Borrell

Last night I dream I'd just eaten half a kebab and i was late for class at college. It was nearly 1pm and the classroom was unusually crowded. I sat on one of the last rows, nearer the door. I didn't know most of the people there [most of those I saw are the ones that I know or imagine to be still in college]. I learned that the reason for the massive attendance was that there was no class, but a lecture by (or about) bygone Spanish politician Josep Borrell. There was a technician there from the videolab (over 30, balding, not nice—the average videolab guy) who insisted that the speaker should not move, for the lecture was going to be recorded with a static camera and the shot was tight around the speaker's face. I thought having to speak in public is hard enough without the pressure of not being able to move, but videolab guys are always helpful like that. By the time he said that we should all lay our coats on the steps to signal them, so that at some point the speaker can walk up the tiers with his eyes fixed on the camera, I'm not paying attention anymore.

Another student (a gray overachiever whose name I can't remember, but it was something gray as Laura) was in charge of somehow reviewing the lecture, for which she was allowed to see it from a special tribune. Another guy named Dani (a rad-looking boy from hi-school, actually) had a similar privilege.

Then the lecture started, and I paid attention again. I couldn't believe what my eyes saw. Someone (I blamed the videolab guy) had turned the whole classroom into a TV stage from the glam 70's, with warm glistening lights, and the lecture had become stand-up comedy. The speaker (he was definitely not Borrell—that was the subject of his lecture) had to look and move and speak like some extremely obnoxious comedian, and his lecture was a spoof. He told us how Borrell began his career as a writer, and how being short and queer like Terenci Moix he definitely had a chance for success. All the time, black and white archive film illustrating his words appeared on a large screen behind him. This was only the prologue, but when the title of the lecture was due to appear on screen, something went wrong and a ridiculous message appeared on screen. People laughed. Then they cut to Laura, the girl on the tribune, who was caught unprepared and said an incredibly stupid remark.The lights switched on. It all ended.

I moved towards the first rows as people began to leave. Jesús (a friend from college who I immediately understood to be the one who had organized the whole thing) was very distressed, wondering what had happened. Then a nice girl by me (who actually was M. B., and I can't believe I just failed to recognize M. B. in a dream, but it was her), equally unsatisfied, tried to comfort him. I remember he said, 'It has served to get to know Borrell on a first-name basis. It's been as if we'd gone together to visit Juvé & Camps winery together; all we accomplished was to know Juvé & Camps'. (The analogy doesn't make much sense but it did then, for both Jesús & M.B. come from Penedès, a wine-producing region.) Laura came by later, close to tears, and M. B. comforted her as well. I tried too. I told her not to worry. I said, 'Speaking in public sucks. That's why I never speak.' I heard people laugh with that. Somebody in the back said something about the website I work for. That's true; I've done my bit of public appearances there. Dani comes by as well; I remember he appeared on the web too. 'Wherever someone is about to embarrass himself, there's Oscar with a video camera—even if he has to raise from the dead,' i joke.

But hey, class is over. Time to move on. I feel like eating the other half of the kebab.

Notes:

- My watching 'Eagle Eye' last night accounts for the appearance of long-disappeared Josep Borrell: Billy Bob Thornton looks a lot like him in that film. Also I read the name Juvé & Camps somewhere and it stuck.

- Happy bday, Noni.

Third

Last night i dreamt the third installment in a horror film series. I couldn't remember the name, though i knew for sure that the sequels had already lost any contact with the original.

It began with a road climbing uphill out of a slum and going through the woods. It's night. And winter. Two people are just leaving the slum now, and there is a third man quite a long way ahead. They can communicate somehow. As the camera travels from one to another, I see a wild doberman emerging from the fog and chasing the solitary walker ahead. This one is exhausted by the cold and the blinding fog. In the end, he just sits on a stool-sized cactus and tells the others to come for him. They tell him to walk just a little more to get out of the woods and the danger, but he's too sick. The camera travels forward down the path from where he sits to show that he actually is just some meters away from some stairs leading down to the slum again.

While I visited the slum, I considered asking some woman in a blacony how the place was called. Not in the movie, but in real life, so i could find it on Google Earth.

Marshall Islands

Last night I dreamt that the Republic of Marshall Islands comprised just 16 landmasses, the smallest being the size of rocks, just a fair swimming distance off the continental shore.

I was promenading along the continent cliffs and saw the Marshall Islands down there, and thought I could reach them just by jumping off the continent edge. I stepped closer to check it was a safe drop. I guess i stepped too quick, i slid off the edge and fell.

As i plummet down, i hope my arc is wide enough to dive into the open sea. It is not, really, but i just ricochet off a ledge on the cliff and keep going. I fall in the water.

I remember feeling completely safe as my impetus keeps pushing me to the bottom, aware that if i survived the collision, swimming upwards will be piece of cake. The ocean is crystal clear, just slightly greener than sky. Then suddenly my feet land on the bottom--on top of an aztec-style pyramid, sunken between the Marshall Islands. I'm very happy about this discovery.

Sisters

Last night I dreamt i came back home (i. e., to my gf's house) after having overslept. I think i had closed my eyes in a bus stop after a party night before going to a matinée, and turned out to fall asleep. [Which is what was happening in real life, being due to wake up in a few minutes after having not slept at all.]

When I came back home, she was not there, of course, but her sisters were in the narrow living room, all four or five around the rectangular dining table, playing Greek Scrabble. With the funny letters and everything.

"Hey. Did you guys see [Swedish star name]?," one of them asks. They're between 12 and 20 y.o.

"Hmm. No, we didn't", I say. (I guess that was the actor in the matinée movie; my gf had been dreaming about him or something; anyway, we'd split ways long before morning.)

"Did you do [whatever i was supposed to do]?"

"No". This happened all en passant, as i walked by on my way to her room.

I'm already in the corridor when i hear one of them say in a mocking tone, "It's great to see you're turning gay!"

"Yeah, cool", i say to myself, as i enter the messy room, thinking that i don't mind the gf, but those teen sisters and their house would make perfect material for my next piece of writing. Unfortunately, after i've taken my shoes off and before i can drop on the bed, i find out my gf left, but her roaches didn't. And i have to kill a few of the nasty things with my hands.

[And, since i have never had a cockroach on my skin, how the fuck does my subconscious know how it feels?]

Photo by Efou222.

NOTE: For a second as i was told about turning gay, in the dream i was thinking my next piece of writing would be about those 4-5 sisters, or life in that teen-ridden house. BTW, there is no GF. And i don't know who she was. I doubt she could be any cooler than her sisters.

Minotaur

Last night I dreamt a cop entering a windowless room, and either killing everybody in it or finding the corpses. There are iron pillars holding some kind of monkeybars above. Yhe cop counts the pillars around, and only afterwards he begins climbing.

Before he reaches the top, the minotaur drops on him.

The creature has roughly human head and body, so i don't know whence the name. It is blind, so it needs to hear his rival before attacking. Therefore, the hero just swings from one pillar to another, without treading the floor, goes all around the room and strikes the minotaur from behind. In this he succeeds twice; the third time, the minotaur expects him and throws a blind slashing punch at the right time, almost killing him.

At the moment of finishing him, the minotaur stops, thinks, then decides to forget the traditional ways. Instead he pulls out a gun for the execution.

In a split second, the cop pulls out a bigger gun a blows his non-bull head off.

Air surfers

Last night I dreamt a movie. It was a classic drama with Steven Spielberg involved in it. Today, i think Aronofsky would like the idea.

The main character is a little kid; lives alone with his single mother and twin brother in a bucolic town in Northern California with a dense population of crows--they probably can smell the looming tragedy. The kids' best friend and possible reason for male competition is a girl their age who wants to be a professional air surfer, a sport consisting in riding a free-wheeling Calvin & Hobbes cart.


At this point, either the brother or a male in the kids' gang should die.

Tragedy taints the rest of the film as the kid tries to overcome the loss, blah blah blah.

By the end of the film, just as (a symbolic) sun begins to shine again upon the characters, a (real) storm hangs over the football field. The home team are training in a corner, whilst the kids watch the girl training for the big air surfing finals tomorrow. Maybe to impress her, the kid decides to give it a shot. The other kids pull the wagon and then let it run loose, with the kid standing on it. POV as he approaches a big pool of rain water with crows drinking from it. Suddenly a bolt of lightning falls on the water and everything turns white.

POV: the kid looks up at the roaring clouds above, from the bottom of a crevice of burnt earth. Feel his pain. The edges of the crevice are spiked by the carcasses of hundreds of dead birds. Then a crow flutters into frame, looks at the camera, and pries the kid's eye out.

In the end, months after the accident, the kid is hideously scarred, and something really trivial happens and they all cry in happiness.

Aaron Invasion

Last night I dreamt I visited Heaven.

The main character in the story is a boy named Aaron Invasion. He lives with his mum, a widow. A man from social services or the government tells them they'll have to move to a new place.

The new place is a small American town where boys and girls dream of becoming astronauts. There is a church (more like a very big trailer) where the locals worship things from space. A few phenomena have been observed in the whereabouts (such the remarkable brightness of some stars when viewed from here) could explain the town's obession with the space motive.

Aaron doesn't believe in these things and does not wish to become an astronaut. After a few remarks debunking space myths, he grows quite impopular.

I visited the library once and couldn't use the computers because the kids were building a giant antenna. The whole town was boiling with anticipation. Something big was bound to happen.

Somebody spraypainted on the back wall of the big metal church, 'Invasion--don't mess with the astronauts.'



In the final scene, Aaron and me and someone else are riding a horse-pulled wagon and fleeing town. We cross the railroads and almost get hit by a train. Suddenly, we fall on an unexpected new set of rails. I see all this in a traveling. We enter a tunnel. When we leave, the rails run along a river, slightly upwards. We're dashing up a takeoff ramp, wheeling above the flocks of ducks that fly away in awe.

We run off the ramp. We arc. We fall, slightly towards the left. We bounce off the rocky walls of the canyon, and in that moment i hear the flapping of massive wings above us. A flying roc clutches our cart with its feet and moves us up, up and away, to the next stage.

Maybe we lost the horse.


The next stage must have been another set of invisible rails hundreds of feet above the ground. I remember our way along the ultimate canyons whose vertical, bush-covered walls are the only things that separates us from heaven, where every woman i deem beautiful must live.

Religion (an obvious metaphor of social exclusion)

Last night I dreamt Xavi belonged to a...

[I hesitate here. I'd write 'sect' or 'cult', though that might be my skepticism doing the phrasing. Maybe the closest word is 'religion' or 'church'. I'll go with 'church'.]

...church. He never told me straight. This is how I found out: Albert came by our desks one day and he commented he'd seen Xavi in the meetings. Xavi was all like, "oh, where you there too?", and Albert explained he was actually the new host. They didn't say much more. Later I questioned Xavi and he admitted he'd been attending those meetings. He didn't call it a religion, though the word 'spiritual' slipped out at some point. Anyway, he didn't want to talk about it, like it was not a secret, but it was intimate, something not meant to share with anyone. So I didn't probe him for the sake of respect. But i was intrigued. I used to think of Xavi as an even less spiritual person than me.

Second happening involved our top-tier boss, J. He too stopped by our desk to chat and tell us some old stories, some involving a mid-manager, M. He sounded like he meant to prove us that M had once been a funny guy, the kind who could generate positive anecdotes. Then he checks the clock, and just as the second hand swings into 09:59, he completely changes the mood by saying to Xavi, "By the way, congratulations, i heard you're doing great at meetings". They go on to speak in riddles for a while, and then J says "I will deny having even been here for the last minute", and just as the clock strikes 10 he changes the subject again.

This is what i made out (or imagined) about the church. It's somewhere between a real religion and a self-improvement therapy group. Devotees go to meetings once or twice a week, where they sing/chant/pray. I don't think i heard anyone mentioning a god or gods, but i do think that believing in some sort of energy/soul/cosmos is required to get in (like in the freemasons).

I felt disappointed to know that J of all people could fulfill that requirement—he whose work consists basically on mocking another reigion. I am an atheist (up to now, i'd have said "a proud atheist", the reassured, no-need-to-brag kind of atheist); but for the first time here i felt like i'd missed something everybody else knew.

Third happening: Paula comes by, she brings up the church topic, Xavi is clearly interested. She says she's not in the church now, but she was for many years. Then they hold some kind of veiled conversation. I act like i don't care, like i'm all over it, as i leaf through a small book spoofing religions that lies around, something Xavi and I used to laugh at together, though now i fail to understand most of the jokes—like a page with a chart listing several core concepts of some new-age cult, one of which is the word 'Roland?!'

When i look up from the book, Xavi and Paula are still talking about the meetings, stating that Albert makes a great host. Xavi's trying to pinpoint somebody who attends the meetings, only he can't name any person nor place because i'm right there, so he draws a sketch. It's a room with a piano and a bar and a sofa and people standing and sitting, and he draws an arrow pointing to the second stool at the bar, and then, as though asking who uses to sit there, he writes the word "Roland?!" in a circle.


Paula says, "you're not much wrong there".

Palau

Last night I dreamt I visited the island nation of Palau, in the Pacific. I remember luxury hotels and spa pools. Natives were olive-skinned, wore suits and were extra-kind. I told them I was just checking the country before deciding where to spend my vacation in May.

Blue taxis drove around the main square in the capital. I was told cars were not really needed, for everything in the island is within a 15-minute walk radius. My mind was made.

Architecture in Girona

Last night I dreamt i had a job. In front of a computer, at a very small desk. C worked just a few rows ahead. And a döppleganger of C too. We used to play Buffy the Vampire Slayer during recess. With Buffy and Angel playing themselves. After recess, having been fighting foes and everything, I was shirtless and i guess people stared at me. C. seemed amused. I was beginning to trust i'd gain one or both of the C's trust sooner or later.

In the next scene, i was in the hospital of Girona (after having sneaked out of a family lunch in a restaurant). The hospital is an enormous, diaphanous building, with an outer glass wrap and the real building inside; each floor was a different color and contained some awarded feature or state-of-the-art technology. I took a glass lift to the top floor (fifteenth). Then I forgot where i was going.

I took a tour thru another public building in the city. This one seemed like a district library. The floor was dark wood, walls were crimson and dark green. It rained outside. Behind a corner were many tables and people reading. I went thru a door, then along a passage, then another door.

Maybe this was another building. The last door in the back was old, almost from Roman times, and very little, as the ceiling and the floor were each slating to meet. I opened the door and looked inside; there was a cellar and some stairs going up. I didn't go through; when I closed, the ceiling was low enough for me to jump over and reach the rooftop. It was just dirt and stone, a pre-Roman building not taller than a single-storey house built near the river. I threw stones in the water.

I keep dreaming about the same beautiful people and different cool places almost every night, and neglect to write them down because i fear i would come here and revisit them too often.

I am pure gin-smelling decadence.