A Second Look

Hello All,

While I was visiting Cindy and family (the picture of the woman), I tried to tell her about one of my dreams last night that I couldn't remember well. I decided I retold the dream well enough that I should probably write it down here because it was a very unusual dream.

In this dream I was a fat kid of WASPish descent around the age of twelve (so, not the 30ish, wiry-built man of Mediterranean descent that I am), and it was in the 1950s. I was swimming in a lake, and had to walk down a dirt road to a crossroads where a man and woman picked me up in their car. They drove me home, which appeared to be a half-way home for troubled kids. It was a rectangular, WWII era, cinder-block home with an aluminum car-port. The sun soon set and we began to watch TV.

There was some deep-set evil in the house we were all apart of, the Satan kind of evil, not the facade-of-normalcy kind of evil. It had something to do with one of the house cats giving birth to a litter of some numerological significance. I'm not sure why, but this signified some success in evil in the household. I remember watching the cat give birth in the TV light.

I remember sneaking out of the house at night and sneaking in another house in the neighborhood to get a chance to play with one of the normal kids. We were talking and playing behind some heavy art-deco screen, made to look Asian (though more New York than Beijing). The wind began to groan and fuss outside, and it began to rain. The parents of the house woke up and I quickly snuck out of the house.

I left that house with a strange sense I was not only unwanted in the house because it was late and I was there without permission, but because of some kind of evil I carried with me from the other house. I really wish I could remember why the cat giving birth in front of the TV was considered such an epicenter of evil, and what numbers had to do with it. I think that's why I didn't retell the dream this morning.

I've spent my day water-coloring and exercising at home, talking and drawing at Cindy's, and now writing this. I had a good time looking at Cindy's garden. It turns out black plum tomatoes aren't really black, they're just darker than regular tomatoes, but they taste really good. Evidently they're from Russia,, just like my watercolors.

Thank you for reading,

Marc