Left-handed Art

My sister tells me her dreams.

Dream #1: An African Warrior is living in her garage. She asks him, "Do you eat here, do you sleep here?"

Dream #2: She finds two severed arms, severed above the elbow and below the wrist. They have hanging tendons. She picks them up and finds that they are floppy and hilarious.

This is the story that came out of my brain, after she told me her dreams.

Two Sisters are walking down the street. One is dressed conservatively in sleek black and white, and she's wearing heels. The other is in earth colors, wears flip-flops, and is wearing a scarf that serves no purpose.

The two one-armed Sisters link elbows and walk into a garage. It is the Warrior's lair.

One Sister giggles.

The other frowns. She wants to scratch her nose but she can't.

The garage has throw rugs on the hard concrete. There are beautiful tribal wall hangings and a round wooden table, with three high-backed upholstered chairs. The sisters take seats across from the African Warrior.

She leans in, ten lacquered nails resting on the table.

"How do we become warriors?" the flip-flopped Colorful Sister asks.

"Fuck everyone."

"Fuck everyone?" the high-heeled Black and White Sister asks. "My boss, men, women, hermaphrodites, my husband, my girlfriend, everyone?"

"No," the Warrior says. "Fuck everyone. Their opinion of you doesn't matter."

Black and White Sister stares. "Do you realize we have two arms? Between the two of us? When we tell the stories of how we lost our arms, people form opinions of us, as if they hadn't already been thinking nasty horrible things when they see our one arms. I lost my arm in a slow-speed chase of an ice cream truck last July. My arm got stuck in the freezer in the back of the truck, and the music was so loud, the driver didn't hear, and everyone who saw me running behind the truck thought I was an overenthusiastic ice cream lover, and they thought I was screaming for ice cream, and all they did was wave at me. My sister here, she went zip-lining in South America, fell sixty feet into the waiting maw of the jungle below, and lost her arm to flesh-eating bacteria."

Black and White Sister and the African Warrior look expectantly at Colorful Sister. Colorful Sister smiles serenely and says, "I understand."

"What is it you understand? Not to go zip-lining in South America again? Not to wander into strange people's garages?" Black and White Sister is red-faced.

"Fuck everyone." Colorful Sister extricates her arm from Black and White Sister and high-fives the Warrior.

"Now we will draw severed arms, and give them personalities." The Warrior leads them to a section of the garage splattered with paint.

Black and White Sister crosses her arm. "I came for enlightenment, I came to feel better about my situation, and you want us to draw?"

Warrior and Colorful Sister kneel on the floor and begin mixing finger paints. Fleshy colors mostly.

Colorful Sister quickly sketches her arm onto the canvas and just for giggles, draws it severed at the wrist. She draws a forearm with an elbow really, and some silky tendons hanging out where the fingers should be. It is whole, beautiful, all by itself on white canvas, glowing, no hint of flesh-eating bacteria anywhere.

Black and White Sister kneels down and mixes her finger paints. She sketches a hard form, almost a 3-D boxy stick arm, with five strong fingers, all in a fist, except that the middle finger is raised high, tall and proud.

The Warrior beams.

Black and White Sister surveys her work with satisfaction. "So you eat here, in this garage?" she asks.

"Yes," the Warrior says, gesturing to the stove in the corner.

"You sleep here?"

"Yes," the Warrior says, gesturing to a mattress with neatly folded blankets behind a colorful hanging tapestry.

Black and White Sister looks at Colorful Sister. "I don't get your Northern Exposure, Twin Peaks, One Hundred Years of Solitude symbolic notion of life and why you dragged me here."

"Fuck you," says the Colorful Sister.

The Warrior beams.

The Sisters hug, thank the Warrior, and leave the garage, arm in arm.

Warrior's husband comes out from behind the colorful tapestry. "I'm glad they're gone. I wasn't going to get in the middle of that."

Stress Relief

The downside
to modern social rules
to self-restraint
to an emphasis on tact
and understanding
and temper control

is

that I must beat
the shit out of
the poor men
who challenge me
in my dreams.

Ah, but it feels good.

Dream about Annie

I was setting up my dorm room, getting ready for the new year in college, when Annie called. She doesn't call on the telephone; instead I get an image of her walking with her ex-lover, saying goodbye to him, and I know she wants to talk to me.

I tell her we'll meet at Hoagie Haven. Hoagie Haven is not a couple blocks down the street like in Princeton, but down three twisted back alleyways and into the woods. There are two dirt paths, red dirt, leading to the restaurant, and Annie is walking barefoot down one dirt path. I'm heading up the other one, the one that is littered with trash from the city I just left. Annie's path is leading from the woods, from a sunlit forest on a ridgetop. Two men are following her, like puppies.

The two paths intersect, and we all stop, barefooted Annie and her followers, and me. One of the guys, a dirty, long-haired scruffy man, is asking Annie if it is ever acceptable to die for a plant. Specifically a tree. He's all fired up about some development project, and wants to make a statement by killing himself in front of the trees they are about to destroy. He is arguing philosophy, moral standards, ethical principles. Annie simply says, "No. It's never acceptable to die for a plant." She brushes him aside like a bug circling her head. The other guy is there for advice too, apparently, but after her reaction and figuring out that he is not going to get the answer he wants to hear, he leaves too.

I look at Annie, tall, confident, and I know she's good. I know, in fact, that she is better than she has ever been.

The only bad part of the dream was the 5:00 AM alarm woke me, and I never got my pastrami sandwich.

Cheese and Strawberry Dream

Last night I dreamed ____ and I (more on him later) were driving a bumpy dirt road. Every quarter mile or so were closed toll gates. I'd get out of the truck, pay the toll, (usually $1.25 or so), and close the gate after we drove through. We met a truckload of children on the road. A young girl was driving, and her face was dirty, and she had no money. I drove ahead of her, cutting up cheese and strawberries in .25 cent pieces. I stuffed the pieces into the gate so that the little girl could find them and pay her toll.