John Burridge

Lately my sleep has been spotty.  I think some of the problem is the restless cats and dog who sometimes sleep (mostly) with us, or who park in the wrong part of the bed (or on me).  For whatever reason, I'm finding that I frequently awake around 3 or 4 AM; sometimes my shoulders or other joints are sore and I need to flip over, sometimes I'm blink awake thinking about work, or stories, or music lyrics.  If I'm particularly restless, I'll move to the couch so I don't wake up Mark with all my tossing and turning.   

It feels a little unfair; supposedly, everyone is sleeping much better now that Joe Biden is in the White House -- perhaps my unconscious hasn't caught up with the political news from NPR.   The other possibility, based on the increasing frequency of daytime naps,  is that my circadian rhythm is shifting to a weird, bimodal mode between diurnal and nocturnal.  

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The other day I had a dream that I was supposed to be performing the harp along with a dream woman who is an amalgam of some Reed friends and various co-workers.  I want to say they were playing the accordion, kalimba, banjo, or other folk instrument.  

I didn't write the dream down at the time, so I've lost the detail settings other than it ended up in my old High School.   At some point, I realized that I wasn't wearing a Covid-19 mask.  Then I had set my harp down somewhere and didn't have it.   The dream progressed -- I think there was a locker room involved -- and the next thing I knew, I was standing at the school auditorium doors wrapped in a towel.  The performance had already been going for about five minutes, and the dream woman was alone on the stage, gamely plinking out the melody of some tune that I was supposed to be accompanying her with harp and voice.  If I went to retrieve my harp -- and clothing -- I'd be even more late.  I started to turn away from the door, then changed my mind and marched down the aisle, with only a towel wrapped around my middle. 

I have a sense a spotlight picked me out.  I jumped on stage and caused quite a stir.  "Hi everyone!" I said.  "You know those dreams you have where you're in public and you're suddenly naked?"  Semi-nervous laughter from the audience.  "Well, today's sort of been like that -- but at least I have a towel!"  

My sense is that the woman was kind of glad that I'd finally shown up, in a "finally" sort of way.

A bunch of six year olds ran up to the foot of the stage, and one of them said, in the breathles, excited, and bossy manner of six-year-olds explaining something that everyone should know, "You know, there's a way that you can wear a towel," and proceeded to demonstrate with her dress how to Gird Ones Loins.  

And then the dream went on to other things.

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This morning I dreamed a poem.  Unfortunately, I don't remember what the poem was about other than a vague notion that it was about politics and gender identity, possibly in the mode of an Old English epic.  Or something.  This is probably what I get for flipping through the introduction of a monograph about Sappho before turning out the light.

Over the weekend we went to the Fall Festival in Corvallis.  It's a two day craft fair where folks sell paintings, hats, ceramics, jewelry, kaleidoscopes, and women's hemp apparel.  It's very much like the Eugene Saturday Market, only with less (and cleaner) hippies and almost no tie-dye.

Once upon a time in the very early 1980's, it was one of my friends, Tina Stewe's, birthday. 

The gang collectively thought that it would be fun to treat her to the Benton County Fair, and I agreed to be chauffeur.  It helped that I had access to my Mom's Chevy Impala Station Wagon ("Hop in my Chrysler, it's as big as a whale!")   The car easily sat nine: three in the front, three in back, and three in the way in the back (a backwards-facing rumble seat).

Anyway, because there was some bicycle grease on one of the way-in-the-back seats, I put a sheet over it (I'd gotten some grease on me after a recent family trip and I didn't want the same thing happening to one of my passengers).   And because it was Tina's birthday, I thought it would be fun to have roses.  In the car.  I should point out at this point that Tina was perfectly happy with her high school boyfriend (they married each other a few years later) and the roses were simply an effort on my part to add some ambiance to a fifteen minute car ride.  I set out to equip the car with roses.

In those days, Chevy Impala Station Wagons stored spare tires within the cabin of the car, way in the back, underneath plastic wheel well covers.  The covers  had a kind of built-in tool bin that collected dust, screwdrivers, pencils, and assorted car junk.  I cleaned the bins out, filled them with a little bit of water, put in a spiky flower trivet or two, and filled them with roses from the yard.  Viola! Everything's coming up roses!  And they smelled nice, too. 

The only bump in the evening was hit while we were traveling through Avery Park.  Literally.  I think between the speed I was driving, combined with the number of high school students in the car, caused a hubcap to roll off into the side of the road when I got to one of the park's many speed bumps.  We discovered it was missing when we got to the fairgrounds, but I couldn't find it when I went back to look. 

Tina and everyone had a great time at the fair.

So, the next day, my parents sort of obsessed about the missing hubcap and went to the dealer to get a replacement.  The dealer said something along the lines of, "Well, there's probably a hubcap with the spare..."  at which point the three adults discovered a rumpled sheet and floral display in the back of the car.

"Whoa," said the dealer.  "I've seen them [the wheel well cover bins] used for a lot of things, but this is the first time I've ever seen them used for this!" 

My parents asked me about the roses when they got home, but it took about two years for them to work up enough courage to ask about the sheet.