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Monday, February 12, 2007

11:16 PM

Last night I bumped into my housemate Ben on the way home. He had a look that could best be described as gleeful. In his hands was a pair of white ice skates.

"Guess what?" he asked.
"You bought yourself some skates?"
"No," he replied, "I FOUND them on the sidewalk. I love this city!"
"Wow! Why'd someone throw them away? Do they fit you?"
"No way, but they look like they might fit you, actually."
"Uh, are you sure you want to see me back on the ice?"

I tried them on anyway, and they seemed a half size bigger than my feet, but if I wore them with thick socks (as I should) they'd fit perfectly. The tips are a bit gasgas, and the inside fluff is more scruffy than fluffy, and the blades need to be sharpened -- but otherwise they're a perfectly fine pair of skates! Orbit, their front flaps say in fading gold font. We will let you glide in circles around the ice, they promise, winking at each other.

I have a vague memory of this children's story about a pair of ice skates stolen by a boy named Peter (?). He wears them and suddenly they have a life of their own, taking him away from the other children on the frozen lake and into the forest and beyond. I don't remember what else happens, only that he turns out safe in the end, if a little shaken. Unlike the gruesome Andersen fairy tale about the adopted girl who puts on a pair of red shoes that make her keep on dancing, across ballrooms and roads and graveyards until she asks a woodcutter to chop off her feet. At which point the red shoes and dismembered feet in them keep dancing and bar her way to the church. She dies of a literal broken heart.

I dreamt I died last night, shot in the chest in my high school by a man with a bow and arrow. I had been flying, then I sank to the ground in slow motion, and crumpled up. Richard said dreams about death are good, that they signal transformation. Sure, but what of dreams about being murdered? Jess said I didn't really die, that it was Cupid reminding me of Valentine's Day. Oh brother.

Labels: dreams, house

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