Sara's X10 Blog

I went to school in New York. This is an experience I would recommend to anyone (though with the caveat that you should also have either a. parents willing to pay for your schooling, or b. you should not go to NYU), because then you can get the "Oh, like Felicity!" comments I endured for years. Yes, I model my life after my favorite shows. This is why I'm also a teen detective, a space cowboy, an office drone (wait) and a vampire slayer (I'm not going to link to that one- that'd just be insulting). I lived there for awhile after I graduated, but now I'm back here in Washington where I grew up.

I'm going back to New York to visit the first weekend in September, and as with anything I'm not giving sufficient conscious thought to, the visit is starting to pop up in my dreams.

The New York of my dreams is a fascinating place. More often then not, I'm lost there, wandering from place to place making note of where I want to revisit; it's always a little disappointing to wake up and remember I can't. I sort of do, though - there are towns that I keep coming back to when I dream, places I've never been in real life, towns on hills that I've constructed from fragments of imagination, places I keep going back to when I close my eyes - I keep going back to the New York of my dreams.

Last night I dreamed about being way uptown. Not the Bronx, but what my mind has made up of the northern tip of Manhattan. It's vividly sunny and there are empty lots of sand, chain-link fenced in, free-standing brick buildings and the Hudson not too far away, visible in the spaces between. I'd been there before in dreams, at some tea shop (that was also...a teen community center? there was a cafeteria, and some places the ceilings were so low I had to duck), and in this dream I was aware of being not too far from the place, just a few blocks over really, walking down the street in sandals and those enormous scene girl glasses I really can't pull off. I was tromping around with some of my friends, and later there were five of us stuffed in a cab and my friend Katie and I were passing notes to each other.

This is only a part of town I've visited recently in dreams; I used to dream of the southern edge of the island more often than not, from fireworks displays in the financial district to the dusty streets and alleys I imagined downtown. I don't think I ever dreamed of places where I'd lived, not Brooklyn or the Village or Chinatown; just the less familiar neighborhoods I only passed through underground between. When I finally saw below Houston I liked it better in dreams. There were no cobblestones and alleys and the streets didn't twist, they weren't geometric and sepia-toned, there were no butchers or dressmakers or men in aprons or Russian tea shops half-underground. Possibly my downtown dreams took place in a different century.

In other news of My Life Is Awesome and You Should Be Jealous, today on the first minute of my first break I went outside, sat down at the picnic table, and was promptly stung on the lip by a wasp. Twice. (In related news: OW.) So I'm swollen up like a circus freak (when I look down, I can actually see my top lip, that's how huge it is), and Becky the receptionist came to my rescue with an ice pack and laughter. Presumably because laughter is the best medicine. On a brighter note, I now know that lip collagen would not be the right choice for me. I look young and tragic and really, really weird.

WebMD tells me that wasps and bees are attracted to food and pastel colors, so it probably didn't help that I was sitting down outside to eat an apple while wearing a lavender hoodie. I'm sure the wasp was really amped to be landing on a really large flower and was just as startled as I was when I went all "!!!!!!!!!1" [EDIT, 3:14: Sitting down outside at a table with a wasp's nest under it. Okay! Fair enough, wasp, fair enough, I wouldn't want you hanging around my house either.] [EDIT 2: Although seriously, wasps, what's your problem? I don't like flies landing on me either but they don't get all stingy about it when I brush them off. Although one time a horsefly did sting me (through my pants!) and I still have a scar on my thigh. Moral: insects are malevolent creatures of doom.]

Conclusion: My lip hurts.

[Of note: this entry was originally titled "I wanna see movies of my dreams," a line from Car, by Built To Spill, but in light of the fact that my upper lip now has it's own ZIP CODE I decided the Dane Cook quote was more apt. It least it wasn't a tire, right?]