the twit

    1.13.2010

    you were in my dream

    so in my dream there is a slumber party. it is in the basement of my childhood home, but the ground floor is a beachside vacation condo. i go down in the basement, and my brother mike has woken up in a panic because he saw a spider. he says he just touched it but his finger is bleeding, and the spider--a small thing--runs under a dusty, cobwebby coffee table. we both get down on the floor to try and find the spider, but don't see much other than dust and dead ants. i go upstairs for a bit to watch a car chase explosion action movie with some people in the living room, but then go back downstairs with a flashlight, determined to get the spider. i get down on the floor again, and survey the space beneath the coffee table. seeing nothing, i move the beam up to the underside of the table. there, in a corner thick with spider webs and dead insects, is a spider--but no the one that had startled mike. that one was common and brown, this is stark white, with a body massive in relation to its legs, and covered in something between feathers and hair. i move the flashlight closer, in an attempt to provoke this dangerous-looking thing out of its corner so i can crush it. instead of creeping away from my advance, the spider's body opens up from the center and balloons out into a puffy bulge with bright red markings that evoke the red eye and mouth makeup of a clown. this inflated body rattles and shakes, making an intense clicking noise as it swells violently before suddenly collapsing back into the spider. stunned, i test the thing again with the flashlight. again, the rattling clown face. i push the flashlight even further into the cobwebs, almost nudging the spider, and it suddenly jumps out of the corner and begins to run frantically around the coffee table and floor, expanding and contracting erratically. at this point you come down stairs with a mason jar, corner the spider, and capture it. you show me the closed jar, and tap on it--provoking the clown face.

    later, in perhaps another dream, i'm sitting on a sidewalk, talking to some girl. between the sidewalk and the road is a ditch, which trends towards a drainage pipe and a small stream that leads in between some houses. suddenly, you walk out of my childhood house, and toss the spider-containing mason jar towards the stream. the girl and i jump away as the jar catches the edge of the drainage pipe, and breaks. the white spider, collapsing and expanding, now the size of a small mouse--scampers through the brush and onto a fence, heading back between the houses. i pursue it, tearing through fallen branches and leaves. i corner the spider on a fence post, and proceed to crush it with my hands. the clown face collapses in a noxious puff. my fingers burn.