Confessions of a One-Track Mind

Continued investigation of Forgotten New York revealed a picture of St. Michael's Church, located a scant two-and-a-half blocks from the house I grew up in. The bells for 8 AM Mass were a signal that it was time for me to leave for the bus stop.



The doors were always red, even back in my day, and the nuns, who went in and out through the door you can't quite see in the far left of the picture, looked like penguins.

Cruised Wal*mart last night for a few things...came home, finally got to sleep, woke up before 9 AM, which seems to be happening a lot lately. If not for the fact that that's less than six hours of sleep, I wouldn't mind, but if I'm over-tired, I get cranky with the customers, and that's a Bad Thing. So I made myself catch another couple hours, and now I'm dain-bramaged.

You know those sleeping pill commercials with Abe Lincoln and the beaver (or groundhog, or whatever the fuck it's supposed to be)? I don't have dreams like that. I may have recurring scenarios, but the only times I have recurring characters, they're either people I know, or actors, which is kinda the same thing....

With me, though, I dream PLACES. Very seldom do I dream about the places as they appear in waking life---the Staten Island in my dreams is much different from the suburbia I lived in in the 60's. Last night, I dreamed about going back there, and how the block I grew up on had changed, how the wooded vacant lots I played in as a child were either built up with tacky businesses, or were sterile moonscape strewn with pebbles, an ominous mist veiling nearby buildings. Creepy.

I dream of big houses, usually full of antiques...rustic houses with exposed beams and fireplaces, grand houses with carved woodwork, labyrinths of rooms wrapping around like a chambered nautilus. Sometimes there are streets of Victorian homes, with variations in architecture and gingerbread, sometimes the neighborhood I'm in now shifts around, sometimes I'm visiting one of my aunts (all long dead), sometimes it's antique or book stores.

Common folklore says that we only use 10% of our brains...I think that the other 90% of mine has been quietly taking notes about decor and architecture---from life and books and media---and when I'm sleeping, it comes out to play with it.

And yeah, I know I'm weird.