Hannah

uh oh i slept until 130 but here are two dreams i had. also it was zach’s bday— happy bday zach!!!

dream 1

so im in this idyllic world (its not all idyllic theres freaky shit like “fire face woman” who appears suddenly with a melted gaping face) where things are just kind of uncanny but in a typical dream way and then this young girl and her father appear and say theyre from another world.  they pop in and out of the world every few years and we grow up together, like my life becomes punctuated by the visits of my mysterious adoptive family.  but as an adult i discover how to go into their world and i do where i overhear a meeting where the dad explains the reality of my world: it’s a fiction created to sell as a VR morality game to teach Americans how to live peacefully (its clear the dad is amoral and avaricious and it is revealed that in the process of rolling out and playing the sure-to-be-a-hit game that my world will be destroyed or compromised to the point of inoperability.) without letting on that i know abt his ulterior motives i challenge the dadto a game native to my world called bug bop where these little gadgets that are like cute beetles stack together like mah jongg (i dont remember what the stakes are in the game bc somehow theres a final battle that takes place in washington dc and also fire face woman has a callback but shes hot now)

dream 2

discover a secret world while trying to get my bf ian to the hospital (he has a tree lodged in his side, this is carryover from another dream. he was keeping the injury from me bc he didnt want to scare me and bc he perhaps felt foolish that he had done it by jumping on top of a tree from a bus). cant find hospital while we are on party train but eventually break out of party train (party train also carryover from other dream). everywhere is dead ends and huge baroque train stations that lead nowhere. (side plot in which a mayoral candidate is having a concert fundraiser in train stATion where he himself is one of the musicians and one of his lackeys comes up to me to tell me in awe i look EXACTLY like someone (lady gaga).) homeless man in train station hall suggests i find what im looking for through the mirrors so i start flinging myself at windows and glass like crazy but its not working. then i try a large ad screen (for obama) and start to go through but cant make it. homeless man comes back and tells me i need to go in like a fish so i try swimming through the air in and go through. 

inside it is the headquarters of aim (aol instant messenger). the front desk guy who is in charge of operations is incredible self effacing handsome asian man who is very like awkward funny like michael cera vibes or whatever. this world is the operations of aim as it exists now and i meet the cast of characters that inhabit it /.work there. i realize they are all uncanny facsimiles in mannerisms and looks to characters i know (from dream world) and it is like a very funny farce where everyone is acting like these characters i know and love. ian hospital thing has converted into a background knowledge that ian is in cryo sleep and i will not see him for thirty years, at which point i will be older than he. this weighs heavily on me and i worry abt the future and the time apart. after spending time in and out of aim, exploring the world and realizing the inequities of the outside world and the covert horrors of aim (a mother/daughter who work  at aim reveal to me there is “something in the bathroom”( its a horribly mutilated man hanging from ropes who is lloomed over by a gleefully bloody man, super scary, bloody man turns out to be their cannibal father). 

back in  our world, i hijack a rich ppl tap dance performance at a shark den by pretending to be the dancer but the rich ppl  punish me by shutting down aim.!! instead of shutting down aim i plead with them to kill me and then ppl from all around (distant friends and andrew savage from parquet courts) come to bid me farewell. my family is there and my mom and sister are being insane. my sister keeps drawing attention away from the ceremony to demand if anyone wants any peaches which will surely rot if we dont take them out of aim with us and then my mom yells at her and then they fight.my dad smiles placidly. i walk around the aisles (aim is now a grocery store) with andrew savage from parquet courts and my college friend alex williams and ask them is they think my writing has promise. savage emits a high pitched “yeah” like clearly meaning “not really”  and i say “yeah i wish the things that concern me now werent the things that concern me” he says yeah. we convene in a circular room to say farewell and the daughter of the cannibal takes a really loud phone call which makes my mom and sister fight again. my dad smiles placidly. finally they let me back out into the shark den which is the entrance to the endless wilderness where i have to go find the plane they sent to banish me (to montreal.)

Hannah is a teacher and writer from South Jersey.