CONCATENATIONS

Row 1: ch 33, dc in 4th chain from hook and in each chain across (31), chain 3 and turn.

Cells dividing into hives multiplying into frequencies honeycombing into an intricate fretwork of networks and signals and towers until there’s no more here or there, only a sizzling grid of electric honey and the dizzying hum and drone of bees, bees, bees.

Phone buzzing under the pillow. Quiet golden murmur in the morning.

Row 2: dc in second dc from hook and across (ch 3 counts as first dc), chain 3 and turn.

Runner passes the baton in a relay race.
Dove-tail joint.
Knit 2, Purl 3.
Shifting limited omniscience.
Tongue and groove.

Row 3: repeat row 2.

Triangulate.
Trifecta.
Bouquet.

Row 4: sc in second dc from hook and next 3 dc, ch 6, skip 6 stiches, and dc in remaining stitches across, ch 3 and turn.

I dreamed I grew feathery moth antennae. Flew blind at night. Overheard it all. Felt everything. It was excruciating. Or do I mean it was exquisite?

Slip stitch.

I am HTML-ing together a web to trap myself.

I am making a bright net to catch me when I fall.

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GEM CITY: A MIGRAINE DREAM

Coasting down foothills into Laramie. My father’s old gray Jeep: vinyled and squared, filigreed in lace cuffs of rust.

Rockies’ chilled crust thrusts up hard, distorting the horizon.

Perspective all askew: Mountains much too large and much too blue, looming up much too close too fast. I am not a child, but I slide back and forth in the middle of the front bench seat, knees jogging the gear shift. The parents in the car are not my parents. Alco’s cracked neon on the left closed down years ago. Lost effervescence of wind-bobbled balloons frantically bubbling in the no-longer-there car lot.

Clouds spill down off the mountains, twisting into dangerous, spiraling wraiths.

Are those tornadoes? I ask.

They flame in the too-loud wind like black dry ice, slivered with bright threads of lightning.

Is it war? I ask.

They dervish off the sagebrushed plains toward the road.

You have to stop. You have to pull over, I say. I’m not wearing a safety belt.

The sound of unfurling metal, burning, shattered glass, hot wind. Everything goes blank.

An eyelid blinks open to sunlight, emptiness, the heart-shaped white behinds of curious antelope retreating. Empty car, empty highway, everyone else gone. Mountains’ bright prong ringing an empty town.

Radio’s static crackle, then chipped advertisements, like faded billboards in the wind:

it’s Joe Albertson’s supermarket . . .

on a sesame seed bun . . .

you’re in good hands with All State . . .

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PEOPLE ARE STRANGE, WHEN YOU’RE A STRANGER . . .

1. Last Night’s Strange Dream

I’m standing in front of a building, chatting with a girlfriend. We’re both wearing our down vests. My Jeep is parked directly in front of me, and there’s a yellow parking ticket on the windshield.

“Damn,” I say, turning to my friend, “I didn’t realize that I couldn’t park there.”

My friend is no longer my friend, however, but has transmogrified into an Unidentified Male Companion. (Seriously. That’s how he’s close-captioned in the dream. Unidentified Male Companion.)

I notice that we are standing directly in front of a Stop sign, and there’s a rather adorable mouse, clinging precariously to the top of the sign. A fat gray mouse with big eyes and clever feet.

“Is that a titmouse?” I ask the Unidentified Male Companion. “No, wait. A titmouse is a bird. So, wait . . . what I really mean is, is that a dormouse? And what’s it doing up there?”

The Unidentified Male Companion shrugs.

“I mean, don’t you think that’s odd?” I press on. “Very Dante Gabriel Rosetti, you know? Perhaps we should be drinking laudanum, or something, or at the very least, exhuming our exes.” (I am, it seems, apparently capable of churning out excruciatingly dorky badinage even in my dreams.)

That’s when the dormouse lets out an indignant shriek and leaps onto the face of the Unidentified Male Companion, and proceeds to viciously bite him in the face. I’m absolutely horrified, and have to cover my eyes. (Apparently, I’m more of a Delicate Flower in my dreams than I am in real life.)

Someone appears to intervene, and the dormouse is removed, and when the kafuffle subsides, I apologize to the Unidentified Male Companion. “Sorry I wasn’t more help,” I tell him. “Dormouse carnage makes me queasy. Did someone help you out?”

“No,” the Unidentified Male Companion says rather crossly. “But he did manage to get it all on film.”

That’s when I notice that there’s a circle of onlookers, all recording the dormouse attack on either their cell phones or with hand-held video cameras. One of the onlookers volunteers to play it back for me, and when I look at the playback on the tiny LCD screen, instead of seeing the dormouse attack, I see myself with my friend in the vest from earlier in the dream. We are diffidently sashaying in front of a red, velvet curtain, a la Twin Peaks.

“I can’t believe that I don’t feel more upset about this,” I tell the onlooker, as I watch myself. “Normally I can’t stand to have my picture taken.”

(Dear Internets: Feel free to leave interpretations in comment box, if it amuses you to do so.)

* * *

2. Strange New Morning Ritual Involving The Bean

AH: [Sleepily and confusedly.] Wha . . .? WTF? What are you doing?

The Bean: [Rigorously grooming AH’s belly button.] I’m giving your belly button a bath.

AH: Well, don’t. That’s just weird.

* * *

3. Strange Days

Um . . . yeah. I think that’s about all that I have to say about that.

* * *

4. Stranger Things Have Happened

Tomorrow there will be dancing. And decadence. Hooray for dancing and decadence!

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POLAR BEARS AND FERRETS

I woke up this morning after having had the strangest dream. I was in an anonymous motel room somewhere, and I had in my custody a ferret and a polar bear cub. Only the ferret was an extremely large ferret–sort of a cat-sized ferret, actually–with silky-soft reddish-brown fur. The ferret particularly liked to have its stomach rubbed. The polar bear cub was a round white bean of a cub–very tiny–the size of the newborn polar bear cubs Klondike and Snow who were hand-raised at the Denver Zoo after having been rejected by their mother. It seemed very important to me that I keep the ferret and the polar bear separate, and for lack of better containment systems, I had each of them stored in large plastic Hamster Habitrail houses. The ferret, however, wouldn’t stay inside its Habitrail–it kept climbing out and making me rub its stomach–and then the next thing I knew, the polar bear cub popped off the top if its Habitrail. I felt very concerned that the polar bear cub would eat the ferret, even though the ferret was technically larger. I put the polar bear cub back in its Habitrail, and it popped off the plastic top again. This, time, however, as it stood up on its hind legs, it sprouted up in front of my very eyes into a full-grown polar bear. “Well shit,” I thought to myself. “Now I’m going to have to take it to Sea World.” And so, for protection, I wrapped white hotel towels around my hands until they resembled giant Q-Tips, and plotted on how to cajole the full-grown polar bear into my car so I could drive it to Sea World. (For some reason, I was driving a Geo Metro.)

Interpretations welcome.

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