2003-04-10 - 1:40 p.m.: ambrosia

vivid, odd-flavored dream last night:

blinks open to me in a tiny gas station convenience store. the kind with short, candy and tobacco laden shelves and coolers filled with beer and not much else. it looked like the inside of the quality dairy near my apartment, only smaller and dirtier. i was looking at something (nothing) and this little group of kids (ages 4-15?) comes up behind me cracking jokes. they're scrappy and dirty and loveable. the littlest one says, "hey hot momma! buy me candy" (or something similar) while they all double over in laughter. i just sort of smile at them and move to pay for whatever i have (nothing) at the counter. they run back outside... and a few seconds later i hear the screech of tires, a shout and a thud. the littlest kid has been hit. hijacked candy is lying all over the road where the boys had dropped it. they give each other scared rabbit looks and take off, scuffed sneakers tripping over untied laces. i leave my purchase (nothing) at the counter and run over to the little kid. no one else seems to notice what's happened. even the driver pulls away without a murmur. the kid is okay�awake and alert, but crying, with one arm bent at an unnatural angle. i pet his head and tell him he'll be okay. he wants candy. i run inside and ask the cashier if she could call for an ambulance. she cocks her head, pops her gum and says "there's no such thing. you'll have to walk." what?! but it's a dream, a different reality, so i say "thanks," grab my nothing (which has turned into candy) and walk back out to the boy, who's now sitting up. his face is greenish white. he grins at the candy, then pukes. my heart breaks. i collect him in my arms (he's shrunk to toddler-size) and tell him we're going to the hospital. he doesn't care. he eats candy. his arms and legs are twiggy, and fold across his body like collapsible table-legs. he has no weight. i start walking along a dirt road (the only road) in a direction that looks promising. somehow i *know* it's the right way. it takes FOREVER. i notice, as we go, that his arm seems to be getting bigger. the rest of him seems to be getting smaller. i think it's my imagination until i take a good look and notice that his arm is now, roughly, the same length and breadth of his entire body. don't ask me how. i panic. a truck comes rumbling along and i beg him to give us a ride. he says to hop in the back. we do. the little kid is quiet and pathetic with a tiny white face and huge purple arm. the ride is painful and hot in the metal bed. he drops us off at a hotel with an empty, dirty inground pool and broken swingset. he takes off with no explanation. is this the hospital? i wonder. i don't think so. so i check into a hotel room (great logic) with dirty floors and walls and no bed. i take off the curtains, lay them on a table with a pillow and set the boy down. i tell him to rest while i find out how to get to the hospital. i wander around finding no one, until i hear noise coming from a large barn/shed near the back of the property. i look inside to find a wally-ball court with 17-20 familiar people (some from real life, most not) at intense play. they invite me to join them. "no thanks, i need to find a hospital." "okay.. well� come back when you're done!" so i go back to the room. the boy is now completely silent, and there is fluid leaking out of his arm onto the floor, whirling into a drain in the center of the room (which is now tiled, green-and-white flecked). a t.v. in the corner of the room zaps on, and i hear a voice talking about overpopulation�how it's become too big of a problem for the world to handle... how it's killing the earth. i then see myself as having to make a decision. spend effort on saving this kid, or let natural things happen. then i think about what natural means... equivocating life and death until the very fact of our EXISTENCE seems unnatural. i don't know what to do. i plug up the drain, thinking that it'll stop the boy's "life" from escaping. from being wasted. the room starts filling up with this strange, clear and odorless fluid (i'd say water, but it was pretty clearly something else). as i'm standing there, worrying about what to do next, the door swings open and the fluid gushes out of the room like a wave. three beautiful people are standing there, a woman and two men, decorated by black and silver "mod" clothing and various-colored dredlocks. they sort of sneer at me when they notice their shoes are wet. then they walk in. "we want to kill you," one of the guys says, very seriously. "oh..." i ask him why. we get into this huge philosophical debate, wherein i "prove" that killing me and this kid wouldn't make any difference at all... that life is continuous, etc. etc. (i say etc. because i have no fucking clue -- no memory at all -- of how this conversation actually progressed.. which is a little weird considering the ease with which i remember every other insignificant detail of this dreammmmm*)...eventually, we all fall asleep, completely exhausted by the depth and intensity of our discussion. i wake up what seems like hours and hours later to find the little boy shriveled up on the table, obviously dead. i start crying. this wakes up the woman, who looks around smiling. the two men are also dead�shriveled like hand puppets without hands to fill them. i gasp, the woman laughs. "don't worry," she says. "they were dead the whole time. none of this matters." i look at her in disbelief. i can't accept that. she crawls onto the windowsill like a cat and jumps out. "where's the fucking hospital??!" i yell after her. she laughs and shouts back, "don't worry! you're going to live forever, just like me!" at this point, i experience the heaviest dread and can think of nothing more desirable than a quick end. then i wake up.

is that fucked up or what?

*...there might have been some sex in there, too, but hrmm i really couldn't say

inward...outward