I've been waking up consistently at 3:17 am for six or seven months now.
Some witchy friend says this is because something is going to happen. I'm
not sure.
A good thing about this is I'm remembering dreams now more than I ever have
in adulthood.
My feet still hurt today after this one:
As usual, I was in a hurry to get somewhere; it was crowded -- some kind of
festival or street fair is happening downtown. I need to find my children
to take them somewhere by a deadline; or get somewhere to pick up my
children but I can't find the way.
I am crushed and buffetted by the revellers.
Though my first goal is to meet
my deadline, I am inexplicably impelled by another need: the length of my
toenails is unacceptable, and will somehow doom an unspecified future enterprise.
I sit on a curb in a spot cleared by an ebb in the crowd and remove my Pumas.
On my keychain is a new toenail clippers. No one in the crowd finds my behavior
strange.
The toenails themselves are an easy job, and I am soon finished. My feet have
though, taken on other strange features: in place of callouses, each of my feet
has grown a tough chromed plastic flange. All around the edges of each foot is
this shiny matter, which of course must be carefully removed. I clip, and
trim larger and larger (now practically bite-sized) chunks of flange material.
My tool is failing me. Its crescent-shaped blades make an incredible scalloped mess
of my hitherto smooth-edged feet. Vainly I keep snipping, trying to even things out.
This is not painful, since the chrome flange is extraneous build-up -- like
callouses. But my anxiety grows due to my tardiness and the shoddy job of chrome
trimming. I now notice that the edges of each of my feet has the look of a
cross-sectioned strawberry toaster pastry, with frosting. In fact, instead of
feet -- now that the chrome is gone -- I have oversided Pop Tarts, bitten into crude,
three-toed, scalloped-edged cartoon feet. I can't get my Pumas back on.
I'm not sure if I ever kept the engagement I was supposed to keep with my kids.