home world

I wake up in the middle of the night, not quite knowing what time it is, it feels like early morning, but it can be any time, it's still dark outside, I hear some cars on the highway outside, and other then that just one big silence. I reach my arm out to him, but the bed's empty, I call him, not knowing where he is, half in English and half in Hebrew. He's sitting on the couch, not being able to fall asleep, keep waking up to mosquitoes and hunger and thoughts. He comes to bed and tell me his thoughts, still half asleep, I'm trying to think back on what woke me up and I then I start to laugh, remembering the last few moments of my dream.

THE DRESS DREAM


I'm still in Israel, but my parents are already not talking to me, I'm on the last few days of running errands and getting ready for the move to New York. It's the afternoon and I'm going to my parents house to take something, I hope they will not be home and indeed when I come in, only my sisters are there, but shortly after, my mom and dad arrives. There's this tension that there always were when we were kids and my parents would come home, and suddenly it felt like we were under inspection.

My father say "We were worried about you, we haven't heard from you in a while" I don't know if I want to just let this go and make the effort to act as if all was normal and just ignore their not talking to me, but eventually I get angry and cynically say "Well, you don't talk to me, so you don't get to know what's going on with me" He get upset, but he doesn't say anything. My mom's cleaning the kitchen counter, she say "I'm busy now, but I do what to talk to you about this later on" She say will have dinner and talk about it later. I feel like she's pushing me into a corner, I say "I can't stay here for the entire evening, I need to get going, if you want to I'll talk about it now" though on the inside I just hope we would not have the time to talk about it at all and it will all be forgotten after I leave for New York.

Then, without a warning or a reason, my mother becomes very nice, she smiles at me and she say "I got you some things for the trip" She hands me a black shiny paper bag, in it there's a dress, I take It out, it's baggy, made of shiny cheap crushed satin fabric, it's got 3 huge tiger tooth buttons on the front and a weird heavy belt.
I make a sour face, obviously I don't like the dress, I think it's ugly. I tell my mom I don't like it and she takes it from my hand and say "Well, I'll just take it back to the store then" making me feel both guilty and greedy, I sigh and tell her that I'll try it on and see how it fits.

I'm going into the bathroom to try it, before I do, I sit on the toilet to take a piss. Somehow the urine shoots from the toilet seat and spray over the entire dress, just soaking it in piss. I get really anxious about my mom thinking I did it on purpose just cause I thought it was ugly, I try to stop pissing but I can't and the dress just gets more and more soaked, I throw it to the floor and see that the black dye is starting to ooze out of it, that when it's mixed with the urine it looks dark brown, like blood, I realized that somehow, I manage to get it soaked with period blood as well as urine, I try to wipe it with toilet paper but it just sticks to the fabric and make the situation worst. I throw it to the floor again and it just get covered in dust and go on oozing this orange liquid, that's dye and urine and blood.

In the dream, I'm both stressed about my mother's reaction, but mostly I'm amused by how ridiculous the whole situation is, how ugly that dress was and how slapstick like I look with my jeans still down to my ankles trying to wipe away piss and blood and just making the situation worst and worst.

As I tell him the dream I realise that it's a lot less funny and a lot more emotional then I was feeling at first, but I still can't stop laughing at it when I'm talking about it.

NIGHTWALK

By the time I finish telling him about the dream and writing it down so I don't forget it, I'm almost fully awake, he can't fall asleep. I put on a dress and shoes and we go out. The streets are very quite, there's garbage trucks and a couple of the late night bars are still running pretty silently. We walk down the empty streets, looking at pigeons sleeping on window ledges and cats walking about. I haven't walked those streets so late at night since I got here. It looks different so late, there's a pale moonshine, the air is Misty, it looks like a magical hour. We look at the buildings, at the new ones being built and the old ones that still stand and how beautiful they are. We are talking about how the neighborhood's changing. He's been talking about moving a few times in the past few days, there's a restlessness in him now, a desire to go to other places.


We cross the highway and walk toward Kellog's Dinner. The Bright neon light's exactly the opposite of the magical poetic feeling of the outside, there's some crappy 80's song playing, and the bright red tables reflecting the lights makes me want to close my eyes, to adjust to the blinding colors. A group of teenagers are sitting on one of them, a few couples, a policeman, coming through the door after us, sitting down to have some coffee.

We sit down, he order food, we share it, I'm half listening to random conversation, he hold hands, we talk, the night's surrounding this restaurant from all places, but inside it always look the same, only the people changes. I eat, the warmth of the food makes me feel sleepy, tired. Two paramedics enters, this is the only place that open 24 hours and so it hosts a very random combination of emergency forces, kids with nowhere to go and random people, some are starting their day very early, some are still half way into their nights. I drink the water from the too large plastic cup, I'm happy to be there, with him, awake in the middle of the night, it feels special, even with that horrible song from the soundtrack of "ghost" even with the blinding red table between us. It feels romantic and beautiful and like us.