Category: verbal

there’s a panel we’re each given or set before which has seven categories, buttons or flaps, each with a little representational icon, used for testing our character and priorities. as you address each category, it sets up a little scenario and then records how you respond to it. I know one of them involves money, but I forget the rest.

I’ve gone back to boarding school for another year, and I somehow overhear something about my not being special, being unremarkable in some way, and I am absolutely livid. I go to my room to unpack, innately taking solace in my living space, and learn that, as an art student, I’ve been given a second room– as a studio or creative space, tho the layout is identical to a typical dorm room. for a moment I consider the dilemma of somehow fitting out and splitting my stuff and self between these two rooms, and in the end simply move into the creative space with a kind of “so there. just let them try to tell me I can’t do this” attitude. the more I take possession of the space, the happier I am.

my friends live upstairs in flats on floors above me, and I live down below, by myself. there’s a sense of outsiderness and former friendships broken or bent. they’re building slides up there down to the ground and painting them with smooth blue and black paint. it’s a big engineering project having to do with somebody’s injury or disability. I learn that one of the guys up there is unhappy, having a hard time– broken up or family bereavement or the like– I go to see him, want to put my arms around him, to pull my strong heart out of my chest and put it in his as a backup– but I can tell right away that, tho he is a friend, he doesn’t care like I do, like I always have for him– and I give him a squeeze and go away again by myself.

my sister and I are in my parents’ basement, in the former luggage room, checking the big shadowy equipment. our parents have updated things in recent years, but the equipment still looks ancient, dark and shadowy and bulky. we’re fussing with the hot water, trying to get it upstairs for bathing, and I decide to just bathe right there in a trim slingback chair device that seems designed expressly for the purpose.

I see a baby hippopotamus being tumbled and bounced down a rolling river, round keister up in the air.

and then there are rapids full of dogs and cats on floating debris, speeding toward some ominous end– too many too far away for me to save– but some jump off and brave the rapids, swimming, and run off into the wilderness, shaking the wet from their fur.

at some point somewhere I’m pretty sure there’s a purple rhinoceros.

finally, I’m walking along the wooded shore of lake superior when I glimpse something odd, something my eyes and brain together can’t quite make cohere– what *is* that big blue round thing standing in the shallows, turning slightly as if it were… paddling?? and then I see an odd curl– is that a plume?– on top of its head– and suddenly the whole thing coalesces: it’s a big round bird, like a cartoon partridge but enormous. and it is a vivid blue. right as I come up on it and am able to see it more clearly, it startles and paddles out to sea.

just then a couple of huron mountain environmentalists come along with boogie boards, see the bird with an intent recognition that causes me to realize they’re come specifically to see these birds (by now I’ve noticed there are more of them, a flock all paddling the tree-hung shallows)– they’ve tracked them to this spot. the people throw off their gear hastily and make for the water to slip in and get closer to the big blue improbable bobbing birds– I try to ask a few questions, but the woman is distracted– her eyes never leave the nearest bird even as her hands are hurrying over her gear, unfastening straps– and her answers to me are hurried as well and abbreviated– I stand and watch the two people paddle out quietly, lying low on the water, and then I turn and continue on along the overgrown shore.

I have a friend or lover who is dark and beautiful with curly, wavy, thick, shoulder-length hair– he’s persian and has the most exquisite features– but I’m not entirely sure where I stand– it’s possible I admire him too much and am dismissable. I get him a gift while I’m out around the little town, and when I’ve given it to him, I’m seized by doubt– I had thought it such a pretty, unusual gift and that it would suit him, but after I’ve already handed it over, my heart quails with embarassment because I’m suddenly certain that it’s entirely wrong– not appropriate for a guy at all, even a beautiful and unusual one. it’s a pair of earrings, and while he does wear a small pair of gold loops in his ears like a gorgeous pirate, these earrings I’ve found and given him are entirely wrong: bright blue metal, fan-shaped, and dangly. really something out of the atrocious ’80s. I’m mortified. and he sees how inappropriate they are and even downright ugly, and I know there’s a judgment of me being made for having chosen and given them. and then he’s walking on with a kind of cursory, insincere thank you tossed back. I even try to pursue it, suggest taking off the bottom dangly fan, can’t leave it alone, trying to amend and explain and recapture some sense from whatever my original inspiration might have been– but it’s gone now, and all I can see is how dreadful what I’ve given him is.

I drop in to visit a friend, or my cousin, and gradually realize that she has plans I’m interrupting and that I’m not entirely welcome– she and her boyfriend or husband are having drinks with the couple next door, and he stops over a little early, and they’re chatting and he asks what she’d like him to make her to drink– I’m standing there like an awkward, unwanted embarassment, so I leave.

I climb aboard my balloon flying contraption and take off over the city– decide I want to fly to the urals, go visit the asian russian mountain cities– so I imagine the direction and eyeball a flight path and set off– but as I’m soaring high over downtown houston, I realize my craft may not make it so far, over oceans and wild mountain reaches– it’s only a humble, makeshift contraption– so I turn it and head for a closer home, where I feel I belong.

partway into the trip I have to crash-land– I lose altitude and am going down fast– but fortunately, as it turns out, there’s a big, soft buddha statue to cushion my fall– I crash into its belly, and all the people, the family, come running to see if I’m okay and to help me out.

I wake up in triangular traction out in their backyard, hanging from my head, the top of my spine– and I feel perfectly fine (although I accept an offered advil)– and in fact the crash has managed to open up my sacral chakra, and now I feel clear and calm and laughing and light. I didn’t realize how closed I’d been before.

when I get down out of the traction, there’s a kind of community fair in progress– possibly even a welcoming celebration for me, which seems perfectly astonishing and unimaginably generous– and the bake-off is just beginning with an apple pie contest, and they call me down to taste and judge. I’m honored and happy and having fun, and I go over and praise both pies for their shapeliness and color, though they’re as different from one another as two apple pies can possibly be: one is classic traditional, and the other is experimental. I try the experimental one first– it has deep fried slices of apple, or maybe even some entirely other fruit or vegetable, inside a spicy crumble crust– and it’s surprising, delicious, quite fascinating really, and I know then and there that I’ll definitely be giving this one a prize, tho I haven’t even tasted the other one yet.