Which I know, but I have to describe this one.
This morning I dreamed that I was in a cafe in the North End with my mother, some other people, and George W. Bush. At first we were all talking, but then Bush started just going on and on, not letting anyone else say anything. My mom and I started giving each other weird looks, and talking a little to each other. We felt impolite, but Bush didn't seem to notice. I knew I had to go soon, and started wondering where to get dinner. The chicken parm sandwich from Il Panino was edging out the other contenders.
Just before I left, someone asked Bush if the Iraq war was America's finest moment ever, and he said yes, he thought it was. My dream self, for some reason, pictured the scene at the end of Life is Beautiful with a little liberated Italian child riding on an American tank, and thought, no, no way Iraq can beat that.
I got up to go and woke up, only to realize that I had actually been listening to Bush's Rose Garden press conference the whole time. It was all real!
Also, I know this is a cheap shot but later when I heard clips of the speech on the radio I thought this was hilarious: Bush said that reports of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo weren't credible because the allegations came from prisoners who "hate America, and who have been trained to disassemble--heh heh--that means not to tell the truth."
Not to dissemble; there were a clear four syllables. Not only do they hate America, they know how to take things apart! Citizens, keep a close watch on your Ikea furniture!
In unrelated news, someone is playing Ode to Joy on a pennywhistle outside my window over and over and over.
2 comments:
Marian Marzynski's dream, coming soon in the summer issue of Boston Review:
"President Bush lies again about the war with Iraq and is summoned to Congress to explain himself. To me Congress looks like the Polish parliament, across the street from where I lived in Warsaw. At this Polish Sejm, the air conditioning is not working and the temperature is unbearable. I sit in the balcony and take my shirt off. Bush enters and immediately recognizes me. Instead of going to his podium, he takes the stairs, comes to my chair and sits on my lap. Giving me his usual naughty-boy smile, he starts to explain to me that he hasn't lied. Rather, he’s been given wrong information by his staff.
"I understand that from then on I am to become a celebrity: a man with a naked torso and a thick accent on whose lap, explaining himself, sat the number 40-something president of the United States. I return home, but am drawn back to the Parliament. This time it looks like the German Reichstag. When I see Bush speaking from the podium, I run to the street, where loudspeakers on light poles carry his voice. They are the same loudspeakers I remember from the streets of German-occupied Warsaw. Painfully loud."
I was watching the press conference with my grandmother and cracked up at "disassemble." I don't think she quite got what was so funny, even though I tried to explain. On the plus side, she seems to be anti-Bush despite the iron fist of my grandfather.
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