i never remember my dreams

and i think we may begin to see why.

i just had a very oddly disturbing dream. the kind that makes you have to stand up and shake yourself before you realize it was a dream and none of it was real or even plausible.

it is a dark dream. dark in color, i mean. a grey/purply blue. like a dickens novel, or, like a bbc film adaptation of a dickens novel. or like a rainstorm.
it's characterized by a slightly panicked feeling and a strong sense of purpose. but what purpose? nadie sabe.
my earliest consciousness of the dream is sitting in my car in the dark at my parents' house. my phone rings and i can't hear well but it's the girl who has kindly agreed to sublet my room for the summer. i can't quite understand what she's saying, but because she offers to pay for may, i assume she's asking me to come get the last of the furniture i have left in the room. i sit back down in the car and try to clear things (although no one else is around and it's very silent outside things seem calmer and quieter within the car. oh. and i guess i got out of the car to talk to her at some point.)
i say "what exactly is it you're asking? because i'm technically in boston so i can't come get my stuff until the end of the month." at this point i become aware that i say "technically" because i'm not in boston. i'm in salt lake. we've come back for a day to get my mother and sister (even though my sister lives in colorado springs) but i really can't come get the furniture because i'm in the car because we are packing (or unloading? what exactly the business with the car is is never clear in the dream.) with excessive franticness to get there on time. somewhere in here i also realize that i'm not even in salt lake because i'm in the driveway of my old montvale house in durham. it's a hot night and maybe a little rain? i'm walking around and while i'm on the phone i see a toe in the back of my car (which is now a hatchback like my sister's new car) i think it is odd that someone is sleeping in my car and think nothing more about it. then i see these enormous birds (i think they're birds. i decide one, at least, is an owl) walking around like totoro. so i run into the house (the girl has stopped talking when i told her i can't come get the stuff and i can't tell if she doesn't know what to say or if the phone died or if she hung up. not my usual self, i just leave the phone in the car.) and tell everyone to come out and see these big scary, creepy birds walking around in the dark (the back part of the driveway, by the woodpile, where we used to park the lincoln.) the fam is doing something (probably playing games) and are taking a long time, but for some reason it's very important that we all go back outside. (i only go far enough in to see that the house is nothing like any of the houses i've ever lived in, but there's a big fireplace with a fire and wood floors and it looks like a nice place to go hang out in, so i'm anxious to finish whatever the beans it is i'm doing outside and get in with the fam) so, impatient with my family who doesn't understand the significance of actually seeing a totoro, i run back, but then i'm scared because they are quite obviously big birds, but not owls and i don't want them to come too close with those big beaks and talons. the chronology gets mixed here, but then maria and my mom come out but there are all these people coming out from the university (which is apparently up on the hill by our house and connected by a little chain-link gate.) it looks like it was a gymnastics or a dance thing cause there are a lot of girls with lots of sparkly make-up and their parents. i explain to my mom and maria (but we were separated by the crowd in our driveway for a minute) that the crowd must have scared them away. and i'm reminding my sister that she never came out the back door of my apartment. and this sad because it's so much more convenient to everything, even though it's less picturesque. (this dream -ha ha pun!- apartment is also for some reason on the top floor with a fire escape out back but it really is, for some reason, so much more convenient than the fancy front door everyone comes in. it's not like an apartment building, though, where you come in the bottom and come up, it's very much like a house with a front door except that my apartment is on the top floor. go figure.) so then we're walking on a trail or an over grown road or something (not like a horror movie, but like an old english country road. like at the beginning of rebecca...) and i bring up the toe in my car and i guess other things have made me suspicious. my mom won't say anything. maria just laughs like they're planning a surprise for me and tells me not to ask and says she doesn't know what i'm talking about. i get angry and want to know what happened and what they won't tell me. my mom says the only important thing for me to do is to make sure when i park the car, that i stay 50 ft. away from it at all times. this tips me off that there is a dead body in the car and my job is to stay safely ignorant and blow up the car and the evidence. (i'm mostly sad to be losing my car, but no worries, i'm duly shocked and horrified to discover that my mother is a calm, cool killer.) my mom says "i guess whoever had the car before us didn't take that good of care of it." i'm confused and feel like i should remind my mother that you can see right in to the "trunk" of my car because it's a hatchback, but maria and my mom are both angry and keep telling me to stop talking. now i'm driving the car and i realize that maybe they just don't want to have this discussion in front of the creepy guy standing in front of us on the trail. so i ask if they want to get in, but then i start backing away down the road. they follow, but then i don't stop at the house and they get annoyed because somehow i've knocked a shopping cart with a trailer loose and it's rolling away. so, eager to pacify, i get out and chase down the cart (i'm very fast. who knew?) and bring it back. then i try to decide how i should deal with getting my car and the cart all the long way back up to the house and determine that the best thing is to put all of my things in the cart. so i start gathering up my things out of the car. there shouldn't be very many, i think, because i've been emptying it, but still it takes a while. and the time it takes me to do this worries my mother, but i think maybe it would be easiest to just blow up the car where it is now and no one will be hurt. then i think that since it's in our driveway they will obviously come to our door and i wonder what my mom wants me to do because, obviously, i'm on my mother's side even though it looks like she may be responsible for the body in the back of my car.


then i wake up and force myself to get up and go talk to liz. it's about 12:30 in our lazy afternoon. it's rainy in boston and very nicely very warm. we've been watching bleak house while liz practices and jord gets new tires on the car. my parents fly in tonight and maria next week.
i'm kind of disturbed. i must say.

but you don't have to say.
really. you don't.