The Fair Stars

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Dream Archive 26: Fox Pack

Worked as a process server in rural America. Stayed at a house in the desert where a fox was sleeping under a bed. He had found a scout pack filled with useful things. I went through it and tried to find mace in case people being served got violent. Found it. In the morning the fox got up and walked around. He was going to leave, but I petted him and he lay down and rolled over like a cat. I scratched his head for a while then had to get going. I was actually filling in for my dad, who wasn’t sick or anything, he just wanted me and my brother to cover his shifts. I came up with song lyrics about someone jumping off the roof of a TV station to kill themselves, but I forgot because I couldn't find a place to write them down. I wish I could remember. I think they were really good.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Dream Archive 25: Amateur Starter

I was a starter for classic cars, meaning that I was one of the only people who knew how to start them when they needed to be moved from display to storage or wherever. But I didn’t have that much expertise, so it only worked about half the time. Apparently that was enough for them to keep calling me when a car needed starting, although they always looked at me skeptically when I arrived. I was basically guessing and sometimes getting lucky. I wondered if other starters knew what they were doing or if we were all just pretending. Maybe there were no professional starters in the world, only amateurs who kept getting lucky. I was also taking improv classes at a place nearby.

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Dream Archive 24: Célèbre

A man came into the bookstore where I was hanging out. For whatever reason I was over by the Language section. He pointed to a book called FAMOUS and insistently tapped it with his finger while saying something in French. He was worked up about something. He grabbed a French-English dictionary and tried to show us what he wanted. We figured out that he was trying to find the French word for “famous” so he could learn what it meant. The man’s companion told my friend a story. Apparently the man’s wife had died, and the last word she said was “famous.” He had never been able to figure out what she meant because he didn’t know the word’s meaning. The internet didn’t seem to exist in this world. We began searching the dictionaries, but none of them had the word. Some of them turned into nonsense in the section where the word should be. I was frantically paging through them, and I got so upset that I ripped out one of the pages in frustration. I offered to pay for it, but my friend who worked at the bookstore said I didn’t have to. The closest word we could find was “notoriété” (notoriety), which wasn’t close enough. Having failed the man, I asked for his phone number so I could contact him when I found the answer. His companion gave me a business card which had an email address on it, so maybe the internet existed after all. I was sitting and thinking, holding the card with the edge pressed against the side of my face. It slipped and brushed my eye. I was worried I had given myself a paper cut on my eyeball.

QUESTION: Why have the past two dreams included both bookstore and famous? Did this dream come from the previous one? Or from writing down the previous one?

Dream Archive 23: Two Brothers

Long lost sister and twin brothers who are soldiers. They’re knot experts. They wrap themselves in sheets of fabric and do complicated jumps and flips to tie the knots. They activate things on the walls to make us move around the room. There’s also a man who’s a tiny dictator. They trick him and tie him up. He is arrested and incarcerated. One of the brothers fakes a hand injury so that the dictator will think he’s got the advantage if he ever escapes. All of this takes place within walking distance of two libraries, several museums, a movie theater, an outdoor mall, and a famous bookstore. It’s like the cultural center of town.