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Title: San Francisco
Category: VA J. C. Sun 8/20/97 I dream sometimes, y'know? I dream, even though people don't beleive me. The Doctor: he says I have REM periods too, and I remember what I dream. Pine trees, dark, black against pink sky, their branches low and dark over fragrant dropped needles and a clearing held between their trunks. The air smelling clean, like natural Pine-Sol, and, sometimes, a beach, too: hot with the sun and a sea as blue, blue as the sky, stretching out towards infinity until you can't tell where they end, whether you're looking at the sky or the sea. And I watch the fishes flicker in the glass water, the palms swaying their lion manes, and the odor of suntan lotion heavy upon our towels, sweet and cloying from pink bottles. I dream of children. A girl, her forehead broad and almost-smooth, and dark, dark eyes underneath, slashing thick brows and frizzy hair the color of dirty water a halo around her face, crackling with static, snapping on dry mornings. Tiny fingers, perfect half-moon nails playing his clarinet on his stand, ivory on silver and black, her hands slipping down the dusty pages smelling of age, and music like water through a house with open windows and polished floors, a clarinet and a violin, soaring, soaring. Camellias in a blue-on-blue vase, fragile white bowing over stoneclay bowls, and books, spilling across a wooden table, pages lifting in breeze, a technical manual on the white floor. I dream of the slap of asphalt, my feet on the hot blackness. The babble of a hundred thousand voices, and brick pathways, porous and red, with weeds peeking between. Coffee shops serving mocha, frappucinos, hazelnut cream;Vietnamese noodle shops with whirring ventilation and giant bowls of glassy noodles and mint. Jean-Pierre's, tiny and dark with she-crab soup and bourbon like fire after a showing of Babette's Feast or the press of people after the theatre, and more music, music like water, soaring in the Opera house like freed doves, soaring. The whirr shadow of a passing shuttlecraft ghosting across a street, and my head turning to follow it's path before it disappears into the rain clouds. The smell of wet roads. The Academy behind me, the Bay, the Bay, San Fransisco ahead. The nights, the streetlights gleaming off slick marble sheathed granite and windows stretching into forever. Water fountains, postmodern, splashing in plaza's, churned white water with pennies winking beneath. Pigeons wheeling, the flutter of their wings, like clapping hands, and neon signs in the darkenss. Haight-Ashbury, filled with the jostle of shoulders, and people, people laughing, not caring for the color of your skin or your species, spilling out of the clubs onto the street, the streetlights glinting off their suits. The men, the women, sleek in a whisper of sari, the gleam of leather and studs, or sequins, or tight, tight vinyl, wrapping around every curve. A couple kissing in the shadows, and a woman's chuckle, loud and confident, her arm resting lightly upon her partner's. Blackberry's, with the walnut counter and the pool tables; Roxie and the #4 Kiss: red food colouring, edible glitter and cherry liqueur pure enough to burn. (Lipstick to drink , Roxie called it, her nails wickedly curving) The Figurehead, with flashing lights and smoke machines, a monster of a dance floor, pounding music and techno to blast your brains. Prosaic 'Jack's Eat's" with linoleum check floors and a jukebox, serving breakfast 24 hrs a day next to 'Les Oeufs; (Argentina sea urchins in caviar sauce: 49.99) down the corner from 'Takanami' of miso soup and blowfish sushi. Noah's Bagel's with lox and ketchup; Lucky's crash and burn recovery Irish coffee restorative. Treble Clef big band and lemon bake cod, slow dances and Gilbert & Sullivan, nanotech smartdrinks available, if you ask the holobartender. The places we might have gone, together... I do not dream of space anymore. I do not dream of stars like diamonds on velvet, nor of supernova, spinning like dervishes on an Egyptian courtyard. I dream that, someday,I will not feel the hum of an engine beneath my feet, and that stars must not streak into rainbows. I can feel the grass cool and thick between my feet, and sometimes, sometimes, I swear I can almost hear the music-like-water. And when I go to bed, when I pull the sheets over me, when I shut my eyes, I squeeze them tight and I try to remember the kiss of sea on my feet, to dream. But I never think of him. I never try to dream of him. I never try. .end
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