fri 23 feb 2001 12:00:00 — allston, ma
more dreams about driving
i just woke from this dream:
i was driving through poland, where i have never been. i was driving from the city to the country, at night under a bright moon i think, for i could see the surroundings well. i was going to a place where aj was, and where the gajewskis were. i started from in town, and when i try to think where exactly, first an image from somewhere in lawrence ma comes to mind, then i realize it's the corner of tenney and kirk streets, ie, the earliest place i remember being. but there's sort of a east-european veneer spraypainted on by my mind. so i'm driving in an open jeep. as i go down hills, i lean back in my seat, and the hood of the car seems almost to get away from me. i go down steeper and steeper hills. eventually, i realize i'm not actually using a steering wheel, i'm holding reins. the car as it goes down a hill seems to be too far away for me to properly control -- i'm thinking i don't wanna pull too hard on the reins or else i'll make the car crash. once i realize my problem is that i personally am flying above treetop height, this becomes a real concern. so i start to pull harder on the reins, just to pull myself down to earth. as i come down, i see the vehicle spin and tumble out of control, but then it turns out that vehicle is just a child's toy wagon. the jeep meanwhile seems to be driving around out of control, but then it drives up and stops at a convenient distance from me to go climb back in. this is in a country spot maybe near farmhouses, with some trees and some cross roads. definitely in poland, whatever that means.
cut to the next morning, i'm safe in a house where i'm welcome, telling this story to aj and somebody else, seems like another woman. and as i'm talking over breakfast, i notice she's got clown makeup on her face and severe lip-lines drawn across her face with an orange marker. i can't remember her explanation of the costume, but it was a clever quip that made everybody laugh. (now to me it seems the makeup was some sort of commentary on her mother.) anyway, i jump up and say "i hope i didn't lose my camera." thinking, i'm pretty sure i did, with all that flying over trees and changing vehicles. i go in the next room and my camera is still there. i bring it back in, it's loaded and ready to shoot, only aj has wiped all the clown makeup off. now she's kinda surly where moment ago she was cheerful. i'm saying please let me take a picture with your makeup on, how often do you have white makeup and orange marker lines on your face? she says something about that particular film, a number, 22? or something, and the problem is it's too fine grained, it captures every imperfection. so she'd rather not be photographed with that film. that's how it ends.
i had another dream about driving the other night, either i was returning from las vegas or jab was returning from las vegas. i had to drive us both from the airport, on fairly busy streets. but our means of transport was two wheelchairs strapped together. kinda dangerous. i was trying to avoid a pothole, which was against the curb but stretched wider and deeper out in an acute corner, which i just managed to avoid dipping our wheel into. what's odd then is what i said: "wow, that was a long flight!"
somehow the driving seems to represent my career, which i lately fear is off track and i'm doing mostly jobs that have nothing to do with what i do. [...]
oh yeah, the other thing is it repeatedly feels like they're trying to convince me to enter a new line of work, which they see as a growth path for me. and it usually involves doing something not hands on. [...] they don't see me working my way up any further, in prestige or glory or good work, unless i do something like start creative-directing trade show exhibits. we've recently started another foray in that direction, which i helped write the proposal for, but it involved working with s from new york, who calls himself machiavellian, refers to everything i work so hard at as "that beautiful graphics crap," who strikes me as a showman, who plugs in "blah blah blah" for the client's actual message as if the message doesn't matter — or as if he can't be bothered trying to understand what the sell is — and who, in my opinion, totally misapprehends what the client is about. so then i'm thinking, the world is wrong for thinking trade shows oughta be this way. in particular in the last day or so i read how s rewrote the proposal and wondered if the client when they see it will think we think they're idiots. [...]
in this context remarks like "hope i didn't lose my camera" make sense, the feeling of losing control of the car i'm driving, of driving a cripple vehicle strapped together with jab, make sense. what's a bit more far flung, in reference to the deepening rut with an acute corner i scarcely avoid falling into, i say "that was a long flight!" as if i'm referring to the entire relationship with [them] as something i ought to have avoided.
why poland in tonight's dream? someplace i've never been? foreign territory maybe -- but i knew i was moving toward a place where i'd be welcome.
the severe makeup aj didn't want to be seen in? she doesn't want to be recorded for posterity looking like her mom? in the dream it wasn't explicit that the makeup job was a caricature of mom, but it seemed tacit. this seems faintly connected to a joke we made tonight earlier, that we should take a photo of aj driving a limo with me in it, poking fun at her mom's assertion that aj uses her car to chauffeur me around.