27
I have this recurring dream… For more years than I can count I’ve had (frequently) a dream in which I meet my untimely demise in an airplane. It isn’t exactly the same every time. I’ve been on every airline. I’ve worn everything in my wardrobe. I’ve had the pretzels, the peanuts, the chicken and the fish. Sometimes it’s a Coke. Other times it’s a ginger ale, but there are always two constants: I’m in a window seat, and the ground is rushing toward me outside that little porthole.
It always happens in slow-motion (the way things like this do). I always have this ridiculously long amount of time to process the reality of the situation. I can feel that puke-sick feeling you get when the ground drops out from under you on a roller-coaster or in a car on a short, steep hill. I have time to observe the rows in the cornfield I’ll soon be planted in. I have the opportunity to glance around at the other passengers, their hands resembling the frozen posture of Muscular Dystrophy patients as they fight against the sweaty slickness to maintain their grasp on the armrest of the very machine that is forcing them to the ground. I look at their heads, fusing with the cloth of their upright seat-backs. I can see their eyes - blue, green, brown - rolled back slightly, and I look for their chins which seem to be tucked somewhere inside their throats as their teeth clench and grind against each other. I, on the other hand, sit in complete contrast to my fellow travelers. I do not feel this unrelenting, overwhelming panic. I am, as the late, great Tyler Durden would say, “calm as a Hindu cow”. I am that collected, disaffected face on the safety procedure brochure tucked comfortably into the plummeting seat in front of me. There is no instinct for self-preservation, just a resigned fascination with the whole event.
I always wake with a renewed sense of my own mortality. I am going to die. This doesn’t trouble me much. It’s simply fact.
I’ve recently added another recurring dream to my repertoire that is far more unsettling for me. I always wake with an overpowering sense of doom and my anxiety is notched up to a profoundly ridiculous level. I can tell you, I have a talent for anxiety to begin with, and this particular dream puts me on the level of a savant. Ah, useless talents like playing Bach on the rims of water glasses - and anxiety.
In this dream, I’m still in high school. I have an English class that, for one reason or another, I can never seem to successfully attend. The class is moved without notification, I’ve forgotten my schedule and I’m in P.E. instead, I’m sick, I’ve forgotten the way to school, etc. Anyway, all of these missed classes result in a large quantity of homework and papers that I’ve failed to turn in when due. I’m now left with copious amounts of catch-up that must be completed before the end of the school year to avoid a failing grade, and ultimately a failure to graduate and finally be free of the binds of the horrid structure of “school”. To make matters worse, I have no idea what the assignments are. My text book, in its disuse, has been lost in the shuffle and my teacher hates me enough to refuse to fill me in on what I’ve missed. I always find myself roaming the halls (in my disgusting gray, stonewashed jeans - peg-legged at the bottom), trying to run my shaking hand anxiously through my overly-geled hair as I fight back the tears. My brain hurts as the words trampoline off the inside of my skull, “I NEED TO WRITE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE. I AM GOING TO BE TRAPPED HERE. FOREVER!”… Gee, I wonder what that’s about.
Well, one thing I’ve learned about myself: I’m obviously infinitely more frightened of failure than I am of death.
BTW, we sent 230 pages of script to Cyan for approval last week.
8:02 pm
Well, let me know when you get it all broken down.
Jul 27 2008
Does this mean the first draft is done?