I make a long anagram joke.
While many have lauded Sarah Palin for coming out and saying what so many of us have been thinking all along this election—that women should not be in politics—I take issue with the idea of her being a woman, or more to the point, the idea of her being human. I recently unearthed a story (in a dream about unearthing a story) which gives credence to my theory.
In my dream, I stood on a shore of black sand. But it wasn’t the pleasant basaltic substrate of a Hawaiian beach—no, this sand was smelly, squishy, slimy and slippery, like near off-shore oil rigs in Alaska, but I’m pretty sure I was actually in Galveston, Texas (which is also weird—I’d never heard of Galveston before this dream!). As I bent to begin counting the sand (I normally do this in dreams), it struck me as odd that the sand began counting itself up, right into a pile of 666 grains, forming a floating pentagram. Then things took a turn for the scary.
I looked out to sea and went paraplegic with fear. On a surfboard of pure porphyry rode an enormous sea-lion with glowing red eyes. He laughed, but not like “This is a pretty cool surfboard, I’ll let you try it when I’m done”, more like “Hey stay still, I’m gonna slice you in half.” Cutting maliciously up and down a standing wave of mercury, he asked me about my life goals, plus what I thought about some TV shows, Lost, the Office, and Fringe. “I don’t know,” I stammered, hot fear clogging my throat, “Maybe go to grad school, maybe not. I don’t know about Fringe, I’ve never seen it.”
He swooped nearer where I stood and hissed, “But you’ve seen Lost and the Office! What do you say?”
“I used to like the Office!” I yelped, fear running down my legs, “But now it seems mushy. Lost I think is a bit overwrought!”
“Overwrought?” bellowed the dark prince of pinnipeds, the hurricane of his fetid breath all around me, “What sort of hypocritical reply is that?”
“I only meant, it’s hard to follow, and doesn’t live up to the suspense it creates!” I cried, fear soiling my shorts. And the wave broke over me, and I was overwhelmed in the undertow.
In the tussle and trammel, I opened my eyes. It was really dark, so I rubbed my eyes to get those little fireworks to go. Then against the opaque mercury, I could see the reflection of my own eyes from closer than ever before. The effect was mesmeric. Just like two mirrors facing each other create an infinite loop of discrete worlds, so too the vision of my own eye examining itself examining itself examining itself (&c) created a loop that transported my mind simultaneously to all beginnings and all eventualities of the universe. “Wowy!” I said.
Then I was back on the beach, dripping with mercury. I started to wax existenstial (that was probably the mercury in my bloodstream), like at night when you start thinking about how on each star, there could be someone sitting there also wondering about things like how long until the beer-delivery guy gets here, only in my dream (about thinking about existence) there’s no beer afterward, so it was that much weirder.
It was then that the vision of the amalgamated Sarah Palin came over me, and I saw the Divine Discombobulation of the Name of the Beast: Ash Rain Pal = Sarah Palin. Horror of horrors! She is the Friend of the Flame and the Flood! She is the precipitation of the fulsome conflagration! A manifestation of all misanthropic forces born of heedless Nature’s fetid bosom! Iä! Iä! Yipes!
Encountering such an ineffible truth shattered every bit of sanity I had, even my reserve sanity, which I keep tucked behind my ear. I tore out my eyes, I bit off my mouth, I trimmed my nails to the cuticle, I did that trick where it looks like you’re ‘cracking your nose’ but for real. Pretty quick, I was so dead I woke up. But the memory and vision still haunt me. I don’t sleep my regular 12 hours anymore without getting up a few times to scream myself hoarse at the stars.
Even the beer delivery guy made some remark about how I’ve doubled my weekly shipment to two cases of beer, but I think he was really just asking for a bigger tip. “Not untill you stack it all in the fridge for me, Jorge,” I tell him, but then a shudder runs down my spine.
Post-Election Update: Now that Palin has been cast back into the shadow, my dreams are about normal stuff again, like going to work, being at work, coming home from work, and sleeping. Sleeping dreams are the best, but sometimes I dream that I have nightmares, so that my dream-self is afraid to go to sleep (in dreams).
Oh, and Jorge’s being a real jerk. He just leaves my biweekly 48 beers out on the porch for everyone to see. If I sleep in past 3:00pm, they get all hot! I wish I could dream up a better courier.
