Dandelion Wine

1
It was some kind of holiday and I was at Auntie Nanie's house. Stasia and I were at the doorway saying bye to Nana and Nanie while they went to go pick up some relatives. Nana took a huge bunch of grapes from the bowl beside the door as she left. When they were gone, Stasia got all excited about showing me things around the house. Behind the shelf beside the door, hidden under some leaves of a plant was a big bowl of pureed red bell pepper. Stasia said Nanie loved it so much she kept it hidden. There were also giant bell peppers beneath the shelves, red, orange and yellow ones. Stasia was cutting them open looking for something, and every slice she made I'd pull open a little bit to peer inside. Soon the halves of all the peppers began falling to the sides and she said, "What did you do?!" Closing them shut didn't work so we rotated them on their sides.

As were were hurrying to get the place back in order before Auntie came back, someone came to the door. Stasia answered it while I was kneeling below one of the coffee tables rearranging a carpet. I turned around and saw it was two nicely-dressed young men with a little greyhound puppy. I quickly finished what I was doing and ran over to see her (the dog). I realized the men were salesmen and they were going door to door trying to sell this cheap-looking jewelry. One of them said something about living comfortably around this neighborhood with his husband, gesturing to the other who stood a few paces behind. As he said this he took my hand and wrapped a thin gold chain around a wart on my finger, pointing at it and describing the different styles of jewelry they had. I got uncomfortable and pulled my hand away. I felt like the cute dog and the mentioning of the fact they were gay were only ploys to try to convince us they were liberal, well-intentioned people.

1
I was listening to Danzig and Sex Gang Children on Last.fm while eating cheese and crackers.

1
It was Thanksgiving and my dad had invited a ton of people to our house, friends and lots of distant relatives I'd never met. A queue began to form outside the doorway as people were waiting to enter and it snaked around the house. Eventually so much time passed that people sat down at tables in the line and were bringing their food outside to eat. Later on in the night I sat down next to my dad and expressed how ridiculous I thought it was to have invited so many people and how irritated I was. There was a plastic jug of pumpkin egg nog on his table which advertised it contained MSG. I began complaining that it was probably because he bought it at some cheap corporate supermarket.

Later that night when most people had left I found my cousins. Dad and Uncle Tony were stacking leftovers in his van to take home. I went inside and saw Tori and Lexy cleaning up around the place which had become like a hotel lobby. Objects were appearing where Lexy was mopping and I knew she was altering physical reality but at first I thought the objects were just 2D pictures and it was like an optical illusion. I went up to her and touched a giant cucumber she'd just placed on the floor and I realized the objects were tangible. She and Tori were smiling wryly and they wouldn't tell me how they did it. Stasia came over and they all looked at each other knowingly and she said, "You want to know how?" So I followed her outside.

It was daytime again and Stasia and I were far away from the house. She ran off the road down through a field of clover toward the edge of a forest. Through some trees was a small house and an abandoned-looking ice cream truck with twigs and branches poking into the windows. Along the side of the truck mixed in among pictures of ice cream were odd drawings, including one of a clown. I started to walk toward the house but Stasia didn't follow, and when I looked back a man was inside the truck talking and laughing with her. He drove away but a copy of the truck stayed behind and Stasia told me to get behind the wheel. I told her I didn't know how to drive.

Suddenly we were in the house and I was playing some driving game on a small TV on the coffee table in front of us. The house too seemed abandoned in that it was missing doors and glass from the windows, but it didn't seem unoccupied. There was graffiti on the wall and colorful toyish objects all over the place. Some of the objects were suspended in space or seemed plastic and virtual. I suddenly realized, comparing the graphics in the video game to the objects around me, that the house was like a physical collection of virtual data.

I started asking my cousin all kinds of questions and she spoke about "polypolyvore" or "polyvore-d." It was a plant or a drug you could eat to immerse yourself fully into the reality of the house. I knew I was only seeing fractions of everything that was there. I was incredibly excited and in awe of this discovery. I felt my whole life had changed. Stasia then said something about getting stoned at a stag party there once and I felt frustrated that she didn't appreciate everything the drug or the house had to offer.

1
My dad was driving me and two of my friends somewhere off the highway, but as we were driving through the parking lot of a strip mall we passed by some chain restaurant and suddenly the male friend in the back seat and I decided we want to go on a "date." Megan, who was also with us, didn't seem to care. But my dad seemed bothered about spending money because our initial destination was either free or very cheap. I brushed off his concern and my friends and I went inside.

Later on I was in the bathroom of the restaurant which was actually a dingy old basement with cement walls and floor. There was a small ground-level window and through it I could see my dad talking on his cell phone outside. He was explaining to someone that he was stuck here (because of money or gas?) but he didn't seem angry, just tired and distressed. When I got back to the table I was going to tell my friends we had to leave.

2
I saw Sam sit down on a bus with Lauren and he was wearing a bunch of oversized cable-knit sweaters. I saw the bottom fringe of a green one sticking out below a big white one with the sleeves bunched up around his wrists. I thought he looked hilarious and I wanted to text him just the word, "sweater," and I did this by reaching over the seats and sticking my hand underneath one of them where he seemed to be hiding his phone. Lauren was the only one who seemed to notice this but she pretended not to. I typed my message directly onto his phone but because I couldn't see what I was doing I accidentally typed "single." He then suddenly started making a big deal about how he was single, implying he and Lauren had broken up, while she sat there smiling uncomfortably.

3
I was on some dreaming forum on the Internet describing a problem I had with dream recall. A guy who'd been assisting me throughout my thread said something like, "Now rub your hands together and meet me in a dream later." I thought this was punny, like: rub your hands together in anticipation, and also rub your hands together to stabilize your dream.

4
Steve wanted to show me something he made or helped create, so I followed him. An alternately docile/aggressive female lion leaped at me while we stood in a small wooden shed. I huddled up against Steve for safety. He seemed distracted and confident I would be fine. A Brian Froud-y looking creature which emanated the melody to I Lay Stretched on Your Grave from its ears. I wanted to tell Steve how emotional the song made me but I didn't get the chance. I felt so affected by everything but he remained calm and stoic.

1
I was spending time with Tori who was still living with Nana on Putnam. Then I remember us being in the kitchen at her old house on Winthrop Ave. and M Mollica was there. He'd brought me something I asked him to buy, like some kind of chicken stock, but I got mad because the stock either was or wasn't made with the neck of the chicken. He apologized but I blew up like an immature bitch while he just sort of sat there next to Tori smiling unaffectedly and I suddenly felt like a child.

2
I went to the eye doctor with my dad, whom I was (still?) mad at about the chicken. When we got there I stormed away into a separate childrens' waiting room, which I realized was also the office. The optometrist, a young Asian woman, was examining this little boy who sat looking at images projected on the wall. We were both seated at a small table on which were the slides used in the projector. It was like a makeshift slide carousel; there were a bunch of clear Tupperware bowls nested inside each other and around the edges were things written on in permanent marker and crudely taped pictures. The doctor took it from the table while I was trying to figure out how it worked. The entire time obnoxious 90's pop hits were playing rather loudly over the radio, including Third Eye Blind's Semi-Charmed Life.

3
I was playing Petz and looking at all the catz and dogz I hadn't taken out in so long. I began thinking of which ones I wanted to breed to make more interesting petz. I felt the kind of remorse I always used to feel about using my virtual petz just for breeding before I remember they are in fact virtual.