I wish to hell I understood dreams. Do they mean anything, or are they just how the subconcious creates art? Last night I dreamt I was trying to get back to New York, and make both my college graduation ceremony and my first day of orientation to graduate film school. I finally realized I would not make both and had to choose between the two.
It just so happens that, for real, I chose not to go to my college graduation. Instead I chose to babysit (literally, a baby) and I strolled past Washington Square Park with the infant in a carriage and realized that was my very graduation I heard going on. This may seem extraordinary to you, in fact, now it seems extraordinary to me. But I was raised in the French tradition, where the closest thing to graduation is seeing your exam results posted. We all went to my brother's graduation, because he was the first, but by the time mine rolled around, my mother was like "is it important to you?" and I honestly said no. But it's a decision I regret, frankly.
And that sentiment of regret infused me waking up. I drifted back into a reverie where I started to half obsess over/half dream about what I would do if I could go back to the early eighties knowing what I know now. Would I be able to convince my friends, and brother, to have safe sex in time for them to remain negative? Would I have told anybody how horrific AIDS would turn out to be? Would I have bought stock in Microsoft? Would I have dragged my Dad into AA? What screenplays would I have written? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. These questions assumed some urgency in my mind, as if I really had to determine the answers to them. It was actually kind of upsetting. Inevitably I pondered all the bad choices I made, though many of them were only so in retrospect. If I'd made a different series of choices I 'd no doubt now have an entirely different set of regrets. That's what your 20's are, as my father used to say, one long "learning experience."
I did get a gratifying phone call while walking the dog from David, who has been in San Francisco almost a week and is hating it. He's thinking of coming back and I am thrilled at the prospect, as we would probably rent a nice house together if he returned. I really don't like this living alone shit, I have been beseiged by loneliness but find it very hard to reach out and make new friends. Particularly as when I really get up against that wall, I do, finally, start to write. I'm on page 6 of the new screenplay. If I write, say, 2 pages a day, I will have a completed work in 2 months. And if I double that output, one in a month.
Off to church, where I hope to sit next to my new crush.
MCO 2005
