Do you go through people like books, or is that different?
The park was full last night. I walked over and up to it with a friend to hit pads for a while. The pickup basketball games were intense. Some of those guys are huge and loud and they wear their fear like amulets that bounce around their tattooed necks. They yell profanities at nothing, as if just to hear it, perhaps to prove their existence back to themselves.
Or maybe it’s a desire to be seen. Isn’t that a natural, human necessity– to be seen and to be heard– and what happens when a person doesn’t feel either? Maybe it’s a cause to try extra hard. Maybe that’s why they make loud noises, sometimes with guns, sometimes with cars, sometimes with bad music.
The hispanics had little encampments set up throughout the park but not so near the courts, and never exposed in full, as if they don’t want to be seen. They had little radios, little children, little bottles in paper bags.
We walked over to the park edge facing the river and then up about halfway the length of the park to where there was no one around. I put the gloves on my friend’s hands first and I took the pads.
I use a number system for target training. “1” is a left jab. “2” is a left jab right straight. “3” is a left jab, right straight, left hook; and “4” is a left jab, right straight, left hook, right straight.
1, 2, 1, 1, 2-3…
Like old times, but in a new place. The mosquitos came out around 9p and we left through a crowd of uniformed soccer teams looking all too serious for their neon knee socks that seemed to glow from the stadium lighting.
The training led to a deep sleep that grew me a new dream to wonder about.
It was me and another person, a woman I knew in the dream but do not know in person, on a plane. The plane crashes and it seems like everyone survives. We are moved off and into a bus, and while making that transfer we learn that 11 people died, though we didn’t see any carnage. The bus takes us to an airport where we wait for the next plane.
In the dream I remember thinking: I just survived a plane crash. This is incredible.
And yet there was no commotion about it. There was no media to ask us questions about what we saw or what it feels like. My family members didn’t come rushing to find me, nor any friends. Instead I was merely transferred along. I didn’t even know where I was going. I felt very alone and yet somehow responsible for the known-unknown woman who was with me. I told her how exciting it all was and kept reminding her how incredible it was that we just survived a plane crash, and that something like this will never happen again. She wasn’t very consoled but clung to my arm, confusedly.
I woke up to reality while coughing on my side. It’s been 7 days of this. Three people in the office have the same, it’s not anything serious, but is very annoying at night.
About the strangers in our dreams… how different are they from those of our everyday lives? I mean really.
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Working late tonight from the secret office and then couch shopping tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to it, but I have ended up agreeing that a completely empty living room (save for a few paintings on the walls) is a little weird. We’ll see how it goes. If it all ends in pride, I’ll post pictures.
But don’t be too harsh with your criticisms because I already know don’t have a talent for that kind of thing. But I will try.
Do something interesting and not something stupid and mediocre this weekend, and I will do the same. If I catch you being less than you are capable, if you act sheepishly, I will hurt you.
See you Monday.
