A Cheetah Dream
I dreamed that my wife and I and several family members were traveling together. Just ending a journey together, we arrived at my house. This was a tiny but crowded place with bare cinder block walls. Included among my family was a sister and one of her daughters, and several of her grandchildren.
I was first into the house. Getting in there, I discovered a full-grown cheetah in our house. My arms were full of grocery bags, limiting what I could do. My dream brain said something like, “Holy shit, there’s a cheetah in the house.” The house was a friggin’ mess, so cluttered with junk that I struggled to walk across the floor. As I did try to walk across the floor, the cheetah gently took hold of my shirt tail in its mouth and tried pulling me in another direction.
My wife and others entered. I warned them, “There’s a cheetah in here.” They didn’t seem to pay attention but I continued, “I think he wants me to feed him. I don’t know if it’s male, to be honest, but I think he’s trying to pull me toward his food.”
That’s what the cheetah did seem to be doing. I talked to it like it was my housepet, explaining that I’d feed him in a second, but I needed to put things down and food his food first. Whenever I’d go toward where I thought the food was, the cheetah would get happy and chirp small, high-pitched mews at me. But if I turned away from its food, it’d would swat at me. Never with true menace, but still, it’s a cheetah.
Sometimes I would swear. Then a second sister, who’d joined without being noticed, would remind me of little ones being present, and I’d apologize. My niece’s husband also joined us, making my place very crowded. All through this, the cheetah paid no attention to anyone except me. Meanwhile, I kept asking the cheetah, “How did you get in here?” The dream ended as I reached for food to give the cheetah.
The Beginning
Daily writing prompt
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
It was the beginning of the end the moment I was born but before the end was finalized, I was required to travel and seek answers, although I don’t think I ever understood the question.
Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts
It was a weird juxtaposition.
I parked in the coffee shop’s lot. A silver SUV battle scar from its travels had the front passenger door open. I glanced that way. It seemed like the SUV was someone’s home. A woman was in the seat, her foot sticking out the open door, as she painted her toenails pink.
I thought of multiple things associated with painting nails. To feel and look attractive. Or maybe to fit in. To seem normal to others. You know, norms, values, mores, judgements. Or carrying forward from the past, trying to remain that person they were.
Then again, I could be all wrong. Might be that they’re not living in their car. They could just be a traveler, pausing to get coffee, taking advantage of a break in their schedule to do their nails.
It’s the kind of scene that inspires questions and thinking about our life and society.
The ‘Miles’ Dream
People were running in positions as though they sat in cars, following lanes marked with white lines and arrows. I did the same, jumping into the left-turn lane toward my home. The streets were narrow, lined with tall cement and brick buildings pink, yellow, white. The setting reminded me of Okinawa outside of Kadena Air Base’s main gate back in the 1980s.
Arriving home, a tall, old, cement building, I encountered friends. One needed to leave but his son’s baby sitter hadn’t arrived.
“I can take him,” I volunteered.
Ted, a Black friend, answered, “You sure? I don’t want to burden you.”
“Miles isn’t a burden.” Miles was the boy, a light-skinned Black child with a sweet, happy face, an oddly muscular body, and a head topped with soft curls. “We’ll have fun, won’t we, Miles?”
Miles agreed with a grin and words I didn’t understand, tottering over to show me something in his hand, which was empty.
“Okay, thanks.” Ted left.
Miles and I walked down the street to another building. People there seemed high or tipsy. Performers, I knew. Students. Singers, actors, musicians, artists.
Miles and I spent time chasing one another or playing hide and seek. People knew him more than they knew me. They started asking, where is his father? Why do you have him?
I explained that I was watching the boy for his father because his father had an appointment, but his mother was coming to pick Miles up.
“What was the father’s appointment?” I was asked. “Why isn’t he here?” They were disapproving, even though I’d already explained that the baby sitter had an emergency.
“He was counter-protesting a protest.”
Oh, that makes sense. That’s important, others agreed.
Miles disappeared from my watch. I panicked and searched for him. His father came in just as I found Miles. I said, “I was so worried that something had happened to him. I took my eyes off him for just a second and he was gone.”
His father, who was now another person, said, “I know what you mean. That happens to me all the time.”
Frieday’s Wandering Thought
He enjoyed people watching. Regulars were given backstories as their habits and details were observed and conversations they had with others were overhead.
One twentyish woman always wore a jean jacket lined with wool. An ordinary jacket except she wore it every day. This was during summer, during the day, during times when the temperature tiptoed up through ninety to one hundred degrees F. Yes, she was inside, where air conditioning sometimes made it feel like we huddled in shacks as we went ice fishing. But she never removed it, always wore it.
Imagination began fabricating reasons for her jacket. It could be fashion commitment. Perhaps a medical condition? Maybe the jacket provided her with extraordinary powers or protected her. There was also the possibility that the jacket gave her form. Removing the jacket would reveal that she had no body beneath it, exposing her as a neck with two hands and a lower body.
It was hard to say why she wore the jacket, but many possibilities existed.
Michael Seidel, writer 