Lemon Dream vs. Reality... I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, rather, he was relating this story about how he had bought a crate of lemons from this very strange convenience store in Brooklyn, with medieval wooden floors and 10 foot deep coolers (where the lemons were). This was especially interesting to me, since up to that point I had thought that I was the only person that had that dream. "But no!" he said, "this was no dream." I'm not usually one to dip my nose in another man's porridge, but I was too fascinated by this coincidence to not ask for details about the lemon purchase. In my dream, the convenience store was staffed by two women, who were trying to help him pull out the quarter inch masonite shelving upon which the crates of lemons rested. But the wall behind the coolers was but 3 feet away, so the shelves (which were 10 foot deep) could not be fully extended, and so the fresher lemons towards the back were unavailable to him. Disgusted, he took a can of Bacardi frozen strawberry/lime juice from another cooler and left the cash next to the post of the cashier, who was still messing about with the masonite shelves with her fat friend. You'd think this story ends there! But it doesn't. Apparently these two women are real, the money was real, and the lemons were also real. Not only that, but the sum of the reality of the lemons, the money and the women is exactly equal to the reality of the experience as a whole. Like, not just close but suspiciously and eerily on the money. The sheer unlikelihood of my dream and my friend's actual experience possessing such close correspondence has made me wonder about the viability of the plot of the movie The Lathe of Heaven. I saw The Lathe of Heaven on VHS a few months ago. Someone made me watch it, and I thought it was extremely bad. It is basically a PBS television production about this dude whose dreams inform, or you could even say manifest themselves into reality after the dream takes place. For instance, if he dreamed of cherry pie, there cherry pie would be for him when he stirred. Similarly, if he dreamt of Nuclear war, nuclear war would happen. I won't go into the plot of this film any further than I have because as I said it was an extremely bad film - owing not simply to the terrible plot but also everything else, which was also terrible. Even the idea of someone entertaining the possibility of the production of this film makes you shudder, after you've seen it, in the same way that someone shudders when they've seen something terrible. Now, how does this connect to the dream/experience. Well I don't know if it does. My dream occurred before I had seen The Lathe of Heaven. All I' m trying to say here is maybe my dreams control reality and I'm just to groggy and tired in the morning to notice the immediate differences from the previous night when I went to bed. Or perhaps I'm just so unwilling to accept the obvious fact that my dreams shape the physical and spiritual universe that I change my perceptions to accommodate for the changes I involuntarily make. I'm pretty sure it's either one or the other. I am also reminded of the time I got some lemons at Whole Foods in Providence (the one near Olney St.) and when I set out to make them into something, found them sub-par in terms of both texture and flavor. Outraged in a big fucking way, I stormed back to Whole Foods because I forgot to buy milk. At the checkout counter I confronted the cashier: "Excuse me but I bought some lemons here just now, and" Just then I was reminded of that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer returns Jerry's bad fruit. But I swear to god it didn't even cross my mind until I was mid phrase, "These lemons I bought weren't very good." The cashier asked for an explanation, partly because he really cared about my lemon issues, and probably partly because I am very attractive and people just naturally listen to you when you're like that. You'll also notice that I am not including his exact words here - I don't remember them, because, conversely, when you are extremely attractive you tend not to listen to people. Or maybe it was just hard to hear him because I was also taller than him. Whatever the reason, I don't remember his exact response, but the gist of it was that I should explain myself so that he might hook me up with the inside scoop on their lemons. "Well you see Durell," (his nametag read "Durell", I remember his name because I said it) "these lemons are," I paused. "Lemons." Isn't that clever? What I was trying to do here was use the word lemon in the sense of the word where it means, like, something that isn't as good as it looked. Like, in Massachusetts we have a "lemon" law which allows you to get a refund on a used car within a certain period of time if it turns out to have major problems you didn't know about at the time of purchase. Naturally, I think this law indicates a relentless and thorough misapplication of bass-ackwards legislative policy. I think we should have a "lemon" law which eliminates the sales tax on lemons, or anything sunshiny yellow, perfectly round, delicately fragranced, or in any other way wonderful, LIKE LEMONS, YES, LEMONS YOU FUCKWADS. But I suppose that' s a whole fucking lot for a mere taxpayer to ask for in our, quote unquote, "representative democracy".