Me: (just waking up) Man, I had a bad dream.
Cosimo: What about?
Me: (remembering) Actually, um. This may be the stupidest dream I've ever had. But it felt really upsetting!
Cosimo: What happened?
Me: I was at the supermarket trying to buy a frozen pizza. But they didn't have your basic pepperoni. The closest I could find was this weird double-sided pizza--like, two pizzas, almost back-to-back? But with a space in between so you could hook them over the oven rack: one on top, one underneath upside-down.
Anyway, it was a stupid pizza, but I took it and went to a register. But the cashier wouldn't check me out--he said something about how the weird box for the weird pizza didn't work with his scanner, and he didn't want to hold up the whole line, so he checked out all these other people instead. Then he just left. (plaintively) All I wanted was my pizza!
Cosimo: It's a book dream.
Me: You think so?
Cosimo: It's about your second reader.
Me: Huh. Maybe. He's the cashier? Like, a gatekeeper?
Cosimo: Sure.
Me: But in this analogy, my book is a weird pizza. You're saying my book is a weird pizza?
Cosimo: No, your book introduction is a weird pizza. Everyone's introduction is, right? You just want to do this straightforward thing, but you have to add all this other stuff you're not invested in, to appease the people who want your book to be something it's not--
Me: (not really listening) Poor weird-pizza book! No one wants to buy you! (confidentially) I'm sorry I said you were weird, weird pizza. If you exist and I see you in the store, I'm totally buying you.
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*Latest in an occasional series.
7 comments:
I *love* this dream! And Cosimo is totally right.
Are you sure that you just don't have a hankering for some Frank Pepe?
FLG: I always have a hankering for Frank Pepe's white clam pizza. And Sally's hot pepper and bacon pizza. But those esteemed gents do not make weird pizzas. That's left to us lesser lights.
Several thoughts:
1. This entire dream and its aftermath is hilarious.
2. When I first saw and clicked on the link to this post, I was almost certain that it was going to be about that freakish New Haven-style pizza. I am amused that the stuff has already made its way into the comment section.
3. Wish I had some weird pizza about now. All we have in Ghosttown is shitty pizza.
Hmm. I could never have figured out the dream. But my dreams are unbelievably, boringly literal. I dream about the exact thing that scares me, obsesses meet, etc. Introductions though, are hard--until they are easy. My strategy is that you have to find the one thing, the example that lets you have a concrete way in to the big issues and questions. I bet there is a passage, an anecdote, or something similar that can serve as a way in.
Glad some of you enjoyed this--supposedly there's nothing more boring than someone else's dreams.
(Almost all my dreams are the same, but in an endless, thrilling variety of guises: I'm always trying to do something or other, but more and more obstacles keep getting in the way. The dream involves desperately figuring out one workaround after another to cope with each new crisis--and I'm never able to give up because even as the clock ticks down there's always a slim chance I could still pull off whatever I'm trying to pull off. It's awesome, my subconscious.)
HAAA.
I just sent my own weird pizza to my writing group. I don't want to console it though. I am just embarrassed by it.
You and Cosimo may have just coined a new term...what if years from now, people are talking about their first weird pizza?
It could happen.
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