I went to her sleazy boyfriend's house with her. We drove a large 1970's sedan slowly through some backlots of a movie studio or a junkyard, not sure which. Their house was small and gray. He wasn't in. He had given her a black eye. We packed up her stuff and she went to a hotel. My parents were there.
She got a room in a ritzy hotel with a whole facade of plate glass and brass. She stayed on the third floor, down the hall from an in-ground fountain. We made out in her hotel room.
We went back to my house which was a bundle of sticks lashed together like on Gilligan's island. I lived there with R. We stayed in the back bedroom. I had painted the backs of the sticks white. R came; A left. We made out. C snuck around the door to the room. He was down for the weekend, snooping around since his girl left him. He didn't have anyone else.
A tornado came up. I got caught in a wheel like a hamster wheel, going around and around. I yelled for everyone to get out of the house so they wouldn't be hurt. They weren't around. I escaped from the wheel. Around front, they all sat, calm as flowers, as I yelled about the tornado. Some people were watching from across their backyard. We ate tapas and no one got hurt.
I went back to the hotel with A. She was living out of a suitcase, smoking a lot. We went up the stairs to her third floor apartment in red high heels. We could see the whole city.
R and I lived on a high floor in an apartment building in a city. We had a baby boy.
The city had a sports arena with a set of bleachers attached to a mile-high metal arm. It was like a n amusement park ride. To go along with our culture, we sent the newborn baby up on the bleechers to see if it was fearful or not. It wasn't, so I jumped up and down yelling, "It's not fearful, it's not fearful".
I felt a great relief.
Out across a field, some cumulus congestus clouds stretch their long arms. Their bottoms are dark. Wind speeds are picking up. A village of small, close houses fills the field. My own house has short walls and a wooden interior. I talk to some people and walk home. The front door isn't locked or even closed; a screen door is my entry. I'm wearing a red dress which blows around so hard I look up to see the wall cloud of the cumulus congestus approaching. Its underside is swirling into a wide hole. A tornado forms a mile or so away. I see it coming and scream. My neighbors run inside their huts.
I go inside and look out the back window as it approaches. I can feel the ground moving as it comes, and hear a rumble. I watch out the window, realizing that it will hit at the back room where I am and make its way south out the front. I stay inside for protection, but know that I'm going to have to try to outrun it.
The hole gets more distinct outside my hut, but the winds get stronger. It hits the back, and I run to the living room, the center of the house. The living room is perfectly square. The tornado follows me to the room, pushing out energy waves to destroy. It keeps its winds on the roof. The energy waves are like a bubble on the underside of cloud. They swirl around the room and take the profile of a newborn baby. The waves turn blue, then pale like a white person. Finally, they are the shade of a white person with a menacing cobalt glow. The newborn baby head fills the ceiling of the living room. It's a sentient tornado.
I walk out the living room to the front, and try to run in front of the tornado. The blue baby head follows. I can't cut it off, and it's too late to run forward. I stop running and stand still. It passes, lifting its most dangerous energy just over my head.
Afterwards, folks come out of their houses to check on each other. Everyone is fine. The babyhead damaged nothing but some trees in the downtown. We think we're lucky. Somehow we only work in seafood restuarants and have the afternoon off.
It is late afternoon now. Things are cooler with the rains. I visit some friends doind their wash in the part of town that looks like a small town in the 1950's. They are doing their wash in their kitchen in a tub.
We go outside and talk. The sky goes brown, and a funnel cloud rises from the clouds at the horizon. It looks much more dangerous than the first tornado. The sky is a dark brown, with the only light coming from a clear hole at the middle of the cloud. I am terrified, but then realize that the tornado is actually an actress swirling her coffee mug around and around. She's on a soap opera and I have been holding a porcelain box above my head. The actress is working inside the porcelain box, like one works in a TV.
Something about a tall evergreen. It's coming down at an angle, blown up at its root by a demolition team. There's green forest everywhere, and I am concerned about the tree. I watch it.
[R wakes me up. I got the hiccups in my sleep and they woke him up.]
{This is really part of dream from Sunday, June 10, 2001. I forgot the rest of it.]
I'm in bed, with tan sheets. I look into the corner and see a spider shaped like a beetle coming at me. It's got a spider's body, but 6 of its legs are around its mouth, so it looks really frightening.
'I know you're a fake spider', I think. It races up, spinning a web closer and closer to my knee. I can't believe its nerve.
[This is actually my dream from Monday, June 3rd, 2001]
R and I are at a friend's house visiting her. She's someone I used to be close to but haven't seen in a few years. She has an eating disorder. She's living at home in a nice, upscale place her parents own. It's got big windows set in its brick walls, and the decor is expensive and conservative--wooden ducks and hunting scenes as art.
R and I go into a back room to whisper questions about what we should do about her disorder. There's an open window in the pastel wall, with a white curtain shuffling around in the afternoon breeze. We're on the north side of the house, and the air is cooling down. As we look out the back window, we can see how high this first floor is set off the ground--about 10 feet. A mound of earth reaches its highest point outside the window, and leads back to the ground. It's an odd piece of landscape, but covered in healthy sod nonetheless.
As we think about my friend's problem, R sees a bear run past the window. It's big and dark, running on its hind legs like a person. It's fast, and from its matching pink and orange shoes and shorts, seems to be in training.
R yells, "A racing bear!" and jumps out the window. He's down on the mound and away, chasing after the bear. The bear comes around again in another lap. It's faster than R, leaving him standing--mouth open--on the sod. It's only after the racing bear has snowed him that he begins to be afraid of it.
But while the bear appears to have a higher consciousness, its eyes taking in me and R and our fear and R's racing hopes, it won't waste time on us. It jogs by, wiping sweat off its head with big paws. It makes round after round. The silk jogging shorts begin to stain.
R sucks up his defeat and climbs back through the window. We travel to a giant grocery store and look in the aisles of the frozen foods for tempting snacks for my friend. I haven't been in this town in a long time, and meet some folks I used to know. They are evily curious in what I'm doing in town. They've heard that my friend is sick, and pretend concern to get more details. I ignore their rude prying, and grab a lot of boxes of frozen pierogies.