Lucid Dreaming
It all started with the goddamned New York Times. That is where I read the article about the UHO (United Homeless Organization) being a scam, about how the sad faces who stand on the street behind folding card tables and empty water jugs asking for “A penny to feed the homeless”, aren’t really collecting money for the poor.
And so, in a coincidence that could only happen while one is having fitful sleep and wading through the dreams that accompany, I find myself at the group’s headquarters in a dusty gas station along some broke down highway. It is here that I decide to liberate some of the fraudulently obtained funds. I’m not very smooth and this leads to an epic car chase and the loss of my left pinkie.
Then I decide to take the stage at the Upright Citizens Brigade with Kate to put my improv skills to the test. This is a bold and bizarre decision as I’ve never done improv before, and am generally uncomfortable with being on stage or in front of people. She says I’ll do fine, and reminds me to go along with whatever happens. I spend the next two hours awkwardly wandering the stage like an agoraphobe at a cocktail party, saying yes to every proposition, and only getting a laugh when I try to speak in a southern accent.
Which leads to me riding my bike home, feeling somewhat dejected about my failed improv career. It is then that my past as a thief from (fraudulent) charities catches up to me a second time. Pedaling up a final hill, a cab races by, then screeches to a halt. The driver jumps out. He claims to be Mossad and a representative of the charity I defrauded. He retrieves a contraption not unlike the one Javier Bardem carries in No Country For Old Men and threatens me with it. Another fantastic chance ensues…
And then I wake, 4am, alone in Brooklyn, a winter wind whipping through the bare trees outside, howling, and there is nothing to do but write.
Snippets 11/27/09
Cold, windy walk over the Brooklyn Bridge… Manhattan, mad with people, throngs teeming up and down the avenues, in and out of stores, buying, buying, buying… lunch in a diner, the best day to order a turkey club… Down the Bowery, through SoHo and Little Italy and Chinatown, feeling sad for the tourists who think this is New York… back across the bridge, the sky darkening, rain drops stinging… into a cozy corner cafe, just in the nick of time… macaroni and cheese, reading Roberto Bolanos by tea light, warming up with rich beer…
