call the dream police: jagger cheats on crosswords

Last night the almost-full waxing moon was aggressive, like god was conducting a bed-check or looking for fugitives. It was casting shadows! I could have READ BY IT. This disturbed my slumber and launched me into the land of bizarre dreams. (perhaps I should mention that I'm currently feuding with the full moon -- its very presence aggrieves me. The crescent moon and I were just gossiping a couple of weeks ago about what a goddamn showboat the full moon has become. Every month since our feud began I hope for some cloud cover -- not unreasonable for winter in pdx -- and what do I get? A moon so bright I could perform surgery, or at least shadow puppet surgery. ) You can't always get what you want.

Which brings me to my dream, the summary of which is as follows: Mick Jagger and I were engaged in an epic Dressing For Dinner battle that involved geisha costumes, cheating on crosswords, and a profound wardrobe malfunction. He was remarkably nonplussed by it all. I'm sure it happens to dream Mick Jagger a lot.

Here's how it started: in dream-land my aunt and uncle who live in Florida were throwing some kind of big mexican-themed party and I wanted to wear something nice. No, that's not right. I wanted to wear something fantastic. So, as is the way of things in dreams, I was trying on stuff that should have been great, but was wrong, wrong, wrong. It would be the perfect shape, except when I looked in the mirror it was completely transparent, or it wouldn't wrap around, etc. etc. (I was having boob exposure issues, essentially.) Then somehow, Mick Jagger was there. At first he was just cracking wise about my wardrobe dilemma (strangely, I was not embarrassed by this) and playing with a rubik's cube thing that was all white with black letters -- it looked like a crossword. (He would CHEAT by spelling words one letter off and telling me it was the british spelling. Dream me would have none of it. "Cobler" my ass.) Anyway, I'd leave crossword-cheat dream Mick Jagger to his own devices and go out in search of something appropriate to wear.

At one point I ended up in a room full of cast-iron bathtubs (they were green and had some fancy design pressed into them -- everything was white or green and had that kind of weird neon glowing quality) and met up with a woman I used to work with a long time ago (Martha T.). There were sheets draped over everything and she was mopping the floor. There was a mattress over one of the tubs so I sat on it while I asked her what I should do. She was very practical, but not particularly sympathetic to my Mick Jagger OR wardrobe problem. I remember making a stupid waterbed joke and being embarrassed since even dream me knew she had to have heard that a million times. Anyway, I talked to Martha for a bit and then went back to my room where Mick Jagger had acquired some crazy outfit, which sent me out looking for something better, and so on.

As I was wandering the halls of this houseboat/floating house (you know how dream halls are -- just on and on) and ended up in my aunt's kitchen in florida. None of them were dressing up, but I couldn't back down now because Mick Jagger had goaded me beyond the point of being reasonable. (isn't that always the way?) Anyway... I went back to my room for another attempt at finding the right thing, and there he was in some crazy geisha get-up. I don't know what happened next because Dash the Orange Menace (aka the kitten) jumped on my shoulder and woke me up. He bugs me a lot in the early mornings, but it would seem that this time he thought he had a good reason -- at some point during my sleep he managed to put his favorite mouse cat toy down the front of my tank top! When I stood up it fell out.

The lesson here is clear. I really REALLY need to stop drinking caffeine after 9 like I promised myself post-index card nightmare, or it's time for a satin sleep mask, or I should buy/invent one of those rubik's crossword thingies. Actually the lesson is simpler than that: just as it is foolhardy to start a land war in Asia, never start a costume escalation with dream Mick Jagger. You just can't win.