How to write a dream sequence, from within a nightmare, even if the nightmare is safe, we all know it’s safe and so,
Sit on the floor. I’d suggest one that isn’t wet.
Red curtains and a heater, a broken heater, one that I knew wouldn’t work when I moved in here and so I nodded my head and imagined hanging gym clothes across the useless dusty thing and therefore always having clothes to wear which is a type of heat actually.
Don’t write the word “actually”. It’s not a word meant to be written. Include in that list the words “just”, “very” and “more”.
I have a recurring dream about a parking lot.
I’ve driven my mother’s car here.
She is a caterer.
On the side of her car, you’ll find the words MORE FOOD in red outlined in purple, a decal vaguely sixties-ish, off putting and cynical, stupid and repulsing.
I parked my mother’s car here and now it’s gone.
The police officer listens to my story and he nods his head.
He turns on the siren, the one that he wears on his head, and he has me follow him around.
Do the people in your dreams speak to you? The people in my dreams don’t speak to me.
I hate dreaming.
False promises, I hate them.
I hate liars and I include my dreams in my liars because my dreams never come true.
I am wearing a ring on my left index finger.
I found it on the floor of this VERY old closet that I am JUST using for the time being because I am living in a house that has MORE room.
Just very more, dreamy language.
I wear the ring, I put it on yesterday and I told myself that if I keep this wring on my finger, everything will be ok.
Something else has happened.
I am wearing the ring and when I stare at it, I don’t care about anything.
There is a movie preview that I keep seeing on TV. I love watching TV because it’s bad and I do not have to worry about being intelligent when I engage with it.
There is a single movie preview I keep hearing. One line. Shouted by a man’s voice. “Everything gets better the second you decide that nothing matters.”
Every second I decide that nothing matters, everything gets better.
That is what I have learned from TV.
I am wearing a ring, it’s too big but it also feels snug so I’m not sure what’s wrong with my fingers, I keep playing with it and remembering that nothing matters.
It is important, listen to this one thing: It is important to know how little things matter because then you can sit and write your dreams.
Write your dreams, you’ll be lying to me. Write your dreams, we’ll be lying. And I promise you it won’t matter.
Start with something you took from your mother.
Lose it.
Ask where it is.
Follow the noise that leads you back to nowhere.
And at the end of the day, I wrote you this song: Still just us/More of what isn’t/Very very very/pleasant thanks.
I think I write here every day of this lockdown and if you aren’t living in the same lockdown as me, great. You are just the very more I need. To read. Goodnight.
Rachel Ganz 