the pillow book
last night i dreamt that henry ward beecher walked in on me hugging a boy, pulled a gun and shot the boy six times through. i screamed and screamed but didn’t wake up. for the rest of the dream, in which i was supposed to be under beecher’s control, i had to pretend that boy hadn’t been murdered and that i didn’t keep seeing replays in my mind.
it couldn’t have been what i was reading before i fell asleep, because i was reading sei shonagon, a copy of which i only just located at second story books years after i stopped looking. the snicket books are lodged close enough to the forefront of my mind to potentially cause nightmares, and so are ehrenreich’s nickel and dimed and c mcc’s member of the wedding, both of which i began recently. but holding literature responsible — isn’t that what nazis and censors do?
it couldn’t have been what i was eating, because i had fruit salad for dinner, and nothing bad ever happens on account of fruit salad.
i suppose it could have been what i was watching. the sopranos are notoriously violent and they showed the episode last night where dr. melfi gets raped in the parking garage. but i watched sex and the city immediately thereafter and the wedding was so cute that surely it gooed and cooed over the morbid residues in my subconscious, rendering them harmless.
or it could have been a result of the general recent topsy-turviness. my grandfather’s still in the hospital, recovering from kidney failure. my house still seems to expect my dog to return. the house itself is in the midst of a face-lift. and i’m applying to mfa programs.
i managed to write a draft of my Who Am I, What Do I Want admissions essay today. perhaps that will inspire dreams of satisfaction and optimism tonite.