palace of winds

I dream of horses, a carnival, a half-dim bar with Steph where that quiet afternoon we run into Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan, who are charming and playful.  We half know them so we hang out with them for a while, as Dominic futzes with his laptop and Elijah laughs, his eyes gleaming a vivid, translucent blue, like seaglass.  Later they dance boyishly, spinning aggressively with their arms interlaced, making a spectacle of fake kisses.

Later still we are all heading to the stable but we must take separate cars, and I am in the front seat of an adorable tiny old car with a girl I don’t know.  We are parked at the gas station where she is filling up.  When I look over I notice that the ignition slot on the steering column is actually soldered over with a lock, which I find curious.  She instead starts her car to the left.  All of this somehow means that the car runs on diesel, and we have a brief conversation about environmental responsibility.  Then we are in England, the riot of grass and trees lush, a soft vibrant green.  We stop for a man crossing on his horse, a tall glossy bay, and I stare after them, realizing suddenly just how much I miss it.

The thunder comes in deep, rumbling rolls, the sky waking from winterlong slumber and stretching, slow and luxurious. A sound that goes all the way down to bone.

My childhood memories are filled with thunderstorms, with skies split apart and raging, light licking fast between the clouds. There seems so much less of it now, though that could be a MO/MN thing, or the past just a trick of memory. I wonder about that sometimes, about the way the mind slips, the truths it crafts for itself. What to believe? Maybe it’s that I’m older now, and nights like these hold no terror and cannot cut down into me.

Sometime early on a tense phone call, a symptom of — but one day I will forget even the thinnest-veiled references, and happily so.

Later I dream of the Marquis de Sade, but it is sadly lacking in the charm of Quills; that is, Joaquin Phoenix.  I am like a shadow over the shoulder of his character, though he bears no resemblance to Joaquin.  He is jailed, he is locked up for mad, but he is (I am) lucid, sane, utterly convinced of this sanity.  Later he is (we are) out and the Marquis is being locked in, and from here I have the strongest memory.  The Marquis is clutching at the bars, pressed up against them, and he is begging.  He is telling us that he is not crazy, that he knows exactly what he is doing.  And I do not know.  Maybe he is sane.  Maybe he is only utterly convinced.  And I think of how utterly convinced I was (and Joaquin’s character), and wonder at that too.

Two women on television are trying to sell me hangers. I’m convinced that one of them is the model for said hangers, as her collarbone and the tendons in her neck jut alarmingly up from her skin. Her grin is crazed, a toothy Joker affair with a side of grimace.

She also wants me to pay $60 for 50 of her hangers (plus a few other odds and ends they always throw in, but the $60 is without shipping and handling, which I’m sure is astronomical, so I’m discounting both the odds and s&h). For $60 I could get 681 hangers at Walmart. Sure they don’t twist the way these hangers do, but they’re slim enough, and none of them have ever done anything to the color of my clothes. And it’s not like buying new hangers would make a neat, color-organized anal affair out of anyone’s closet when it was originally a vomited orgy of clothes. (This is, of course, discounting the motivational effects of new hangers. I realize this motivation is considerable. But I don’t think it makes up for them cheating me out of 631 hangers.)

I discovered just before break that the computer in the WRC (where I do my scholarship hours) has a speaker that works. So now I’m listening to Kathy’s new album, which is infinitely preferable to doing work. Though it’s also made slightly strange by Annabelle the Sheep, who I’ve discovered is one of Real Player’s visualizations.

And she’s just gotten a disco ball in her pasture. Earlier she had a spotlight and backup singers. So I’m currently caught in a very odd mix of hilarity over the head-bopping hopping sheep and the calm, centered happy that Kathy’s music makes me.