dreams about baked goods. These are clips from three different nights.

I've decided to open a side business selling muffins. The two kinds I will offer are chocolate zucchini and blueberry oatmeal. I can't find the ingredients in time to make my market deadline.
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I am hosting a birthday party and I am decorating a bunch of cupcakes. My pastry bag keeps running out of frosting. My rosettes and leaves keep wilting.
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I'm at the office and it's Tr***'s birthday. I walk down the street to go to Baskin Robbins for an ice cream cake but I detour to the right when I see a grocery store I haven't noticed before.

There are numerous options right as I walk in: a Carvel freezer, a display case of Italian cookies, an Entemann's section, a Sara Lee freezer, and a bakery section with brightly colored cakes in solid colors. I've only brought a $20 bill and I need to get enough cake to feed 16 people.

I go to the section with the vibrantly colored cakes. There are all these great colors like hot pink, lime green, and turquoise. The problem is that the cakes are all stacked on top of each other and are either lopsided or crushed on one side, etc. Every time I see a good one, the price is above my budget: $24.83. Finally, I select a small royal blue one with a simple scalloped border for $11.85, but I get superstitious about the unluckiness of blue in Chinese culture, even though no one in the office subscribes to that superstition. I see an almost perfect chocolate brown one with the same scalloped edge for $16.49.

When I finally flag down a saleswoman, she asks me if I want a name piped on the top; I say yes. She says it will take 2 hours. I say, never mind. Since I'm in a grocery store, I'll just go over to the baking aisle and get one of those frosting gel tubes. She takes the round cake and shoves it into an undersized square box. I let it go -- figuring that we can just eat the cake, not have it too. A bonus with the cake purchase is a cheap necklace with a blue stone. I don't want it, but she keeps trying to shove it on my neck without undoing the clasp, and it's more of a bracelet really.

Swallowing my resolve c. Spring 1995

I'm in the church I attended as a child, except now I am my current age (19 years old at the time).

The setting flickers back and forth. Most of the time, my mother is sitting on one side of me and a police officer on the other. The priest is sitting in the pew in front of me, but has turned around to face me. We are the only ones in the otherwise empty church.

Other times we are sitting in the church office. I am sitting in a chair opposite the priest's desk, being interrogated. The cop is standing behind me holding me down in the chair by the shoulders. My mother is sitting in the corner facing the priest.
They are all urging me to drink the liquid. The priest tells me that it will cleanse me, my mother promises that it will cure me, and the cop is threatening to have me committed if I disobey.

They pour the liquid into a chalice. I notice that it comes from a red bottle of Resolve carpet cleaner.

There is no resolution to the insanity. I wake up just as I am about to drink my resolve.

Backflipping time travel c. September 9, 2007

I am part of a team of four scientists who travel to outer space and figure out a way to go back in time, but only by a day at a time. To do this, we align ourselves with four planets in a particular configuration by placing our four chairs in the same relative positions. Then, one of us has to do backflips while the others drive a train through a time portal. We land on the previous day on the Williamsburg bridge and I have to steer us through traffic. As usual, my brakes don't work very well and I feel as out of control driving as I do playing one of those race car arcade games.

One character c. May 2003

A famous model in the 1970’s was taunted constantly:
“Valerie Glass has no class. She isn’t worth the zits on her ass.”