Gosh Darn Dreams

Dreams are confounding. I couldn't escape my dream this morning. I would wake up and go straight back to it, like the interruption was a commercial. So the dream plot centered around the fact that I took a painting from the museum. Horrors. It was one that was on a sort of sampler rack, and all the administration was deciding which paintings were going on auction. It was an abstract of a city, I think, you know how pliable the edges of dreams are. I have no idea how I could just pick up a painting three feet by four feet and walk out with it, but I did. I brought it home, which was a woodsy backyard in a canyon, not my real life house by any shot, and set it on a tiny easel outside. I continued my life of shopping and visiting and had sort of an amnesiac's respite of what I had done until news broke that a painting was missing. Then I realize I had taken that painting, put it on an easel that was so small it poked its hard wooden edges into the canvas, and to top it off, left it outside in the weather. When I ran to see it, it was distorted and stretched. What was I going to do? Who should I call? Am I going to jail? In the meantime, I'm driving down steep cobblestone streets and a cousin of mine, who is a real artist, gives me a painting to take to the museum for the auction, and the dream spins off into the whole story behind her painting. With me waking from the dream, being relieved for a split second, then going back to sleep where I'm a criminal docent. When I finally woke for the last time, really relieved I hadn't stolen a painting, I got up and realized I have to finish painting the hallway today.