lucyoncolorado

In which I live in a tiny, impractical house in a beautiful village and watch a horrible Tom Waits concert...

I’m living in a small A-frame house deep in the woods in another country. I have neighbors nearby, but we are all isolated in a valley like a small Swiss village. The floor of my A-frame is a small kitchen, sitting area and a loft-style bedroom. There is also a ladder leading up to a tiny wooden door from the sitting area. It's a little messy because I’m not expecting guests. The floors are dusty and there are dishes in the sink.

From the front door, a cobblestone path curves through a wooden picket fence to my neighbor’s garden. She has a cute black bob and wears punk chic clothes. We both have lush green gardens with bright flowers and many trees. She is waiting for me near her fence with a blonde girl with 50s style curls wearing a pink cashmere sweater. The neighbor and I joke that her friend is going as Ed Wood for Halloween.

We three walk through the village to the local outdoor pub. Picnic tables are arranged in a semicircle around a raised deck that acts as an events stage. Behind the stage is a Swiss style brown house with white shutters and trim. Its front door opens on to a moving walkway that carries entertainers out to the stage and then back again as if they were birds in a coo-coo clock.

We’re here to see Tom Waits. I tell the girls that I’ve seen Tom Waits in concert twice before in large urban venues. We’re excited to see him in such an intimate setting, and we move close to the stage.

Waits comes out coo-coo style and then steps over to the microphone. He tells a story, but I can’t listen to it because the Ed Wood girl and my neighbor keep talking to people through a chain-link fence that now encircles the concert area. The acoustics are poor, and I can’t understand what he's saying. A crowd gathers just outside the fence, and people inside the beer garden play horseshoes and washers. I can’t pay attention to the show admist the noise and distraction.

Tom Waits is annoyed as well because no one can hear his story. Instead, he starts singing a song from an unreleased album. He’s obviously not into the performance, and he starts to look nervous. The song isn’t going over well, and no one is paying attention. He stops singing and instead starts walking around the beer garden, jumping from picnic table to picnic table. When he comes to my table, I hold up my hand to shake his. He shakes my hand and smiles. The Ed Wood girl tells me that it was stupid to hold up my hand as if he were Bruce Springsteen. I decide I don't like her.

Then Waits disappears backstage. He returns with sunglasses and bleached hair like his mid-80s self. He asks us all to stay put while he runs out into our village for a quick bit of exercise. I’m confused about what is going on. My two companions explain that sometimes he gets stage fright and has to try things like this to get himself into the zone. This seems weird to me, and I tell them that the last two times I saw him, he was an energetic performer. But no one else seems to think it’s weird. Everyone just sits down patiently and waits for him.

Before Tom Waits returns, I notice my Aunt C and her family through the chain link fence. They explain that they’ve come to the village as tourists and would like to see my home. I’ve bragged a lot about what a beautiful place it is. I’m nervous now about showing it to them because I remember that I’ve left it messy, and besides, they are wealthy people who live in a large house in the suburbs. They won’t understand what a beautiful place I live in because they are accustomed to sitting around indoors with modern furniture and electronics.

On the walk to my house, I try to explain that people here have small houses because they spend most of their time outdoors. My house is tiny but it’s cute, and besides, I’m usually sitting in my garden or hiking in the surrounding mountains. I point at the majestic landscape surrounding us, but they don't appreciate it. They give it a glance and say she understands, but I can tell they're looking down on me.

We step into my house, but the sitting room doesn’t have enough chairs for my aunt, two cousins and their partners. They look around confused about where to sit. I suggest we sit in the garden, as I explained, but they want to be indoors. I tell them that when it is cold or raining, we usually sit on the floor in front of the fire place. They try to act like they are comfortable, but I can tell they are not.

One of my cousins sees my loft bed and says it is really quaint that I have a guest area. I feel too embarrassed to tell her that this is actually my bed and that we have no room for guests. So instead I just smile and nod. Then she asks me if she can see my bedroom. She points to the ladder, and I realize that they think the ladder leads to a master suite. Actually, it just leads to a bit of storage in the attic, but I figure they are too fat and unhealthy to climb up it, so I lie and say the bedroom is upstairs.

Later I climb up the ladder and it leads to a small window. I open the window and then have to crawl through a tunnel to another smaller door. The door is so small that I can barely squeeze my way through it. Then I’m straddling the ledge of the doorway looking into a small room below. I have to jump down to get in, but instead I just look at the room. I remember that in a previous dream, I’d jumped into this room and then found it very difficult to get back out. It’s hard to crawl back up the wall to the doorway ledge. Once you get there, you have to go back through the tunnel backwards. Plus the room has a window that doesn’t open so it gets hot in there. Instead of continuing, I just return back the way I came and sit down in my sitting room. I’m feeling disappointed now and I wonder why anyone ever built that room in the first place. It’s just a waste of space.