Transcription Of A Dream Written Upon Waking

Mar. 13, 2013
Jimmy Chen writes essays, criticism, and satire. He also contributes at HTMLGIANT, among other places, and ...

I married into a Filipino family for sexual availability of the sister, to whom I would not have been blood-related, and discovered the matriarch only used plastic cups and paper plates, like there were towers upon towers of Dixie plasticware everywhere. This may have been a subconscious ecological commentary of contemporary wasteful practices, or some “fear of commitment thing” i.e. not wanting to buy, store, and wash actual dinnerware I’m still working out. Anyways, my adoptive family is suddenly not just white, but blonde and illuminated in the golden afternoon sun. We’re sitting at the kitchen. I’m on a stool next to my sister, or girlfriend, I’m not sure now – basically, the one about whom I will fantasize when I get home from work – and we’re mocking a slender man in a business suit pensively talking into his Bluetooth headset, who we can see through the kitchen window facing the front yard. He’s hauling more plastic cups in. It turns out – through this self-derived fluid narrative in my mind, of course – that he’s trying to get into our family because we live in Los Angeles and the weather’s very nice here. My derision for him may implicate some self-hatred on my part, given our mutual agendas. He’s the current lover of my mother or future mother-in-law – depending on if my lover is my sister or girlfriend – which totally pisses off the biological father, who by the way, legally separated, is still making mortgage payments on the amazing house I’m in. It’s Bruce Willis. Here’s where it gets “meta” or self-aware of dream state: Bruce Willis plays both the real life actor caught in this personal scenario of his and the actor who plays the character of the biological father, would this have been actualized into a movie – since all of the lighting and edits feel cinemagraphic, the way dreams do, and there’s a part of me – even asleep and drooling – that is narcissistic and self-involved enough to perceive his reality through the lens of a massive film production, which a loyal populace pay tickets to attend. I think at some point the mom comes around wearing sheer lingerie and fluffy slippers. She’s technically a milf, but may have had too many Eggs Benedicts in the past five years. I get locked into a vortex of her cellulite, like a pilot flying over the distant topography of her legs, and next thing I know – this is the most severe edit – I’m looking at digital footage of me riding my bike to work inside the New York Metro (which have croissant stations, for every 4 of 5 frames cut to a glistening croissant) and, get this, I’m lying on my bike sideways (imaging someone crying in fetal position) in a special bike designed by cry-biking, with a dog strapped to the back in a similar contraption. It’s implied that people are holding croissants and unhappily going to work, though at this point all worldly context has strunken to the dog and I. It’s waving its tail in slow motion, though I can’t tell if that’s some artsy moment or if my internet connection is slow – which implies I’m viewing this online, as an animated gif, vine, or vimeo. That one may dream the subsequent viewing of the dream during the dream as a way to distance himself from feeling, is a kind of tragedy, I think. The camera pans from the slow motion tail to the dog’s eyes. It looks so happy, so thrilled to be strapped to a bike in fetal position, zipping through New York City’s underground, inside the mind of a sad person. The last seconds stay on the dog’s eyes as we sink into this canine whirlpool of irrational gratefulness. The dog’s eyes form a wet salty sheen which reflects a camera, whose convex lens portrays its subject, ad infin, as I wake up. TC Mark

You should like Thought Catalog on Facebook here.


Cataloged in

Text Size:

A | A | A

  • http://www.itmakesmestronger.com/2013/03/transcription-of-a-dream-written-upon-waking/ Only L<3Ve @ ItMakesMeStronger.com

    [...] Thought Catalog » Life [...]

blog comments powered by Disqus

Recently Cataloged

  • How To Start Your Own Religion

    How To Start Your Own Religion

    The best thing about being a young adult right now is that you, more than any previous generation, have the freedom and the resources to create your own religion. So, let’s get started.

    John is a novelist, writer, entrepreneur, and consultant, whose best consulting is focused on what he did that others ...
  • sdjkhjkf

    Nostalgia (The Pain From An Old Wound)

    The apartment you lived in your first year out of school, the walk-up with a view of the street.

    Justin Hook is a writer for the Internet, a large network of computers. He also occasionally writes for television.
  • jehrjfhjkrf

    How To Quit Your Job

    I wanted to quit my job. I hated my boss.

    James Altucher has written nine published books and one comic book. He's created a web series for HBO and is working ...
  • assualts

    I Was Sexually Assaulted By A Registered Pedophile

    His eyes widened, he became angry, and backed off of me. I told him he could leave now. Now. He said “With you being a good Christian girl, and me studying to be a priest, I think it’s important we not tell anyone what we did.”

    Katie Arnt keeps her diploma around to remind her of better days when she studied English Literature. She is afraid ...