Dream Body/Physical Body, by Jennifer
The Waterlilies somalixir produced physically tangible effects on my dreams.
During the earlier part of the night, I dreamed a tall, thin man with dark curly hair in a pony tail and a pink seersucker shirt. He complained to me that the Somalixir didn’t actually do anything. I showed him that if I loosened my jaw a little, it would vibrate rapidly back and forth, clearly an effect of the somalixir.
In a later dream, Erik and I rode in the back of a bicycle rickshaw driven by an old Hispanic man, our guide in a foreign country. He carried a bird feeder made from a hollowed out piece of bamboo that hung from a rod meant to be stuck in the ground. I said I wanted to buy one and he directed me to a very run down, third world-looking supermarket. That part of the dream was in Spanish; he called the bird house an ave casa, the literal translation, though I don’t know if that’s what it’s actually called.
In the market, I went to use the bathroom. When I finished and tried to stand up, I could only rise slightly, not enough to pull my pants back up. I realized that my physical body was lying in bed spooned against Erik, my knees bent in against his, and that I wouldn’t be able to stand up straight in the dream without also straightening out my physical body and waking him up.
Since I knew it was a dream and I didn’t want to disturb Erik, I stayed half standing, dream and physical bodies both bent into the same shape, and started to read a magazine I saw lying there. In it, Micah—one of the alchemists who created our Somalixir—had placed an ad for her and my going away party.
Through a small window, I saw one of the store employees peering at me standing awkwardly with my pants around my knees. Then, though I knew it would wake Erik up, I stood up to pull my pants back on. As I did that, I correspondingly stretched out my physical body, waking up both Erik and me in the process.