First Day of School
A dream in which I meet an animated Richard Brautigan.
I told this one to Pop. He said, indignantly, "That's not the high school dream!"
POP: Have you had the college dream yet?
ANNNA: Does it involve zombies?
...
It was the morning of the first day of school, and I was in my room in a panic. It was quite a while before the day started, in fact, it wasn't even light yet. No matter how many lights I turned on, the room was still very dark with small pools of light, like I was lighting candles instead of turning on 60 watt bulbs.
I didn't know my schedule, though I remembered signing up for it at my high school's confusing arena schedule day. I started looking though all my papers, then went into crazy searching mode, looking through things that couldn't possibly have my schedule.
I eventually found a schedule, but I realized it was last year's. Then, just as I realized that, I found my current schedule. Unfortunately, I'd written it with many abbreviations and couldn't understand it. It had many lines, each with a cryptic entry. I remember this much:
IV
Polar Bear
II, later III
Bruising
Dither Point
So it was pretty unlikely that I could find my way around with that schedule. I took another look around, hoping I could find my course catalog. Maybe I wrote notes by things, or maybe there actually was a class called Polar Bear.
Then I remembered that I wasn't in high school any longer and that I had a month until college started. I went back to bed and drifted around in sunlight and blue gingham.
I was sitting at a table in a 1950s kitchen with a 1950s woman. Everything was black and white. I had a uniform on and was carrying a box of thick hair rubber bands, the kind that are stretchy yarn woven around elastic strands. They weren't black and white. They all were partially cut, so that some of the elastic strands could be seen, and they had each caught strands of thick black hair.
I was a prison guard, and I told the woman that the hair bands had been worn by David. No last name; he was just that infamous. I think he was a spree killer. I was telling the truth. She pointed out that I wore the exact same kind of rubber bands in my hair. I countered that I had loaned them to David, because he didn't have any in prison. She believed that. I showed how they all were slit. Apparently one of David's famous habits was that he never took a ponytail holder off normally, preferring to slit it with a knife until it relaxed and could be slid off more easily.
The woman paid me and took several. She sat on a wooden dining room chair with her legs folded under her and stared at the hair bands. I wandered off.
I wandered into an animated children's book. Everything was a line drawing, colored lightly in with watercolors. It was bright white. I walked around a friendly meadow and ran into another person. I was not, by the way, similarly drawn.
The person was a cartoon drawing of Richard Brautigan. He had big sad eyes and looked like a cowboy Jesus. He looked important.
"Hey," he said, "You're done here. There isn't really anything else to do. If you stay here you can watch the rest, but there's a nice creek over that way."
I stayed with the cartoon Richard Brautigan. We watched the black and white woman on a square hanging in space. It was a screen, but we both knew that no technology was making it show pictures.
The woman fidgeted as she made a supper for a lot of people. The family was her parents and her aunts and uncles, and there were several dozen. She seemed to have developed nervous ticks.
The family all sat down to eat. After they had all eaten a few bites, there was a sudden silence. Then their heads suddenly caught fire, in a whoosh that sounded like their heads had been made of paper maché and doused in gasoline. It was really quick and left only ashes.
The nervous woman laughed and laughed, never stopping.
POP: Have you had the college dream yet?
ANNNA: Does it involve zombies?
...
It was the morning of the first day of school, and I was in my room in a panic. It was quite a while before the day started, in fact, it wasn't even light yet. No matter how many lights I turned on, the room was still very dark with small pools of light, like I was lighting candles instead of turning on 60 watt bulbs.
I didn't know my schedule, though I remembered signing up for it at my high school's confusing arena schedule day. I started looking though all my papers, then went into crazy searching mode, looking through things that couldn't possibly have my schedule.
I eventually found a schedule, but I realized it was last year's. Then, just as I realized that, I found my current schedule. Unfortunately, I'd written it with many abbreviations and couldn't understand it. It had many lines, each with a cryptic entry. I remember this much:
IV
Polar Bear
II, later III
Bruising
Dither Point
So it was pretty unlikely that I could find my way around with that schedule. I took another look around, hoping I could find my course catalog. Maybe I wrote notes by things, or maybe there actually was a class called Polar Bear.
Then I remembered that I wasn't in high school any longer and that I had a month until college started. I went back to bed and drifted around in sunlight and blue gingham.
I was sitting at a table in a 1950s kitchen with a 1950s woman. Everything was black and white. I had a uniform on and was carrying a box of thick hair rubber bands, the kind that are stretchy yarn woven around elastic strands. They weren't black and white. They all were partially cut, so that some of the elastic strands could be seen, and they had each caught strands of thick black hair.
I was a prison guard, and I told the woman that the hair bands had been worn by David. No last name; he was just that infamous. I think he was a spree killer. I was telling the truth. She pointed out that I wore the exact same kind of rubber bands in my hair. I countered that I had loaned them to David, because he didn't have any in prison. She believed that. I showed how they all were slit. Apparently one of David's famous habits was that he never took a ponytail holder off normally, preferring to slit it with a knife until it relaxed and could be slid off more easily.
The woman paid me and took several. She sat on a wooden dining room chair with her legs folded under her and stared at the hair bands. I wandered off.
I wandered into an animated children's book. Everything was a line drawing, colored lightly in with watercolors. It was bright white. I walked around a friendly meadow and ran into another person. I was not, by the way, similarly drawn.
The person was a cartoon drawing of Richard Brautigan. He had big sad eyes and looked like a cowboy Jesus. He looked important.
"Hey," he said, "You're done here. There isn't really anything else to do. If you stay here you can watch the rest, but there's a nice creek over that way."
I stayed with the cartoon Richard Brautigan. We watched the black and white woman on a square hanging in space. It was a screen, but we both knew that no technology was making it show pictures.
The woman fidgeted as she made a supper for a lot of people. The family was her parents and her aunts and uncles, and there were several dozen. She seemed to have developed nervous ticks.
The family all sat down to eat. After they had all eaten a few bites, there was a sudden silence. Then their heads suddenly caught fire, in a whoosh that sounded like their heads had been made of paper maché and doused in gasoline. It was really quick and left only ashes.
The nervous woman laughed and laughed, never stopping.