I, Refuse

I dreamt last night that my alarm clock was green, not that the thing itself was green, but rather that it had green digits: bright, glowing green digits. And a squawk like an extinct bird. That's all I remember from the dream. It was a clock from bizarro world, a clock conjured by my unconscious to confuse and distort me and make me question upon which side of the quilt do I reside. For in reality my actual alarm clock is red and it sounds like a mother hen cooing in the dew of morning.

Why such a detail has velcro and others do not baffles me. Certainly there was more to the dream than a slightly different alarm clock. Could my mind be so simple as to struggle at night with such frivolity? In slumber do I not find myself engaged in grander designs? Flying unassisted, perhaps? Slaying dragons? Rubbing elbows with aliens at debaucherous galactic balls? Showering under waves of liquid silver? Defending my peoples from an invasion of paddle-wielding midgets with quick reflexes? Lust-filled dalliances with Renaissance babes who take thirty minutes to get undressed but are worth it? Inventing new gadgets for grateful lazy people? Being taken hostage by Leprechauns who are tired of being mistaken for the Keebler Elves but sound so cute when they talk they have a hard time being taken seriously by the authorities? Rescuing the princess? Fedora shopping? Volcano humping? Being on the set of the original Star Wars and being the guy who gets to remove the electrical tape from Princess Lea’s nipples? Breaking up a clown fight and going home smeared with blood and pie? Living in a world where mailmen bring donuts to your house instead of mail and are called donutmen?

For some reason I struggle to bring dreams across the threshold; just a few make it through. It’s too much contraband to sneak past the guards at the gatehouse; meaty trolls in sweat-marked uniforms who decide what you may or may not bring with you, casting confiscated figments behind them into a writhing landfill of dreams and nightmares, an impossible pile of odorous images, melting colors, flickering faces, unsought tears, reversing thoughts and unique notions, a pile that could never be inventoried or accounted for and is at turns too bright or too dark to look upon-- ever evaporating, decomposing, returning to the ether, but living nonetheless. Characters dig for the bottom of the pile and escap down ancient rabbit holes, tunnels that lead back to the place where people and aliens have orgies and donuts after a good day of dragon-slaying.

Tonight I will dream and tomorrow I will wake. The dream in between will teach me not to look at the horizon. There is nothing for me there.

Good thing I won’t remember.