Every minute I stay in this room

In the dream we are living on a kind of commune in a hotel in a place like Vermont. We are working there temporarily. S.P. comes to stay and she keeps setting up the buffet at the wrong time and I think she is stealing and on drugs. I don't trust her for some reason. At one buffet, there is Italian food and a lot of terrible, crumbly bread. S.P. keeps smiling all the time like she is guilty and wants to be forgiven. At one point, some people arrive to work on the sidewalk. They are dressed in old-fashioned newsie outfits from the 1930s. Stumpy calls me over to meet one: a sickly, sad, boyish character with an awful fleshy hook for a nose. Stumpy says he reminds him of the kid from the J. Peterman catalogue and I agree. In the dream I know who he means. One night, everyone is putting away all the stuff from the day and we look up at the sky and the stars are all arranged in this crazy, bright pattern: an arcane language full of ideograms, like heiroglyphics. Someone asks how we're going to interpret it and I say, "No, this isn't psychological. This is something major and religious." We realize that the end of the world is coming. It is daylight again and there is smoke on the horizon. A frantic, frightened energy in the air. I decide to drive to my mom's in this little red car she used to have. A Suzuki Swift hatchback like a shoe. When I get to her house, she is gone. But I go through her stuff and gather Chapstick, gold, and uncut diamonds. Then I try to drive back to the commune, but the highways are completely jammed. Somehow, though, I am an amazing driver and I can just weave in and out and over and through it all. It feels like I am on a rollercoaster, but also watching the whole thing from a news helicopter: OJ in the white Bronco. There is a dark storm chasing me and I am trying to outrun it. 

Back in August, Dave from Red Sofa DVDs informed me that Stumpy and I had rented 767 DVDs since they opened back in the winter of 2007. Coincidentally, they opened their shop around the same time that we moved to South Africa: Red Sofa's lifespan is contemporaneous with my life here and I feel very loyal and connected and to it. So connected, in fact, that the staff from the video store often appear in my dreams. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I dreamed that Dave himself grew up on a Russian commune in Maine. (Don't ask me where this New England commune thing is coming from lately.) And, a couple of nights back, I dreamed that Stumpy and I were going to Burning Man, only instead of in Nevada, it was being held outside a small fishing village in the Pacific Northwest. The festivities hadn't started yet; everyone was still in setup mode, staying at all these small, rundown motels. Ours had a red striped awning and was owned by Rob from the video store. Stumpy and I had to register and the organizers gave us a lame goodie bag with single serving shampoo samples and sun block and a couple of coupons for athletic equipment. It went on from there, but you get the picture: Red Sofa has become a part of my psyche.

Now, I suppose one might think that 767 is rather a large number of movies to have watched in four years. In fact, if one were so inclined, one could perform a series of simple calculations to discover just how many total days of viewing that represents. (About sixty-four, if one were so inclined.) However, if you look at it another way, you will discover that 767 is really only equal to one movie every other day. Which doesn't even come close to insanity, especially when you consider that many people contentedly watch hours and hours of badly lit, appallingly scripted TV every day. Or, more likely, they watch reality TV, which warps the mind and pollutes the soul. (And don't get me started on the commercials: as preposterous as they are patronizing, TV is just riddled with them.) But the problem is that when you rent movies as frequently as I do, every movie you watch is not exactly going to be "The Wrestler" or "Borat". In fact, every movie won't even be "Tigerland" or "Best in Show". A lot of the movies you see are going to end up being "Scream 4". (Or "Scre4m", as it's written on the box.) Why did I rent this? What was I thinking? Granted, my stance on the entire "Scream" franchise was positively inclined from the get-go thanks to the conditions under which I viewed the first in the series, at the Northway Mall Cine-10, at the curiouser and curiouser age of sixteen. It still ranks as one of my top five movie experiences of all time. Let's just say that certain films hold up exceedingly well when viewed through the crystal-clear, absurdist lens that becomes one's adolescent mind after ten hours of side-splitting, hair-raising mid-winter hallucination: ah, the snow-bedecked woods; behold the Hale-Bopp comet! But that was then...

What I don't understand is why I am willing to devote so much time to watching bad movies. Why do I feel the need to see everything that comes along? I don't sit around looking for abysmal books to read or cheap music to listen to. I try to avoid unpalatable food and generally steer clear of dim, humorless people. I'd say that overall, I'm rather finicky about what goes into my head, to the extent that I can really control anything at all. But, I just can't resist movies. Even crappy ones. Even "Butterfly on a Wheel", which was thoroughly lame.

The sun sinks, the children sleep. I turn on, tune in, drop out. Well, in a manner of speaking: Hale-Bopp is long gone. 

No labor-saving machine

In yoga yesterday, I had to suppress a massive surge of ego when the teacher told me that my trikonasana was "very beautiful". I am, perhaps, excessively proud of that - I think it may have made my whole week. But yoga teachers are an odd sort. After class, she told me that I should take calcium citrate for my osteo-arthritic wrist. (This was her diagnosis, after I mentioned that changes in weather tend to make it hurt.) When I told her that I drink tons of milk and eat a great deal of cheese on a daily basis, she wrinkled her nose and shook her head like I'd offered to grill her up a turd.

"Cow's milk is not very good for this," she said. Her voice was marvelous. She may be French, or Israeli. Possibly Lebanese, even. Who knows? I'm terrible with accents.

"Okay, well I actually have some calcium supplements at home," I said. I've got them on a shelf in the kitchen. Every once in a while I get it into my head that I'm going to start taking vitamins. I go out and drop a load of cash on some and bring them home and put them on a shelf in my kitchen so that it looks like I'm a very healthy, responsible person. After a few years, they expire and I throw them away. Or, I move to a new house and they wind up on a shelf in the bathroom. Bathroom vitamins stay around longer, often decades past their expiration date. They sit around and trade stories with the old lipgloss. Sometimes I hear them all whispering about how they knew me when I was young and had such promise, and how it's a crying shame to see what's become of me.

"Where did you get them?" the yoga teacher wanted to know, about the calcium. I couldn't remember where I'd gotten them, not the store or the city or even the country. In fact, I had no idea how long I'd had them, either. For all I knew, they could've been vintage vitamins passed down to me by my grandmother back when she was alive and we used to go skiing together in the '80s and '90s. Once in a while, especially after a really disorganized move (of which I've made several), ancient vitamins from the bathroom find their way back to the kitchen.

"Um, er... Clicks, maybe. Not really sure," I said. "I'm not a big vitamin person." (Clicks is about the closest thing to a CVS in South Africa.) Another sour face.

"No... that's not... you should..." she began. She seemed to be wrestling with the futility of explaining something that she knew I would probably never understand. I knew how she felt: It's the same way I feel when someone tells me they like Lady Gaga or James Taylor or that remaking "Point Break" is a good idea. You just realize you are living on a completely different planet from someone else.

"Look, you need calcium citrate for this," she finally said. "This is good for prevention." I nodded earnestly and repeated "calcium citrate" so that she would know I was taking her advice on board. Now, I appreciate her concern, and I'm sure I will acquire the recommended vitamin at some point. My main problem, though, is that my whole life I've been told you can get the calcium you need from drinking milk. Cow's milk. And I thought it came from cheese, too! How confusing! Who knew that these "foods" were really just poisons to be sneered at? What other dread lies have I been fed?

I've also heard a couple of yoga and pilates instructors bemoan the modern lifestyle that forces people to slouch forward all day. They all cite the keyboard and the steering wheel as the main culprits in our current posture crisis. Now, I agree that working on a computer and driving can both take a toll on the body. However, when exactly in history did people mostly perform their work behind them? Never! Think about making bread - kneading it, rolling it. Think about sewing your own clothes or even washing them by hand. Consider the butter churn, the reins, the hammer and anvil. Consider milking a damned cow!

That'll really mess you up.

All your dreams are on their way

In the dream we were staying at A.L.’s house – me, Stumpy, Chui, M.B., HJ, N.B. – and other people. A lot of the rooms were painted navy blue and there was an extra living room hidden beneath the kitchen. We all seemed to be living there together for a while. Then, it changed into this big industrial space with a huge drop off on one side and an extremely long, difficult ladder with really close-together rungs. Everything was different – there was a kind of makeshift shelter within the space that was made of bones and sticks and pieces of flags and kites and tattered sails. Chui sat in it watching "Poltergeist" on an old TV. There was an unknown Japanese chick (maybe 20 years old) with really messed up teeth staying in the space. Her father was there, as was T.S. She showed us her dental x-rays and we were all giddy about them – about how much money we were going to make (or something). Somehow, her teeth indicated that we would be able to build something magnificent. Then, the subject changed and we needed to make a decision about what to do. Someone jumped off the edge, which seemed to be the only way out. I realized that I was filled with grief because one of my children was gone – must’ve been Sasha, though I didn’t think of her. Chui was afraid of the movie and there were a bunch of dolls piled up in the corner of the structure she was sitting in. I kept telling her not to bother me. I decided I was going to jump with the three other people who were there – it was the only way out. But then, I realized that I couldn’t and that I shouldn’t let Chui watch "Poltergeist".

So that was the beginning part of a long dream on Saturday night.

The following is a dream from last night:

In the dream, we bought an old house with a vineyard and a wine shop attached. It was just before dawn and it was cold outside. I had to wait outside for Stumpy to come with the sellers to hand over the keys. There was frost on all the vines and it covered the house too. The electric fence didn’t work; I touched it to find out. When we finally got inside, the little wine shop was attached to the kitchen. There were a lot of doors and gates that didn’t open, that we didn’t have keys for. The man who was selling the place told us that we had to keep an empty wine crate available to customers, next to the till. We would sell more wine this way. There was a teenage girl that lived on the property who was going to work for us and help us fix it all up. Somehow, in the midst of all this, I found out I’d been shortlisted for a very important literary award. Everyone was congratulating me, but I couldn’t remember writing the novel. The house was very old and interesting and we made a fire in the huge fireplace and looked at all the old stuff that the sellers had left behind. We talked about how strange it was to buy a house with a whole lot of other people’s stuff in it, and I had a quick thought that it would not be easy to sell if we had to sell it. There was a fleeting worry about being stuck. At one point, I went to look for Chui and I found her sitting on a big stone window sill next to a wide open window with a little drop below. I wasn’t terrified, but I cautioned her about windows and falling.

(Note: When I woke up Chui this morning, she told me her dream had been about "silver leaves".)

In the supermarket today, the nectarines were paradise. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" played on the speakers - the real version, not the Muzak - and everybody that went by had to pick up a nectarine and smell it: the simple and binding olfactory imperative. Put down your pale oranges, your waxy cherries, your avacado like a brick. Come over here to the nectarines. Come over here and sniff. And listen - there's Garfunkel, singing you back to your childhood heart.

On the radio in the car, they were talking about ghosts and old cinemas. There was an energy in the air like something extreme was about to happen.

But nothing did.

(Or maybe something did, but somewhere else.)

We drove home in the rain.

I'd be safe and warm if I was in LA

I have been reading the blogs of friends/colleagues/former teachers and feeling pretty miserable about mine. Mostly, because I never write in it. I am a terrible blogger, so I’m just going to force myself from now on. Even if I can’t actually string a decent one together, I will just write – verbatim – my notes from the day, which often include (but are not limited to) thoughts, dreams, observations, jokes, and ideas for fiction. This will at least create some sort of momentum, and I will feel liberated in sharing my most navel-gazey musings with either one or two readers or no one at all. Depending on who’s available.

Have been thinking lately about permanent/temporary, and how everything seems to be a combination of both. Probably has something to do with buying a house. I am nervous to write about it – don’t want to jinx anything. (Superstitious thinking is the way of my life: The other day I considered putting all the medicine bottles that have crept into the kitchen over the past few months back into the bathroom, so that they wouldn’t be sitting there on the shelf reminding me every time I reach for the tea or the cinnamon that I am actually, in reality, a fairly regular consumer of Big Pharma-type products and really not patient or consistent enough with anything homeopathic to actually get it to work. The Big Pharma bottles are like some kind of dirty secret, only it’s not so secret sitting there at eye-level in the kitchen: how hopelessly unenlightened I am! But also, more to the point, those bottles have been rendered unnecessary now that Chui has had her ears drained and adenoids removed in a most medically-Western/non-homeopathic fashion. Now, pretty much overnight, she is well! She can hear! She is all a-flush with good health and I’m like a mother in a movie with tears in my eyes, so grateful to the ENT surgeon. But then, I think: “If I move the bottles into the bathroom, she’ll get sick again.” So they stay there, and then we all get sick within 24 hours of all this going through my head anyway. And then, I think getting sick has something to do with my not moving the bottles in order to not get sick. As though there’s some kind of trickster working the ether, eavesdropping on all my mental hocus-pocus and switching things around. So, what is the point of this tangent? I guess it was merely to illustrate the compulsive non-rationally of some of my thinking.) However, as part of an effort to be brave and to change and evolve, I will say, nakedly, what I am feeling about the house, even though I fear my enthusiasm may cause it all to come to nought: I want the ramshackle “Villa Copgari” with its painted chameleon and cheesy fleurs-de-lis. I want the glorious view and the depressing bathrooms. I want the little arched windows and the courtyard and the cracked tiles and the crazy garden. I want the awful downstairs flat, the broken gutters, the shambolic light fixtures. I want the trees blocking the sea and the dunes in the distance and the wild potential of all of it! I have been thinking about planting sunflowers. And peonies. Do peonies grow here? I'm a fool for possibility! I think we need to get some animals: Two fearsome, vigilant German Shepherds and a genius mutt. The odd cat or two. And peacocks. Definitely peacocks.

Last night I dreamed that Stumpy and I were in a parking garage that was also like a busy intersection in a city. It was like a shadowy knot of dirty, underground streets and people were walking and waiting to cross. There was a lady walking a cheetah on a leash and suddenly it started acting all nervous and jumping around, with its hackles up, hissing like a cat. (Do cheetahs hiss?) Then, there was the sound of all these care engines revving and rumbling, getting louder and louder, and then a few angry cars screeched and squealed up the ramps to block the exits. We were all trapped and then someone shouted something about a bomb and I knew we were all going to be blown to smithereens and I was terrified. I woke up and the baby was crying and it was 3 am.

It took me about 30 seconds to decide whether to write “Kleenex” or “tissues” on my grocery list the other day. I went with “Kleenex” because I felt that it had some kind of 1960’s Tang-is-what-the-astronauts-drink vibe going on.

In the US, they mostly sell white eggs in the supermarket. Here, all the eggs are brown. This sometimes causes me to inwardly burst into my own version of “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas:

“All the eggs are brown (all the eggs are brown)/ And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)...”

the dark sacred night

Tonight, I can see the moon from my window in this office. It's not full, but is reasonably close to being. I'm not sure if it is waxing or waning. I forget about the moon sometimes, for weeks at a time, and then I see it and the stars again and it all takes my breath away. The night sky has always filled me with a cool, clean feeling, like lying down in the middle of a frozen lake and closing your eyes and breathing in the wind that skims across the ice. When the sky is really clear, I feel like I'm inhaling a kind of exquisite celestial vapour and there is nothing so pure in the world. All that black and silver. But I guess that is just the distance. Up close, the stars are a mess, and the moon is a dusty, lonely place. You look back at Earth, all blue and friendly, and think, What the hell am I doing out here? Why would I ever leave that behind?

Back when I lived in the Caribbean, one of the most phenomenal meteor showers in decades took place (the 2001 Leonids Meteor Shower). It was absolutely incredible, like someone was setting off fireworks, like something engineered. I watched it from the house I was living in, up on a hill with Stumpy and Conrad and the unlikely trio of my housemates (a sailboat captain, a lottery winner, a radio DJ with an enormous pickup truck). But another friend of mine had the right idea: She watched the meteor shower while wading in the sea, which is full of tiny bio luminescent creatures along the beaches of the islands. They light up as you move through the water. So imagine that, watching the pitch black sky rain with light while all around you in the dark ocean, tiny little life forms make your every move glow green. How wonderful! What a world!

I watched a fantastic movie last night called "Splice". (Writing "glow green" up there in that second paragraph made me think of it.) I'm not usually a huge fan of sci-fi entertainment, as it doesn't usually feature period costumes, rickshaws, the Nile, gramophones, journeys overland by elephant, or chemin-de-fer (except, apparently, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, season 4, "Our Man Bashir"); they are also often very LOUD, which I'm coming to realize I do not love in movies. However, I thought Splice was a great success. Fascinating, weird, and kind of heart-wrenching; of course, it was pretty darned silly, too. I give it a thumb up. Stumpy does too. Two thumbs up from Stumpy and Stumpy.

... it smells like pregnancy

Back in December, when I was about seven point five months pregnant, I developed really intense pica cravings having to do with smell. Pica, according to americanpregnancy.org, is "the practice of craving substances of little or no nutritional value during pregnancy". That it is described as a "practice" is a little odd, because it is definitely not something that one sets out to do, like meditating or providing legal advice for a fee. It's more like a bizarre compulsive habit that creeps up on your mind and then becomes a near-constant distraction. Women with pica desire a variety of things, many inedible, like bricks, cigarette butts, paint chips, soap. I've read more than a few internet testimonials in which pregnant women waxed rhapsodic about ice or expounded upon the strange hold magic markers had on them. (I myself deeply understand the allure of the Sharpie.) In my case, I didn't crave bowls full of freezer frost or the taste of the sidewalk; the pica I practiced was all about the nose. Suddenly, near the end of my second pregnancy (nothing like this had ever happened in the first), I just couldn't get enough of certain very chemical, very fume-y smells:

The garage - oily car engine, huge cans of paint, cardboard boxes: heaven.
Wood furniture shops - varnish: delicious.
Books - especially phone books.
Firelighters - these I would think about, but would only very rarely allow myself a sniff.
Wet paint - I was a moth to the flame of my friends' newly-painted burglar bars.

Sunlight brand lemon dishwashing powder - amazing.
Newspapers - especially the glossy holiday advertising inserts.

I found myself wondering if we had any Whiteout in our filing cabinet, but I didn't actually search for any. It didn't seem prudent to add any more neuron-vanquishing temptations into my life. I also started reminiscing about this games/stationary closet that our neighbors had in their house when I was a kid. It smelled so good. I could stand in there in the dim light, among the jigsaw puzzles and the construction paper and the Trivial Pursuits (Junior and Genus editions), and never see any reason to leave. It was a very blissful place for me.

This last pregnancy brought about other olfactory oddities as well: Something about the taste of chicken began to remind me of the smell of fish and I had to stop eating it (chicken). Water smelled really intense to me, and then plastic things, like our telephone, began to smell like water. All of this was so powerful at the time that I couldn't imagine it all going away once the baby was born. I thought something in my brain had been altered permanently. But, of course, I was wrong. I sniffed the dishwashing detergent the other day out of plain curiosity and nearly choked to death on a tiny cloud of toxic lemon dust. It was horrendous.