My Dearest Mack,
Have you ever had an animated dream? Dreamed in all black and white? In a foreign or made-up language?
All dreams have meaning. But there are times where dreams just feel realer. Would you agree? Aboard these vivid drimboats, you’re taken on a journey that surprises you, excites you, and immerses you in more color than you can possibly see in waking life.
Many times these are the dreams that stick out the most to me. This dream was one of em that had moments seemingly ordinary and extraordinary, and I quite enjoyed the juxtaposition. I hope you do, too!
Part Un: Ye Shall Not Pass
I’m outside in my parent’s stone walkway, likely on my way to work in the morning or heading out on an errand. It’s really windy and the gate my Dad and I fixed last fall is making a clacking sound in the current. We replaced it with new wooden planks and painted it a vibrant Badlands Red.
I can see a gap between the bottom of the gate and the fence that swells when the wind whips through. Enough, I think to myself, for a three-year-old golden retriever hellbent on chasing a chipmunk to squeeze through.
Now~ the following details weren’t in my dream, but they’ll help you understand the strangeness I felt being at two parts of the yard simultaneously.
We have another gate at the back yard, it’s chicken wire in a big frame and closes securely when you swing it shut, pull its chain, and hook it around its steel post. It guards the three trees we planted when my brother, sister, and I were varying degrees of yougin’.
While I know I was on my way going somewhere when I saw the red gate, in the close-up in my dream that showed the gap, it was actually where the wire gate normally is, guarding the back yard. I tell my Dad about the gap, and he says there’s a bottom latch he’s been hanging onto from when we fixed it originally that will hold things together, and it does.
It’s another day. Another walk out to my car. I unlatch the red gate and it breaks off of its hinges and into my hands without any extra effort. I try to reattach it. Awkwardly trying to balance the connected slats of wood, I notice a sequence of numbers on the gate itself that match the post and try to line these up. I get it to stand upright and look sturdy and secure from the naked eye, but I know that whoever walks back through it will break it again. That feels unsettling to me.
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In the next part of the dream, my Dad becomes a famed inventor. IRL, he’s got the crazy Guy Fieri hair for it, at the very least!
Part Deux: Animation Station
I’m looking out over these round, huge, cartoonish green hills. I think to myself how beautiful they are and exaggerated, like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. As I walk toward the plump landscape, the hills do a very Pixar thing and shuffle around like a deck of cards being held by a giant.
As I take a few steps, they bunch up and disperse in a stop-motion way until I’m elevated to being level with their peaks. That’s when I notice them: Big green stems like tree logs, like a close-up of the bottoms of asparagus stalks. Directly above them, giant, curved red petals that look large enough to slide down. Despite my wonder, I’m concerned that they’ve fallen and cannot grow any longer. The bottoms of their stems are blunt as if someone’s taken the world’s largest pair of Fiskars and cut them.
Before returning home, I tell the inventor.
The next day I set out for the green hills again. This time, before I even begin my climb, I can see the gargantuan tulips, a beacon of red hovering against the green hills – it’s a breathtaking sight, the colors are so overwhelmingly vibrant. I pause to take them in. At the end of the day, I run home, energy pumping through my legs. I can’t wait to get up and see the flowers again.
The next day I journey up the green hills, there are more huge, colorful attractions to see. Now, as I ascend the hills, each one unfolds like a surprise greeting held in a pop-up card. Despite looking very real, they also remind me of glossy 3D paper. There’s a shiny, red rollercoaster, those like joke colored worm things that come out of a can of whoop ass- but huge and blue. They constantly fly out in different directions and then disappear and start over again.
The hills are alive with the sound of…whoop ass?
That’s what Julie Andrews sang right-
I’m downright E N C H A N T E D. I now know what to ask for for Christmas this year.
Every time you walk up and down the hills, you find something new, and the higher you venture, the more you find. I take a picture, then saunter down to the information kiosk tucked into the side of the bottom hill like a hobbit house.
Cue the Spa Babes
At the info station, I run into Mack and Enron. They have white towels around their heads and monogrammed bath robes on. They twinkle their toes fresh with polish. Obviously, they’ve just had a relaxing afternoon at the Hillside Spa(TM).
Mack starts massaging my shoulders saying “feel that? You’ve got yourself a gnarly knot.” (that’s when in real life I would have said, “is that like a garlic knot???”) Mack continues: “Let’s loosen that up for you shall we?”
Then I wake up. Thank you for rubbing my shoulders in my dreams, Mackadoodle boo. You the real MVP. <3 Now, what the heckeroonie does all this mean!!?? I can’t wait to hear your take!
All of my luff,
Jennifer, Jenny, J