Dreams

[ysobelle]

Last night-- or perhaps this morning-- I dreamed that I was wearing an old, old cream brocade skirt, stained in places, heavy and thick. And I asked someone to cut it with a sword, and they did so. It was only afterwards, when looking at the x-rays, we realised there was a large pocket near the hem, closed with a brass clasp. And we had cut something inside that pocket. Turning the skirt round, we found that plain-to-see pocket, and inside, now slashed to pieces, was a tiny, bejeweled and feathered bird mask, delicate and destroyed. I was horrified at my own carelessness. It bothered me all the way through the ship, even as the Coast Guard officers showed me around, past all the passengers, and up the stairs to the command area, from where I could see the remains of the horse stalls when they used to transport horses and, possibly, he said, ponies. But there was only an old Toyota hatchback there, now. Later, we went to see how the machines had separated my blood samples. The five large, clear containers were marked with issues-- that I had a dog, cats, etc. in case anyone should be allergic to them because then, you know, they couldn't have my blood. "But I lived in England," I told the woman. "Ah," she said, but didn't write that down. We peered into the last container, where the impurities had congealed together in the murky depths of blue and clear, and she said, "Don't you think someone would have removed that?" I looked at the can of tuna, with huge crystals and strange detritus gathering on it like barnacles, and wondered how I'd never noticed it thumping through my veins.

After that, losing your parking lot into a white, swirling blanket just seems like another surreality.