Ella Cinders Neighbor; Top 10 Man Songs; Redwood Farm in a Storm; Taking the Children and Leaving Jewels

3/25/10

I'm with Eric and Laura. We're taking cookies to a neighbor. Dad and Will are there. The neighbors have a huge collection of Ella Cinders comics.

I walk past a parking lot where OK Go are making a music video. They're wrapped up in black bags or pieces of cloth from the torso up, lying on the ground. There are colored banners waving in the gray parking lot. I continue to walk to E&L's, knowing the band wouldn't want too much attention.

I try to work at a big cluttered desk or table, and there are people all around including a radio talk show host named Babe, who is a big black guy with black plastic rimmed nerd glasses.

I'm in a car with Will making out, listening to a radio show of the top 10 songs about being a man.

A Chinese couple argues. She wants him to make a fancy costume. I plan to go as Ella Cinders in my blue raincoat. I go down to pet a dog but realize it's not the one I thought it was. Instead it's someone's seeing eye dog. Laura reads and Eric makes a painting of a farm in the California redwoods and the mountains. Storm clouds move in and the tops of the trees point together in a complicated perspective. It's a very beautiful painting with all the parts seem so separate on the page, or I notice each part very particularly.

Laura suggests a villain from Ella Cinders. Some old timey disease or personification of death. He leaves sick children behind but drags the dead ones with him. He leaves behind bright, cartoonish jewels for the grieving parents.