Excerpts from My Anxiety Dream Journal
"The year is 1935 and I’m at the White House for a dinner with Eleanor Roosevelt and Gertrude Stein."
Dream 1
I have the ability to fly just by spreading my arms and jumping. I get into the upper atmosphere, and am immediately approached by a Delta flight attendant who reminds me that I paid for a coach seat. She then straps a standard airplane seat to my back, the weight of which causes me to plummet screaming to the ground. I land at LaGuardia airport and am forced to spend all eternity at Baggage Claim watching an endless parade of identical black suitcases, none of which are mine.
Dream 2
I am nine years old and am sitting in a Broadway theater for the musical Cats. Only the Playbill says “Cows”. The actors are in the aisles squirting milk from their udders on an ecstatic audience. I run into the theater next door, where Cats is playing. The Cats are in the aisles, terrifying an unsuspecting audience. They smell the milk on me and begin licking me to death with their giant sandpaper tongues. The last thing I see before I wake is Magical Mr. Mistoffelees’ cold dead eyes staring through me.
Dream 3
The year is 0000 AD, in Bethlehem. I have snagged the last room available at the only inn in town, much to the consternation of a pregnant lady and her husband in line behind me. I pay with my last check, which bounces when I absent-mindedly date it 0001 BC. I find myself lying in a bed of straw in the barn out back with three disappointed men looking down at me.
Dream 4
It’s my first day working for a New York City public high school. I’ve been hired to teach the Gifted and Talented Driver’s Ed class. I’m behind the wheel of a car, with my principal in the passenger seat explaining what the course entails. We get to the intersection of 48th Street and 7th Ave., and I try to stop the car but the brakes don’t work. The principal tells me, “We don’t believe in forcing students to stop.” I scream that we’re about to run through a red light. He smiles condescendingly and says, “We don’t see any difference between the lights.”
Dream 5
I’m reading a book when I suddenly remember that I have a pet cat, a British Shorthair, that I haven’t fed for months. I search frantically all over my apartment in terrible, guilt-inducing fear that it’s dead. I finally search the bedroom, where I find a set of papers suing me for divorce on grounds of neglect. When I get to court, I see the judge is also a British Shorthair. The jury is composed entirely of British Shorthairs. My lawyer tells me not to worry. The trial ends when someone hears a bag of treats being opened three rooms down and the courtroom empties.
Dream 6
I watch the news on TV. Devils and madmen make laws, thugs enforce them. Everyone is confused and angry. I wake up in relief—but when I turn on the TV, I see the same news. A pelican with a man’s face appears at my window. I realize I’m still dreaming. I try to wake up again, but I can’t tell if I have.
Dream 7
The year is 1935 and I’m an editor for Simon & Schuster. I’m at the White House for a dinner with Eleanor Roosevelt and Gertrude Stein as part of a media tour promoting Stein’s next book, 30 Days to Catch a Man. Things go well until Stein turns to me and asks my thoughts on the use of semicolons. “Well, Gertie,” I reply, “I don’t know how you do it in Paris, but here in the U.S. we get our best writing from a full colon. Mine certainly works overtime.” Stein says, “Your output does have an excrementary quality.” I thank her for what sounds like a compliment. Mrs. Roosevelt coughs in embarrassment.
Dream 8
I am working at a call center job where I hold a phone to my ear and listen to an eternal monster from a dark dimension growl wordless noises. When it stops, I then ask, “And on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is amazing and 10 is the best, how would you rate your wireless carrier service?” I ask my supervisor, a faceless demon named Redd, if I can use the bathroom. He fires me – through a window into a featureless void where I am condemned to spend the next 20,000 years navigating New York State’s unemployment system.
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