oct 95-dec 95
dream journal
30 December
I had written one of the stories from "Four Rooms" and Quentin Tarantino
was directing it. He was complimenting me on the story and, though I was
very flattered, I avoided him because I thought he might be flirting with
me and he's just too much of a dweeb.
16 December
I was in a production of "A Midsummer's Night Dream" directed by Amy
Enell. I was Titania again and I was wearing the mask that I'd made for
makeup class. Typical actor's nightmare stuff, but with a twist: I
remembered all the lines, but realized that all of Titania's scenes had
been cut.
13 December
Something about being held captive in a closet by some evil person and
her child. I tried unsuccessfully to escape by hitting the child with a
chair and as
punishment the woman said she was going to set me on fire. She doused me
with some kind of reactive substance and then explained that she was
going to start pouring this other liquid on top of that one and it would
eventually react with the first and make me burst into flame. She
started to pour that stuff on me. I was afraid, but I knew I wouldn't be
killed. I kept my mouth scrunched shut and my eyes tightly closed.
Didn'tt want any of that stuff on the inside. At some point I realized
that it wasn't working and it wasn't going to work. I felt a bit warm in
spots, but I thought it was just the power of suggestion and not really
any chemical reaction producing flames. I opened my eyes. The woman
eventually gave up and let me go.
22 November
Waiting in the Circle in a truck, Toby at the wheel. We were dispatching
folks in other cars for Meals on Wheels when I suddenly remember that
this can't be Thanksgiving since I have to be elsewhere on Thanksgiving.
Then what the hell were we doing there? I think to ask, but Toby starts
to drive and I keep quiet. I think at first that he's going to take me
home, but he turns
the wrong way down 28th and I'm too embarrassed to say anything. Myrlin
is there, too, which makes me feel a little more comfortable, though I
wonder why she is not driving. Sights get more and more unfamiliar and I
finally ask where we're going. You're going to the concert, right?, says
Toby. What concert? I feel bad for not saying anything sooner,
especially with Myrlin in the car and with Toby going so far out of his
way to take us to the concert (which he himself was not attending).
Several freeway exits and twists and turns down half-familiar streets later,
and we're somewhere in Milwaukie and I think that I've been here before,
but I haven't. Still feeling bad about the misunderstanding, I say, Drop
us here, this is fine, when we get to the hotel which happens to be the
same hotel where the concert is. We went into the hotel into the concert
hall
which was small for a concert, I thought. I take a seat in the very back
and set my suff down on the seat beside me. An older man approaches and
asks is this seat taken to which I apologize for taking up the seat and
say no, please, sit. Eavesdropping on passing conversations, I figured
out that this man I was sitting next to was actually GUS VAN SANT (tho'
he was actually much too old to be gus) and I was proud and pleased to be
sitting next to the man himself (whose concert this was, incidentally).
Other friends of mine were there (esp. those from high school) and I
heard one of them say look! it's Michele! and it surely was Michele\
Whitworth who was looking much more female than I had expected her to
appear. I went to greet her and though pleased she seemed unsurprised.
I was talking to someone in her entourage of friends who was very much
entranced by a block of amber on the table by the wall. We sat down
because it was time for the "concert" (Gus's speech) to begin.
21 November
I. Under some kind of false pretnese I was attending one of the classes
of... y'know, the guy. I was extremely nervous especially since
in the dream he was still in high school (I was still a college student,
as normal) and I felt
very silly sitting in this desk chairs again and I felt much older than
everyone else. I'm not exactly sure why I was there. Maybe I was doing
some kind of study or survey or something, or maybe thay were covering a
topic that day in class that would be somehow necessary in my thesis. I
think that I thought all these possibilities at one point or another
during the dream. Whatever the pretense was, the real reason I was there
was for him. I sat in the seat behind his. He wasn't in class
yet, but I knew it was his seat because there was a shirt hanging on the
back of the chair which I recognized as his, plus it was a gym shirt or
something and had his name written in sharpie on the sleeve. I thought
for awhile about stealing it and wearing, but thought better of it. Good
thing, too, because he soon walked in and I would have felt like a goober
if he had caught me trying to steal his shirt. He sat down. He seemed
unsurprised tosee me, but he was preoccupied with being in the class.
Apparently, he had missed several sessions and now was skulking back with
that I-know-I-haven't-been-here-but-please-don't-give-me-a-hard-time
slouch. We exchanged a few words and I think on the whole he was glad to
see me there, despite his aloofness. We talked a bit about his shirt and
I started pulling stuff out of my backpack, stuff that I had brought
along specifically to impress him. I decided not to pull out the shirt I
have that's just like his, but I did take out one of those wire hoop
windshield visor things and handed it to him saying, "Fancy!"
II. Meridith exploded. I mean she really exploded. There were
bits of her everywhere. Everyone was very upset, but very restrained in
their response to the event. See, we all knew it would happen sooner or
later, but we were still sad and surprised when it finally happened.
III. Very sketchy: I was on my way to celeste's apartment - she lived in
Wimbledon. On the way there I was trying to remember her whole name,
thinking that "Celeste" was actually a dimunitive form of a longer name
and I was annoyed that I could only remember her nickname. After some
thought I decided the full name was "Celestemartini" (one word), but then
I realized that I'd had this whole train of thought before and discovered
then that her full name is just "Celeste." I got to Wimbledon and found
myself extremely disoriented. I wandered through the buildings looking
for Celeste's apartment. I gave up. Thomas McElroy came by and seeing
that I was lost offered to take me out to lunch. It was awfully nice for
him to do so and we had a lovely lunch until something went wrong, I
don't know what, and we fought and I wound up punching him right in the
jaw, knocking him unconscious. In the dream, this scene played and
re-played in slow-mo several times.
17 November
I discovered that I was preganant, already several months along, and I
wanted to have an abortion, but I realized that I didn't know where to go
since so many clinics had been bombed or otherwise shut down. Time was
running out. It would soon be too late for me to have an abortion. I
was extremely angry during the rest of the dream about the lack of
options for women.
15 Novemeber
I. I was looking for a shirt of mine. It was in his (y'know, the
guy I won't name here) room which was just down the hall. I thought he
wasn't in so i went inside to get the shirt. He was in the room, but
asleep so I tried to be really quiet and crawled around looking for the
shirt. He woke up and asked what I was doing which I divulged. He said,
"The shirt's on top of the refrigerator." It was.
II. I was watching this on TV or in a movie or something: a man was
plotting to kill his wife and in order to do so he turns himself into a
large sheet of paper tacked to the wall. She comes home and seeing the
paper takes up a pen and writes "sleet, selet" and other nonsensical
anagrams for the word "steel". This contacts the police in some way. He
waits until right before the police arrive to shoot her (so that she has
a beter chance of surviving). He shoots, the police arrive, she
understands that he has tried to save her. He morphs from the being the
paper into being the butler. She knows this but says nothing to the cops
as they take her to the hospital. Then the husband/butler "leaps"
(quantumly, complete with blue sizzle) and dispappears. She says,
"Wherever he is, he is happy."
11 November
There was a huge, raging party in the Foster-Scholz Lounge kitchen. The
kitchen in the dream was no bigger than it is in reality, but it fit more
people than you'd think it could. Still, there was some oveflow into the
lounge itself. The only people at the party that I actually knew
(all the people there were Reedies, so I sort of knew them) were Darcy and
Celeste,
neither of whom really wanted to be there. I, however, was dancing
and having a great time. It was so crowded that everyone had to stand
with their arms straight up in the air (made sense at the time). The
pagan guy from De Anza about whom Gary wrote to me a while back was there
and I was talking to him and trying to convince him to come to Reed. He
was hesitant, though, because the party seemed like such a rollicking
good time that he was afraid that his academics would suffer in such an
atmosphere. So I tried to explain to him that this was quite unusual,
but in the noise and confusion of the party, I eventually lost track of him
in the crowd. Some other guy was there and at the end of one song right
after I lost the guy and was looking around for him, that guy bent down
to kiss me. I think he thought that I was looking for him. I pushed him
away and looked over at Darcy and Celeste as I rolled my eyes. I walked
out into the lounge. This is where it gets really confusing and I can't
remember exactly what happened to get to me to the nextr point, but
eventually I wound up in this storage room with a bunch of other people
and we were all waiting for some guy to lead us on some kind of
expedition through the land which one got to through the door on the
other side of the room. The only specific person I remember being there
was Dave Bennett. I was talking to him (I think he may have been th
eonly person in the room that I knew). Trying to make conversation, I
asked him if he lived with
Harmony and he laughed and said that he didn't which I knew to
be untrue so I was really confused for awhile. Then the guy got there and
we went through the door. I can't remember much about the expedition
except that it was extremely dangerous and scary and at the very end I
had to crawl (crab walk, actually) over barbed wire to get out. The
tricky part of the barbed wire was that at the very end, there was an
unbarbed wire that somehow was more dangerous than the barbed ones. But
I made it through.
10 November
I am quite sure that in this dream there was a strong narrative structure
that held the whole thing together, but what exactly it was is not
something I remember now. What I do remember of the dream comes in
quick, vivid images. Here is what I remember:
Matt and I were walking to a house belonging to an older married couple.
Did we know them already? Were they relatives of some sort? Were they
even expecting us? I don't recall.
We snuck into their kitchen some time after being there to look for
food. I opened the refrigerator which was full of food. All of the food
was contained in separate metal bowls, like the kind used for serving
salad. I took out a bowl full of chocolate-covered orange candy sticks
and ate them all. They were yummy. Matt found a bowl French bread cut
into slices and another bowl of butter (there were several sticks all
cut in half to make little cubes of butter) and Matt ate that.
I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and saw that my hair
was really quite long. I was pleased that my hair had grown, but it
didn't look very attractive at all.
We were all at a swimming pool and I was debating whether or not I wanted
to go swimming because my suit was wet and I hate having to put on a wet
suit.
I had to get from the house to 37th and Holgate. This was desperately
important. There was a store of some kind there that I needed to go to.
I was somewhere on Powell, I think it was around Milwaukie. When I
pictured 37th and Holgate, though, I couldn't think of what store could
possibly be there, but I was sure that that was the address.
9 November
I was standing in the bathroom in a friend's house, fixing my
hair in the mirror. I bent down for a moment, I think to get a drink of
water from the faucet. I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my throat and I
stood up to see that something small and sharp had stabbed
me in the neck. Horrified and fascinated, I gently pulled the offending
object from my neck to see that it was one of those little plastic swords
used in restaurants to keep one's sandwich together. I looked in the
mirror to inspect the damage and saw that the wound, though large and
ugly, was not bleeding at all. In fact, I could see directly into my
throat, clearly able to discern my esophagus and trachea and also able to
see that the sword had punctured my larynx. I considered
for a moment the
problematic nature of calling for help when my larynx was essentially
gone. But then I became entranced by the fact that there was no blood,
only a bit of goo where my larynx should have been. I got a bit of
tissue from the toilet paper roll and though there was no blood to worry
about, I feared that there would be soon, so I held the tissue to my
throat as I called for help. Surprisingly, I could speak, though not
very loudly. Some friends came to my assistance, but no one seemed too
terribly alarmed. I asked for a phone which I received and I called 911,
but was unable to articulate the problem. I asked someone else to take
care of it which I suppose they did though I didn't see it happen. I
waited for a long time and no ambulance came. I tried not to make a big
deal about it since no one else seemed to think it was very bad, but my
throat hurt a lot.
5 November
Darcy and I were repainting our apartment and making a few other
household repairs. Realizing that she couldn't quite reach the ceiling
she said, "We really need a stretch ladder. You should go buy one." Not
knowing what a "stretch
ladder" is exactly, I decided to ignore her
suggestion for the time being and go grocery shopping. I brought along
the monster, my huge green suitcase to aid in my shopping endeavour. I
filled up my bag with groceries until it was near breaking and made my way
out the door when I realized that I'd forgotten to buy eggs which was the
main thing I was after when I left to go shopping in the first place.
But the bag was too full already and I was out of money so I just went
home. Darcy was gone and I remembered that the reason she had left was
because there was a play she was directing which was opening that night.
I was in the play in the lead role, but my call time was not for another
hour. To kill time, I continued with some of the household projects we
were working on before when I suddenly came into agreement with what
Darcy said earlier: we needed a stretch ladder. I decided to go out in
search of it and though I still didn't know exactly what it was I figured
that folks who work at a hardware store would and if I just said, "I need
a stretch ladder" they would understand. Also, I figured
that I could pick up eggs while I was out getting the ladder. I left the
apartment, but I couldn't get the cats to stay inside so I told them that
they could come along if they stayed near me. They were unusually
responsive and gamboled and trotted around in the streets but never
strayed too far.
The first stop I made was True Value, a safe bet, I
thought. Turns out that the neighborhood True Value hardware store was
actually a front for KOPB radio which used the proceeds from the store to
pay for the radio station. The problem was that the store was really
run-down and didn't have much of anything useful so the whole idea was
pretty much a flop. The DJ was broadcasting with a little tinny boom box
(don't ask me how) in the back room. I asked to see the stretch ladder
and he rummaged around for a while and finally found the ladder I was
looking for in the closet. It wasn't what I had imagined the stretch
ladder to be, though it still looked useful. I climbed up it andalthough
it was a little shaky I wanted to buy it even if just to support
public broadcasting. "How much?" I
asked. "Thirty-eight dollars,"
was his response. That seemed reasonable to me but then I suddenly
remembered the problem I had earlier at the grocery store: no money. I
told him to hold the ladder for me and I would be back later.
As I was
walking home with the cats, I decided to stop by another hardware store
to compare the prices. The store I went to, like True Value, was owned
by KBOO. Though it was also a bit run-down it appeared to be far more
successful than the KOPB store. There was a lot more stuff and it wasn't
as much of a sty as the other place. Also, there were several people
working there and they had more sophisticated broadcasting equipment.
Everyone seemed to be having a great time. I asked if it was okay for
the cats to come inside, but they said that one of the DJs was allergic
to cats. They didn't have stretch ladders anyway so I wasn't there
long. I went back home, pleased that the cats had stayed with me the
entire time. When I got home I looked at my watch and saw that there was
only a half an hour until curtain for the show. I hurriedly tried to get
ready, but I was still planning to drop by and pick up the ladder before
going to the show. I was also waiting for someone (I can't remember who)
to pick me up to take me to the theatre. That person eventually showed
up, but she had never driven before so maneuvering around on the streets
with her was a strange sort of activity. I had her take me back to True
Value which we managed without dying and I bought the ladder. Struggling
with the bulky purchase I got back into the car and we were off for the
theatre. When I got to the theatre
the dream turned into your typical
actor's nightmare: 2 minutes til curtain, I don't know any of my lines,
everyone else knows their lines but won't help me, costumes aren't
ready, house is full, etc.
Wow, that was a long dream.
4 November
I was reading a copy of Feudal Society by Marc Bloch and noticed
that it was edited by, among other people, Stephanie Coontz author of the
book we recently read for Senior
Symposium. I was confused for awhile
because I don't think she was even alive at the time that the book was
written, but I eventually reconciled it by figuring that she is just
older than I had previously imagined she was. As I read through the book,
I realized that he was making a very strange argument that the 1960s in
the United States marked a brief return of feudalistic society. The
argument was compelling and persuasive until I realized that Marc Bloch
was long dead before the sixties. "This is bullshit," I cried. "Marc
Bloch
couldn't have known this since he was a martyr for the French resistance!"
Darcy and I were moving from our apartment to a larger house with a lot
of people already living there. I was trying to figure out how to pack
everything efficiently and thoroughly when I realized that I was not only
already in the new house, but all of my stuff was there. "Well, I guess
I'll start unpacking," I thought, though I was annoyed that the previous
resident had not yet completely moved his/her things out of my new
room. I opened the
closet which was filled with hanging clothes and again I was angry that
all the space was taken up. But then I looked at the clothes and saw
that they were my own clothes and, in fact, all of the stuff in the room was
mine, too, all unpacked and arranged the way I wanted it. I must have
unpacked so efficiently and quickly that I hadn't even noticed myself
doing it. I pushed aside some of the clothes in the closet and saw that
there was a woman in a wheelchair behind all of the clothes. She was a
friend of mine who had recently been paralysed. There were
several friends (perhaps about a dozen people altogether)
gathered in the living
room anxiously awaiting our arrival and they burst into applause when they
saw us. I gingerly rolled my friend down the three steps into the room
and as I did so she began to sing the song "One" from "A Chorus
Line"
which inspired more applause. I rolled her into the middle of the living
room and sat down in a nearby chair as she continued with her
performance. Toward the end of the song she arose shakily from her chair
and danced a few hesitant steps before ending the song and collapsing
back into her chair. All the gathered spectators gave her a thunderous
round of applause.
3 November
All I remember are unconnected, but vivid, scenes from the dream. I
think they were at one point well-connected into a single narrative, but
this is all I remember now:
I was trying to draw a picture of a waterfall which fell
from a flat,
green cliff. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the picture until
I realized that I hadn't drawn in a source for the waterfall on top of
the plateau of the cliff. I drew that in, but there was still something
wrong. I drew a hasty, crooked black line at the point where the cliff
began to descend and was satisfied. "Ahhh, perspective!" I said.
I saw a Reedie friend at a restaurant which was atop the cliff I was
trying to draw earlier. I said, "You never talk to me anymore!" and she
responded, "This is a good thing." I told Darcy about this conversation
and she said, "She always says that."
I saw an advertisement for "erotic cakes" which was on a book of matches
that Justin gave to me when I asked him the meaning of the phrase.
Apparently, they were just small chunks of clay that could potentially be
shaped into something erotic. I failed to see the marketing potential of
such a product. (finger jglouie@csua.berkeley.edu to
understand where this is coming from)
1 November
I was living in an apartment which looked kind of like a cross between my
apartment now and the Arbitrarium in Wimbledon. The apartment
was also the library,
but only for the people living there (who
included Adam Warner, Darcy, Suzie and my sister, I think). My thesis desk
was
set up next to Adam's just like it is now, but his desk was blocking the
TV so I was trying to rearrange the desks in the apartment so that they
would not be in the way. I tried several things and none of them
worked; the desks were too big. I was beginning to get desperate
because for some reason I knew I'd be really embarrassed about the whole
situation when Adam found out (he wasn't home at the time). I
finally gave up and tried to watch TV from under the desk. Suddenly,
Adam was in the living room and he said, "Come on! I'll show you where I
moved the desks!" We went back into the far bedroom (which kinda looked
like Darcy's current bedroom) and the desks were there in a little alcove
set in the west wall. I was bouncing up and down, ecstatically happy
that he had discovered this before unseen alcove. I was also pleased
because there were two twin beds on opposite sides of the room, too (and
now the apt. was more like a dorm than a library), and I was looking
forward to falling asleep to the sound of typing. I was thinking
nostalgically about my Scholz days when Erica
would be using my computer after I went to bed.
28 October
[My dreams have been rather mundane lately and difficult to remember. I
haven't bothered to put them up here since they would be of little or no
interest to anyone including myself (not that I necessarily think that
these dreams listed here benefit humanity in any way, but at least most
of them are amusing if nothing else) and also because some of them needed
be censored not for questionable content (remember, my dreamlife has been
exceedingly mundane) but for the potential embarrassment of revealing
that many of my dreams of late have involved a certain person who shall
remain nameless. But then I realized that I doubt anyone actually reads
this (except maybe Matt) and that this dream journal is more for my
benefit than that of the web community at large. I set forth such a
lengthy and rambling argument in order to excuse the entries herein which
are exceptionally short and hardly at all interesting.]
Last night's dream involved the nameless man yet again. We were standing
with a group of people outside of the SEEDS office and he was talking
about how he was planning a party in the SEEDS lounge where 25 bands
would play between 6p.m. and 6 a.m of the day of the concert. I was
displeased with the whole idea because there should have been 24 bands
to make everything even and because I was afraid I would have to clean
up the mess.
22 October
I was standing at the reserve desk and Ben and Kristi were working there.
There were several people standing around chatting as people are wont to
do around the reserve desk and Kristi suddenly mentioned that she was
having an affair with a Reed professor (she mentioned the name, but I
don't remember who he was; it might have not actually referred to an actual
prof). As if to one-up her, Ben non-chalantly but quickly said that he
was having an affair with Lena Lencek. This, of course, stopped everyone
dead in their tracks. At first, I thought he was lying, but I later saw
them together and it was clearly true. (thanks go to Darcy for reminding
me that when I tell people about this dream, especially when on the Reed
campus, in case there should be any eavesdroppers, I should repeat loudly
and clearly several times during the narrative, "this was a dream, _not_
real.")
21 October
I was in Seattle
hanging out with Keanu
Reeves and River
Phoenix. I had
somehow travelled back in time and this was now shortly before River's death
and I knew that my duty there was
either to make sure that he didn't die or to ascertain without a doubt
the cause of his death. I was hoping it would be the former because as I
hung out with the two of them the more I liked both of them, River in
particular.
Both of them asked me not to call them by their more well-known names;
Keanu was to be "Golf Ball" or "Pink" and River, I believe, was supposed
to be "Ring Pop". If I really wanted to annoy Keanu, though, I'd call
him "Canoe" which he really hated and I think I only used once because he
was being a jerk. Anyway, we hung out and did Seattle things together,
though mostly all we did was hang around their apartment (nice aprtment,
too). I knew that the time for River's death was coming near and that I
had to stop it, but I wasn't allowed to say anything to either one of
them. The closest I got to mentioning it to either one of them was when
I was looking at River's ring collection (a box full of really
interesting and artistic, though clunky and large, rings) and asked him
if he had willed them to anyone yet. I think I was hoping that he would
will them to me.
River left the apartment without my noticing and I asked GolfBall (note:
during the dream I thought of River as River though outloud I called him
"RingPop", but Keanu I always thought of either as "Pink" or more
commonly "GolfBall" as if those were the names I'd known him by all
along) where he'd gone and he said, "I think he went somewhere to meet
girls." I knew that this was when River would die because I remembered that
River died outside
a club so I made GolfBall drive me to all of their favorite clubs. We
got kind of lost because, as I was explaining to Golf, "Seattle is
deceptively like San Francisco, but actually completely different."
I got kind of trapped at this one club for awhile because there was a woman
there who kept talking to me and trying to get me to dance. I finally
got out, knowing that much time had been wasted, and realized that Pink
had disappeared, too. I knew I'd never make it to River in time.
14 October
I was running from a mob of zombies who were attacking
the
greater Portland area. They were everywhere and zombism was extremely
contagious. I finally found a safe warehouse-type place to hide and once
I locked the door I heard a knock and a man pleading for me to open the
door and let him hide there, too. I could see him through the crack in
the door and could tell that he was not a zombie so I let him in. He
thanked me profusely and said that a zombie had
just bitten him. I got really angry with him and scared because I knew
of the zombie contagion of which he obviously did not know. He suddenly
screamed out in pain and bent over and when he stood up he was carrying a
baby in his arms to which he must have just given birth. I knew that the
baby must be a zombie simply because a man gave birth to it and therefore
something was clearly amiss. The man collapsed, dead, and the baby
crawled away very quickly. I chased after it meaning to kill it, but it
was very speedy and smarter than your average newborn. It turned itself
into a white paper cup (like the cups at the Paradox) which I at
first thought was
a really dumb move since it would be very easy to crush a paper cup. But
I realized when I walked into the room into which it rolled, that the
reason it had done that was because there were similar cups everywhere in
that room and I had to start crushing them all indiscriminately, which I
knew would be an ultimatey futile effort.
10 October
I was in a conference in Vollum (not any specific class, though) and all
of the students in it were friends ofmine, or at least people that I
know. We were waiting for Minott
Kerr who was the professor for the
class, but he was running late so he had arranged for a student to come
lead the conference in his absence. Though she was a Reedie I had never
seen her before. She had no idea
what to do; she didn't even know what we were reading for that day. In
exasperation, she said, "Well, why don't we just tell jokes, then?"
Nobody had any better ideas so we all agreed to do so. She started out
the joke-telling with some very old, well-known joke (which I can no
longer remember) and though it was vaguely funny, no one even chuckled.
It was one of those painful conference silences for a while until Jon Kiparsky finally said,
"I've got a joke" and proceded to tell this "joke" whic
h was really just
a series of several strange, unconnected vignettes, like:
"I was walking down the street yesterday and I saw a woman carrying a
poodle the size of an egg."
"Yesterday at the store a man bought a large bag of pretzels."
and so on. As he went on, with each vignette he grew louder and more
intense until he was standing on his chair and shouting. While this had
just about reached its peak, Minott finally arrived in class, rushing
into the room. And here's the weird part: he was wearing a really large
and ill-fitting full-length red leather coat. I was really fascinated
because it
seems so unlike Minott to own and wear such a garment. As he was rushing
in, he looked like he was about to say something, like "Sorry I'm late"
or something similar, but he realized that something was going on and
instead he sat down quietly so as not to disturb the scene. He looked
over at me with a quizzical expression as if to ask what was going on,
but i just shrugged since I knew no better than he. During this exchange
Jon must have reached his punch line because the whole class was
applauding and laughing. Minott, now also applauding, leaned over to me
and said, "I see; it's performance art."
5 October
I was in Sweden and everyone in
the entire country was attending an
assembly in the national arena. It was an awfully big arena (natch) and
I was wandering around in it, feeling lost, looking for a seat and
fearing that someone would notice that I'm obviously not Swedish and I
would be subsequently booted out of the country (which pretty much was
within the arena). I heard someone call out my name and I followed the
voice up to the higher levels of the bleachers. In fact, I think it may
have been the highest level of the stadium. The person who was calling
me was a Reedie (exactly who I don't recall, though I am quite sure it
was not Carl) and he gestured for me to sit beside him. As he started to
scoot over to make more space for me, I saw a rat-like creature scurry by
on the seat. I screamed and refused to sit down.
"What's wrong?" the Reedie guy asked innocently.
"THERE'S A RAT ON THE SEAT!" I screamed.
"That's not a rat!" he said picking up the very rat-esque animal.
"What is it then?"
"Don't you remember the song?" he asked surprised that I apparently
didn't. At this point he cleared his throat and began to sing:
If it didn't swim underwater
Then it wouldn't be
(and here he raised his hands as if to conduct an orchestra and the rest
of Sweden sang along)
A Mexican Underwater Chinchilla!
If it weren't from Mexico
Then it wouldn't be
A Mexican Underwater Chinchilla!