Glowing Russet

Your auburn tresses are scrambled.
The grass, like time, separates the strands,
Your scalp, our lune final above us,
And we scrimmage in phrase-space, weaving
Fairy tales of an amulet, a carpenter,
And a skeptical young girl. Hey!
Your messy, umber hairstrands taste funny!,
Swallow.

Room 101

Sleeping turquoise on my pearly desk
Smiles tritely at the misfortune
Of your departure –
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Dream debris : Night of 241110-251110

Last night (in my dream), I started off talking to Anastasia. But then Mark and Jackson and Allan and I went to a grocery store to buy lots of soda — which probably means Paul was there too. It was a dark, damp grocery store, and mostly just had soda. I think it was part of Wal-Mart. On the way back, I realized that sometimes this late at night some kid whose name now escapes me would come over and hang out (which annoys me). It’s like 3 AM… I don’t want anyone over. But we get home to our barracks-like apartment and he’s there.

From the outside, our apartment is a strange mix between Sam’s old apartment, some latrines I saw whitewater rafting once, and an abandoned strip mall of two or three shops. From our front door (in a row of three-ish front doors) to the wooden fence about 25 feet away is asphalt, and it slopes down pretty rapidly because our apartment is on an asphalt hill (the slope looks like a logistic curve). There’s one street light, but it’s bright. It’s not a classy, well-kept street lamp like you might see in downtown Charleston, but rather an old halogen bulb on a 30 foot pole like you might see at a deserted soccer field.

Inside, the guy I anticipated had, indeed, showed up. He had written his name in sloppy handwriting on the blackboard in our kitchen and was climbing like a monkey all over the counters. We have a drab color scheme, bland in a left-over-from-the-sixties-but-faded-and-dusty kind of way. I realize that I’m in love with Leela, but she’s disappeared.

The next day — although I never slept — I go into “downtown”, which is mostly in the style of urban Cantha (from Guild Wars; Cantha is mostly shambles built by commoners in a style reminiscent of archetypal Asian architecture… scattered among the shambles are more well made and colored gates and bridges built by the government) but includes some winding outdoor staircases and modern city decor like dumpsters and dirt patches, which seem to hail from my Half Life 2 playtime. I’m helping Joel find his girlfriend. We search, and search, but can’t find her. As we go up and up some outdoor staircases on the side of the apartment complex, the safety rails vanish, and I eventually fall from many stories up, presumably dying on impact.

But it’s okay. I respawned. When I go to pick up my inventory from where I died (a la Minecraft), I see a glint in the grass. I click to pick it up… Jackpot! It’s a ring encased in a diamond block, surrounded by 6 emeralds, and it classifies as “Herbal”. Unfortunately, I don’t have an iron pickaxe, so I’ll keep it in my inventory for later.

I am Fry. A few times I go to the gates to leave the city, but everyone cries out for me to stay, and I give in several times, admitting that when they’ve asked me to stay before I usually find something good. The gates are large, wooden red arches with an Asian-looking wooden lattice that would rise to let me through if I decided to leave.

When I finally do go home, there’s a party in my apartment. Joel is eating macaroni and cheese, and lamenting over the loss of his girlfriend. I realize that he’s talking about Leela. I try to comfort him, and I tell him about this time that I lost something and never found it again. I suggest that, perhaps, his girlfriend became a drug addict or something and ran away, and that he’s better off this way. He seems to take solace in my tale, and asks to be excused — he’s going to go sit in his closet.

Some stuff happens after this that I might not remember. But I very clearly remember the end of my dream.

I have to say, I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t seen Leela lately. I’m not Fry anymore, though; I’m Matthew. There’s no more Guild Wars computer graphics; I’m at a public school. I’m walking down a concrete sidewalk under an aluminum awning (like they had in middle school) when I come to a small building. The building is brick, roughly squarish from above, one story, windowless, and has glass double doors right in the middle of the side of the building — they are, in fact, identical to the doors on the first floor of Kinard. All around the building is bright green grass, with trailers and other buildings in the distance. When I walk in, I see the layout of the building: it’s just a single hallway, with classrooms scattered on each side. There are identical doors at the other end of the hallway-building. About a third of the way in, on the right, there’s a photographer and some press correspondents looking in on Leela talking to Eli David (from NCIS). I find it odd, though, that Leela’s hair is now brown. Oh well. I want to talk to her as I walk by, but don’t want to interrupt whatever’s going on; it seems that they’re all about to walk into an auditorium. So I keep walking, but I hear/know that she begins to follow me when she sees me. Her footsteps quicken. I say “Hello, Leela”, and she slips around in front of me, back to the double doors, blocking my way and looking up at me (she’s slouching, an arm against the pushbar on each door). We exchange a few witty remarks, and I realize that she’s not just Leela. She’s also Samantha. And she asks if I want to go on a date. I (obviously) agree, and we walk outside under another of those awnings. There are trailers off to the side (because CCSD doesn’t have money to build new classrooms). As we’re walking hand in hand, Kevin Kramer walks up. I feel bad, knowing how it must look when I was helping him look for her before and now here I am walking with her. She looks at us accusingly, and mentions that I had said she was a drug addict and disappeared. But we just ignore him, and walk into the sunlight, hand in hand. I’m very, very happy. And I can tell she’s happy too. And the rhythm of bliss continues to wash over me until I wake up.