Transcription Of A Dream Written Upon Waking
By Jimmy Chen
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.