grin and bear it

i have got to start writing over here in this thing [i have decided], if i'm going to presume to call it a blog. these intermittent essay things hardly qualify.

i had another interesting dream last night, shall i share it? sure, phantom reader, i think i shall. but i want to disclaim first: i am not always having these violent and awful dreams, just now and then. perhaps i'm just more prone to write about them b/c while i'm having them i'm always halfway awake so i remember them quite vividly, straining as i am the whole time to stay asleep through such angst and discomfort. why, just the other day i had quite a pleasant dream about running into snoop on the street. he brought me up to his playhouse, full of beanbag chairs and bright green carpet, smoked me up lovely and gave me a pair of tiny cowrie shell earrings & a matching necklace. wasn't that sweet of him?

but last night, man. at first i was going around minding my own business and this woman (who might or might not have been my high school cheerleading coach) came up to me all frantic. "jamyla," she said. "you have GOT to do coco tonight in Fame on broadway. please please you'll save my life, i don't have anyone else."

well, far be it from me to disappoint a damsel in distress, particularly if that damsel in distress is offering me a job. but broadway? coco in fame? would i have to sing the body electric in front of hundreds of people? i started stretching immediately so that i would be in form, even though i was in the middle of a large cubicular office, in front of the microwave, warming up my cup o noodles for lunch.

so i sped out of the office and spent some time stressing out, running around this mall (yes, the office was in a mall) looking for costumes and the like. i spent so much time stressing that suddenly it was five minutes to call time. i had to call the damsel in distress / producer / cheerleading coach woman and tell her i was on the way, only a few blocks far and would catch a cab and be right there. i could hear her reassuring somebody 'she's coming, she's coming, but don't open the house yet' and i became even more stressed by proxy.

then i woke up briefly (couldn't handle the pressure) but it was too early and my body said to me, 'get thy ass back to sleep,' and so i did, but the stress didn't end. b/c this time me and pierre were eating a meal in this wonderful yellow-brick sun-splashed kitchen in some amazing loft with these two white people. and the guy was a serial killer and the girl refused to see this. and it was OBVIOUS, not only because when we entered the room he had her head down onto the cutting board and was slicing bits off of her ear. he also was insisting on doing ALL the slicing involved in the food preparation (a transparent ruse to gather all the knives), and being generally shifty-eyed. it was a tense and drawn-out meal to say the least.

we kept luring him into the other room so we could tell the woman what was going on but she just held pieces of paper towel up to her bleeding ear and looked blankly at us. pierre got into a fight with him and was swinging at him with a bat (i'd already 'washed the dishes' so i could drop all the knives behind the stove) and i assume that we escaped, because the last thing i remember before i woke up for real this time was being in the audience of a talk show while the host's mic went out.