I work for Malcolm X

A few days ago, not certain when or what we'd had for dinner...

I work at a museum, not like any museum, I've ever really worked at. But it's sort of on campus. The environment seems more Explora! than art museum, though. Lots of black fiber/felt walls and red enameled pipe.

I'm supposed to meet my mom, cuz she's going to have a look around with me, see where I'm working and what I'm doing. In the mean time, I'm goofing off with the guys. I think Jonesey is there, some other guys. They keep pressuring me to go off on some fool adventure, when I'm supposed to be waiting for my mom. And I certainly don't want to expose her to these goons, either. She shows up and I kind of miss her, but I see her just inside and I go to catch up. I end up repeatedly diverted, however, between crap and apparently some official business.

In the end, it's time to close the place up. I think my mom has gone already. Malcolm X is my boss, and he's locking the place up. He's wearing the white garments of the Hajj, including a white prayer hat. I try to keep up with him, but he's really moving fast. There is a black family there that has been traveling a long time to get here, and waiting all day to see him, and now in his haste they they will miss him, and they are very sad about this. I tell them to give me a moment, let me see what I can do. Before he gets to his studio, I run up behind him and embrace him, stop him in his tracks. I whisper in his ear that I know that I ask a lot of him, but I need to ask one more thing. I explain the situation, and he's glad to take the time. He goes in his studio, which is JQ's studio, and sits down in the chair by the folding table. The family comes in and they are very relieved that they have the chance to meet him. I'm glad for them.

Please Don't Fire Me!

Chicken, pepper, feta sammies, water. Later bowl of LIFE cereal.

I'm starting my new job at a restaurant, which is rather like Lucky Boy, but with table service, maybe some ref to the old Jubilation Deli. The inside is a creamy yellow, the tables small (geez, Spoletto?) Marta and Claire both work there and got me hired on. It's my first dinner service, and I feel like I don't quite have a handle, but I'm a good server and I can wing it, and the girls will be there to give me some guidance and help if I land in the weeds. We serve the first, late afternoon rush. After that I have to just pop home to change or something, I think I wore the wrong thing.

I go home (to my parents' house) to change, and everything is chaos. We have unexpected company that's come to stay the night, there's people everywhere, I get trapped into one conversation and situation after another. I can't stand this. I have to go, don't you people understand? But I simply can't get away. My 15 minute break to change has certainly moved past an hour now. I'm so fucked. I finally finally finally get away and (run? on all fours? I think so.) go back.

I knock at the back door of the restaurant. The wife of the owner pair opens and looks down at me. I literally drop to my knees and begin begging for them not to fire me. She asks me something about it all being "totally retarded," and I agree, I think she realizes that obviously something beyond my control happened. I head in and down some stairs. But then I realize that maybe she asked if I was totally retarded, and I said yes, and now she thinks she's employing a person with special needs. And come to think of it, my speech does seem very halting through this whole experience. I don't think I'm retarded, though.

The game of torture

This from a couple of nights ago, I think after beer bust shenanigans at the Atomic.

I'm a woman, a mother, trapped with my husband and child. They've taken us captive, and we're going to be tortured, we know. We're led through corridors, the walls change around us. My husband is taken, and we have to watch. Though a green-tinted window, he is floated up in the air, somehow suspended horizontal. From above him descends brownish tentacles, eventually almost like the root ball of a tree. He's disoriented and screaming. The roots or tentacles suddenly drop, pound into his body. It's horrible.

I'm looking through specimen drawers, full of petrie dishes and jars, samples. They are failed experiments with my flesh and cells, all rotten & monstrous. (cf Ripley finding all of the failed clones in Aliens: Resurrection) I'm tempted, indeed, to go all Ripley & destroy everything, but I know they're watching and laughing at me, it's what they want. I won't play.

My son and I are taken to a place and turn into cartoons. My husband is there, too, and he and I become trees, we grow together, our roots move together, our branches. Our son is a turtle (Tootsie Roll commercial style). Suddenly, though, he turns into a frog, jumps up in our limbs and starts eating all the leaves. It's not our son, an imposter maybe the whole time, who knows where he is really. But now we're trees, we can't defend ourselves. The frog with eat our leaves and we will die. Sadness.