mallorys_camera | Dream of the Fourth Floor Plus Zombie Cabbages

The first part of the dream concerned an impossibly beautiful male Czech freedom fighter and an older woman, aristocratic, English, who had once been beautiful—but that was long ago.

I was in some kind of alternate universe. I didn’t know what relationship it bore to the universe I mostly inhabit, but I was crazy to find out.

There was an impossibly huge house that I had gotten lost in. I had wandered into a woman’s bedroom. It was decorated in a kind of 1950s-ish style, doilies, wax flowers, old-fashioned perfume vials with those long rubber atomizers, and I remember thinking, Considering no one has been in this room for like forever, it isn’t too dusty and cobwebby.

Did I steal something from this room?

I think I must have.

Jewelry? Or possibly a pair of boots?

Yes, I think boots.

I was supposed to be writing a movie script for the English woman, only she didn’t like it, and I couldn’t figure out whether this was because the script was bad or she was jealous of me because I was young and beautiful.

Then I was in an office. I think People Magazine’s NYC office—there was Stephen! With his dog!—only weird because this was yet another alternate universe.

Stephen had taken over writing the English woman’s script! And he’d apparently done a passable job, and I felt very threatened, I wanted Stephen to invite me to collaborate on the script. To that end, I began buttering him up, telling him how I used paragraphs from his writings when I wanted to show my other writing clients an example of perfect writing, yadda, yadda, yadda. Couldn’t tell whether Stephen was buying any of this.

I had become obsessed with getting people to acknowledge they’d seen me in the earlier alternate universe.

I saw a young Black guy I’d seen in the Czech freedom fighter’s house: You recognize me, don’t you? I demanded.

The young Black guy looked frightened to death. Yes, I recognize you, he whispered and ducked his head down.

Then it was the end of the day, time to leave the office, time to go home. The stairs down from the People office were impossibly steep. I was wearing boots—presumably the ones I’d stolen. They didn’t fit very well. They made my ankles wobble, and I was desperately afraid I’d fall as I hobbled down the stairs.

I’d attached myself to two Spanish-speaking young women. They didn’t like me very much. Tough, I thought, I’ll be safe with you. One of the women seemed to be the guardian of a little dark-haired girl with a peculiar bowl-shaped haircut and bangs.

How old are you? I asked the little girl.

I am three and a half, said the little girl. I don’t know why that half should matter. But apparently it does.

I was quite taken by the little girl’s answer!

Congratulated her guardian on the little girl’s obvious intelligence.

This made the guardian warm up to me some. She confided her name (can’t remember), some details of her life (can’t remember.)

All the while we continued tramping through crowded, strange, obliquely perilous streets. My boots had disappeared. I was tramping through the streets of strange, alternative NYC barefoot.

Finally, the young woman gestured to a street—That’s 74th Street over there.

Because, of course, I was going home. To my childhood home. Seventy-fourth Street between Central Park West and Columbus.

But the apartment building where I’d grown up was no longer residential. It seemed to be the center of some strange commercial enterprise; in the lobby, three guys in a glass cage handed me a security lanyard, directed me to the fourth floor, which was apparently the DJ ground zero for some radio propaganda operation—

DJ patter! thought I to myself. Well, I can do that.

Except I couldn’t find the fourth floor!

Flights of stairs took me outside to a kind of meadow where three identical clones in strange latex masks were digging a ditch.

Excuse me! I called gaily. Can you give me directions to the fourth floor?

The three diggers exchanged uneasy glances. Don’t you know where the fourth floor is? Weren’t you here for the orientation tour? We’ll have to call security.

Security turned out to be this big beefy cartoon of a guy. I mean, literally—a cartoon, like Bluto in Popeye. With those black spots on his cheeks and chin that in comics are meant to depict unshaven faces, shaded a peculiar red as though he’d been colored in with a stubby red pencil.

Who are you? Bluto demanded. Why weren’t you at orientation? You’ll have to come with me.

Oh, I’m sure you and I can work something out, I cooed, all sexual innuendo. I knew sex was the only thing I had to trade. All I want to do is get to the 4th floor.

Bluto turned all rubbery and lascivious.

Jeeze, I thought to myself. I hope I don’t have to give him a blowjob. Or if I have to give him a blowjob, I won’t have to swallow.

And then I woke up.

###

Yesterday was another uneventful day. Completed and sent off a Remunerative Project only to have it returned to me later that afternoon, massively red-scribbled, for revision. Oh, well. I think the client didn’t know what they wanted until they saw what they didn’t want. Happens like that sometimes.

I’ve already crunched the numbers (the hard part), so the revisions should be easy-peasy.

In the afternoon, I went off to the FDR Library to score some FDR coloring books for

poliphilo (who wants to use them to make little children Quake! 😀)

But the FDR Library didn’t have any FDR coloring books.

I went for a wander in what remains of the FDR victory garden in the tail end of autumn.

Night of the Zombie Cabbages!

In a couple of hours, I will be toddling out for the latest flu vaccine and the updated COVID vaccine.

I haven’t yet had a reaction to any of the COVID vaccines I’ve received beyond soreness at the injection site. (I must have a really crummy immune system, right?) Still. There’s a first time for everything, so I thought it prudent not to schedule any activities for this weekend.

I will probably spend the weekend playing video games.