and i can hear, see, smell, touch, taste

last night i dreamed of orcas. big orcas, baby orcas. i was standing on a rocky shore with friends and we were watching them moving up a thin channel layered with shallow rocks and raging rapids and the babies were small but still twice the size of me and one was riding atop it's mother's back. and the mother lifted herself up onto a red wooden bridge just below my rocky vantage point and i was terrified she wouldn't be able to thwump her way across the wood to get back into the icy water and i crawled my way down the ledge and put my hands all over her back and pressed my nose into her rubbery skin and smelled salt and seaweed and told her it was time to go home. and her great eye whirled around backwards and looked at me, black and white and shining, and it seemed her head imperceptibly nodded and whap whap whap her great tail thrashed and her great body moved and she splashed down.

i climbed back up onto the rocks to sit with my friends again and watch them all swim away, and then, without knowing why, and feeling guilty, we flicked our cigarette butts into the orca-free water, watched them dampen and swirl in the eddies and currents, and disappear around a corner, and i woke up.

point of awareness

i half-dreamed i was talking to an old lady on a bus, and she asked me to hold out my hands, palms up, and depending on which hand was lower, right or left, i'd know how many good dreams, and how many bad dreams, i had left in me for the rest of my life. i couldn't tell which hand was lower and was about to ask her which hand meant good and which hand meant bad when she raised her own hand to me and slapped me square in the chest, hard and purposefully, as though she were trying to pound life back into me, clucking angrily. "there!" she cried, "there! stupid girl. this was a test! the dreams aren't in your hands. they're in your heart. wake up!" she slapped my chest, right between my breasts, again. hard. she was furious and frustrated with me. the thumping noise her palm made against my sternum dragged me up from my half-sleep. i lay there wondering what on earth that was all about.

i'm 'the one'.

i had a dream last night i was sitting on a rooftop overlooking a huge city, at dusk. beside me was a friend who i've always harboured a sometimes-tiny, sometimes-enormous crush on. he was telling me that he was about to ask his current girlfriend to marry him. i just remember looking down between my sneakered feet, down down down, at least 30 stories between me and the sidewalk and the cars and people busying themselves below, all out of focus, and feeling as though an enormous weight was pressing on me, like it was going to crush my head. i tried to make a moaning noise, i felt so sad that he was about to marry someone that wasn't me, even though i knew i would never marry him myself, even if circumstances were different and i wasn't already somewhat happily hitched. so i tried to make this noise, this sort of moaning, sad noise, to express myself, and what came out of my throat was a genuine rumbling growl, as though my throat had grown thick with muscles and unfamilliar vocal chords. my friend took his eyes off the glittering skyline and looked at me curiously, and then his eyes grew huge and terrified. i couldn't figure out what was going on until i looked at my hands. they'd turned into great, huge, furry orange and white paws. my head felt heavier, and more square, my mouth itched. i tried to shake the feeling off and get off of the ledge to walk around a bit, and that was when i realized that i had turned into a bengal tiger. my friend was speechless, gaping at me. i twisted my body around, landed on my four huge paws, and loped slowly away, leaving him on the darkening roof, to wonder.

flash flood 04

last night i dreamed that leon and i were out in a public place together. it was busy, very busy, and we kept losing each other in the crowd. i would stand on my tip-toes and catch sight of him, leagues away from me, waving. i kept trying to get to him, unsuccessfully. i had my camera in my hands and i was snapping pictures of him every time i thought i had a good line of sight. suddenly this parade of police started marching through the crowd, with people in handcuffs at their sides. no one knew what was going on, it was some sort of massive arrest. all the "criminals" were wearing threadbare tiger costumes. i saw that one of our friends, shane, was dressed in such a costume, being led away. i caught leon's eye and he spotted shane too. we were both distressed. i started firing off pictures of shane in his tiger costume and handcuffs. despite the fact that he was obviously in trouble, he was still smiling. he didn't see me or leon even though we were yelling his name. i finally lost leon in the crowd, and decided that i would head towards home and meet with him there.

i walked and walked. i finally found myself on a deserted suburban street in one of our old neighbourhoods. i tried to walk up the steep sidewalk to get to our side street, but my legs gave way. i couldn't move at all. i was lying, prone, on the street, trying to crawl across the road. a car was trying to get past me, honking at me, but the woman inside wouldn't get out to help me. i finally managed to pull myself up to a standing position and jerkily walked across the road. it was only a block or two more to get to my street, but i couldn't do the walking. a bus appeared and i managed to climb up inside it. the driver was very concerned for me and took the bus off it's regular route to drop me at my front door. it was the house we lived in with shane before i got pregnant with my son, a tiny bungalow. when i got off the bus my legs worked again. i undid all the locks on the door with my keys and walked into the living room to find my old dog, cheevers, sleeping in a patch of sunlight. he looked up sleepily at me. i dropped my bags and jacket and called him to my side. i walked through the silent house to the kitchen and was going to open the back door to let him out so he could pee, when i saw that the back alley was raging with flood waters, at least waist-deep. they hadn't swelled into our yard yet, but i was too stunned to open the door and let the dog out. i just stared and stared and tried to figure out where all the water was coming from. suddenly a big rig appeared, driving down the hill in the flood. it was trying to create a dam out of used tires of all different sizes. it finally blocked the alleyway and suddenly all the water was thundering through my backyard and hit my house with a sonic boom sound. i clung to the window sill in shock as i watched everything that was in our yard wash away. the man who was driving the rig leapt out of the driver's side door and waded his way across my precarious back yard. he climbed up the steps and his face appeared on the other side of the window.

"hey!" he said, "hey!"

"hey!" i cried back, "what the hell is going on?"

i could barely hear him over the din of the raging flood.

"i was landscaping my backyard with this borrowed machine from my work and i hit a watermain!" he shouted. "i can fix it but i need help, and the guy who can help me won't be available until tomorrow!"

"well that doesn't do me any good!" i cried back, through the glass, "my whole house is going wash away at this rate!"

he looked sad and worried. "i know," he said, his voice suddenly quiet. even as the flood raged behind him, i could no longer hear it. it was just his face in the window, his quiet voice against the glass, his breathing. "i know. and i'm very, very sorry for that."

i banged my palm against the glass, angry. his face vanished and the sound of the flood returned. roaring. undefeatable. i felt the cement walls of the basement give way under the water's pressure. my last thought was of a photograph i'd taken, of shane, arrested, in his tiger suit, and leon's face a few yards behind him, nearly swallowed up by a crowd. my old dog whined and laid down at my feet. i banged the window again. the flood seeped under the doorway. i woke up.

the house was lit with nothing but xmas lights. i think it was supposed to be tonight, new years eve. i had people over: my mom, my friends, plus steve burns, tom waits and wayne coyne. we were drinking and having fun. my husband was entertaining the children in the rumpus room and i was playing at being the hostess with the mostest, flitting around the room refreshing drinks, offering h'ors d'eouvres made of phyllo pastry and telling entertaining stories. the celebrities in my midst seemed bored and i was running out of ways to stimulate them. finally i took off my apron, set down the tray of food, and said, "i can do amazing things. would you like to see?"

steve burns was the most enthusiastic. "yes, i know you can do amazing things, but i still would like to see them performed." he sat down on the couch and folded his hands in his lap. wayne coyne and tom waits stood together near the tree and sipped whiskey from highball glasses filled with ice. my mother and friends were looking at one another with confusion in their eyes. i smiled knowingly at everyone, and then, with an effortless leap, lifted myself into the air, my toes pointed, my arms outstretched, and began gliding around the room. my belly filled with warmth at the feeling of weightlessness. everyone started, aghast, as i drifted through the house, my pretty party dress dangling from my legs, my bracelets tingling on my arms as i used them to propel me through the air.

there was some incredulous laughter, and as i glided past tom waits, he reached up to touch me, as if to see if i were real. i smiled down at him and evaded his hands. wayne coyne joined in the game, trying to get a hold of me. steve burns got off the couch and started following me around, making small jumps up at me. everyone was following my gently floating form through the house, trying to reach up and grab a hold of me, maybe to hitch a aerial ride along with me, but their hands would slip off, they couldn't get a good grip, and i would roll over onto my back and kick my feet lazily, as if i were swimming, and i was laughing and laughing at them. it was the funniest joke in the world.

haunting

leon and i were sitting up in bed, in our jammies, playing cards and smoking and drinking wine, when i looked over at the corner at the end of the bed and saw bagheera. he was laying down but his head was up and looking beautiful and noble. i was shocked, and pointed at him and said, "leon! it's bagheera! he's back!"

bagheera stood up and strode across the covers, knocking our cards astray, and then gently leaped off the bed and wandered over towards the closet. we were watching him while we held hands, wondering if he was real or perhaps a visiting spirit. i started crying from relief that the whole ordeal had been a bad dream. leon was petting my hair and stunned into silence.

bagheera sat down on his haunches and the most amazing transformation took place. he slowly and gently morphed into two cats. they looked like him, but smaller, and where he was brown, they were peach coloured. where he had one eye, they had two. where his eye was an irridescent, almost supernatural violet hue, theirs were a clear, bright green, almost like pale glass. they looked like twins and sat side by side next to one another, watching us.

i don't know what we said, but we were shocked and surprised and a little awed at the mystical implications of what we'd just witnessed. we called them over to us and were petting them. if they were seperated by more than a few feet, they would both become disoriented and start stumbling, like bagheera had in the moments before his death. we decided that they were bagheera's reincarnation and that they each represented one part of his whole and that they should be kept together at any cost.

marvelling at this amazing development we introduced them as "bagheera" to the children who were confused. i didn't care. i was high. high on the fact that something divine had come down out of the heavens and touched a fingertip to our lives and given us a strange and inexplicable gift. i wanted to take the bagheera cats out with me, show them to people and explain the story, so that they might understand as i did there are marvelous forces at work in the universe that do magical and amazing things. i scooped the two cats up in my arms and carried them out to the car, plopped them in the passenger's seat and drove up towards liam's school where i knew there would be some parents i could amaze. i pulled up to the fence running alongside the schoolyard and called some parents i recognized over to see the magical cats. they came and were ooh'ing and awww'ing and some seemed skeptical about my story, but i didn't care. as i was talking to them, though, i got a strange, dark feeling in my chest. my eyes glanced up and in the rearview mirror i saw a woman, a very bland, plain looking woman, maybe in her 40s, with a beak nose and a lined face and a quiet expression of resignation, sitting in my back seat.

i stopped talking to the parents and they wandered away. i rolled up the window and turned to face the woman. she didn't speak. i said, "who are you? why are you here?" she looked me right in the eyes at that point and i could see infinite sadness in them, and determination. i suddenly realized who she was, this boring lunchlady-esque woman in my back seat all bundled up in a brown puffy parka. she was an angel of death, here to amend the fluke chance of bagheera coming back to us, even in an altered form. "no, no, please no," i begged her, quietly, wanting to pull the cats in close to me to keep them from her. she still did not speak, she only looked more sad. i started crying as she leaned forward, the vinyl of the seat squeaking underneath her, her arm extending over the passenger's side seat, her index finger extended loosely towards the cats. i cried and cried.

it was quick. she gently moved her finger along their jawlines, like a soft swoop or a friendly hook like you would do to a friend who is blue, as if to say, "chin up, you." the effect was immediate. the cats melded back into one another, became bagheera as i knew him in his first incarnation, with his one eye and his chocolate point markings, and then he turned into a very small human baby boy, who writhed in his death throes, in the front of my car.

blacking out in the patisserie

Hovering over the slick wood veneer, pen in
Quivering hand poised to sign a credit card slip
Packages exploding from out of bags
Handles cut into tender flesh
When I blacked out in the patisserie.
In that last moment before the vortex swirled up
Narrowed down and closed into pinpoints of light
I wondered
What do YOU write in cards to rock stars?
Is your handwriting spidery?
I was only wondering because
I bought chocolates for acquaintances today
And blacked out in the patisserie.

O, mall, mall, most dreaded of halls,
With your poisoned air and your fried fat stalls,
It's a wonder we ever go in you, mall.
It's a wonder we get out alive, at all.

miranda's cellar

rising from the cellar of miranda!
the spaces between the wooden slat steps, a void!
effecting
tendrils of contraband smoke willowing out the door strip
not foiled by the threadbare towel stuffings,
not foiled!
trailing up behind, sweet scented, food scented
the spaces between the wooden slat steps, a void!
miranda laughing
quietly below
you never know
would her mother and father be home up there?
would they know?
what we'd been doing?
what we'd been into?
eyes rimmed red and throats clasping for moisture?
and the spaces between the wooden slat steps, a void!
cricking!
cricking door at the summit
you know it opens on a hallway's olive green carpeting
and a sideboard made of 70's panelling
eyes rimmed red, and mouth dry like grit
cricking! cricking door at the summit!
and it opens as you approach
miranda!
laughing quietly at you,
she's done this every day for 18 years.

he's still there, affixed
"what is that, fiber glass? what?"
miranda, laughing quietly behind you
he's still there, you're transfixed
his visage so tortured and gory on prominent display
his eyes rolled back so far in his shining head
waxed head!
only whites show!
his skin white like snow!
his arms out wide in a "t"
only white shows
the red trickling of his pain
and the cricking door at the summit
and the spaces between the wooden slat steps, a void!
and the phantom parents who lurk, or not
and miranda!
miranda!
laughing quietly with you!
at the shame of her family's fervor
and the fiber glass reminder each morning she rises
when a man is left to die for days
with bolted hands and feet to wood in a "t"
white only shows
white only shows the red and the rimmed eyes, more brightly
as you rise from miranda's cellar.

my dream last night was so weird. i can only remember pieces of it. first, we were living in this huge, old, deserted ballroom with luscious thick red carpet and drapes and all the furniture (scores of empty tables and elegant chairs) were gold filigree. but it was cold and dark and weird. we just sort of kept to one end of the ballroom with our sleeping bags and propane stoves.

i had somehow managed to fundraise by offering to hold a fancy dance in the ballroom and the dance was all over and i was tallying up my profits, and my mom demanded a cut (even though she hadn't really done anything) and i was really mad at her and resentfully handed over the lion's share of the money and she left with her boyfriend.

and my daughter, all through the dream, kept choking on everything she tried to eat. (this isn't that far from the truth, my daughter DOES gag and choke a lot, which makes me crazy!)

and finally, our cat was wandering around all SLICED UP, like a loaf of bread, only not cut all the way through to the bottom, so that every time he jumped or walked the slices would spread apart and you could see the gooey pink and red of blood and flesh and the severed sections of spine. it freaked me out and i kept insisting we had to take him to the vet but no one else seemed worried and my husband told me we didn't have money for it anyway. and people were still holding the cat and petting the cat even though he was so injured. their hands were all covered in blood and ick and they didn't even care.