mallorys_camera | Fernando

Dreamed I had fallen rapturously in love with a man named Fernando and he had swept me away to the Borgesian city where he lived. In Mexico? In Venezuela?

Many scenes of our domestic menage. We lived in an apartment with my friend R___ and her lover. The apartment was small, cramped, somehow foreign, as if the smells of faraway had somehow become embedded in its walls.

Fernando was an excellent lover and an attentive helpmeet. Always cooked for me when I was working—although it was unclear what kind of work I was doing.

But one day, he went to work.

And I thought, But I don’t want to cook for him. I don’t want to cook for anybody.

So, I ran away.

And then I was wandering up the streets of the city—which kind of looked like the streets of upper Polk in San Francisco as I remember it when it wends through the lower part of Nob Hill, anonymous until you look closely.

I was wearing whatever it was I’d worn to bed in the dream, shapeless, repurposed cotton dress; ancient, unraveling sweater.

Some boys snuck up behind me. Yanked the dress from my shoulders so that my breasts were exposed. Ran away, shrieking with laughter.

And I thought, What do I care if my breasts are exposed? I don’t.

Though I did understand that since I was out in public, some sense of decorum had to be preserved, so I struggled to get back into the dress, all the while walking fast.

I figured, though, I had better get back to the apartment and start cooking dinner (though I didn’t really want to.) How do people do it? I wondered. This cooking thing. It wastes so much time! And for what? You only have to cook again tomorrow.

I didn’t really know this city, so I was lost.

All I could remember was that the apartment where I lived with Fernando was located at the intersection of two streets that start with “S.”

I tried to retrace my steps.

I saw a jewelry store and looked in through its windows. The display was all of these huge, gaudy rings, set with enormous amber stones. Why would anyone want one of those? I wondered. But they are cheap.

Then I saw another jewelry shop, and I thought, We must live in the city’s jewelry section. Who knew?

Then I saw a street sign: Pine Street. Uh oh. Not the intersection of “S” and “S”!

So, I was really and truly lost.

I rummaged around in my pocket for my phone. Possibly I could GPS my way back to the apartment. But the thing I thought was my phone turned out to be a portable blood pressure cuff.

You are in a pickle, girlfriend, I told myself. Though I wasn’t panicked. More bemused. Well, at least RTT is learning Spanish. That should be useful—because apparently, I had brought the teenaged RTT with me when I’d eloped to this Borgesian city.

Up ahead was a bus stop on what looked to be a bridge. A plump man with a mustache and a kind face was delivering some kind of lecture in a British accent: And the magnitude of what once was will be again—

And I looked off the bridge—

And saw the most amazing panoply of extinct volcanoes! Just breathtakingly beautiful! And in a completely different artistic style from the rest of the dream! As though they were painted in oils while the rest of the dream had been pen and ink drawings—though, of course, none of the dream had been drawn, it had all been photo realism, so this is an effect that is very difficult to find words for—

And then I woke up.

###

I passed the IRS certification exam.