Rockville

Yesterday my body rebelled against my the-weather’s-a-bit-nicer trike riding frenzy. OK that and I suspect I’ve a cold on top of it. That’d explain the being cold all the damn time stuff (duh). Every blessed muscle in my body was yowling at me like, well, like Gaston defending his territory from the interloping Greta. I had all the energy of an elderly, drooping, debilitated bantha.

Now, normally, when I’m feeling under the weather I muscle through it. I go to work, run my errands, take my walks/rides anyway -- I’m just functioning at 5 miles per hour versus 50.

Not yesterday though. It took every micron of my energy just to get into a near blistering hot shower in an attempt to steam out the aches. After collapsing back into bed our Doctor Coco sat on my chest, forcing me to relax. She can be quite the pushy cat about these things.

While in this REM sleep marathon I had another of my Moving Back Into the City dreams. It’s a whole series. These began with just me (and not The Amazing Bob) moving back to the Brighton section of Boston, the area of town where we both lived before moving to Cambridge. Brighton, for the most part, is riddled with Boston College and Boston University students -- the pro league partiers specifically. I don’t know where the quiet, studious types live. Maybe they don’t exist. For the most part, the apartments here are less expensive than in other parts of the city and seriously hard used.
So dreaming about moving back there isn’t a walk through the Public Garden on a brill Spring day.

The next stage of these dreams was with TAB and I moving back there together -- still a student ghetto but, after a few dreams, a little hipper and we had a cool crib.

Last night, in my fevered REM state, I reached a new level. I dreamt that all of us, TAB, Jen, Oni and I, had to move back into town only THIS time we weren’t relegated, doomed to Brighton.

We had a options and chose Arlington, one town north of Cambridge because almost no one can afford Cambridge these days. We scored the first floor of a a large-ish, dilapidated, three story office building on the main drag just past Nicola’s Pizza House.

The floors were a depressing grey, crumbly concrete so, while everyone was moving in furniture and boxes, I was painting the floor a pale, hazy shade of sea blue.

It was a dream, dammit, this made sense!

There’s a definite wonderful progression in this dream series. Who knows -- maybe one of these nights I’ll dream that we all live right here on Hough’s Neck, we never have to leave, furnaces and water heaters never shit the bed and my painting studio is vast and above ground versus the basement.

It can happen!
(Don't Go Back to) Rockville -- REM