All I Have to Do Is Dream

Last night I looked out the window and the world was draped in a thick veil of mysterious fog. If it hadn't been past midnight and if I didn't have to get up the next morning at 8am, I swear I would have been out in that fog, searching for the seams between the dimensions and listening for the ocean crashing against distant rocks. Instead, I went reluctantly to bed and was awakened to the glorious sight of early morning fog cloaking the tentative light so delicately.

The rest of the day was mad, mad, mad. It rained hard and furious and Main St was lined with bright yellow school buses letting kids off, picking kids up, pumping hot exhaust fumes into the never ending rain. We got 2,800 kids into and out of the theater despite the fact that the show ran long, the rain was merciless and everybody forgot to bring umbrellas.


And I found out that I don't know how to pronounce Leicester, much to the merriment of the volunteers. What I assumed was "LeiCHESTER" is apparently, quite simply, "LESTER." Luckily, I figured this out BEFORE I did my dismissal. Again, I threw in some Flynn trivia questions and the kids went wild trying to guess how many seats are in the theater (FYI: 1,453). The more time I spend in front of that huge audience, the more comfortable I get. Watch out Vegas, she might be taking this schtick on the road! Oh my!

Below is an email that I sent to three people in 2004 when I had recently moved back to Vermont after a decade of living in California. I was (and still am, in some respects) in the midst of culture shock, homesickness, and frequent jaunts down memory lane. Also, I was having serious difficulty making inroads in VT and laying down roots in my old home state. Additionally, I was inspired by Isak Dinesen, rainy days (daze) and dreams. Wish I had more dream time these days and some time to wander aimlessly in the fog and the rain...

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DREAM EMAILS … July 2004

From: "Eva Rabbit"
To:
Subject: snooze
Date: Wed, Jul 7, 2004, 2:10 PM

m

i have been dreaming too much recently. my life is so mono-tonal and dull that it is only in my dreams that my imagination takes flight. it is so hard for me to wake up that i often can't raise my head off the pillow till noon....and this is despite the pleading whining dog begging for her morning exercise. so deep are my dreams that i am tired when i wake up, as though i had traversed great distances. so complicated are my dreams that i can't communicate in the morning. my head is all misty from the multitude of undertakings i have been participating in.

last night it was some sort of a counter espionage thing and, as is often the case, the fate of the world depended upon ME! i was planning a very careful route through some mansion into some other world where i was going to, without arousing the detection of the bad guys who were everywhere and controlled everything, somehow manage to steal some very secret papers that were somehow going to aid the resistance in their fight against evil. i couldn't understand the directions properly so another freedom fighter wrote them down for me. i managed to follow them successfully to the other world where i went about finding the special papers. i got them and was on my way through the customs booth back to the other world when something happened. was i discovered? found out? all chaos was breaking lose around me and then i realized, "it's him!" i pointed at the little shrunken, innocent head of the shrunken companion that i had thought to be my ally and yelled, "It's him!" all this time he had been a spy for the other side. the clarity of discovery washed over me. then i woke up.

it is like this almost every night. the real world is losing its flavor by comparison. not to say that it is all bad. there are some good things too. i love my cable access show and my family, pets, garden and cooking madness. but i haven't managed to meet any like minded people here yet so there is just my solitary job projecting where i drift from one imaginary world to another....not so different from my dream life i suppose. and then there are books and there is tv. i go from one story to another, never living them myself, just experiencing them vicariously.

i am trying to be positive about it, after all, at least i have this fascinating dream life, and it is better than nothing. and there are so many daily, simple pleasures to enjoy...tea in the morning, reading in the hammock, baths at night, making pancakes, frolicking with the dog......but no stories of my own making....

here is to hoping that the big apple will give me some scintillating conversation and flirting with pretty people and perhaps even a story or two of which i can be a supporting player, if not the STAR!!!!!!!! or at least let me spin a tale or two and let some listeners catch it and remember it...

i read this before dosing off last night. it is from "7 Gothic TAles" by isak dinesen. it was written in 1934 but it couldn't be anymore relevant to what i have been blabbing about. The character is an old storyteller (who happens to have his nose and ears cut off....ooch! another thing for me to be thankful for) who is bemoaning his disenfranchisement with life......

"what is life, Mira, when you come to think upon it, but a most excellent, accurately set, infinitely complicated machine for turning fat playful puppies into old mangy blind dogs, and proud war horses into skinny nags, and succulent young boys, to whom the world holds great delights and terrors, into old weak men, with running eyes, who drink ground rhino-horn?"

...........

"what is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine? You may even ask which is the more intense craving and pleasure: to drink or to make water? But in the meantime what has been done? A song has been composed, a kiss taken, a slanderer slain, a prophet begotten, a righteous judgement given, a joke made. The world drank in the old story teller Mira. He went to its head, he ran in its veins, he made it glow with warmth and color. Now I am on my way down a little; the effect has worn off. The world will soon be equally pleased to piss me out again, and I do not know but that I am pressing on a little myself. But the tales which I made - they shall last."
.............

"And in my dreams I still know fear. Things are terrible to me there. In my dream I sometimes carry with me something indefinitely dear and precious, such as I know well enough that no real things be, and there it seems to me that I must keep this thing against some dreadful danger, such as there are none in the real world. And it also seems to be that I will be struck down and annihilated if I lose it, though I know well that you are not, in the world of daytime, struck down and annihilated, whatever you lose. In my dreams the dark is filled with indescribable horrors, but there are also sometimes flights and pursuits of a heavenly delight."

that pretty much sums up my dream life of recent date, not to mention my bitter musings about the world. to drink or to piss? oh m. it does me good to think i am in some faraway person's thoughts, even if you are just staying that to be kind, it warms my frozen solid heart.

is this over dramatic? please excuse me but i exist in a dream state, come on, cut a girl some slack. tell me more about what you ate for dinner. and tell me if this world is essentially good or bad? i have a lot of time on my hands to mull over this.

xoxo eva xoxoxo


TO M IN SEATTLE
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From: "Eva Rabbit"
To:
Subject: something affectionate
Date: Sat, Jul 17, 2004, 2:57 PM


dear m

thanks for dashing off that lovely reply. it didn't feel at all dashed and i hope that you made it to your fiddle appointment on time. you are always spoken for these days? every moment is accounted for? yes, that drives me mad. i have hit a point in my life where i go mad if every moment is relegated. i very definitely need snooze time and space-out time and tea and paper time in the morning (mid-afternoon if you want to be exact).


my last job that took up all of my time made me angry in a strange way. i had to drive from oakland out to the presidio every day and sit at a desk for a film festival. i had to be in charge of people and hire people and be the "boss" type who makes the schedule. blech. not my thing. i began to rebel and every morning i came in a little later and then a little later still. no one had the balls to call me on it so i slowly worked my way to coming in after 11ish and then even after 1pmish. i just couldn't stand being there all day. and i took long lunches meandering through the tall grass at the pet cemetery nearby (have you been? heavenly, it's underneath the freeway that leads to the golden gate...) or sitting and soaking in the nearby ocean at Chrissy Fields. no one else took lunches ('cept to the local hip lunchy place).

no one else took walks. i couldn't get it. and the gap between me and the busy bees became too wide to ignore. i had a dream life and they had cocktail hour after work. what am i blathering about? who knows. i was glad when that job was over but i did like having nice people to work with daily...even if they drove huge SUVs and min-vans and my car was falling apart. also, i discovered at that job how to be a flake and get away with it. i basically did my job and so people just accepted my weird way of avoiding the ankle clamps and doing my own weird thing. blah blah.


the trip to nyc was nice but i couldn't help but feel a bit crazy amidst all that mad stimulation. when i was young i walked the streets of nyc with a weird confidence. i was hungry for noise and distraction and madness and chaos. i drank it up and looked for more. this time around i felt a wee bit more timid. the bustling streets made me feel lonely. the crowds made me claustrophobic. i was looking for someplace calm and cool in which to hide from the pee stench and the constant eye contact. what the hell happened to me? i'm like a scarred, bitter, once was adventuress. once was brave and now is afraid of her own shadow? well, at least i have my dreams.

yesterday at work one of the candy girls pointed to a picture of Julia Roberts on the cover of Star and said, "eugh". she had armpit hair and the cover story was about the stars imperfections./ it brought high school back to me and all the closed-minded, small town girls who abhorred the sight of anything different or bohemian...basically, everything that is me. i think i am here for reason. i'm not sure why yet but i think i have to face these teenage ghosts in order to move on.

it rained yesterday and i stood at the large windows of my movie theater, watching people get soaked as they ran the short distances from their cars to the theater entrance. the sky was dark and petulant. i could stand and watch it out those windows for hours. sometimes i do.

it was decades ago that it was me walking up to that theater and buying a ticket to "ET" and "Raiders of the Lost Arc." the hour drive from the sticks to the SHowcase was exciting like a death-defying adventure with a pot of gold at the end. i was young and deluded enough to imagine my life would one day blossom into a plot at least as interesting as what i was seeing on those screens. and now my life revolves around the screens and the screens only. but at least i have my window to the sky...and my nightly escapades through dreams...and at least i saw some sights that were above and beyond my little vermont world. unforgettable and burned onto my retina. plenty for me to mull over in these quiet moments that follow.

this babbling just goes on and on. no pressure to write me back m. take your time and think of me when you are rushing off somewhere and maybe, even allow yourself to be late!!!!! i'm telling you, if you don't make a big deal about it, neither will they! try it!

from the middle of nowheres-dreamsville,

xoxo eva xxpxp