July 2010
13 posts
2 tags
July 25, 2010
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I tell her, nervous, trying my best not to look at my feet while I say this. My chest clenches. It is difficult to breathe.
She just waits, and I can’t tell if she’s being patient or if she’s uninterested.
“I like you,” I say. My face is flushing. “I like you a lot, and I think you like me too. I...
2 tags
July 24, 2010
In Paris, at community college, with the cast of the show Community, and a few additional characters like myself, and a rather unfriendly older black gentleman, and a woman I used to work with, who looked like a teacher of special education who was secretly evil. Every day, late for class, running into the center of the city, which is grey and rainy all the time, to get to class in one of the legs...
1 tag
April 24, 2010
Am supposed to meet with Kathy for dinner at a restaurant, but I am walking to King of Prussia, and I end up forty minutes late. Rekha is there, by surprise, but they have eaten without me, and I am not allowed in the restaurant anyway, for I am a mess, and I missed my reservation, and the restaurant is crowded. Two old friends are outside, also not allowed in, and I talk with them a little, but...
3 tags
April 18, 2010
At school, in class about American history taught by old linguistics professor. I have been cutting class for weeks, all of March, because it’s mostly useless lecture stuff, but I feel weird to be going back, only to find the class I am returning to is a day of working out wizard duels, because apparently Benjamin Franklin and Harry Potter fought in history. Meredith is there, and she tells...
2 tags
April 17, 2010
He is staring at me, eyes wide.
I have had a baby.
I have had a baby.
Living with my mother and my brother, but no father, nor the father of the baby. The house is like the one I grew up in on Regent Street, tan, warm, dangerous. I don’t want to raise a baby here, but I have no choice. How am I going to raise a child? Why do I have a son? A son.
My days are left mostly to myself, to take...
3 tags
April 15, 2010
With Claire, to see a film at the Anthony Wayne, but when I walk inside I can’t find her anymore, and all the faux-gold theatrical touches are dark with grime. The walls and carpet have turned black. I try to find the right screen, not even sure of what I am seeing, and run into someone I used to know, and we start smoking, watching Breathless.
When it ends, we are surrounded by other...
3 tags
April 15, 2010
Having friends over for dinner—three who don’t know each other. In the end, one doesn’t show, and the dinner falls apart. At the ACME in Paoli, I pick up tomatoes and bread, before the long haul home, to drive along deserted pastoral roads into Amish country. The night is purple and grey and black, and the stars are shining, and everything has the air of the apocalypse. I am...
2 tags
April 4, 2010 (Easter Sunday)
With a former co-worker named Sam, and Sam Adama of Caprica, and my brother, I fight zombies. I ask Adama to teach me to shoot, but his mother tells me I never will.
2 tags
2 tags
December 21, 2009
Was a student, sort of, in Pittsburgh. Was afraid of going back—in the dream I knew I had been back a few times (other dreams!) and they’d all been awkward. I was trying to meet up with Meghan but nothing came of it. My uncle lived near me, and we were to meet up for dinner, and I looked forward to going back to the Manor to see a movie afterward.
This was a very flat, almost rural...
1 tag
December 19, 2009
Looking for an internet top ten list of best characters of the decade, only to see #1 is… Jal Fraser, from Skins. Why Jal? I ask myself. She’s not even the best character from the show. At #3 was my beloved Roman Wild, but as pleased as I was to see a minor German soap opera character on an American list, I realized that if they knew of his existence, they would also know he should be...
1 tag
November 20, 2009
You are working at a grocery store with your old boss, a good friend, who is, in this dream, cruel and unkind, much like she was in real life (but never to you). The store is under threat of closing soon, and you’re doing your best to keep it afloat, but there’s too much to be done. The store itself is the largest you’ve ever seen, and there are only ten or fifteen employees to...
4 tags
last summer
At Kathy’s house, in her living room, drunkenly singing karaoke with a few friends. We are waiting for scores to come up, because the machine tallies points based on singing ability. I have been singing with a male friend, and we are holding hands while waiting desperately, hoping we’ve won, and I realize suddenly how starved I am for attention: I am getting turned on from holding...
April 2010
4 posts
1 tag
11/11
We’re going to have sex, and I am not sure why, and I am not sure that he is either. It doesn’t make sense. We’re not attracted to each other. We’re kind of friends. But we’re here, in a shower, and it’s happening, and we just both go with it.
It’s kind of good, and we’re both surprised, but a mutual friend is here, and we both rush to get dressed,...
1 tag
11/9
October, cutting class to go see a soccer match in the woods. I’m not sure the year, or the place, but I am in a uniform for a red plaid pencil skirt that comes down past my knees, and everything feels homey, and welcoming.
In the woods, walking tiny footpaths, I freeze when I see a combination of a character from a soap opera-the actor who plays him-my loathed AP US teacher, who is also...
3 tags
11/7
In Pittsburgh, in apartments that look like they have been transplanted from Hong Kong, or vaguely reminiscent of British colonialism, or both, sitting on my miniature balcony, waiting for friends to arrive. It’s raining, and my feet are up on the red railings, and I am sipping lemonade.
The guys I know arrive, and there is a series of complications, of explanations I can no longer...
PAST DREAM: 4/13/08
I am a spy, the kind that is stereotypical in tight patent leather jumpsuits and spike heels, with utility belts filled with noxious gases and knives and surveillance equipment. My hair is sixties-girl-pop, high with bangs and curled out at the ends, and I look fucking awesome, like I’m fucking Agent 99 or something. The fun part is, I am crazy-renegade about it. The US thinks I’m...
March 2010
1 post
November 2009
5 posts
2 tags
10/30
Claire and I are meeting at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, but not to see a movie. It is the kind of early-fall day that is so common here, where the leaves have yet to really change, with the temperature still hovering in the 70s, the humidity still often overwhelming. We walked the Main Line to get there, as though it was nothing at all, and now that we are standing outside under the overhang, we...
2 tags
PAST DREAM: 4/23/08
I am dating Gabe. There is a strong narrative to this dream that disappeared during the course of my day. It involved tracking down an item, and Pittsburgh was suddenly like home in that it was really train-oriented. Up the street, where Forbes curves near Schenley Park, was a version of my street, and I remember being angry and yelling, and running into the street and almost being hit by a car....
1 tag
PAST DREAM: 4/16/08
I am dating this chick named Leslie, and we are making out, and she tells me we should break up. “I don’t understand,” I say. “You’re bisexual,” she explains. “It’s not like you’re really a lesbian.” I don’t know what to say to that. “I didn’t think it would matter,” I finally blurt out. “Well, it...
3 tags
10/22
I’m standing on a concrete patio overlooking a lovely garden party in England, and I am so sad knowing I have to leave. The sky is clear and everyone is dressed in stereotypical Sunday best. I hug the host good-bye and then go down the steps to the yard, careful to not catch the eyelet of my white dress on brambles lining the short dirt path. In the garden I grab Kathy and my friend Michael...
2 tags
10/20
My mother and I are driving and suddenly the car in front of us slams into the car in front of them, and I am screaming and the brakes are not slowing us down fast enough, and everything is moving too fast, and we slam into the car in front of us, and the car behind us slams into us, and this is how wrecks happen, I am thinking as I black out. But almost immediately the darkness is gone and I am...
October 2009
7 posts
PAST DREAM: 4/14/08
Initially, I am watching two young brothers navigate Pittsburgh. They are orphans, and rummaging around trying to get food. The elder boy is 12, the younger is no more than 6. An older man strolls up with a shopping cart full of food, and tells them to follow him. They follow, and eventually come to a giant school. I forget after this, but somehow I came in at one point. I think I became the...
3 tags
10/16
I walk into a bank to move some money around, and inside I run into a girl I knew in high school, KF. “How’s college?” she asks and I freeze a little, tell the whole story. “You?” I say, finally. “Oh, I transferred”—she left behind her dream school in California (she does not go there in real life, didn’t get in) to go to Juniata. I am stunned,...
2 tags
10/15
This is a dream starring someone I’ve come to recognize as New Alex. (For the purposes of this explanation, I will refer to my current self as Old Alex.) New Alex is a few years down the road and happy, proof that Old Alex can get past this dark chapter in her life (as she has come to think of it) and will one day even thrive. New Alex will be confident and smile more and has taken Old...
4 tags
10/13
It is weird to be in high school again. In high school I never dreamed of important tests or wandering the halls, so it seems odd to do it now, a few years after I’ve left.
My first period is free, so I am in the library, and then the bell rings for second period and I realize I don’t know where I am going, so I pull out my schedule, only to find that first period wasn’t free...
1 tag
10/9
In this dream I celebrating Thanksgiving with my family and The Neighbors who are unkind in real life, but in this dream so loving that it left me uncomfortable when I woke. I would describe this dream in further detail but I would mostly like to forget it, though I am trying to do my best at making this tumblr an accurate representation of my dream life, so I will just elaborate that within the...
2 tags
PAST DREAM: 4/13/08
Chloe and I are on the sidelines of a giant football field. Everything on the field is off-center. It is the Carnegie Mellon football team, and Gabe is the captain. Chloe and I are bored, and tell Gabe so. “It’s a fucking useless sport,” Gabe says, and takes a drag on a cigarette before stubbing it in the astroturf. An announcement comes over the loudspeaker, and it is announced...
1 tag
PAST DREAM: 4/13/08
I am taller, and dancing in a giant ballroom surrounded by couples, when I am surprised by a masked man, who takes my hand and ushers me to a side-library, where I am abandoned, and I read for hours, before finding a portal in a book, and suddenly I am in Ireland, up on the cliffs where there are no railings and tourists lie down and put their noses over the edge, and instead of doing that I dance...
September 2009
5 posts
2 tags
9/27
In Pittsburgh, on Halloween, in my old apartment, which is the same but bigger. In my dreams I am always aware of the scope of things—I am always aware of how much smaller I am than my surroundings. In this dream my room seems to extend for miles in length even if it’s only a few extra feet. Miji, my old roommate, is missing, and has left a gift for me on her bed, just like the last...
5 tags
PAST DREAM: 4/21/08
I am going to CMU, but it is a completely different campus. Near where Walking to the Sky should be is a bus stop. I am sitting here with Rekha and Kathy and Robyn, watching others play frisbee. I have taken a bunch of pictures and asked Claire if she can put them together within one of her image programs to make a book. When it arrives, it is three feet by five feet and glossy papered. Claire...
PAST DREAM: 4/23/08
I am at home with my mother, and we are watching an episode of a television show that has brothers on it. Suddenly the television show becomes most of the dream, and here I am confused, but the brothers had an abusive father, and there was a lot of internal emotional conflict, and then at the end the youngest one died. I said to my mother, “Can you believe the youngest one died?” as...
2 tags
PAST DREAM: 4/15/08
I am 6 feet tall and super-model-skinny (and consequently no more than an A-cup) and a fan of black spike heels and super-dark-wash denim. I have perfect eye sight and a different nose. I am Jewish and a year older and working at a salad place on the Main Line. I have dropped out of college. I have a co-worker named Dovid who is a senior in high school who is exactly my height when I wear the...
PAST DREAM: 4/16/08
I am bathing in a giant bathtub of white wine, and someone taps me on the shoulder to say, “Wouldn’t you rather have gin?” I wake up before this dream can go anywhere.
August 2009
6 posts
2 tags
PAST DREAM: 5/10/08
It was the fall of 2009, I believe, and I was living in this same apartment, and I was married. I was still in college, and so was he. I don’t know why we got married in school, but we did, and I came back from classes one day and he was asleep where my roommate Megan’s bed is currently, and I crawled in beside him and looked out at the sky. When we woke up I made dinner in the...
PAST DREAMS
I used to record dreams I had on livejournal, and in an effort to consolidate I will be posting them onto this tumblr. They aren’t recent but some of them still resonate with me.
3 tags
8/18
Back in Pittsburgh, back at the old college, but back early, during orientation. This town is Pittsburgh, I tell myself, but even as I dream I know it isn’t really. My heart tells me it is Montreal.
“What’s changed?” I ask Chloe and Gabe. We are going out for dinner.
Gabe drives a little green car now, not his mother’s blue minivan. “Oh, everything,” he...
2 tags
8/17
I find myself a famous screenwriter. I am known for my scripts being made by a particularly visionary young director, and we are becoming known as a sort of wunder team around town. It is an exciting time—our latest film has gotten major critical praise, and it looks like we will each win some awards from our respective guilds. My agent is even speaking of Golden Globe nominations. I am...
3 tags
8/5
At Infomania, where I intern, I am sleeping with the boss. Often in his office, during work hours, but sometimes after dates, sometimes before he drops me off at the train to go back to campus.
I almost feel a little bad about it, but I am a fucking excellent intern, and everyone knows it, so I am excused for this obviously unprofessional aspect to my time there.
4 tags
7/29
I am going to a party at Haverford with a few friends, and the second we step off the train and barrel down in a line down this deserted suburban road, we are almost lost. This is not the Main Line I have come to know. The trees are thousands of feet tall, and the houses are all far back from the main road, and we are going to this party I don’t want to go to.
Beforehand, as my friends and...
July 2009
10 posts
7/23
Everything hurts. You throw yourself off a bridge. You hit the water and keep falling.
7/22
At a male friend’s duplex home, a bunch of friends gather to discuss the Great Gatsby. It’s an awkward situation, to talk about this book when I am pretty sure we aren’t a book club of any sort. After a conversation marked with many long silences, we all give up on the book, and decide to watch a movie. “Upstairs,” the house owner says, “upstairs, past the...
3 tags
7/22
At the top of my hill, in what I called as a child “the Big Circle,” I am managing what seems like forty little kids, who are running around wildly. My mother and I, along with a few friends, run a summer camp out of my house, and a large brick stadium.
At the Big Circle, the sun is beating down on me, and I can feel my skin burn deep, as though my veins have lit on fire. My mother is...
7/22
I am going to the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, which is actually more like the Anthony Wayne, to see the early stagings of a famed musical. Coincidentally, many people I knew in high school have been cast.
Technically, I am not supposed to be here. The premiere isn’t for another few months, but everyone wants to see this. It is a romance and a fantasy, and staged by Steve Martin. Every...
2 tags
7/18
Kathy is eight months pregnant, and I’m not sure how I didn’t notice—how no one noticed. She is swollen and glowing, the happiest I have ever seen her. We are at brunch with some other friends.
“How did this happen?” someone asks, rubbing her belly a bit.
“Well,” she laughs. “My mother wanted another child, and she offered me money to carry it. So...
3 tags
That dream about Kathy throwing away your Twilight...
This will have to do for now.
5 tags
7/04
Kathy is buying a new car. “I told you this already,” she says, drumming her steering wheel with her fingers, her tone of voice already impatient. My eyes meet Claire’s in the rearview mirror, and we pretend we forgot instead of not knowing. We are driving along narrow straight roads surrounded by corn fields until we come to the construction place, pulling off the cement onto a...
3 tags
7/01
Visiting Robyn at school, everyone gets a little too drunk at one of the frats, and suddenly I am not sure where I am. I am along a long road with frat houses and no trees, and the road seems to not be connected to any other road, any other town, any other place, as though it exists only by itself. To put it mildly, I am lost. I am lost, I am not from around here, I have lost the only person I...
3 tags
7/01
It is winter, and maybe the year 1910. Everything in the backgrounds and the landscapes of this dream is either grey or the color of parchment, vaguely khaki. My house, however, is white and full of columns, but I am afraid to be inside it. The whole place feels rather dangerous, mostly because it is so large and yet completely empty. I go outside in a navy blue wool cloak and fur slippers,...