// A Nap//

I had a dream that I was not as understood and not as wanted to be understood and then I fell asleep.

// A Dream of Propaganda//

I fell asleep after grazing over the faces and figures of beautiful women.

I woke up in a dream that Memphis functioned underneath a propaganda machine. The machine was fine tuned and private and vulgar. The machine stifled confidence and dignity, but it was beautiful so the city pressed on to toiled quietly.

// A Dream of Lobsters in my Backyard//

I had a dream that I was standing with my nose pressed against the glass. I was looking into an aquarium that held my childhood backyard inside. There was a channel of water passing through it, rich with things that the sea likes to eat. There was a group of disfigured lobsters scavenging for food. Their tails had been torn off and eaten by rich people so they walked on their front claws. They gathered around the rich watch channel and were reaching out for scraps that passed by when something large and ominous startled them and hurried them away.

It was a children’s soccer game. They scored goals into the wall of eight foot trees that looked like furry pencils. When I lived there, I used to jump through them blindly and have faith that the brink planter would catch me. Nervous betting adults paced inside the living room and looked out the window at the hustling kids.

// You Should Date An Illiterate Girl by Charles Warnke//

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life.

// Frolicking and Talking to Myself//

I had a dream that I came dressed in my favorite outfit. White t-shirt tucked into blue jeans tucked into cowboy boots. And my friend lamented, “I wish you were a little bit taller. You would be tall enough to be a model.” And I pranced away in pity, repeating, “I wish I were smarter, I wish I were funnier, I wish I was skinnier, I wish I was richer, I wish I were prettier…”

// Wisdom Teeth and Quesadillas//

I had a dream that I walked into a school cafeteria and sat at a table. A man who spoke a language I did not completely understand began to speak to us. I was obliged to smile and nod and laugh. I found another wisdom tooth poking out while he spoke. The old man talked about men and their tendency to search after girlfriends even while being married, “If a man has enough energy to lift a spoon, he will chase after other women.” A movie about suicidal love and fake pregnancies and naval academies distracted me on a nearby screen. He advised that when I found a man of my own, that I should bury any extra money to prevent him from giving it away to his girlfriends. He advised that we participate in good deeds together as to keep his mindset straight. He spoke and I eyed my quesadilla.

// Superficial Summer//

I had a dream that I met a reluctant leaf. The leaf was implored to become a flower and then a bud and then a fruit. It shouted at the vine out of exhaustion and fear, “I only wanted to be a leaf, but you implored me so I became a flower and then a bud and now I am a fruit but I have grown so large that I am about to fall! Why have you done this to me?” The fruit fell to the ground and sprouted to become a tree and the leaf said, “I now understand.” 

// Illusionists//

I had a dream that I lived in a strong house. It was a safe home. I was relieved to come home, not afraid. Home felt like trust and stability. There was no one building mansion wings when the kitchen was left empty. This home was my foundation. My future wasn’t dependent on the window makers or the mansion wing builders. It lent me the freedom to risk fearlessly, without the condemnation of judgement. I never sat at the window like a bird. I never felt lonely in my own home.

// Reoccuring Dreams and By-products//

I suddenly realized that I had been having a reoccurring nightmare. I hadn’t been able to remember them after waking up in the morning, but for some reason, the sound of unlocking my front door abruptly brought them to my consciousness.

I am in a backyard. someone far away cries out, someone that I have lost and been searching worriedly for. The someone is crying out to be found. I grip the top of the gray brick fence and shout their name. I feel the desperation and fear grips me; there’s no response.

What is the by-product of fear? When I feel unsafe, I my pursuit of joy fades, my hope wanes, my momentum tires. I stagnate and bunker down and prepare to pick up the pieces. I feel too old and too tired to continue just surviving. I want to thrive. I want to take risks without fear gripping me.

// Concerts & Tsunamis //

My mind sinks into sleep hesitantly.

My mind wandered into the beach. There were large crowds, but I was slipping in and out of consciousness and I saw my body sleeping in the fetal position. Was I experiencing an earthquake? I stood on the beach with legs bracing me, and then, far off in the ocean, I saw a wave. It was violent and powerful, and it screamed towards us. I thought of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan; California’s turn had finally come. It was our turn to face the same terrifying consequences.

I screamed at my brother and little sister to run with me. I got dizzy to the motion of running. I was in the top of a skyscraper. I called my brother to urge him to come to where I was. He yelled at me to stop being irrational. He had forgotten the wave that we had seen. I could not reach my little sister. Helplessness over took me like drowning.