new place

My roommates and I moved into a new apartment. We liked all the shelf space, and the exposed brick walls. But there were several drawbacks---the giant, gym-locker-room style bathroom that took up about half the apartment and flooded on a daily basis was less than ideal. I also wasn't a big fan of the fake New Orleans interior design scheme. Each of the bedroom doors had a stained glass window etched with the name of a street in New Orleans and a stylized drawing of a jazz musician. Neon light sculptures of additional jazz musicians hung from the brick walls. Classy. I got there late, and my roommates had taken up all that wonderful shelf space with their books, DVDs and CDs, leaving me none. I threw a big fit, screaming and yelling and maybe throwing some things. Later, I apologized, embarrassed for my outburst, but things remained pretty tense.

snakes!

I encountered a number of pestilences. Tornadoes. Fires. Earthquakes. The worst was the room full of snakes. This big purple cobra cornered me. I thought I was fast enough to get around it and out the door. Boy, was I wrong.

the new world

I joined an improv troupe, but our chemistry was all wrong. We just weren't funny, and I think two of the other girls were clinically depressed. The rest of the group decided to order in some fried chicken, stay up all night, and work everything out, but I jumped ship and headed to Michigan to hang out with my coworkers.

They were eating dinner at the house of one of the publicity assistants' parents, which was on a Manhattan city block transposed over one of the hilly forested areas near Ann Arbor. The publicity assistant was mad because one of the publicists had taken over her bedroom and filled it with baby-related gear. The really annoying part was that the publicist doesn't even have a baby. Still, I liked what she'd done with the place. Everyone was debating whether or not to head over to a party on 6th Ave. It was only one block away, but that block was steep and icy and covered with heavy forest.

We decided to drive to the frozen yogurt place instead. It was a no-name Pinkberry imitator, and they weren't doing so well. The place was a mess, with napkins and fruit bits and yogurt residue covering every surface. I was almost to the front of the line when the place totally broke down and became two narrow strips of land running in parallel across the Atlantic Ocean. A neverending train of prehistoric animals, from pink brontosauruses to baby-blue woolly mammoths, trudged along the isthmuses toward their new homes.

I cut a perilous path between all those giant, adorable legs and soon found myself in a small port city somewhere in Spain, full of notable architecture and elevated causeways. At every corner, there was a park with artfully arranged bushes and benches, so that the heads of the people who sat there poked up like rows of cabbage, making out, taking naps, or just taking in the scenery.

carless in Los Angeles

Getting around Los Angeles without a car can be a real pain, especially if all the trains are full of zombies. I was visiting friends up in the hills, but had to get to a high school reunion on another hill. I'm not quite sure how I made it, but it definitely involved a lot of running and quick-footed zombie evasion down by the train tracks. I arrived just in time to hear this girl who used to live down the street from me out her little brother. He didn't seem to be expecting it, but he handled it well.

My friends got me a room in a really nice bed and breakfast up on the hillbilly side of town. Getting there was also a challenge, but it was worth it. The next day I even snuck back in to use the bathroom after I checked out because it was just the nicest place around to do my business. Then I walked down the hill to the local fruit stand. The line for this place was around the block. A local lumberjack told me that their recent popularity was due to their delicious waffles and jalapeno tacos, but they still slept out back in the mud with their pigs. I was glad to hear that success hadn't changed them (although in their case a little upgrade probably wouldn't have hurt).

meta

I found a tunnel that led into my dreams. It was out in the woods, but not too hard to find. So I took a bunch of my friends, and we wandered around. My dreams sometimes looked like a city with a confusing public transportation system, but other parts of them just looked like a mall. They were mostly under construction. I assumed I'd be able to fly and do whatever I wanted to, but every time I tried just left me lying flat on my face.

The bus to the exit only ran twice a day, so I had to make sure we left in time to catch it. I didn't want people running around in my dreams at all hours. I found some people, but John Kim was missing. We sent out search parties, checked out all the stores and alleyways, but he was nowhere to be found. We stopped in a coffee store to regroup, and decided to leave without him.

At the bus stop, I turned on my iPod. It was playing Crash and Burn by Radiohead. This seemed somehow wrong. So I tried scrolling back to the menu, where things really started to fall apart. Some of the songs didn't even have names, and the ones that were there didn't make any sense. It dawned on me that being inside my dream was itself a dream. I tried the flying thing again, but just fell...and fell and fell, into my parents' family room as it looked in 1989. But this time I knew for sure the whole tunnel into my dream thing had been a dream, and this was, too. So I started flying around for a while until I got bored. I don't care what you say, flying around your parents' family room is never very exciting.

downpour

I arrived in Costa Rica, which is kind of like Disneyland, and also kind of like an airport. There were turnstiles at the entrance, and then a kind of waiting area. The American tourists had a special area on one side with leather chairs and their own bartender. I stuck with the locals on the other end, waiting for a bus up to the top of the large hill that was visible from one end of the waiting area.

My bus driver was pretty cool. But when we got up to the top of the hill, he dared me to ride a skateboard all the way down on the main road, which ended on a dock and would send me straight out to sea. To be honest, I was scared shitless, but I said, "Sure, whatever."

Luckily, it started to rain just as I was about to take the plunge. The whole hillside went dark like it was moved inside a barn. Everyone in the town was sitting outside with their families at backyard picnic tables when the storm started, and they continued on with sharing their meals and company like nothing was happening, even though they were getting soaked. I waited out the deluge, dreading the aftermath.

musical journalism bus

The musical journalism bus is a moving city landmark. Kids line up outside the bus depot all day, practicing their saxophones and violins and various percussion instruments, just hoping for a chance to take a ride. I was showing some friends around the city, and they all wanted to get on. Unfortunately, none of us had any musical skills. I considered auditioning with my singing, but everyone in the group quickly vetoed that idea.

Somehow we all managed to sneak onto the bus without having our credentials checked, but some jerky kid with a flute ratted us out. As the bus pulled out onto the street, the door flew open and we were pushed to the front, where a militant looking woman started to pull us off the moving bus.

"I'm not jumping off a moving bus!" I said.

"Yes you are," she said, giving me a final push. I exaggerated my recent ankle injury as I hopped down, hoping to make her feel bad. People who kick other people off moving buses are among my top ten least favorite kinds of people.

It turns out one of our friends had been holding out on us. In fact, he was kind of a scratch clarinet player. We caught up with him a few hours later when the bus dropped him off near one of the bridges. He showed us all of the pamphlets he'd received. We oohed and aahed over all the insider information on interview techniques and fact checking. "If I had known if was a stupid journalism seminar," he said, "I would have gotten off with the rest of you."