dream

[dragonlady7]

I was at college or something. Friends were in a band. One friend was, anyway. Boy. Blues band. They were all my friends.
Boy's sister was a friend too. There was an air of tolerance about the friendship-- they were strange people, I put up with their foibles, I loved them anyway. (No sense of real "self" in this dream-- don't recall whether I was male or female; I may have been a third person observer.)

Boy and girl's father dies. This may happen offscreen. Don't remember.

The husband of a friend of the family dies. Young family-- oldest boy is another band member maybe?-- bunch of younger kids. Neighborhood comes together, takes up a collection for the widow. Widow does nothing, sits in back yard all day staring blankly. Water gets shut off, then gas, then they evict the family. Much frustration by the rest of the neighborhood, who had all sacrificed a great deal to try to help the family but the widow just did nothing.

Sitting at a performance by the band. Nobody else is there. It's part of a festival and just nobody is coming over to their area. It's dark, and overcast. Their mother is there. The sister is sitting in the audience. There were little plastic figurines, three little plastic figurines, the tiny kind with no movable parts, and at one point these were the three people we were talking about: the brother, the sister, and either the widow or the son of the other dead man, but I don't remember. Then there were three pieces of paper-- I think one was the girl's scores at a recent singing competition. Another I forget the significance of. The third one was some kind of worksheet-- some kind of useless worksheet like maybe a grief counselor would give you, and it had a long list of characterizations next to which you would put a number if they applied-- I think it was listing connections to the deceased, like how well you knew him, and at the end you'd add it up and get a number, and the higher the number the worse off you were.
And the sheet was old and faded, and had been filled out long ago, but nobody had ever added it up: the final result line was empty.
I started singing that Ani DiFranco song:
what kind of a scale
compares the weight of two beauties
the gravity of duty
the groundspeed of joy?
What kind of a guage
can quantify elation?
What kind of a measure
could I possibly employ?

(Words quoted from memory, in the dream, so possibly not correct. It took me several workings-through of the chorus upon awakening to determine that the song is called "School Night".)

And then the phone rang, awakening me. One of the morning bartenders has called off and they need someone to come in. It's the woman from Landmark; she was complaining yesterday of back pain, and had an appointment with the chiropractor. I was talking to her yesterday, and told her that I was sorry I was already working five days this week or I'd agree to work for her the next day. I declined to come in today, even though it's the money bar-- it's a Tuesday, which is pretty much never money. I did say, on the phone, "Oh, G's back was bothering her, I hope she's OK"-- but no. I am tired today and I will be doing gardening today and also writing, because I got some done on the bus and maybe I can make a last push and finish this novel after all.