kate e macneill

dreams hangovers

wake up.
make chia seed cereal goop.
go back to bed while they soak.
dream about gluten free pancakes.

recognise you know exactly why you drank, even last night as you consciously passed your 1.75 limit. recognise it’s okay, as the two year anniversary of your life falling apart is coming up like a head on truck, and forgive yourself.

last night you dreamt you were in the passenger seat of a fancy speeding pickup truck, dressed for a night out in heels and slinky dress. there was no driver. you had to shift to the driver’s seat in the middle of traffic and guide the truck to safety while cars crashed all around you.

you also dreamt that you found a dead and frozen barn owl hanging by string on a lamp post. you took it down and carried it with you through the snowstorm.

you also dreamt a friend cracked through the ice on a beach and fell in the freezing water. you had to lie down on the cold and grab their hands to help them slide out and over the ice before you both fell in again. there were violent waves further out. you had their shoulders under one hand and the frozen barn owl dangling from the other. you were tired, but knew you had to hold on.

today is another day.
breathe. work. stretch. eat. smile.
take it slow & easy.

history lesson

it’s one of those affairs you can never quite put your finger on, can never quite articulate. i’ve gotten better at telling the story over the years, but there has never been a conclusion, no matter how hard i tried.

when we saw each other a decade ago, i didn’t tell a soul. various teenage angst reasoning. we tore each other apart and couldn’t figure out how to put each other back together, or were too self-involved to try hard enough.

it’s been distance and rare phone calls and denial and heartbreak and letters and dreams since.

i am not sure what tomorrow will bring, for something that exists so stalwartly virtually, so embedded in idea and possibility, so unattainable for so long.

i don’t expect an avalanche, nor a tidal wave. nothing so disruptive. but i know it is snowing in the saskatchewan summer as i write this, and i’ve only packed sandals.

i had a dream, years ago, that he came to visit me. my friends and i were having a potluck, and we filled our plates and sat at the kids’ table on the porch. my partner eyed us with a teasing look, respecting our shared intimacy. we sat with our knees beside our elbows, and smiled at each other over our plates and the primary colours, and everything was alright.

i think it will feel like that. still, no conclusion, but alright.

dreams

after we made love, we fell asleep, and made love all night. your forehead near my open lips, calm in sleep, in exhaustion, our sweat from the first hot summer air, weighted with smog, with the insufficiency of necessary photosynthesis.

it doesn’t work like that, not all the time. often athletes, we stretch ourselves after marathons, walk it off to reestablish our footing, descend to the regular slowness of heartrate, delegate the intimacy to sweet nothings, review the tapes at a later time.

but last night we crowded corners of each other, the sheets, threw our breaths across the room to make space for our murmurings, intertwined fingers as if forever might be found in a pinky swear, in all our unspoken promises.

i imagine skin and breath to dictate our dreams, the traffic out the open window, the sea, the hum of the fridge, the beehive, but last night your breath on my collarbone was your breath on my collarbone and my hand on your neck was my hand on your neck, and i was not alone, in sleep, nor in dream.

dream analysis.

1. i identify too much with glee.

2. i identify too much with star trek tng.

3. i miss my gay friends and wish they would make a gay podcast about their gay gardens so i don’t miss them so much. (paging clairebearstare.)

4. i am attracted to yet suspicious of the feminism of patrick stewart.

5. i worry about my cat ripping up my carpet (although he doesn’t) which means i am worried about moving from my apartment.

WAIT WAIT WAIT WHAT. SCRATCH THAT.

STAR TREK TNGLEE.

GAY STAR TREK WITH DANCE NUMBERS AND PATRICK STEWART AS THE CAPTAIN OF AN INTERGALACTIC SHOW CHOIR. WITH CATS.

UM.

WHAT.

EDIT: Giles would be in it too.

dreams

patrick stewart is my vocal choir conductor and we’re on a trip to nationals.

recently, he has been making terrible vocal selection choices, and i keep fighting with him about it.

i am paired to stay in the hotel with a choir friend i don’t like that much. i realize she and patrick have been sleeping together recently. and this explains, in part, the terrible vocal selection choices.

as part of the trip, i am visiting friends who have begun a really gay gardening video podcast where they turn unconventional spaces into vegetables gardens. this week is a convenience store, and i go to help them, building sprouting trays on old freezer shelves.

when i get back to the hotel, my roommate is rampaging about patrick, angry he has finally cut her off. the cats have begun ripping apart the carpets.

after rehearsal, and another fight with patrick, he pulls me aside to apologise. after a long debate, in which i cast doubt on his musical and moral judgments, he trumps with the confession that he is in love with me.

i get angry at first, but then it hits me in the conscious mind of the dream, ‘patrick stewart is in love with me. oh my god.’

awesome.

i wake up,

crying. i know it’s because of the pain throbbing from my jaw, not the dream, but the dream lingers. he lingers, still.

sigh.

when i sleep too long, the fears of losing lovers manifest in dreamscapes of drug binges and nervous breakdowns, arguments and alienation, tall buildings and cars driving off, running across lawns shouting names that go ignored, chasing down small stairways, collapsing in exhaustion on a park bench i don’t even notice.

of course, that’s when the lover i always miss, when i miss anyone, finds me, the moment of resignation. there’s a space of reconciliation, until we make the mistake of a kiss.

‘it’s different.’

‘of course it’s different. it’s been years.’

‘but it still feels the same.’

dreaming about having nervous breakdowns feels almost as bad in the morning as actually having one.