Being the fourth of July, I do not have to go to work today. I rolled out of bed around ten after wild and rollicking dreams. They were peopled with an old online friend who received hugs and kisses from me out of gratitude (for what, it was not specified) and two men covered with electric blue fur wearing fuschia suits. The two men in suits were rather jolly men despite the fact that they were oozing blood everywhere. I wound up living in a cabin in northern Maine with them and my old online friend stopped by and said hello. I kept trying to make myself go back to sleep in order to spend more time with these friends of mine.
I have spent most of my day off in and out of bed. I found a small red insect and a beautiful and brilliantly green fly-type insect on my pillow and marveled at them. I am heartened that these insects are around, because they will outlive humans by many ages and I'm glad that something beautiful like my insects will survive us all. I haven't written here in a long time so I should mention that I am currently convinced the end is near (for us at least) due to global climate change and my current President.
Out of bed, but not away from the insects, I bounded around the house. My brother does not like our house because it's always dirty and dusty. He likes his friends' sanitized houses, with climate controls and where the outside stays where it is meant to be and where there are certainly no red or green insects on people's pillows when they awaken and no mushrooms grow (at least, no mushrooms grow in the stair railings). There is no separation between the outside world and our house. At night in our house, you can hear the squirrels bounding in between the two floors. It sounds like someone pushing a dresser around in fits and starts. Many times when I was younger and left alone at night I would call my parents in a panic. "Mom! Dad! The burglars! They are rearranging the furniture upstairs!"
Out of bed still, I dashed off a letter to a friend from highschool. "Please come fix my modem. Also, had a dream about blue fur covered men wearing fuschia suits - what does this all mean?" I hurtled myself back upstairs and into bed to read for a bit. I've been reading slower this summer - I've only finished three books since I arrived home in May - but I'm tearing through A tree grows in Brooklyn much faster than I mean to. There were sounds coming from outside: strange bird calls and our neighbors preparing for a feast of some sort. There were dead moths collected in my window sill and spider bites all along my legs. The air smelled very much like our house when it is damp with humidity - like wet dust and wet dirt. I jumped out of bed to treat my mouth with listerine and comb my hair, then climbed in again. I read some more.
From outside came a most curious noise. At first, I was sure the children who belong to our next door neighbor were playing with coconuts, and thus turned to my book without looking out the window. However, I was soon gripped by unabiding curiosity and involuntarily peered out my dirty window. A horse was drawing a small carriage with two people in it! Down my very street! I watched it clop off in its somewhat surreal way. I thundered down the stairs hollering for my mother.
No answer. I hollered some more. I finally found her absorbed in a computer game of pinball. This is not a surprising place to find my mother. Every evening she comes home and, after inspecting the garden and killing potato beetles, she plays solitaire games.
"Did you see the horse?"
"Horse?"
"Didn't you even hear it?"
She didn't say anything for a while.
"Mom. Didn't you hear the horse?"
She hadn�t, so I crawled back into bed.
2001-07-04, 4th of July
before / after archives / website / hello book / diaryland