I’m ruining the effectiveness of these posts, with half a cigarette before I begin.

I had dreams last night, many. However, there was one thing that I kept telling myself to remember, it was a date written on my computer screen, with a note in red type next to it. I believe it was in Windows explorer, but I wonder what the red note was. And now I wonder what the date was…

54/13

Or some permutation thereof… with a note in red to verify this. I believe it was for my upcoming court case, but I don’t know if it’s something that happened or is about to happen.

I also had dreams last night, and while I’m kind of bored of reporting my dreams, I’m going to today. I can remember the rest of everything else.

I have this feeling that someone died… but it’s probably just this song.

I was crawling through an underground tunnel, with a few other people, though I’m not sure who₁. The tunnel was filled with trash, but it looked like incinerated trash, perhaps incinerated trash, white ash packed hard into something with the consistency of florist’s foam. In it were somehow scattered usable items – razors, occasionally a full bottle of shampoo, and many dildos and vibrators, still in their plastic manufacturer’s packing (although some looked as though the packaging was open.

The trail continued through the tunnel, and we ventured in. It was the underground passage beneath a mall where I had been earlier in the dream, but apparently the mall had been built on an older one.

Across the tunnel from the back entrance (employee entrance?) of the CVS, lit up bright, was an abandoned old CVS, with the color scheme that CVS used to have₂, stripped of branding.

At the end of the tunnel, where the mountain of trash stopped, was a wire shelf. Several items, apparently rescued from the tunnel, were lined up there. Mostly personal grooming items – a few electric razors, aforementioned bottles of shampoo, deodorant, etc – and I stopped to look through them.

As I stopped to look at them, a young Latino₃ walked up and looked at the shelf too. It was immediately apparent₃, the way it would be, that this was his shelf, and he had placed the items there himself. He barely looked at me, was he embarrassed, or was he annoyed?

He grabbed one of the razors, and walked into the old dilapidated CVS. I followed him, and I don’t remember how, but I ended up inside.

There was a large family, presumably of which he was a member. I was surprised there was so much space in there, as they came up to talk to me, standing and sitting upon what had once been checkout lanes. The wire racks were still there, and they had been filled with poptarts (unwrapped which I thought was gross), but other than that I was sort of impressed with the space₅.

Along with the Latinx family, was a woman that I had to struggle to remember, about my age. Curly rich brown/red hair cut into a bob₆, impossibly pale almond milk colored skin, brown freckles, and dark rimmed brown eyes. She was beautiful, in an unconventional way. Apparently she lived there too, though I was not sure why as it was not apparent that she was attached to any of the men₇.

We talked for a while, and she was extolling the virtues of the space, mainly super cheap rent. I was able to see through to the front entrance, and realized that it was quite centrally located in town₈.

I would have loved to talk with her more, as I had more than half a lifetime to catch up with her on. She had always been cool to me. I wonder if she ever went into journalism as she had planned, and how I am planning to.

I wonder if that’s the point of the dream.

1. As I remember, the rest of the dream comes back to me. 2. Wasn’t it red, orange and yellow? I will have to check. 3. I prefer that term to Hispanic because the masculine/feminine descriptor is right in the word. Elegance. 4. I have used the word apparent too many times. 5. I wonder if I’ve missed the dead mall phenomena, or if the coronavirus has given me a second chance to jump on all that interesting space. I should throw a festival in a dead mall. 6. Her hair was a straight bob, when we were in highschool, and we were both published in the lit mag. I remember when I was quite the poet. 7. I’m not here to handle what any of these assumptions mean, as it was a dream, but I do note that they were there. Maybe she was attached to one of the women? I’m down for that. 8. This reminds of a space that I looked at, a basement apartment in the center of this town where I currently am, and now I’m reminded that my ex and his current cockerspaniel live in a storage unit near me. The autocorrect of cockerspaniel as I spelled it is knickerbockers, which is hilarious.

I purposely let my coffee go cold so that I could finish this.

Was it worth it? Damn right it was.

A reference to the boy’s horoscope.

I wonder why I don’t just drink the coffee and write with an empty cup, it would probably be more satisfying. It would also spare the awkwardness of finding out that I have more than one cold sip left as I try to close up a post.

There, Done.