YOU WERE ENORMOUS & I WAS ENORMOUS
“I… I had a dream we were Pangaea – you were enormous and I was enormous, and we were laying side by side not touching except for our ankles and our finger tips, which were enormous and cold, but a good cold, and we were sub-continental plates shifting softly beneath silk Cambrian sheets, and when we woke up we were familiar, in the dream, like a mangrove forest. I remember saying that in the dream and thinking it was really important, and then not saying it again when we woke up because it felt too small out of context.”
“I couldn’t get to sleep last night, was lying there, twisted up in the sheets and trying not to move. Started counting to a hundred but got to eleven and felt stupid, so started counting down from a hundred. That felt stupid too so then out of nowhere I thought: Base 7. I don’t even know what that means, really, but I started trying to count backwards from a hundred in what felt like Base 7. Which ended up being too much, so I started counting forward to a hundred in Base 20, but that was too much counting – didn‘t even get to nineteen before it felt stupid again. Was just lying there frustrated in bed for like two hours, wondering about numbers.”
“Oh god… but also, there’s so much timing with everything. How terrible if you, you know – I would want my kid to have like a venerable principal, like a Headmaster. Like an FDR or something. How terrible if you got some young CEO, you know? Someone not august. That just changes everything, and no way to plan for it, really. Like, so also: what you want is to have a baby so it doesn‘t have a new years birthday, right? But then what about wanting it to have a new years birthday so when it‘s older it doesn‘t have to hate itself twice in one year?”
“I don’t even dream anymore, really. I used to make up my dreams when I was a kid – I’d wake up and they’d ask me what I dreamt, and not dreaming didn’t feel like an option so I’d just say whatever about unicorns or whatever you’re supposed to dream about, and they must’ve either thought I was a normal dreaming kid or I was a really out-there kid that made up pretty standard kid-sounding dreams for whatever kid reason. And then I guess that started me dreaming after a while because it was easier to actually dream than to wake up and have to force some story. But I’m back to not dreaming now.”
