I think Blondie woke me up a bit right before I quite finished this dream, and I was a little disappointed not to get resolution. I was going around with some other people, I think my brother was there, or maybe not him, but some of his stuff at the pawn shop on 4th St., he was going to come get it at some point... and in that group of people who went off... can’t remember if this was first, but I was at something I guess maybe resembling the “community centre” I was working on on the island, but it was set in S.A., and I think run by Mr DigiQ who shares the mayor of Waikīkī’s name... but anyway, can’t remember how we met, but I was at this community centre, I’d had a bunch of papers I’d written or designed, arty shit to, like, post, or wheatpaste, or something, I think, or just put up around the centre, and when I came back to get the pile these kids had photocopied a bunch of this one they liked (I’d though they were all hand written, but the one they’d photocopied was typewritten), and I didn’t say anything about being the author or involved, but when I went to pick up the pile I heard one of the kids saying something about writing it in “Sanscript.” So I asked him to repeat and he like, “You know... um...” referring to a handwriting style (possibly from writing on Blondie’s back/discussing styles?) So I got out a pencil and, writing on this shitty, tear-y brown learning-to-write, big-lined first-grade handwriting paper, in hella straight-letter handstyles, I wrote out SCRIPT, SaNSKRIT and told him he better look up Sanskrit... So this cute, younger redhead girl came to get me (OH. Geez, now I know where that’s from) and walked me out to near the edge of the block, and posted this notice that basically said, Drummer Boy, you didn’t do X, Y, and Z, and we’re through. On this same newsprint-y brown paper, written in black marker. And I just looked at it, and it seemed pretty final. And I was sad, and I shrugged, and I started to walk off. And she started screaming at me as I was walking away, like, “That’s it?! You aren’t even going to say anything?” And I was like, Well, look, you pretty looked like you’d made up your mind. In fact, I remember I threw down, I think, a handful of thin colouring pens (reminiscent of the screwdrivers), and screamed, incredulous, like, “What do you mean that’s it!?” You know, you wrote this notice you declared it was over, that seemed pretty final. Oh, and the other thing was, I had started to be like, “Seriously? We hung out once before this, and now you’re posting this big (it was really a little smaller than A4) flyer about how we’re ‘breaking up?’ What is this, high school? Why couldn’t you just stop calling me like a grown-up? Or if you did like me, start?” And I started to make excuses (lying) about how I’d been in Oakland and SoCal through lots of the month (probably in fact I’d been with ariadnae, but I couldn’t remember any of this; where, exactly, I’d been, in the dream). And working, which was true; 12-hour days so I could get 6 hours sleep and wake up + do it again. + she wasn’t interested; she wasn’t having it. So when I shrugged, and gave up and walked off, and she screamed “That’s it?,” I was pissed. I ran up to her like what the fuck am I supposed to do - I guess I must have had to run across the street to get to her, and we ended up sitting on the edge of the top of a curved, wheelchair-friendly dip in the sidewalk to the crosswalk, but it was pretty high up, probably like a metre at least or something, and hella nice manicured grass patches alongside the sidewalks, that salmon-coloured sidewalk in upscale places, some kind of mattress retailer or something to my left, behind her on her right. And she sat and I was standing with my hands in my pockets, and I was like, look, you need to learn to articulate your discontent, and she was like, I don’t know how, and I was like, it’s a learned skill. And I didn’t know how much younger she was, but I went off on some sort of rant on positive conflict resolution in relationships, and let her know, look, when we met, I liked you, I really liked you, but it was seriously like this one time, and, OK, let’s do it some more and learn to discuss things because I don’t want to engage you like you did when you put up that letter, because I need you to tell me what you want, rather than laying down some ultimatum or discontent and then expecting it to be my role to wave a wand and make it better. + that’s when she said she didn’t know how to articulate her discontent and later, some other girl with lighter, oranger hair came up who I can’t figure out/remember who they were/based on, but some friend of this girl (“Melany”?) I was talking/breaking up/making up with, and I couldn’t resist the urge to whisper in the girl I was making up with’s ear, “I like your [shade of] red hair better than hers,” and while I can’t remember if that’s true in real life or the dream (it seems to me I prefer oranger shades to darker/browner ones), I do think I found her just more attractive. Now somehow where we’re sitting is right in front of the store windows, their fluorescent light from inside illuminating us on the pavement below the window, her friend’s back to one of the little stucco posts that jutted out, between the windows, the world beyond of course completely unmapped, unknown, and irrelevant. And of course I was not slick at all about whispering in this girl’s ear, and her friend was like, C’mon, what’d you say; don’t do that, and I think that’s about the time I woke up.

I do hope we lived happily ever after, though.