I knew Hillary when...

In the dream the house is in South Dakota, although in real life, it is in Nebraska, 30 miles from where I grew up. I am not particularly close with the family who owns the house, but nonetheless, it is their rural house I dream of. The dream takes place in the kitchen.

The room is dimly lit, sun washes in through a wooden framed window, warming the pale yellow walls and bringing in the open South Dakota plains. A mother, with brown hair, is puttering around, doing dishes, putting them away, staying busy. A blonde woman sits at the bar-style kitchen divider, her back turned toward me as I walk in, hunched over papers and newspapers and folders spread out over the bar/counter.

I talk to the mom for a while, in real life her name is Glenda, but in the dream I don't address her by anything or even know that she is my friend Chrissy's mom. Finally, I sit, facing the blonde and talking about last night's election poll results before I even ask or check to see who she is.

"Did you see how badly Obama stomped Hillary? I knew he would! People love him, and I think that Hillary is washed up, especially here in the Midwest. She should get out while she still can," I say, settling into my own seat. When she looks up and I see the drawn, pinched face of a woman campaigning for more than the presidency, I realize that Hillary Clinton is at the simple, solid farmhouse in South Dakota/ Nebraska. What the hell is she doing here? I feel like an ass. What's going on? Hillary?! She knows my friends? I thought they were Republicans...

The room is quiet, until she smiles, gives a solid, standard little shake of the head for composure and looks at me, head supported on bent wrist.

"Yes, well," she manages to say, before giving a polite "oo, bet you feel like and ass" laugh. Before anything else can be said, Bill walks in (yes, Clinton), drying his hands on a blue washcloth.

"Hey ladies, what's going on in here?" He asks, jovial and relaxed. Hillary looks at him, a withered and small glance, tired. He feels the tension of what just happened, even if he can't pick up on it in words. "Uh, I'm going back outside." Outside, where Bob (my friend's dad) is, is safer than the sad and somewhat silent female congregation of inside, where we are.


The dream ends here, and as the scene fades away, I'm left alone in the room wanting so badly to call the media contacts I have and tell them where the Clintons are hiding out. In the dream, which happened last Sunday, I know that rough days are ahead for the Clintons, becuase they have been hiding out, escaping the media and the public's scrutiny. That would never happen in real life, mind you, but it did in the dream. I want to call the NYTimes, the Washington Post, anyone, I want to tell the media where these people are hiding out. Yet I don't want to rat out my family friends and draw down the Media Big-Top upon their lives. It doesn't seem fair. Now that both NE and SD have claimed Obama for their own (go teams!!) in real life, I guess it was a bit of foreshadowing, to know they would, in the dream. But bigger than that, I see it as me still wanting very much to be part of the media circus I once aspired to. Last election cycle I LIVED in Washington, D.C. and planned on a career in the media circus. Now, I'm happy to be in Chicago instead, but am still yearning for that place among the bylines and big names of the profession.

Guess Hillary and I aren't so different after all....

Schoolhouse/rock

I just spent the last hour getting versed on the differences between "dating" and "seeing someone" and "hanging out" and just being "friends" and "leading someone on" and "shitting where I eat" and even "dinner."


I guess the rock I was living under did too good a job of shading me from the sun, since I didn't seem to know my head from my ass on this topic, and the sun would have been a pretty good indicator of "up."

Here's what I learned.

1. I can "hang out" with someone if he's not an adult. Or if she's a girl friend. Or even a woman I've made out with can now be "hung out" with. But I cannot simply "hang out" with someone who might like me, or I might like. That would be a "leading on" of said person. Or else he can't be an adult, because adults don't just "hang out." Apparently, other female friends can "hang out" with non-adults they're making out with and eat pizza with them, but I can't. Maybe when I'm older. But then I won't be an adult. What?

2. "Seeing someone" means you are having intimate relations, like eating pizza together and sharing hand-drawn pictures of each other's homes over discussions of showers. You might also be "sleeping together" at said homes," "making out," "giving head" or going to concerts with guitars and clowns. I got lost somewhere between the concert and the cotton candy stand though, so don't quote me on that.

3. "Dating someone is when you actually get to have "sex," which is something like inserting Tab A into slot B, except there's no bacon involved, and those cardboard bacon packaging slots are the only ones I'm familiar with. Near as I can tell, you begin "dating" someone after two weeks of eating pizza, sleeping together and giving or getting head. But not before. That's still just "seeing" each other. Maybe clarification comes in the shower? I should check.

4. If one of your "friends" invites you over for "dinner," you just might be going on a "date," unbeknownst to yourself. Those "friends" are sneaky bastards, they are. If that "dinner" is scallops and three other courses, it's a "date." If it's pizza and three other courses, it's just "hanging out." I had pizza and three other courses with these educators tonight, so that made it "hanging out." I had to check my notes at one point just to make sure I understood this concept. I think I do, but for next time I have to apply it in real life as part of my education.

5. "Leading someone on" is buying him a ticket to the circus and telling him there will be guitars. If the guitars are not present, I hope he notices the elephant's leash more than the one you're using, but I have no footnotes to reference.

6. "Shitting where you eat" should logically follow "dinner," but it has nothing to do with food. Unless you work in food services. Or the alley behind my apartment. This term refers to "dating" and/or "seeing" someone you work with at their home, the circus, a concert or in bed. Also not to be done with pizza, dinner or scallops, it means that you cannot spend time with this person at all, unless you are just "friends," or "hanging out." As far as I know, though, if you are just "hanging out" with your co-workers at work, you're going to get fired, and the whole thing becomes a moot point anyway, eradicating all boundaries and opening you up to all sorts of options.

And isn't that what we all want, anyway?

I mean, I want to eat pizza AND scallops AND bacon for breakfast AND maybe "dinner," too, with my adult friend whom I might or might not be interested in while we may or may not be at his house or in my bed. If I want to "see" him and not get or give head prior to "hanging out" with him in the shower, do I have to quit my job, and can I go to the bathroom after having sex without leading him on? Will the clowns have the guitars, or do the elephants play them?

I just want options. Doesn't everyone? I thought that was the beautiful thing about living in America and being cute and making it to 25 and having opinions and intellect. That's the thing about my rock. I didn't have things cut so crystal clear-as-mud then. I didn't know what I could have been doing wrong or missing out on, and under a rock, you'll take anything you can get. Now I want to explore the worthwhile options that come my way, in my own way. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not ready for another rock just yet, and all of this sounds like fun stuff to explore. Except for the "shiting where I eat" part. I already sleep where I eat (sort of) so that would make things all sorts of awkward for me at home, too.

Oh, and one last thing I missed the powerpoint on: I have no idea what "friends" are, but I know they are the sorts of assholes you CAN hang out with, share six courses of dinner and great conversation with (even while shitting), regardless of whether guitars or clowns or adults are even present.

Nightmares and dreamscapes

it is 6:46 am, and I have just woken from a dream.

In it, I am in my great-grandfather's old red barn, which sits on the land he originally homesteaded when he emigrated here from Czechoslovakia in the 1800s.
In the dream, it is my grandfather's barn instead, even though my granpa never lived on that farm or worked it in all his years, owning his own land instead. At one point (the 40s) my dad lived in the small house next to it, with his first wife. This barn is a source of contention among my relative in Houston who want to tear it down (and now own the land), and the relatives in Nebraska, who want to preserve it, even in its decrepit state. This is all true in real life. Parts of my dream involve scenes that are not but were true in the dream.
The dream:
I face the western wall, looking at images from the late 1990s of people I went to high school with. The only sense of any family I get is that of my nephew Ben, and I can't even be sure he's on the wall. There are tacky glamour shots and birthday greetings and faded computer print- out pages stapled to the wall. Sometimes it is a wall, somtimes it is just a support beam and I'm focusing on the wall behind it. Whatever it is (when not switching forms) it is supposed to be a wall of commemoration, a wall of celebration in my family, and I cannot understand why pictures of men and women four years older than me are on the wall, looking frozen in time in their leotards, poufy hair cuts and wide-armed tanktops.
I am in the barn alone, taking pictures of it, after seeing a picture of it on my dad's wall for the first time, a shot of its hayloft through some pines, aesthetically pleasing. I've actually seen this picture for years, but am just now figuring out that it is of the barn. I decided to take pictures inside the barn, to preserve it before it is gone.
When I enter, there are things hanging from the ceiling, old, dark metal things with cobwebs and decades of farm grime blanketing them. I can't make out any of them, and as I move underneath, among other planks and boards of wood that seems to have fallen over time, I find clothes and throw them into a bin of some sort; a black hoodie that lookes like mine and maybe another sweater, but certainly a black hoodie.
I make my way to this wall of pictures which feels like and alter of some sort.
At first, I'm just taking pictures, using the small digital camera I have in real life.
I kneel down, I use clever angles, I capture as much of one scene as possible. When I kneel in the dirt, the whole thing smells like ancient decay and I feel age, but it doesn't smell correspondingly. Or at least, I don't remember if it smelled.
Behind the beam/wall, is somehow another wall (in life this would make no sense, it probably doesn't now either).
This wall is green, covered in years of moss. Soft, green textured moss. Up high, toward the ceiling and illuminated, are horseshoes. Horseshoes hung above a doorway signify good luck, and these shoes look as if they have been up there generating luck for as long as the barn has been standing. I am trying to get a good, framed shot of theses horseshoes and the soft beam of light and drifting dust motes, and it isn't happening, the shot I want. Think Norman Rockwell painting.
As I'm moving around to get this shot, I run into something, to my right.
It is clear. And round, an orb of some sort. Gelatinous, not in that sense that it feels jello-y and squishy, because I don't feel it or see it, but in that sense of bouncing right off of it with a miniture vibrational shift up through my shoulder and head, like they do in the cartoons, wavy, wiggly "blluhhuhhhh" lines to show bounce.
I bounce back to where I was standing moments ago. Bounce is the wrong word because it seems to imply some speed, and this was not quick. I shift back? At first, I have no idea what I ran into. I can't see anything there, but something is keeping me from getting the perfect shot, of the horseshoes and softly aged sun.
I try again, and it has made itself solid. I still can't see it, and it has no shape, but I know it's clear and round. And standing its ground. There is no way past this thing, and I realize that it's not good. It's something evil, something unhappy, and I'm instantly scared. But I stay.
For whatever reason, I wrap my arms around it. I don't think I want to, I think it sort of forced itself upon me, and I'm trying to protect? myself. I start praying, using words and images and entreaties-- not to it, but God and his forces. I'm reassured that I'll be ok, I'll walk out of the barn.
This thing and I keep on hugging, in a corner-ish area, on the southeastern part of the barn, near the door, and I feel nails digging into my hand. I'm certain they are nails, although I can't see anything of any sort and I still sense that this thing is round.
I don't know if I hug this thing out of existence, but I don't think so. I think I take it into me.
And then the dream ends.

I wake up on my left side, arms wrapped around me as much as they can be, with a pillow sort of underneath my right arm. I am shrouded in a soft, white blanket. The sun is coming in through slats in the blinds, and my stomach hurts. I can feel the dream in my brainstem, in my stomach, my right leg, my foot. I am not scared or crying, but full, almost sickened by taking in too much. I feel like I have that slight vibrational hum of life and activity. I have no idea what that means, because I AM alive and mostly active, so I have that anyway. But this is new and different (no, I'm not pregnant, it's not possible) and it is making my stomach crazy, which is why I mention it.
And this is the only reason I think I took this thing in, truly.