strangeness

my grandmother has died, and they're having a memorial coffee at her house-- when I get there with my fanily, the place is packed with people I do not know, and my family members quickly disappear into the crowds. my grief lies heavy on me, and I don't have the emotional resources to make sense of this scene-- I wander around for a time, trying to do my best, but the shock of it all quickly undoes me: the people are all incredibly fancy and highbrow and important, and it becomes swiftly evident what an important person my grandmother was in the eyes of the world-- and the familiar, warm person I loved so dearly is nowhere evident-- except in small familiar knick-knacks that others are pawing and taking as mementoes-- I lose it at this point and start searching for my family to I can get the hell out-- they drove me here, and I feel utterly dependent on them for escape-- every room I enter has more mucky-mucks standing around talking about my grandmother in an urbane world context I don't recognize and generlly being very smart and cool and alien to me-- I begin to see my grandmother's possessions and life and accomplishments in a new light, but I'm in no shape to process it-- I just want my family to get me out of here-- I start calling out to them, "mooooo-ooooom... daaaaa-aaaaaad!!", quickly realizing how ineffectual these names are but keeping at it, growing desperate and plaintive. the cool people, fortunately are unflapped by my display and continue their conversations without a ripple-- I go on and on, calling, searching, unable to find my family, until the place starts to clear out and I realize the only possibility is that they have left without me. I collapse into a chair, utterly abandoned, and after a bit take notice of the bright shiny folk I've collapsed among-- they're young and cleverly dressed and effortlessly at ease and clearly successful and wealthy and bright-- a shining lot-- dusty me has fallen among them for better or worse. as they rise to move along, they offer me a ride, and with mixed mortification and relief I accept-- we board a dreadful concept vehicle with stadium seating and no safety whatsoever and proceed through town-- we're moving through the locales I grew up among, and I make some small comment about a change and then a heartbeat later do a double- and then triple-take and gape in utter shock as I realize how the place has been transformed-- there are now elaborate undulating glass constructions, hotel megaliths, with multistorey water features lining the road-- when I'm able to speack again, I exclaim, "my god! it's like las vegas!" my companions all nod and say, "yes" and "actually, I heard a statistic the other day that the businesses here see more activity than vegas"-- and a cool, unhurried, unamazed discussion ensues. I don't begin to know where I am.

I'm back in my grandmother's house for something, moving through those turned-strange rooms, when I run into some of the guests staying there-- namely angelina jolie and her daughter and other members of her entourage-- angelina glides into the room, stark naked and with perfectly astonishing globe breasts, smiles sweetly at me and says hello. my jaw must be on the persian carpet, but I stammer something out by way of a greeting. I can't take my eyes off her, so I see how warm and honest and utterly unselfconscious she is, watch her interacting with her little daughter and am infatuated and entranced-- suddenly leaving is the farthest thing from my mind-- I just want to stay and stay and watch and absorb her goodness and ease-- the only thing that remains somewhat disconcerting is those crazy unearthly perfect breasts.

landscapes

rowing around on a dark lake with piney edges and dark, ragged, sudden dropoffs-- I am a passenger, two other women at the oars, and they drive the boat into a black cave-- I want them to stop, but they go further into the blackness-- we can hear others up ahead in the darkness, which makes it "okay", but I am not okay-- especially when the air fills with bats or even smaller whirring things all around my head-- I am panicking-- and finally we go back out.

I'm flyinging high above the landscape with a plane-- but somehow I've ended up on the outside, clinging to pillowy soft pieces on the side, watching lakes and trees pass beneath, wondering if there's any way I might survive a fall-- I keep slipping into a drowse and literally slipping, and I have to catch myself and pull back up-- but then the copilot notices me clinging there and climbs out and helps me back inside the craft.

there's a big fight between college students at the edge of a precipice, a rough chasm dropping a mile down into a glittering lake that looks modest from the height but I know is enormous and deep-- they're battling with long poles over some point of honor, and they fall over the edge in droves and fall forever, still engaged in conflict, a whole crowd of youth and potential falling so far, plummeting and disappearing without a sound into the water beneath, the lake's gleaming surface folding cleanly over all the signs of struggle. someone erects a plaque.

there's a woman living out in the desert, burrowed into a sandy hillside-- the white earth walls are full of the tunnels and activity of small creatures, but she's unbothered by it-- they keep to themselves, she goes about her business-- until some hooligans show up, a black-clad gang of them, drawn to the place-- they're spirits reanimated or reshaped into borrowed bodies by some dark force. one of them, a young woman, comes back to her after they leave to show her, tell her. the last shot is of the woman gazing out her round embedded window into the view-- someone sees her from far, far away.

the house on the floating island

we go to visit, my sister and I, the lady who lives in the old house on the floating island. the island rests on the water just about 30 feet offshore on lake superior and floats back and forth along the beach. there's little substance to the island itself, no stone to fasten a house's foundation to-- the lady's parents built the house many years previous when she was just a child-- like a gigantic doll's house, flimsy and romantic. there's a firepole and sweet porches-- one problem is that there's no staircase between the lower and upper floors, only a makeshift bookshelf she's contrived to climb for the purpose-- but it's loose and tricky. my sister insists that there once was a staircase and puzzles over the mystery, searches for it in vain. the woman in the house is blind and infirm, the house itself become a curiosity for tourists, hardly viable-- it seems it will crumble or tip and sink any day. we're negotiating for its sale to someone who wants such an ungainly elephant, but later I realize I want to keep it, fortify and restore it-- there's too much history there to forfeit it. nothing will grow in the little patch of garden, and I go out and start planting kernels of corn but stop when I realize I must first improve the soil and find better quality seed stock.

not belonging & grandfatherly advice

some people I ran into from my sketchy-cool neighborhood were going to some midnight show in an old theater building-- so I decided to venture out and go too since I knew people I knew would be there. it was a hipster scene, so I got all dressed up in my edgiest clothes-- tho I feared they were sadly out of date and low-quality and -rent. it was an enormous old space with industrial galvanized metal circular stairways between levels, and the place was packed with the uberhip, and I started to regret coming.

I also visited my conservative friends in their big suburban houses and left feeling like an alien.

I went to work at a new place in the front offices of something like a sam's club or costco-- and I was busy, but other people were overwhelmed, so I offered to help with checking food in in the back-- the guy said, remember, you have to touch it and look at it-- presumably to see if it was bad. i went to try to find the bathroom and discovered an entire employee lockerroom facility with a big pool and people swimming laps.

my grandfather picked me up and took me to visit my father-- we were driving on side roads-- he was driving so slowly it made me nervous, especially as we were coming up on a merge onto the highway-- it was clear though, so he cut over without a problem-- and seemed to keep going as if he wouldn't stop before he was in oncoming traffic lanes-- I said, stop! here!-- and he was already correcting, in the lane for the lefthand turn, I now remembered belatedly that we were supposed to take-- he took it, and I realized just how very long it had been since I had visited. I said something about this and how I wanted to more adventures, and he said, you should, it's good for you to go explore little islands.

the game

I got invited out with some people I didn't know very well and so was kind of tagging along. we entered a big building, and I had no idea whether it was a club or a party or a show. we sat waiting in an anteroom with some strangers, and I thought maybe restaurant-- but then it started. it was a big interactive game that ranged throughout the rooms-- we were given scenarios and then had to act, quickly, in response to them-- everyone else seemed much more adept at this than I was. at one point during a dress-up bit, I tried to cut loose, see if I could really get into it, was twirling a belt around over my head and hoo-ing in character-- but then the buckle hit something and clanged, and I stopped and felt, in retrospect, that it had been in poor taste and not particularly ingenious. I just wasn't getting the game, and it was incredibly embarrassing and frustrating.

and then when it ended we all filed through and received little assessment cards, and as I stood in line my competitive side kicked in-- and then I got my card-- I could hardly look at it-- but I thought it had a D written on it-- and I'd seen others get As. I was having trouble reading the handwriting-- there was a little note which might have illuminated it, but I couldn't make it out. with the near-certainty that I'd utterly failed, now documented, I felt like a complete and utter waste-- I was crushed-- I had liked the game, wanted to play it, and simply was frustrated by my own clumsy slowness.

there were a bunch of electronic consoles scattered around-- at several points during the game there had been two or three challenges going on at once-- people would be selected out and go off for whatever bit and return to the group and pick up wherever we were at the time-- one of the things going on seamed to be taking place on these monitors. so after everyone left, I tried my hand at it-- and was utterly flummoxed-- the operating environment was like nothing I'd seen before, full of many navigational choices, complex and graphical and clean and bright-- and I thought, here is the future, and I can't keep up.

then there were my glasses-- for some reason I discovered that I was unable to look, to see through both eyes at once-- the left eye would just stay closed and then if I forced it open, the right eye would close-- I thought the problem must be the glasses, the prescription, and in the process of fiddling with them, snapped them in half.

belonging & not belonging

it was the most beautiful, wonderful, perfect dream. I went back to art school of a sort-- it was full of people who'd been studying and doing design-- kind of like penland-- and I was afraid my pipe dream was about to go up in smoke-- but until that happened, it was glorious-- it was like a community of all my favorite creative women-- all my former art teachers were there-- it was like coming home.

dreamed I was back at liggett after having been away-- I was late for class because I couldn't find my schedule, and then I couldn't find my locker-- but there was a basket of my clean laundry right in front of it. I opened the locker and grabbed the schedule, hurrying because I was so late-- and I hadn't studied at all. I was afraid I had english or french because we were having tests and I hadn't studied in ages. I rushed to the math class in a big lecture hall and had to just go in-- sat down near the front by the door, by a girl who seemed like a stereotypical loser (her clothes weren't up to snuff and she was black and shy) and a big man in a wheelchair, clearly a guest-- he was listening quietly to the preamble and first class bits-- I had my notebook poised and was studiously not looking at the other students, some of whom might have been able to recognize me after all this time because of my hair. then the teacher turned to the man in the wheelchair and an anecdotal history session began, and somehow I got pulled into it and felt conspicuous and embarassed.

stuck

I fell or climbed in somewhere I shouldn't have and was captured and put in a cage. I climbed the walls on little climbing hand- and foot-holds. I found a tiny trap door at the top and pushed it open and could see a dormitory or sorority house outside-- I screamed and hollered and called out to the girls, amazed that my captor wouldn't have somehow prevented me from making my situation known. but then later the girls, when they came, were incorporated into horrible experiments. it was all a trick.

I was running across a field, and suddenly I realized I was stepping on fragile young plants and stopped-- but that was no good because I realized I was still standing on them. I looked for space between the rows, but there was none, only tightly, perfectly planted patches of green and blue-green and yellow-green and pink, all so tidy, all tiny and fragile-- and the gardener was there, scowling at me, and I apologized and begged for her help, and somehow she got me out of it and set about trying to repair the damage I'd done.