I Can't Leave China; Extra Hell; Hey That's Not Tom Petty

12-16-09

I was trying to leave China and it was nearly impossible. I had a packed suitcase and I was waiting with my brother. We were children. I bought trail mix at the corner store and the shopkeeper asked me to give the English translation of a set of directions written in sort of mangled han zi characters. I said I could only recognize one, mountain.

We finally seemed to leave but got taken to Hell instead. I had to play cards, competing with a glamorous woman and grizzled man. The face cards were decorated with very realistic looking people, wearing rubies and diamonds. We each played with six cards and had to match up pairs against each other and I had a jack, queen and king. I knew the man had queens, kings and aces. He offered a trip to a casino to see a show and I quipped back at him that if he wanted to leave his hand must not be good. There was an advertisement for the show in big letters made of cacti.

Still in hell- walking down a carpeted hall and a man and woman decide to go to "Extra Hell" so they can always be together. Men gets head cut off (I don't watch) and girl bravely, stupidly, decides to drwon herself in the giant jar of formalin that she will be preserved in (I don't watch but I see the result.)

Also in the club, I meet Tom Petty and we flirt. He asks me about my romantic past and we run into my ex at the subway and I babble awkwardly and introduce them.

My friend B. and I get snacks and drinks together. I excuse myself to the restroom only to find the toilet overflowing with garbage, including an empty ice cream carton. I have to clean it out some.

I don't remember much of this dream five days later. I remember the woman's body crammed awkwardly in the giant jar, and what the cards looked like. I knew I was going to lose at the card game but I didn't care, which usually isn't the case--I'm not great at games but I hate losing.

I lived in China for almost a year and although it was a perfectly straightforward, prebooked flight home, I couldn't quite believe I'd be able to get back. The character for mountain in the dream was actually pretty accurate.

My brother and I did travel a lot unaccompanied when we were little. Our first solo international flight was when I was five and he was six.

I had been reading about Tom Petty in Rolling Stone before sleeping that night. The guy in my dream wasn't Tom Petty, though. He looked more like Matthew Sweet, who was on the radio a lot when I was hearing Tom Petty for the first time when I was about fourteen.