Wednesday, September 15, 2004

These Fish Next To Me Are Sleeping

The title today refers, of course, to the magic realism of the second season finale of The Sopranos, which should win the Emmy for Best Drama on Sunday. Tony's ranging dreams while suffering from food poisoning lead him to a fish market, where Pussy speaks to him through one of the fish sitting on ice and tells him he's been wearing a wire.

I chose the title because this post is about a dream. It started with me in an office building, getting off the elevator on the wrong floor. As often happens in dreams, the focus shifted quickly. One minute I was describing my job to someone on this other floor, momentarily confusing the job I used to have with the one I have now, then sputtering to figure out what it is I do; the next, I was seeing a fight break out in the opulent cafeteria of an unknown company. Leaving the floor, I discovered that Ralph Nader was in the building, and that his followers were filling it, forcing everyone else out.

And here's where things get weird.

I walked out of the office tower and found myself not in the middle of a city, as expected, but on a wide plain, with only the tower rising from the middle of it. A screaming horde greeted me, crying lustily for the head of Nader. As I walked along the front edges of the mob, I found Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. Hillary screamed at me that we had to do something about Ralph--didn't I understand he was fracturing our side? But she was looking up at the tower; I was looking out over the plain, beyond the mob, where a mass of red was streaming in from all sides. It looked like blood pooling, but it became clear that it was, in fact, a mob of Republicans, armed to the teeth, ready to kill us all while we were gathered to scream at Nader. "Hillary," I said, "We have bigger problems than Ralph! Look behind you!" She saw the red menace, screamed--

And I woke up, two minutes before my alarm was set to go off, turned on my computer, and saw another kind of creeping red on the electoral map. And when I walked out the door this morning to leave for work, the people across the street had a Bush/Cheney sign in their yard.

What does all this mean? It's not the best way to start the day, let me tell you...

1 comment:

Richard said...

It doesn't look good, does it? I added up all the states that I really believe Kerry will win, no matter what the polls say right now. I gave him Pennsylvania. I gave him all of Maine. I assumed Colorado's referendum wouldn't pass and Bush would hold on there, which seems likely. And Kerry could only make it to 264. That's assuming Bush doesn't snag any of the "Gore states," when we all know he's making serious inroads in Wisconsin.

Edwards should move to Florida; Kerry should move to Wisconsin; every week they should trade. It looks like that's the only hope. That and maybe the suggestion in the Village Voice that Kerry create an ad showing Bin Laden and playing Bush saying he'd get him dead or alive. Talk about an example of failed policy: we didn't get the guy who caused Bush's favorite tragedy, 9/11, because we were too busy chasing after the guy who wanted to kill his daddy.

And I haven't been having Gmail trouble, other than no one writing to me. Though if these troubles are systemwide, that could explain why the usually consistent Paul hasn't written back in a few days.

No thoughts on this dream of mine? I thought it showed a clear Lord of the Rings influence--the tower in the middle of a vast plain, under the power of a once-glorious leader, with hordes approaching from all sides--and I'm wondering how that imagery and Hillary Clinton got all mixed up in my head.