Tag: Dreams

Night shift

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Mad Dog?

Another shower of oddball dreams, and after two consecutive dinners of nothing spicier than a mild beef vegetable soup with cornbread, too.

The old MacSkull Air must be defragging its hard drive. Or just fragging it.

Why else would I be dreaming about three things I haven’t been doing lately — cyclocross, burro racing, and cartooning — all in one long dark night of the soul?

Maybe my cranial janitor came back from an extended coffee break to find a new supervisor scowling at him, with arms crossed and one foot a-tapping.

“Have you seen the state of this place? Acid flashbacks piled up here, empty liquor bottles scattered over there, and just look at this fantasy closet! No, on second thought, just nail that fucker shut. Nobody needs to see that shit. One quick peek and I had to book a double session with my shrink. So, deep clean, new carpet and drywall, and fresh paint all around. Chop-chop!”

When I arose and toddled into the kitchen in search of the Ebony Elixir of Life, Herself was fiddling with a Panasonic bread machine that she and her sisters found at some estate sale last fall, and I was onboarded as a consultant before I could decide whether I was actually awake.

A quick glance around took in zero sisters, so after two cups of the black velvety goodness and one fat slice of buttered cornbread I put my two cents’ worth into the project and now we await the results. If you hear of a mushroom cloud over Albuquerque and the Authorities say it smells like bread you’ll know the backstory.

Microdozing

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 32 Comments

“Like, wow. Like, bow wow.”

It could’ve been an acid flashback, or maybe a contact high.

But after getting pretty deeply into “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan, I started to have some truly bizarre dreams, especially in the morning, just before officially waking up.

My favorite so far: I was the new guy at some newspaper and an artsy bunch was trying to arrange coverage for some event. I was asking who, what, when, where, and why, and also whether the artsy bunch might be able to provide, like, y’know, some art, an’ shit, when an old hand snickered and nodded toward the photo department.

“I beg your pardon,” I told the artsy bunch. “I’m new here, and I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes until I find out how big their feet are.”

The river of dreams

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

Lately dreams are sliding right out of my brain-pan as I awaken, like eggs from a non-stick skillet.

It’s slightly irksome, on a par with an overzealous server who whisks your plate away before you’ve mopped up the final toothsome tidbits. “Hey, I was still savoring that. …”

I’m pretty sure I’m being entertained as I sleep, but maybe it’s a lowbrow sort of dreaming, like some off-brand Netflix movie you’re trying to describe for a friend.

“It was pretty good. It had whatsisface in it, you know, that guy who’s in everything, and there was that gal from what the hell’s that TV show that never really took off? It wasn’t a rom-com but there weren’t any car chases or fight scenes either. It was based on a book by that dude from Spokane, or is it Reno? You know the one. No, not that one. The other one. Can’t remember the name of it but yeah, it was pretty good.”

Or maybe the dreams are simply being overwhelmed by reality, like the aftermath of an election. Herself is still in Flawduh, taking care of business mom-wise, and so instead of lounging around in the sack of a morning, reviewing the work my subconscious did overnight, I have to get up, feed and water the cats, empty the dishwasher and the litter box, make the coffee, and like that there.

Speaking of cats, ours will be giving me poor marks on Yelp. Herself is generally up and at ’em around 4:30, but in her absence I don’t spring into action until 6. None of us has a job, and we’re not going anywhere fast, so what’s the rush?

Try explaining that to a cat sometime. They have a finely honed sense of justice, which they perceive as “just us.” You can see them mentally counting down the days until you croak of an aneurysm while reading The New York Times and they finally get to eat your lips.

A nose for noise

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Life is but a dream, sh-boom, sh-boom.
Life is but a dream, sh-boom, sh-boom.

I’ve been dossing down in the guest bedroom for the past few nights while I try to shake this bug (hack, cough, ptui, repeat) and last night I was dreaming that I was in some concrete condo/apartment house shithole, the prototypical American multifamily dwelling pioneered by the East Germans, a cheerless vertical warehouse with all the charm of a Stasi penitentiary for political offenders.

In the dream, as in “real life,” I couldn’t quite drift off to a proper sleep. I kept hearing this repetitive sound that was driving me batshit: Pok. Pok. Pok. Sounded like someone bouncing a tennis ball off a concrete wall or floor, over and over again.

Pok. Pok. Pok. Etc.

In both planes of consciousness it had been days since I last enjoyed a solid night’s sleep. And in the dream I was starting to get seriously pissed off because for the first time in a good long while I wasn’t enduring any coughing fits and thus nothing should have been keeping me awake.

Pok. Pok. Pok. Etc.

I couldn’t localize the sound — inside my apartment, upstairs, downstairs, in the hallway — and I was on the edge of bounding out of bed to get medieval on someone’s ass, as soon as I got a fix on where the fuck was it that they were.

Pok. Pok. Pok. Etc.

And then I woke up to find that the sound — Pok. Pok. Pok. Etc. — was my own nasal exhalations bouncing off the sheet and blankets, which I had tugged over my head.