Underwater (You and Me)

Dear Adrienne,

I keep a notepad and pen on my nightstand. The items are there in case I want to record something I think of while I'm in bed, or something I dream overnight.

Usually, should I dream something that warrants documenting, I'm too lazy to do so -- either I don't want to open my eyes, or I don't want to turn on the light. At best, I might grab the pen and attempt to scrawl a note in the dark. At worst, I think, "I'm sure I can remember that in a few hours, and I'll jot it down then, after I'm awake.

Well, this morning, I was lazy, and I chose not to write down my dream immediately after experiencing it. To my shock, I actually DID remember it several hours later, when I was lucid. And you were in it! Here's what happened:

Everyone in town, and presumably the world, was excited to watch this movie. For an optimum viewing experience, this particular film had to be viewed while underwater.1 So, a theater/tank structure was filled with water, and everyone took some pills that allowed them to breathe underwater2, including myself. When I realized that you couldn't laugh while you swimming, I abandoned the movie and exited the tank.

Later, after the movie, people began to suffer from a rather dramatic side-effect of the pills -- they began to explode. They didn't explode like a bomb went off; they just kind of turned inside-out and popped3.

Many people expired in this fashion. I saw some people punching holes in the walls of a house whose owner had blown up.4 I guess they were releasing their frustration by destroying the house.

Anyway, at this stage, people were beginning to wander around, trying to find others that were still alive, banding together. That's when I found you. You and I met at the intersection of 135th and 37th, near Wichita5. (135th wasn't paved, though, like it is in the present-day Earth. Also, in the present-day Earth, people are not exploding due to defective medications.) Two others were in your group: a very obese woman from Missouri, and a young child of unknown ethnicity. Our groups merged, and we walked west on 37th to continue our search. As we walked down the hill, I carried you on my shoulders -- not piggyback-ride-style, and not with you saddled over one of my shoulders, but with your body cradled around my head, with one of my arms around your back, and the other arm around your legs. This was when we started singing, "Lost Girls"6

I eventually put you down, and we somehow found our way to the moon, which was where the refugees were being settled. Upon entering the moon facility, we passed a sign-up sheet, where fellow outcasts could enroll for a job planting moon wildflowers.7 Everyone congregated in a large gymnasium, where two movies were being projected onto two large, adjacent screens. The screen on the right was showing "An Inconvenient Truth"; I saw it and thought that it was an odd choice. "A film about global warming? On a planet we just abandoned?" I turned my attention to the other screen, which showed two older, Jewish gentlemen being interviewed. One of them was saying, "I am an orthodonist. My father was an orthodonist. I don't know how to plant wildflowers." He was pretty concerned about how he was going to make a living on the moon, and it was kind of touching, and I question the director's choice to cut immediately to a man demonstrating how he made coffee cakes.

That's when my dream ended, so I'm sorry I can't say whether or not we etched out a living on the moon, or if that fat chick from Missouri adopted you and the ethnic child, or if that movie that had to be viewed underwater was lauded by what was left of The Academy.

Until next time,


dn


1. "The Shape of Things" was on before I went out Saturday night, so I re-watched it. In that movie, Phillip and Jenny plan to get married underwater.

2. I'm reading "Sirens of Titan" right now. On Mars, everyone has to take pills called goofballs, which let them breathe in the oxygen-depleted environment.

3. Saturday night at Henry's Upstairs, Molly brought up some "Inside Out Guy", who I had never seen or heard of, but it made me think of the PopMart tour, when Bono wore an anatomically correct "muscle" shirt. It also made me think of a Simpsons Halloween episode where there was poison gas that made everyone turn inside-out.

4. I recently repaired such a hole in my own wall.

5. I grew up near here.

6. Friday's workday shuffle: Tilly and the Wall, The Shins, The Fiery Furnaces, Neko Case.

7. I recently picked up a packet of Kansas wildflowers, which I plan to plant in my backyard, next to the fence that separates the interstate ditch from my lawn.