1/24/04

More snow, although today it falls gently, beautiful, white. The sound of silence. I had a dream that last that I was playing soccer in high school as a goalie. Class was almost over, although my brother and I wanted to intermural the boys and girls. Failing this, we walked over the fields to the city. I wondered how such a hick town (Delmar, MD, the town I spent my high school years) could be situated so close to a major city. As I waited to cross the street at a major intersection, an SUV drove by. On its back window, in letters created by shoepolish, was "YOU W LIVE FOREVER." I got angry and thought to myself, "That's bullshit. You don't live forever." Why I assumed the incomplete word was "will" and not "won't," I'm not sure. Just then an older relative caught up with me and said that I had to come back outside (I had entered the glass lobby of a hotel/school, something). I thought he was going to tell me my aunt died (a fictional aunt potrayed by Rose on the Golden Girls) when I met up outside and noticed my Aunt Rose was there, along with my Aunt Blanche (also from GG) and my brother. I asked them what was wrong, trying to figure out who had died if it wasn't my Aunt Rose (who was wearing a lovely white and pink-striped sweater), when Aunt Blanche said, "honey, your mother took ill suddenly, and she died." I said, "you're kidding!" before I woke up.

I still worry a lot about my mom's health since her close call five years ago. I was elated when she told me the other day that she was joining Curves, although I secretly fear that she will probably die younger than she should because of her almost dying before. Still, exercise is exercise. Now, if only she would eat better....speaking of fitness, I finally went back to kickboxing on Wednesday. I had a pretty bad hamstring pull (my second in five months), and I feared that the recovery would take much longer. I hate getting old.

I finished "Comfort Foods" and will probably put it up soon. It came to me, as I said before, because of waking up next to my grandmother in bed, but it might be taken a little from my mother too. I was thinking about my family again because my aunt wanted to go visit my mother for a week. I immediately thought of the fact that it would be the four of them living together again (mom, aunt, grandmother, grandfather), just as they had for so many years, and maybe it is this subconscious desire, for safety and simplicity, that fuels my aunt's desire to visit. It would be an interesting play as well for the family to grow up and apart but then come together again as age and fears and disappointments and the fading of sour memories all come together in them and they are back in the safe, "known" incubator of their family. I guess the title of the play and running theme would have something to do with the girls raising a chick in a homemade incubator when they were small and what happens to the chick when they release it too soon. I think this will be a back-burner play because it will take me awhile to work out the logistics. Something more pressing might come to me in a dream or in passing in the meantime. I wait with baited breath for the next spark.