LOVE & SQUALOR

I had a dream, and it is making me extremely frustrated, because the girl in it is the last person who will ever want to be with me today. On my way out of it, waking up, feeling the daylight and slipping through the cracks of a fantasy realm, I felt my heart break so loud and thought: I haven’t done this in a while.

I don’t know if the rest of my friends have seen her, but there is a new girl in town named Caty Rose. She is a little brave girl, drawn by sceneries and likes to travel. This side of California has been good to her, so she decided to settle, and find a job, and maybe live a little, just like every one of us. And by that, I mean stop being a tourist and actually be able to call this place home.

We met through my workplace. We talked and talked until the opportunity finally came. An invitation in a pale brown envelope, sealed in red, had come to her mailbox. It was a trip for two to the Moon. Caty Rose has been there once, for a Sweet 16. She said it was fun, except for the part where they all got drunk and silly. At that point, she said, the Sun drew too much attention and it got too hot so they had to go home. Nonetheless, the neons were amazing. I didn’t know anything she was talking about, but I wanted to know what she was talking about, so I asked —

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She asked, like it was her first day here on earth, so we jumped, out of the wooden zeppelin, if there’s such thing.

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The dream started when you told me there wasn’t any way you could go to Texas this May, to meet me half way and make it possibly the only time we could ever see each other. I said I wasn’t going to force it, so I let Texas go and drove all the way. All the way where, you ask? All the way to Alabama.

It rained all the seven days I drove and then I finally got there, where you said you will meet me at a certain mall. I parked at the structure, which seemed vast enough to carry sailboats, and not cars. I finally saw you.

It was so surreal. I touched your hair and you held my hand with yours; so tiny. We watched TV like normal human beings do. You were a human being.

That was the best part of my dream: to know that you were nothing short of a human being.

So I left The Radio Dept.’s Clinging To A Scheme playing before taking a nap this afternoon and as Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs supplied the score for my dream yesterday, so did the shoegaze/post-pop dreamy record orchestrate my dream.

You know how Tumblr’s layout color changes every time it stands up for something, like the BP Oil Spill (black) and the Anti-bullying (purple)? In my dream, the Tumblr header was filled with neon green slime and it seemed real. I “came to my senses” and to my surprise, I was in a room with the Tumblr header as its banner. Neon green slime and all.

Then Woody and Buzz Lightyear were flying around and about the room, above the black-and-white checkered tiles and two lines of people beneath the banners. I checked for what they were lining up for - there was a lady in a nurse outfit giving out free iced tea. When asked, she gave me the headline for the day: “Groups of iced tea consumers settle disputes and agree that adjectives may be used before ‘tea’ to describe what kind of tea one is having.” You know when you’re trying to spell out iced tea and you don’t know if it’s supposed to be ice or iced? The world finally agreed to use adjectives such as iced.

Then, I thought of everyone falling in line as the song Heaven On Fire was playing in the background. That day, everyone needed a win. Free iced tea made us happy. Even Malcolm In The Middle (I know) was in line, waiting for his free cup of iced tea. Everyone hugged each other after getting their free beverage. I saw broken families come together. People just fired from their jobs were also in that room, celebrating iced tea.

Then, Woody and Buzz flew away from the room, and I followed them. They went inside a tiny room and as Woody left his Aviator glasses on the bedside, they tucked each other in a bed and slept soundly.

I just had the best dream sequence thanks to Arcade Fire. Before I slept, I had The Suburbs playing to sleep.

It started off on a boat. I basically rode one that was on a mission: the headline was Three girls walk the Atlantic. So my boat followed them walking through the Atlantic and they did it. It was very colorful inside the boat, reminiscent of pinball machines and ’50s sailor love affairs. Then an encounter with an old lover. She had no one to be with, so I paid for her candy and we followed each other through the night. We never spoke throughout the dream but Arcade Fire playing in the background was enough to orchestrate our movements.

So the elements of the dream were Teddy (from 9 Stories by Salinger, which provided the setting), and the music of Arcade Fire (The Suburbs, the score).

That was so awesome, from now on I’m gonna listen to more music before I sleep.