Dream Cities

 Dream 1: 

Boarding a jet to Paris. The jet's enormous, wide as a football field, and you can choose any seat you like. I settle in a cozy corner row, comfortable, but somehow but I forgot to bring anything to read. 

I get up, wander till I find a rack of magazines. I grab one, but then can't remember how to get back to my seat. No matter; easy enought to find another one.

The plane takes off so quietly that I hardly notice we're in the air. At times, the jet pitches low and we cruise through city streets before ascending back into the sky. 

Maybe I sleep as we cross the Atlantic. I don't remember. We land in a tunnel that resembles a cave and troop out into daylight. This is France.

A bus takes me into town. Lacking French currency, I wander about searching for a bank. I find one in short order.

Don't know how long I will stay.


Dream 2:

Back in Rogers Park. I need diapers for my child, so I stroll south on Damen Avenue until I reach Devon. Rogers Park has changed. Lou the Cleaner's shop at the corner of Devon and Damen is gone, replaced by a multi-storied drug store. The empty lot half a block from our old apartment has morphed into a box-like community center. 

I keep walking. At the the corner of Seeley and Devon, I see Miller's Pharmacy is gone, its space claimed by an escalator leading to a sparkling, crystalline bridge. This is quite something,  

The bridge extends all the way to Western Avenue and even a few blocks beyond. Shops on each side, a wide walkway between. Not fancy shops, but appealing in their way.

No stores beneath the bridge. No tailors. No delis. No grocery stores, fabric stores. No shoe stores, no bowling alley. No Woolworths. The street has become empty space, but above lies a wonder. 

You can't go home again, they say. I mean, author Thomas Wolfe says. I'm thinking he's right.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plotting and Pantsing

The general consensus is that there are two types of fiction writers: plotters and pantsers.  Plotters plan out their stories, scene by scene, chapter by chapter before they start their manuscripts. They know exactly where they're going and how they plan to get there. Pantsers , as the name implies, fly by the seat of their pants. As much as I've tried to become more of a plotter, I find the technique difficult. Once I start a novel, I have a general sense of my main characters, theme and plot. Endings are no brainers for romantic suspense writers like me - the romance genre requires happy-ever-after resolutions, of which I've always been a fan. My characters often have minds of their own and take me in unanticipated directions. Today, as I penned my sixth chapter, the hero of my current novel (I'm branching off into sci-fi romance) revealed he has a drinking problem. I had no idea. My problem as a pantser is that I can dig myself into plot holes in terms of sequence a...
Read more

Starving Hysterical Naked

The first line of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl"  published in 1956:  I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked ... Damned straight as we reach the end of 2024. Many of us baby boomers imagined that by now we'd be living (if we were still alive) in a technologically advanced, George Jetson-like world where the problems of hunger, poverty, war and discrimination would be greatly diminished, if not eradicated. Ha. Not so much. The poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats, published in November 1920, seems eerily prescient. (Please note this poem is in the public domain.) The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the ...
Read more

And Then I Exploded

  And Then I Exploded ( Response to a writing prompt. You look at the prompt, whatever it is, and take it from there. No idea what I'm going to write until I start.)   And then I exploded, because the addition of a pair of ferrets to the five dogs and eighteen cats living in my brother Phil’s two-bedroom bungalow had passed the edge of eccentricity and was fast approaching the bona fide insane. When I’d moved in with my widowed brother the previous year, our household consisted of two long-in-the-tooth humans, three assorted mutts – Ebenezer, a gentle Lab mix, the hyperactive beagle Claudia, and Susie, a moody miniature poodle – plus four cats, Christopher, Alphonso, Mimi, and James. “You’ll have your own room. Private. No animals allowed,” Phil promised me. Which worked for a time. Phil took in more cats, ceding them his bedroom and sleeping on the living room couch as the three pooches snored at his feet. He prided himself on keeping the bungalow immaculate, so cle...
Read more