Secret Pop

May 2, 2007

"We're done."

The other night, I had a dream that began in Disneyland. Or a less engaging version of it, with some kind of bumper car flume ride where half the gondolas were stuck facing sideways, and the people aboard them didn't realize until the ride got going that they were only going to watch everyone else having the time of their lives. I remember walking in the roundabout at the end of Main Street and noticing that there weren't very many people. It was night, and the walkways were wet. It was cold. Dewy. I think I had an argument with someone under a lamppost.

At some point in the dream, I was then on a plane flying back from San Francisco over the water at night. Something was wrong. I could see the people around me beginning to panic. When I looked out the window, I could see the ocean and a few far-off lights. And I could tell with suddenness that the plane was beginning to go into a nosedive. There was less noise than I expected. One of the people on the plane was talking, and he said with a calm that surprised me: "We're done." And I knew he was right as we hit the water. I expected to watch myself die. I even wondered if I would be able to see the moment of impact or if it would be so powerful that this moment of conscious thought would just fold seamlessly into the blackness. But when we hit the water, the fuselage didn't buckle, and none of us were thrown from our seats. I knew we we were going to go down into the water, and I reached for my phone and began sending a text message with the flight number and the fact that we had crashed into the sea to several people in my phone book. I wondered if they would know what to do.

Last night, I was awake all night. Tired and listless but unable to sleep. I'd spent the day shooting behind the scenes video and stills on two different productions, and the day was long as a result. I made very few notes. I remember wanting to write down that an SUV in front of me had a mason's bumper sticker on it, and I wondered what masons are really like and if I might actually know one but just not be aware of it. But most of the day was waiting. And waiting really takes it out of me.

I didn't fall asleep until well after 6 a.m. And the dream I recall took place in something like a large hotel, where there were a lot of people that I knew doing the things that people do in hotels, and I was trying to look like I was doing them, too, even though I was preoccupied with one person and whether we were going to run into each other or find ourselves in a situation that made having a conversation not seem like a surrender. I saw him eating in a restaurant, and I was trying to finish breaking the pieces of flatbread in front of me in time to run into him before he left without looking like I was in a hurry. He was wearing a blue shirt, and I didn't like having to rush.

While trying to sleep, I made a lot of effort to comfort my dog. She was fast asleep, and I realize it was projection.

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