blather_dream_book raze so i have this dream last night that i'm looking around in this great used book store we've got here in the city. only in the dream it's a little different, the way places will often look a little unlike themselves in your dreams. a lot of the charm is gone, and it's laid out much more like a conventional store that sells new books, instead of the "huge house full of endless amounts of awesome things with pages" it is in the waking world. i grab a graphic novel i'm interested in. then there's a tall, slender hardcover book with a dust jacket that catches my eye. i pick it up. it's a book about blather. it's not one of the blather books made by 'skites. newdream put it together, and it's a few different things. first it's a useful glossary of all the people who've worked on blather behind the scenes. the glossary is at the beginning instead of the end of the book. it's made up of a much larger cast of characters than just dallas and sage. dallas' name redirects to "baby" at the beginning of the list. for some reason that's his nickname. after a brief explanation of who he is and what he does, he's quoted as saying, "oh, my eyes. oh, the tears." after that, the book is a collection of long standalone blathes written by 'skites, selected by the blather gods, presented as if they were always meant to live like this, as chapters in what would appear to the uninitiated to be a book of poetry or short stories. they all feel connected. i don't recognize many of the names aside from sabbie's, but then i notice the date. this was published in 1999, a little bit before i showed up. there are illustrations. vivid colour sketches that comment on the stories being told. the dominant colour is red, though the book is specific to blue and was published before red existed. the book is one other thing. it's an advertisement for the leamington, ontario music scene. it comes with a free cd, a list of songs and artists on one of the final pages, and the approval of a doctor (also illustrated; he looks very gregarious). inside the front cover, the book tells me it was self-published and printed in a limited run of four hundred copies. this may be the only copy left that hasn't been claimed. the price tag says it's $15.99, but there's another tag above it that says $0.00. i'm not sure if that means it's been marked down to nothing or marked up from nothing to more than nothing. i ask the mother of the man who owns the book store, who works here sometimes and is the only person here right now. she tells me the book isn't for sale. it was at one point, but now it's not. it's grown too rare and valuable to sell. i accept that. but i want to at least take a picture of the book, to share with a few blather friends who might get a kick out of it, and to have for myself. i set it on a skinny little podium and take a polaroid picture. as soon as the flash goes off, it's no longer a book. it's a blue ceramic statue of the virgin mary. that was my last picture in the cartridge. instead of reloading the camera and trying again, i decide this book that becomes the mother of christ whenever it's photographed is coming home with me. it's a fascinating piece of blather history i never knew existed. i don't want to just leave it here to collect dust. i walk it back over to the counter. "would you consider selling this for significantly more than what it's worth?" i ask the owner's mother. "i've got seventeen years of history with this place." (my math in dreams is almost always a little wonky.) she thinks for a bit. then she says, "i'd consider it. for a hundred and seventy two dollars." "i don't think i have that much in my pocket," i say. i pull out a fifty and a few twenties. i'm trying to count how much i've got, knowing it isn't enough, but i'm distracted by piles and piles of folded twenty dollar bills on the counter. she doesn't need the money. she's raking it in. my dad looks reluctant to help, but he's willing to haggle on my behalf. "how about a hundred and thirty?" she won't even entertain the idea. we leave. but to do that we have to descend this incredible stone staircase that seems to stretch out for miles. at the end of each cluster of steps, the last few are fused together in one huge chunk of stone i need to jump to clear. because of the shifting architecture of dreams, she can see us the whole way down from where she's standing behind the counter, with all her green canadian twenties to keep her company. "no one will ever buy that book," i shout at her. "they won't even know what it's for." "roger knows," she shouts back. roger is the name of her son. the one who owns the store. "ROGER'S FULL OF SHIT!" i yell, louder now as the distance between us grows. "HE'S BEEN TO THE SITE!" "IF THAT WERE TRUE, I WOULD KNOW! HE WOULD HAVE WRITTEN SOMETHING BY NOW!" and then i wake up. 151030 ... amy in red halloween. It's big there. she'd sell you your soul, if you had enough cash on you. (brrrrr. Chilly.) I recently got a 1998 Creative Writing reader called Dreams and Inward Journeys (from the local used book store). Ah the carefree days of 1998... The first passage is so similar to what my life has been like: theme_for_english_b by langston_hughes ( except my life is only race in metaphor). Look it up it won't disappoint. And, nice dream. Sorry about Roger. : ( 151031 ... raze the good news is, in real life roger and his mother are super nice people who would have sold me the book without batting an eye (why is it always baseball when it comes to eyes? why not soccer?). and anything that has to do with dreams is fascinating to me, so i'll be checkin' that out post-haste. 151031 ... jane you had my dream. http://blather.newdream.net/d/dream_about_blather.html 151103 what's it to you? who go blather from