Married to the language

Last night I wrote a poem in my sleep.

I suppose I should really say I wrote a poem in my dreams, but that doesn’t sound as cool as saying I wrote a poem in my sleep. It would be even cooler to write a novel in my sleep. You hear about authors who say they stayed up every night for two months straight to get their great masterpiece written. But it would be cooler to say, “Eh, I wrote it in my sleep.”

I’m holding out hope that the poem is just the first step, and the novel is right around the corner. Or maybe a novella would be more realistic. To write a whole novel in my sleep I’d probably need to lapse into a coma. I know I shouldn’t joke about that. Lord, please don’t put me into a coma, even if it means I might get a bestseller out of it. Even if it means I could, by some miracle, get rich and retire off of the royalties of that one coma-written book, please don’t put me into a coma. Also, here’s a note to the police: if an accident should happen to befall me and I should happen to end up in a coma in the near future, please believe that I did not do this to myself so that I could write the next great American novel. Please, go out and find the person who put me in this coma.

Anyway, I’ve got to admit that writing a novel in my dreams probably wouldn’t work out too well. Knowing my dreams, I’d probably end up with something along the lines of the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey or Mulholland Drive. In order to support this belief of mine, I will give you a synopsis of the dream I had in which I wrote the poem. Now, if you haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey but want to see it, you may not want to read this synopsis. It could spoil the movie for you. If you haven’t seen it and don’t plan to see it, good for you. ‘Cause really, if you’re anything like me, you’ll just end up and looking up “Zarathustra” on Wikipedia, conjugating the verb “to speak,” and wishing you had those two hours of your life back. If, on the other hand, you have multiple degrees in literary analysis, philosophy, and the history of film, go for it.

The dream opens with hubby and I living off in the countryside and helping some woman, a stranger or recent acquaintance, as far as I could tell, clear out a large room in which she has been hoarding junk for decades. (You will soon see that this had nothing to do with the rest of the dream, and so in Space Odyssey terms it was the equivalent of the scene in which the apes discover tools and their first use of said tools is to inflict violence.)

The room is nowhere near being completely cleared out, but hubby and I leave to go to some sort of administrative office of the courts. (Imagine my surprise when I realized we were there to get married. So... I should not be calling him hubby I guess. Pre-hubby.) The office is empty, and we end up riffling through the papers on some lady’s desk to find out the marriage requirements. (This is sort of like the scene in which HAL starts killing off the astronauts who are in a state of suspended animation. – Hey! Maybe they were all writing novels in their sleep. – This is not really the plot you were expecting, but at least it’s plot-like.)

Having looked up the marriage requirements, we return the next day to find the office now occupied. But the marriage lady looks at our forms and tells me that we can’t be married yet because I don’t have all my English credits. I have to prove that I speak English before I can be married. Apparently pre-hubby is in the clear. And apparently the fact that I am speaking to the woman in English is not good enough for her to check off the little box on her form. I have to jump through some hoop by writing an essay or something. She tells us to come back the next day. (Yeah, now it’s really weird. This is like when the remaining astronaut gets sucked into that weird Technicolor worm hole. It doesn’t make any sense, and you don’t know what in the heck is going on, but you’re intrigued and impressed by the special effects.)

So it’s the next day and pre-hubby and I are at Target. Obviously, right? We are finished with our shopping and are on our way toward the check-out aisles. Our next stop will be the court office to get married. This is when I realize that I have to write whatever it is I’m going to write for my English credits. (In Space Odyssey, this is when the old man is in bed ... watching himself eat at the other table... getting older? I have no idea what’s going on. But it feels like we’re near the end, so that’s good.)

Luckily, there is a counter in Target where all the high school girls have left love notes to the quarterback before the game. Two girls are there writing now, all giggles with their pink glittery pens and stickers. (Wait! Is that guy getting younger now? What is happening?)

I stop at the counter to write my poem. I’m writing it on the smallest size Post-it Notes. But they’re pink, not yellow. Each verse of the poem gets cramped onto its own note. Pre-hubby is standing at my elbow, frustrated. He wonders why I didn’t do this earlier. That would have been so much more logical. (I don’t know. Why is there a giant baby floating in outer space?)

And here is the poem I wrote in my sleep/dream. Disclosure: I may have tweaked it a bit here.

A cold gale from the north

Sweeps fast down the hill.

I’m writing a poem to

Prove my language skill.

[I don’t remember the second verse.

What do you want from me?

This was a dream!

Give me a break!]

It seems a bit silly

To write for your marriage,

But to speak proper English

You should not disparage.

So step up with your love

Whether he’s old or new.

If you can speak English

You can say “I do!”

For those of you who are into plot arcs, I should tell you that I don’t know how the story ends. I was so amazed by my mediocre dream-writing skills that I woke up. I don’t know if pre-hubby and I ever got married. Sorry. (If this leaves you feeling unfulfilled you know exactly how I felt at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. What happened to the big monolith? WHAT IS THIS MOVIE SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT?!)