five-minute shark training lessons! watching from the bank of some grey mix between an ocean and a river, i observed a series of cheezy tourists in company life jackets take turns going through their newly acquired skills of shark-taming. one by one, each pair--shark and handler--waded down the stream. the human would start off by mounting the shark from behind, flipping it over like a lifeguard rescue maneuver--one hand on the back of its neck, one on its chest--then cooing to the supine sea-creature to coax it into relaxation. after his or her sucessful two-minute demonstration, the accomplished shark-trainer would bounce along, shark assistant in arms, to return his life-vest to the instructor staff.
i decided to sign up for this with an unidentifiable friend. i sat down with my instructor, who placed a large plastic box on the table between us. as she opened the box to reveal the creature i would be working with, i looked upon a dark green monster--a sphere shaped, wart covered head that opened half way to reveal two semi-circles of what looked like tiny rocks for teeth atop an elongated tube body with snake-like limbs. i remember being weirded out to the max. my feelings only worsened when the creature began to speak in an unintelligable gargle and point to a particular tooth--he had a toothache.

later i tried to park my car inside of a snoball stand.

i was lounging in a steamy spa jacuzzi with an older, white-haired man (grandpa age). among the buttons that controlled the jets was one that would turn on and off a steady stream of fish. along with the relaxing bubbles came the massaging effect of thousands of tiny fish bumping into our legs.

had to pick up mom and dad at a spring dance in a white limo i pushed around with my bare hands.

a gathering of high school, dearest friends cooking dinner someone's beautiful home. instead, we became distracted by a giant black rat up to something in the laundry room. we had an automatic relationship of mutual trust with him for some reason. when we let him out, he dragged the corpse of his most recent mouse victim up the wall to the mantle. He and we, the audience, treated the mantle as his stage as we gaped at his meticulous performace: with a surgeon's precision he removed the innards of his mouse which were neither dry nor wet but tiny tubes, opaque white encasing bright blue. I don't remember if we clapped afterwards, but our collective amazement applauded him. Dinner time came and my friend's mom insisted we taste the seal she had prepared, just because there was a ton of it in the fridge and she needed to get rid of it. It was uncooked, yet the outside appeared as the bark of a tree, but bright green, cracked, and overgrown with broccoli-shaped growths. After it was cut open, the insides spilled out: a cross between chunky clear jelly and sushi rice. No one was disgusted.

All blackness but spotlights like a movie set. I was still in high school, but couldn't go this day because I was sick with the problem of my teeth coming out. They didn't fall or anything, but came out as if glued together between the cracks--a mouth shaped set, newly removable both top and bottom. And the spaces ached without the roots. On the way to spending the day shopping at an underground mall with a friend, I adopted the habit of taking my teeth out to have him gape at what was beneath them--a powdery, blackish burnt umber surface dry as if colored with conti crayon. My youngest sister was even younger (Martha, 15) and also sick, so she came along as we took the elevator down to the shops. The doors parted to reveal what looked like the dullest doctor's waiting room--off white walls and a crowded, friendly reception desk. It was then that I remembered the one task mom left us for the day: to drop off a card, marked with an 8 digit code, at this very desk so the clown would remember Martha's upcoming birthday party.

There was a storm coming; I had to get back to France. Our family was vacationing in the middle of nowhere Great Britain at a junky house-turned hotel. When we arrived there was no one in sight, so we went snooping for who would normally be the man behind the desk. The decor had the tacky flair of mid-western American farm house, but all adhered to a Union Jack theme. After passing a fiesty French couple screaming in the hall despite their infant accesory, we discovered the hotel manager sprawled out sleeping in what would become my room. The storm was still coming, so I excused myself to use the phone. It had a never-ending cord. Holding the reciever up to my ear, I walked over railroad tracks to a pond-side pier where I staged my call, leaning one hip against the rotting wooden railing. A train approached in the distance, so I held up the phone cord so that it could pass underneath, casually. When I returned to my parents room, I posed a request for hors d'oeurves. Mom said, "Sure we have some eggs." What she presented to me was clearly a pile of salt rocks.

(Returning from (fortunately) temporary dreamer's block, coinciding with my recent Mardi Gras obligations.)

I found a young, blonde boy of about 8 hiding behind the opened door of my fictional bedroom. He said that he had just had a heart attack. Without asking where he lived or who his parents were, I tucked him into my bed, put on a movie, and left the room to ask my friend if 8 year olds can have heart attacks. Later, my mom came by to take me for a ride. She drove (somehow) a plastic mini car wagon, and with my sister already seated behind her, I sat in the back, on top with my arms around her for safety.

my grandmother's house had opened into a marble museum--long halls spotted with brass busts and streams of tourists looking left and right. a speaker warbled overhead creating an atomosphere of going someplace like an airport. i was also a guest, but had an air of special priveledges (besides being the dreamer) as the house owner/curator's granddaughter, exentuated by the company of my extended family. as we took our own tour, we came upon a small, curved section of beach--right in the middle of one of the great halls--formed of ice with water rushing up onto it like at the turn of a river rapid. we promptly dropped all of our laptops into the rushing water, as we took turns jumping and splashing around. my aunt (a very healthy hippie) played lifeguard to our doomed electronics. following this, my mom and i took to the highways in a borrowed pick up truck to attend a series of intellectual convention-style weddings. one in particular opened with a shower of fruit-flavored candy to arouse the congregation. i was seated next to my (real life) ex-boyfriend who blamed me for stealing candy from an old lady, one turning out to be a friend's (from elementary school) australian grandmother. at no point did any of the buildings i found myself in have ceilings; the sky was grey and overcast, the shade suggesting twilight.

later i was sitting on the edge of an old man's bed, which had been placed in the kitchen of his house. i think this is beceause he lay dying upon it, and no one wished for him to miss a minute of what was going on with everyone else in the family. (everything happens in the kitchen.) his wife--much younger, tan, engergetic, vibrantly dressed, physically beautiful--announced that she was going to the post office as she slipped a carton of soy milk back into the refrigerator. (awake, i wonder why she would leave so non-chalantly in the last moments of her husband's life.) sitting beside the dying man, i provided a listening ear. he told me, "i've had a girlfriend for eight years and a boyfriend for nine hours, that's why i've been talking about him so much..." then he died. (my reaction was a sense of settlement, peace, an ending.)

took a trip into tv land...

first, it was a managerial meeting with the cast of Saved by the Bell during their rockstar phase. all i remember was lots of underlying tension in the room between lovers and lovers. cut to running up and down st. charles ave. with Elaine from Seinfeld, knocking on doors demanding that they pay back the money they owed her. shortly after this rampage, we strolled into a pet store. it was full of protestors demanding the freeing of these peculiar little creatures most closely resembling tiny puppy-sized lizards with lime green velour fur. in moments the city was crawling with these cute little pets, and then we realized someone had to take care of them.

(i have abandoned capitalization due to my habitual infidelity to the rules.)

stopped for a drink at a pizza joint gas station--the bar stools were covered in cracked, emerald green leather and everything else glowed red. the scraggly staff kept asking politely if we would take up the mop and give the place a quick wipe.
then, i stumbled into the re-building of a house for a family i played nanny for during the summer. as i swirled around to admire the new look everything appeared to be made of wood-a shining, glazed oak-except for the ceiling, which required snapping together millions of tiny glass tiles with rubber edges. the project of this intricately geometric glass ceiling was taken up by the dad who squatted on the roof to put together the puzzle. it was not long until the boys stormed me, swinging their stubby baseball bats while chasing me through a flourishing jungle of plastic house plants into a safe corner of the garage .