The Eighth Page

Phillipian Satire: Excerpts From My Dream Journal

August 12th, 2018:

Running through the sand with a paper in my hand. I am sitting on a wolf named Hazeus. We run together to deliver this letter to my forever love, my TI-84 Plus with a special edition chrome finish. It is no longer a love letter felt with deep hearted passion, but now a breakup letter. No, I can’t change that mode one more time. Radians to Degrees to Radians. I can’t handle it anymore, TI-84 PLEASE! I want to love you so. My head’s in the game, but my heart is in writing. FATHER I don’t want to go into STEM! I want to hang out with Hazeus in the jungle up in the trees with luscious greenery all around us. The sun shines brightly on my golden locks. In dreams I always have golden locks. I wake up a light shining in my face. It’s the flash of lightning through my window. Next to me, my TI-84. A modern romance.

October 13th, 2018:

I sat down in the middle of a cornfield expecting to have some good, wholesome fun: praying, pulling grass, staring at the sun until my eyes go black and then rubbing them hard so I can see again. The kind of things God (our Lord) expects of us. Then I pulled a piece of grass and the grass pulled me back. I woke up in another dream. In this one, Mr. Palfrey was tucking me into bed and he kept softly singing 24K Magic like it was a lullaby. When he got to the chorus, he stopped singing and kept telling me why he shouldn’t have quit “the sweet gig” he had before teaching here: “Oh, man, the money I made. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.” He was wearing a top hat. He had a monocle. Wait, no, that was just Mr. Peanut. Then he told me that “it was okay to settle for a Subaru.” I woke up sweating. I guess that’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru.

December 10th, 2018:

You know that scene in Pinocchio where he and Jiminy Cricket are inside the whale’s stomach? Yeah, it’s not related to my dream, but man was that a crazy scene. Imagine if they did that live action — how much do you think it costs to rent a whale? And what would you tell the whale renting company? Anyway, my dream: I was in a room full of toys, like really crazy toys. A Rubik’s cube that was just small faces of my relatives joined together in a square, and they kept telling me that “I’d grown so much.” There was a beach ball that, when you bounced it, just insulted you each time it came up. Bounce. “You’ll never amount to anything.” Bounce. “Mom and Dad’s divorce was de-e-e-finitely your fault.” In the corner, I saw this guy who used to work at the gas station by my house. He was wearing this sweater-vest that unzipped to reveal more vests that were each smaller than the last — like a russian nesting doll of tweed. He turned to me after he unzipped the last one, patted me on the back, and said, “He has come and all the world with his entry has left. Now is the time to pay upon your family, your loved. For they are next, once you yourself have perished.” Weird.

December 11th, 2018:

The Lord hath no hell in store such that I have seen tonight upon the occasion of my rest. With my own eyes and tongue do I renounce this world and its plagues. No longer shall I walk among the living, but retire among the dead, and in graves beside them take my rightful place. For I am cursed, as the devil himself hath shown me as I slept. Oh, how my insides have turned rotten against me, and hath thrown me in fits hither and thither. Wayward Lord, where have you travelled? If not to save me from this suffering, what is your purpose? I am determined now: there is no God. But man wouldn’t it just be so cool to see a live-action whale stomach. Pinocchio was really ahead of its time.