Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I slept through CSI and the Monty Python special (not to worry -- VCR caught 'em), and had odd dreams ... dreams of befriending a family of small (about a meter tall) space-aliens trying very hard to figure out how to blend in here based on television shows, and introducing my girlfriend to my parents on the day one of my brothers was supposed to be on a live television broadcast. Things went wrong in odd dreamways, including my oversleeping, confusion over the schedule, difficulty tuning the television (in dream lack-of-consistency, I had both antenna issues and problems figuring out which cable channel number matched the station), the aliens worrying about screwing up and blowing their cover, etc. Then the house caught fire ... except that instead of being my mother's house, it was my house -- just larger and with a whole lot of people in it, but same basic floor plan and my stuff was in it; oh, and either freestanding or an end unit, rather than flanked by two other row houses as mine is in real life. Everyone else got out and I stayed behind to help the space aliens.

At some point, an alien catlike creature entered the story. So I was trying to gather up any exposed film not in the freezer and trying to decide whether it'd be safest in the freezer or carried out of the house with me, trying to decide which guitars to save, and trying to buy the aliens time to get out unnoticed. That's when a fireman started tapping on the door-to-nowhere at the bottom of the back stair. I yelled through the glass, "Won't open! Painted shut!", and he motioned me to back away. Then he and two others kicked the door in (their being able to do so from atop a ladder didn't seem odd until I woke up and started writing this down). Either Perrine or the alien pet scurried down the stairs and around the corner (somehow we were suddenly atop the stairs), and the first fireman asked, "What was that?"

"A cat," I replied.

"With eight legs?" the fireman asked.

"She just looks like that when she runs. She has an unusual running gait."

So I was trying to catch her, in a house filling with smoke, while a fireman urged me to leave, when I woke up.

And, awake, smelled smoke. The sirens came a few moments later. I went to the third floor to see where the fire was, and the fire trucks pulled up in front of my house. The view out the back was very similar to the end of my dream, with thick smoke obscuring view of anything but the swirsling shapes of the smoke. I ain't opening that window for a better look.

The house two doors uphill from me is burning. Mostly, it appears, in the back. I watched a firefighter chop a hole in the roof with a chain saw.

I poked my head out the front door to ask whether I needed to stuff Perrine in her carrier and flee; if I'm interpreting the firefighter's hand gestures right (they were all a bit busy to come over and talk to me, and got really irritated when someone else entered their wok area on the sidewalk), I'm to stay put and just be out of their way. (I wasn't certain at first which house was burning. If it'd been the vacant one I share a wall with ...)

The one that's burning was inhabited. I thought I heard a firefighter yelling to another that everyone was out; I'm not certain. I hope so. (This is the house that's used for some sort of drug-rehab program. Mostly good neighbours, but they change on a regular basis -- though I could do without the Really Loud music a staff member plays sometimes when they're between groups of patients/residents -- so there's a fresh round of "get used to the neighbour who dresses oddly" every few months. I hope that means fewer personal belongings to lose. I'm not sure whether a group was living there right now, or just the one staff member.) No more sirens, so I presume it's under control with just the equipmemt the first alarm sent out.

A chance to photograph fire equipment from a different angle -- though as I said, I'm not leaning out the back window. My house already smells like some sort of resinous incense, and the sharper, nastier smells are starting to creep in behind that. More than enough will get into this leaky house without my opening a window for it.

So. I'm awake now.

[Added at 00:35] The fire seems to be out. Firefighters are now hurling chunks of debris out a second-floor window into the back yard and hosing them down there.

Inside my house there is a light grey haze, mostly noticeable only when looking at a lamp from a distance.

"Everyone has their own piece of the invisible. This [is] something I believe about imagination and creativity--that they're at least as much a matter of discovery of something real as they are a matter of invention. Even though they're finding something real, each person has an idiosyncratic chunk of territory to search through. That territory very occasionally overlaps someone else's a little bit." -- nancylebov, 2005-09-22