Dreams take the day’s events, twist and bend, turn and tumble with hopes, dreads, obsessions and skinny-eyed suspicions. Presto! Out comes a distortion, not really real, but a temporary living space, sometimes more memorable than the day itself.
Almost anything seems possible at 3AM, almost any dread seems probable. And if floundering around in possible probabilities causes you to stir in your sleep, the dog will sense that you are awake and insist on being let outside. Reality has a way of nudging its way back into even the most fantastical dream.
Like the dream I was having two nights ago about turning the back of the garage into a work of art. Erected in 1955, it has only a coat of red stain and one layer of a sprayed on latex cosmetic of grey paint. We’ve been waiting for the wicked witch of the west to drop a house on it for years, but like the crows that are supposed to come down and pluck out the eyes of your enemies, she didn’t arrive on cue. Frankly, we were prepared to wait her out, but we like our neighbors too much to let the decay go any longer. And they’re republicans.
The west side of this garage is a true testament to the damage lack of sun screen can effect. Up until this year, the back side of the garage was the site of our compost of decaying grass clippings. We just didn’t go there except to off load yard waste. But this year, the area has been transformed into a lettuce, spinach, pepper and tomato patch. How cool would it be to have a wall of art assembled on a clean canvas of redwood siding overlooking the garden? Perhaps a poem lettered there, found objects attached to the wall. Dream. Dream.
Fourteen hours into scraping the paint off the wall, that dream began to wane and I suggested to Michael that maybe we really should have the reality encased in environmentally unhealthy vinyl siding. He is all primed for painting.
I hate to call out a hackneyed phrase like “lipstick on a pig” when the garage has really never done anything swinish or hoggish or even let out a snort of protest over obvious (oblivious?) neglect. All it has ever done is stoically house our bikes, lawnmower and snowblower. It is too small for a car, too squeezed between the house and the limits of the lot line to be expanded, and too stubborn to fall down.
Last night I was back to dreaming about a weather report predicting heavy storms and high winds.
Oh but that wall just screams for a mural or poem on it. Even graffiti.
I had to laugh when you mentioned your dog. My dog sleeps in her bed just below my bed. I try not to wake her at night with my insomnia because just as you said, then she wants to go out, at 4 or 2. She has no sense of, “ungodly hour”. I like your blog.
I love the way you write! My parents (who also live in Ohio and have a tiny garage) refused to tear their garage down cuz they’d have to build a double and lose yard space. They re-did the roof and put vinyl siding and now you could use the reinforced roof for a barn dance!
Your garage has character, tell that the the GOP neighbors 🙂
thanks — actually we are on deadline for a book so that was our first excuse for painting the garage — and I didn’t quite say that right about the neighbors — they are really nice, organic gardeners who have a bumper sticker on their car that says, “kick their ass, steal their gas.” Confusing, but this is America, yes?
Wouldn’t it be fun to paint some word art on that garage!
what a pleasant post, harvesting dreams, cultivating a garden, working with your hands, working on the garage.