I'm in training, but for what?
In April of this year I started keeping track of my dreams on the notes app on my phone. (Google Keep, since I am an Android person, both as far as my phone goes and also occasionally just how I feel.) I was inspired by Rev. Tristy Taylor, a friend of two dear friends of mine as well as a weightlifter and dream worker, who writes down her dreams by hand in colored pen and posts them to Instagram. They are in the form of titles — in quotation marks and Title Case — and they are succinct but juicy like there is a story to come but instead the story has already been there, taken off, and Tristy’s title is all that can still be told. So I started doing it, but, as a lifelong paper diary failure (and proud of it, let’s just say for now) I began to thumb-type whatever bits I could into my phone. I look at it the first thing in the morning anyway.
This is how it started.
4/24 - Michael Jackson is my cousin
4/26 - Left behind in Chicago
4/28 - Tricked into killing a couple of people, I strip naked and run off into the woods
4/29 - The dog is stuck down the drain and only I can save him because physics
4/30 - I have to run through bees and I'm ok with that.
5/3 - Found the best comp LP, put out by a secret society of all the coolest women musicians. (Had to tell Millstein all about it.)
5/6 - My shoes keep flying off in the grocery store.
5/7 - An early morning walk where lots of friends show up, and an opportunity for me to go Ted Lasso on some team
5/9 - My office building gets surprisingly wild after hours.
5/11 - That is A LOT of coffee.
5/13 - Backstage at the festival. Why is the type on the set times SO SMALL?
5/14 - invited to the Roys, can't find working bathrooms, find Shiv instead
5/16 - Stop talking to me, I didn't eat dinner last night and I don't like you anyway.
5/22 - Wait, Bean works here?
5/24 - I love them both and it's great
6/1 - This trip is terrible but the water is warm
6/2 - Pete Davidson is the bad prince
6/3 - Not in front of the children!
6/4 - Now everyone knows I can't tie a Wilson Knot.
6/5 - That errand turned into a whole thing.
6/7 - Traveling for a baseball game and nothing else makes sense, either.
6/8 - The power's out in NYC, there's a spaceship in the sky, but I'm afraid I cannot be your girlfriend.
6/11 - Kristina is visiting but we're not going roller skating.
6/13 - I should go I should go I should go, I guess I'll stay.
6/14 - Working my way thru the resort.
6/17 - Tried to take pictures of the New Moon.
6/21 - A grisly scene, and then I lose David Tennant on the train.
6/23 - On a tropical vacation, Bean and I run into someone who isn't dead.
6/25 - Trying to get food before class is really difficult and pretty embarrassing.
Left: Papilla Estelar (1958) by Remedios Varo
Some of those, eight months later, I can still remember more about. I know who the someone was who wasn’t dead during Bean’s and my tropical vacation the night of June 23. There is more to “I love them both and it’s great,” and it is better left in the dream world so I can refer to it slyly. Much of the first few months’ dreams, though, are pretty tethered to reality; the TV shows I watch, my office, coffee, a music festival, anxiety. And clearly these are not titles like Tristy’s (Except maybe Pete Davidson Is the Bad Prince.) Some of them felt like short stories to me. Some of them were just all I could remember.
6/27 - Video games, spare organs, ex-boyfriends, property theft
7/4 - Bean gets us in trouble at the movies so I have to go find Indian Love.
7/5 - My online harasser is at the spa; Jason Smith kicks his ass.
7/7 - Standard KALX anxiety dream, nothing to see here
7/10 - Somebody needs a nail file, STAT!
7/13 - Driving blind with Traci and Mark in the car, headed to karaoke if I can ever pick a song.
7/17 - Making dinner for the in-laws and a bunch of friends but i don't have ANYTHING to do it with, not even onions, so a bunch of us go to the store and Oscar is driving and i fall out of the car but I'm ok and we buy things and we get back and we FORGOT THE ONIONS and it's already 9pm.
7/18 - Making comedy writers laugh on the lawn
7/20 - A camping trip with a promotional bent
7/21 - Florida. Mark Bustin. Mike Bagley. A public restroom.
7/22 - I'm in training, but for what?
7/24 - i am available to help lots of people move.
7/25 - You can't just change a script like that!
7/27- Everyone gets to do something but I don't.
7/31 - Watching TV with Zendaya and a lot of dogs, in between yardwork
8/3 - I get to introduce my dad to the nice P.I. who is going to catch my fake baby daddy. (The P.I. is named Chris.)
8/4 - Wouldn't it have been easier to leave all these things where they were?
8/7 - Road tripping in a tiny car with a magic spider.
8/16 - The Bickersons go to a bar (the Missouri Lounge, in particular).
8/17 - Marc Almond at the festival, Kaya Oakes at the hotel, and a difficult wardrobe change in and around the car
8/18 - Getting married in Vegas and it feels like a movie
8/21 - Learning guitar from Ian McShane through a program at work
8/24 - I'm in Robyn Hitchcock's way in the kitchen before he plays with Nick Cave up the street.
8/25 - The chancellor is my grandmother, she is ill in Singapore, and I am trying to get to her.
8/27 - Throwing a big party and a friend with COVID refuses to leave!
8/28 - My phone broke again.
8/30 - For detective work I'm pretending my best friend's boyfriend is mine, but it's less fun when they're fighting.
First of all, in that dream, “Indian Love” was somweone’s name, for whatever that’s worth. But man, summer’s dreams! So star-studded! And also featuring so many friends from my everyday present and (technically) faraway past.
In July, I began meeting up with Tristy on Zoom once a month to do dream work and talk about witchy and creative stuff. Around the same time I started writing these dreams down (somewhere between the dog getting stuck down the drain and my being OK with running through bees) I had also started really hacking away at some song lyrics for the first time in decades. It seemed like I could use some weirdo veil lifting.
Some of this group of dreams are still about work, but it feels like those are less reflections on reality and more, well, dream scenarios. Though the best friend I’m detective working with is Veronica Mars and I get to pretend to be Logan’s girlfriend, so my subconscious was just out there writing fan fiction, my dreams had mostly moved from TV show characters to celebrities with whom I have a more personal connection — I have seen Robyn Hitchcock play live more than any musician who I do not personally know, and I used to work with Zendaya’s mother and knew her when she was a tween.
Understandably, Tristy and I talked about the big spider in that very small car for a while.
9/3 - Just because we can create a new genre of dystopian gross-out cinema doesn't mean that we should.
9/6 - Hanging out with my handsome long-lost stepcousin from West Philly.
9/7 - No idea what i dreamed but i woke up singing "Tower of Song." (Oh, wait! I dreamed that Bean put all of my various eyedrops in a pretty little bowl!)
9/9 - Termite invasion! So you can't stay here, I'm sorry.
9/10 - Ooh, my version of that Miami Vice episode is way (scarier, more feminist) better than the real one.
9/14 - Do we really need all those dangerous setups for a yearbook shoot?
9/16 - Meltdown is at the Madonna Inn this year.
9/18 - I bought big bags of two kinds of sugar for this Airbnb.
9/24 - These dads are creeps.
9/25 - I will dance with you tonight, but i definitely need to take a boat ride and go on the rollercoaster tomorrow.
9/26 - Showed up too late to take the SAT. (Ugh, seriously?)
9/28 - It was my idea first.
9/29 - I should have dressed differently for this but i can make this old chambray button-up and long skirt work (i just need to button up).
10/1 - I will have to reschedule this meeting because i ran late trying to find a book on what kind of witch i am.
10/5 - We are in Hawaii, the rooms are weird and have birds and lizards in them, the neighbors are rude, and i don't know what to wear but, again, we're in Hawaii.
10/7 - Rock climbing, self defense, voice-mails, dating
10/9 - So many different ways to feel helpless
10/12 - Driving somewhere remote. The Maine of Generation Loss?
10/13 - Well, there goes that manicure.
10/17, part 1 - Teaching college classes, barely prepared, but it never seems to matter once i arrive.
10/17, part 2 - Back in Tampa, lunch with an editor, who else is here?
10/18 - visiting Serina and Paul and Brian (?), then i stumble upon a strange and murderous scene next door. Then i go get keys made.
10/19 - Up all night with the Rocky Horror kids. They remember me and want me to stay but i just don't feel safe enough.
10/22 - This quest involves mushrooms and vintage clothing? I'm in.
10/23 - I lose my mind a bit. Yell at some medical professionals. Get locked down. Then let out, but under observation.
10/28 - Listen, I don't have enough for everyone.
10/29 - i keep missing my turn in line for the bathroom, and I'm not sure that i even bought tickets for the show.
10/30 - First, staying in a hotel room next to a boring ex coworker. Then, double-booked for work volunteer shifts and yeah, of course i am trying to get out of both.
OK, jeez: “Just because we can create a new genre of dystopian gross-out cinema doesn't mean that we should.” That one was such a doozy. I was part of the population left after a dystopian event, we were rebuilding society, and my friends and I were making ugly art, in part to reflect the world around us but also because we were working with the detritus of the world before. (What, you thought I’d be trying to farm or something?) Our art became so popular that it was verging on becoming the first creative movement of the new reality! Our first big public event was to be a film festival, the culminating movie of which was (as much as I can remember) a tremendous, festering trash pile; an undulating Jabba the Hutt of garbage so foul that you could practically smell it from the theater. Everyone walked out. The movement was through,
On September 28 my partner’s place of employment was sold, and they were locked out of company systems. I give these dreams the date of the day before rarther than the morning in which i write them down. On some level I think I do so to backfill, but also I don’t always know if I am remembering dream bits from before midnight or after. The night of October 7 I dreamed of rock climbing, self defense, voice-mails, and dating. It’s a laundry list and I can’t tell you anything more about that. But the morning of October 10, eleven days into Bean’s work uncertainty and two days after Hamas attacked Israel, I wrote down: “10/9 - So many different ways to feel helpless.” The rest of October’s dreams are frightened, murderous, clumsy, lost.
11/2 - i make plans to hang out with the kangaroo dog, but when I get home to change, everyone is crowded into the street because all of the houses are for sale.
11/4 - We're really not ready for this baby.
11/5 - On a solo trip to a beach town, i heckle Chelsea Perretti, she leaves the stage, and then Issa Rae yells at me.
11/7 - Driving around Bean and Jean and some strangers, we're happy they have CDs.
11/10 - There are spies within our police ranks, so we are taken by surprise and i have to protect Oscar and kill a wounded asssasin with his own samurai sword.
11/11, part 1 - Talking about Oakland through fashion
11!11, part 2 - I see ghosts off the beach, castle boats with flags and more.
11/11, part 3 - This little party in Joshua Tree just got too big and too rowdy.
11/13 - Brought out of cryogenic sleep for a bit, I have to figure out what kind of costume i can pull together.
11/20, part 1 - I am a child, I have been kdnapped, this is not a good dream.
11/20, part 2 - We have roommates again, it's weird but mostly for them.
11/21 - Costa is visiting on her way home from China!
11/22 - I get to go to Hong Kong for work! To learn how to run a cruise?
11/27 - Chatting with a stranger at the BBQ joint about why we chose that particular location
11/28-12/1- These dreams have been elusive and complex. Themes include composting, and trying to leave parties.
12/2 - Turns out that Chris Stevens went to see the performance piece we're going to see Sunday, and he says we'll like it, provided that we're comfortable with live self-surgery.
12/3 - The little poodle tries to bite me when i go to pick him up off the sidewalk, but when i get home, he's there.
12/4 - Our houseguests are being thoughtless and destructive, and i guess i didn't check the weather for where we're going at all.
12/6 - We're in Hawaii and so is Andre 3000.
12/9 - My former hairdresser does NOT like my hair and would like to tell me what she'd do differently.
12/10 - A neighborhood melee with my relatives and a work fashion show that turns into a real modeling gig.
12/12 - I've gone Hollywood.
12/13 - I forgot about our lunch date, thank you for picking me up, I'm sorry there are so many people I know here but at least I get to witness different ways of communicating?
12/14 - Ok, so, this baby wasn't a total surprise but we're still not quite prepared.
12/18 - At a series of parties, I'm telling off the alcoholic men of my life.
12/19 - Chasing the video team around at the beach.
12/20 - Don't change the station. I want to turn up that Freakwater song and cry.
12/21 - I keep changing clothes until I'm late for therapy, but I'm right on time for my cater waiter shift where I find out that a carnacki is another word for a cairn.
Damn, Oscar is in my dreams a lot. I should probably tell him that.
Fun fact: Bean and I are going to Hawaii soon and we did not check the weather before booking the trip! The veil is lifting, y’all. And just so you know, the babies who keep showing up are creative projects. I think.
Just in case, I am getting ready.
Sweet dreams and happy new year.
