side notes

(Good -- um... afternoon, everybody. On the weekdays, I usually write my dreams in the morning, on my subway ride in to work. But this morning I didn't think I remembered any dreams.

Then, sitting at work (really stressing over something, in fact), I suddenly recalled this dream. Weird.

The dream is weird. I'd say at least part of the influence on it is the fact that over the past couple days I've been reading Jack Kerouac's Book of Dreams. In one dream, Kerouac meets Dinah Shore. That dream was so charming, I think I also wanted to have a dream where I met a celebrity. So my unconscious obliged... kinda.)

Susan Faludi was out in the desert doing research on a new book she was writing. The book was similar to The Terror Dream. But this book had less to do with feminism and more to do with some general national conspiracy. I probably identified with Faludi or saw through her eyes.

Faludi had discovered whatever it was she had been trying to discover. She may now have been standing by her car in an empty road in the middle of the desert. Faludi may have slammed down the trunk or hatchback of her car with an air of finality.

She intended to go somewhere. Instead of taking her car, which now may not even have existed, she flew up into the air, possibly by means of a red and white striped parachute.

She flew away to her right, along the road. She knew that she actually needed to head along the road, but in the opposite direction. She flew over a small overpass. This overpass was a landmark telling her she was definitely going in the wrong direction.

The wind was carrying her in this direction, although she "had control" over "her power of flight." She kept telling herself that she would work up the momentum of the wind in order to get swinging around in the correct direction.

But she kept flying and flying in the wrong direction. It was now night. Faludi was in the woods. It was cold and snowing. Still flying along the highway, I/Faludi (I definitely was part of her decision making process here) saw a billboard. The billboard was on a 50-foot tall, steel column.

I knew that if I/she grabbed on to the guard rail in front of the walkway before the billboard, I/she could stop the uncontrolled flight and at least get my/her bearings. So Faludi grabbed the railing and did some kind of elastic flip onto the walkway before the billboard.

The walkway was snowy and lit by a few fluorescent flood lamps. Othewise, everything was snowy, cotton-grey dark. Some pine trees may have reached as high as the billboard.

Faludi huddled behind some weird, clear, plastic rectangle which I figured was some kind of a solar panel for powering the billboard's lights. Faludi thought she could call someone, perhaps her husband, to pick her up here. But it was just so cold, and she felt like it would take forever for someone to get here.

I had a false awakening. I was going about my "daily life" when somebody, possibly my mother, told me that Susan Faludi had died. I was really surprised and upset. I regretted the fact that I'd never gotten to meet her.

But it also seemed weird that Faludi should have died. She had always seemed like such a healthy person to me.

Somehow I saw a photo of her -- possibly on the web. The photo showed Faludi in a motorized wheelchair, like they have at the front of grocery stores, the kind that look almost like cars or scooters with baskets on the front. Faludi was overweight, with short, grey hair. She wore a white t-shirt and black slacks, both of which were sloppy and tight on her.

Again, this didn't make sense. I thought, There's no way Faludi could have changed this quickky. I began to doubt seriously whether Faludi was in fact dead.

(Just one small note on this, from November 14th. After looking at some news images, I realize that the image Susan Faludi is hiding behind in the snow is a teleprompter. I'm not sure why a teleprompter is hanging out on a billboard. And I'm not sure why I thought it was a solar panel.

But, then again, I'm still not sure why this dream involved Susan Faludi. The actions in this dream are completely the opposite of what I feel Falud's actions would be. They're more like what I think my own actions would be. So maybe the dream is saying I wish I was like Susan Faludi, but that I'm just still horribly, embarrassingly like myself. Oh, well.)