palace of winds

My dreams last night were all tangled. Full of escalators. I was a child with a baby who disappeared in an errant wind, leaving me with an armful of black blankets. I sat at the base of one of the endless escalators and despaired, not knowing where to even begin looking for her. An old woman with gold hair crouched next to me and explained something about the interconnectedness and endurance of souls, and something about letting go, and showed me how to enter the collective consciousness of the universe but I still wanted that baby back.

Later I was preparing for a space mission, and met my partner on the way into the massive apartment complex where we were staying. We collided, literally, and immediately began bantering as if we’d known one another forever. He was charming and handsome but soon turned menacing, violent, eyes hard and staring and I kept fending off his fists, backing through restaurants and bathrooms and hallways while he whispered threats and I caught his wrists again and again and again.

I was feet behind a friend on a crowded beach, both of us walking in a thick crowd, and I was trying to call but as I scrolled and scrolled through my cell phone’s address book the number was inexplicably not there.

I had a dream the other night that Sara gave me a puppy. A corgi, specifically, a gorgeous blue-speckled corgi with huge foxy ears and big dark eyes. I thought, in the dream, that she was a blue merle, and maybe she was, but the great mysterious internet seems to suggest that blue merles must have irregular blotchy spots, and she was regularly and perfectly flecked, or ticked, or speckled, or whatever. Regardless, she was beautiful and ever-so-cuddly, and I was quite distressed since dogs aren’t allowed in my apartment. I had no idea how I could keep her, but very much did not want to give her up.

I think, periodically, about getting a cat. It’s clearly a bad idea since I’m never home, but I always turn to this perfectly sound explanation with a faint trace of guilt, because even if I were home more often there is a part of me that still would not want a cat. There are lots of cats out there who deserve good homes, but I really like being able to go out of town without a second thought, and never having to worry about hair or vomit or a litter box. That and I still can’t really think about my cat, can’t even think his name, without feeling like someone has pulled all my insides out. I almost didn’t make the horse decision for it.

Anyway, mostly I like the total lack of responsibility. Same sort of reason having kids (ever) doesn’t quite appeal to me. (That and the expense. Children are dreadfully, dreadfully expensive.) Is this something people get over before they get pets or have kids? Or is it something that just evaporates after the pets or kids have been acquired?

I have decided, for now, that I will not get a dog unless it is that blue-speckled corgi. Which is really a moot point because my new apartment doesn’t allow dogs either, but it’s one less decision to make down the road. Or one more window for fate: if that puppy materializes, I’ll know it’s time to move again.

Also, totally unrelated, IT IS STILL COLD and I demand that it STOP RIGHT NOW PLEASE. I’ve lost track of the number of days in a row that I’ve stepped outside in the morning and had my nose freeze shut a little. I want to get back to playing with my horse, please. Please? Pretty please?

What I wouldn’t do for that face.

I gladly make him sandwiches (he loves pbj). Sew up the tears he and his pals make in his supposedly indestructible (read: expensive) winter blanket. Scratch all the itchy places on his nose when we’re done riding. Visit him even when it is unholy cold (4 degrees today). Give up the apartment I thought you’d have to pry out of my cold dead hands.

My apartment? Is beautiful. The afternoon sun spills in and glows the hardwood floors golden. There is a dance to the kitchen, a place for every footfall and fork. There are archways, and walls of lush burgundy and cheering turquoise and quiet taupe. A deep tub and deeper closets. Lovely white wood molding. Charm in spades, in a little brick building in a wonderful neighborhood crossed with bike paths and littered with good places to eat and shop.

The new apartment is fine, it’s nice, it’s got a gas range and a little balcony and a dishwasher and what-have-you. And it’s closer to work and, most importantly, the barn. I try to think about the 20 minutes a day I’ll save in commute time, but sometimes that feels like a dubious trade-off, like maybe my walls are worth it. I try very hard not to lie awake at night remembering my dorm room in England and all the sleep I didn’t get that semester. When I am consumed with dread I try to remember my sweet boy’s face.

I plan to move all of my furniture in a horse trailer, and that seems exactly fitting. I like such auspicious beginnings.