Robert Manners

Hot

It's hot outside. Hot and dry. There is pollen in the dry heat. I cannot breathe. My face hurts. I am writing short sentences. I am miserable.



When I got home from Church et Cie this afternoon, I took a nap and had a dream in which a purple, yellow, and orange car was out to get me; it changed from one kind of car to another, for a while it was a Camaro, then it was a Dodge Dart, and at one point it was a Pontiac Monte Carlo, but it was always a mid-seventies American model and it was always bright yellow with one purple side and one orange side. Eventually it chased me down and caught me against a security gate in the guise of a Grand Am.



My dear friend Cookie Dough then appeared, wearing a t-shirt in the same three colors as the car, and soothed and petted the car (which curled up and wagged its tail like a puppy), explaining to me that the car wanted to tell me something... something that was suddenly written in three columns of gold lettering on its hood. Apparently this car was the soul of my Miss Jane, and she had been trying to tell me these things for months. Among several instructions I don't remember, she wanted me to change her air filter more often, to not hit the brakes so much, and to be more careful about cutting people off on the left who were trying to hear the music on her stereo.



There was more to the dream, this was just one thread of it, but it was the most memorable, and the part that was so patently absurd that it woke me up.



I don't know why I tell you these things.