Dream of: 30 October 1996 "Wuzzy"
I was in Russia, where I had gone to go to school. I had been thinking of doing some traveling, planning ways to visit every capital in the world. In my imagination I had grouped together different countries which I could reach in short trips, planning to visit the capital of each. But instead of simply traveling around, I had decided to go to Russia and study for a while.
I was somewhat concerned by the political situation in Russia. Although it was the modern day, Russia still seemed ruled by a man who closely resembled Stalin. In my mind I had an image of the large gruff man with the black hair and black mustache. On the surface he seemed friendly enough, but I knew that underneath he was evil.
I was concerned that some incident might precipitate a war while I was in Russia. I knew such a war had recently been narrowly averted. Two Russians had been kidnapped from an important government office. At first it had appeared that the Russians might declare war on the United States because of the kidnapping. But the kidnappers were quickly found, and it turned out they weren't even from the United States. They appeared to be Moslems, and the crisis had passed.
***
It was morning and I was waiting for someone to pick me up and take me to school. When the car arrived I got in and we took off. The person driving was a girl (about 20 years old). Her name was Carolyn and she had also come to Russia to study. In the back seat was a second girl (about the same age) whom Carolyn had also picked up to take to school.
As we headed down the road, I noticed that Carolyn was driving rather fast, and suddenly as we went around a curve, the car flew off the right side, crossed another road, and ended up in a field. No one was hurt and the car was all right; but I began chastising Carolyn for driving too fast. I pointed out that she had done the same thing before, and that she didn't seem to be trying to improve.
***
The three of us had stopped for breakfast at a restaurant which had tables outside. Stopping for breakfast like that had become a regular routine. As we waited for the food, I picked up a little card which had some printing on it, like an invitation to some kind of event. Only it wasn't an invitation; it was simply a description of a fellow named "Wuzzy" whose last name also began with a "W."
It appeared that Wuzzy was also an American, and that he worked in Russia, possibly as some kind of journalist. This card was from Wuzzy's employer, and was a mock congratulation to Wuzzy for having finished his book. As it turned out, Wuzzy had left his job for four months to write a book. The card also mentioned a second fellow, who during the same four month period, had written several musical compositions, and the card mentioned the specific names of the compositions. Apparently the composer had used his time quite efficiently. Wuzzy on the other hand, hadn't completed his book, and the card played on words, saying that the book had been "wuzzy." The word "wuzzy" apparently had a meaning similar to "fuzzy" (although I thought it sounded like "woozy").
I put the card aside and began concentrating on the matter at hand. It was beginning to seem like a waste of time to have to be eating breakfasts with these two girls every morning. It just took too long, and the girls were hardly stimulating company. Carolyn was busy talking about taking a drug called Midol. I had heard the name of the drug before, but I was unsure what it was for. I thought it was for nerves, especially since Carolyn seemed the nervous type. One of the girls mentioned that I might like to try some. I tried to be funny and said something like, "Give me a gross." But both of them just looked at me as if they hadn't understood what I had said. I realized they probably hadn't understood the word "gross," and that perhaps I should have used the word "boxful" instead. But it seemed like too much trouble to try to explain it to them. Besides, I just wanted to hurry up and leave. I was feeling more and more uncomfortable about being there with the girls.
And I was also feeling uncomfortable about something else. I knew I would be writing down this whole event and that different people would be reading it. I specifically thought about Donna, whom I knew read some of the things which I wrote. I wondered what Donna would think when she read about these girls. What I was concerned about was that Donna would impute characteristics of the girls to me, since I had been with them. I didn't want to give the impression that these were the kind of girls with which I would normally associate. Carolyn was a highly nervous type, perhaps even insane. Her driving off the road had exemplified that, and I could even imagine her suddenly standing up and running off wildly like a crazy person.
But what probably disgusted me most about Carolyn was that she was overweight. I really didn't like being around overweight people, and I rarely found myself in the company of such people. I didn't want Donna to think this was the kind of person with whom I associated. As I looked more closely at Carolyn, I realized I hadn't adequately described her so that Donna or anyone else would know what she looked like. It occurred to me that it was difficult to describe an overweight person. Basically I could only think of two adjectives: "fat" and "overweight." It seemed that "overweight" would only be used when the person was slightly to moderately too big, and that "fat" would be used when the person was far too big.
But it seemed there must be some better way of describing such a person. Carolyn, for example, wasn't fat. She was only slightly overweight. But to say she was "slightly overweight" didn't seem to be an adequate description. Perhaps when I wrote down the descriptions of people, I actually needed to write down their approximate height and weight. But that just seemed so prosaic, and I thought numbers could end up boring whoever was reading my writing. I needed to find a way to adequately describe the size of people without being too boring about it.
Copyright 2001 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
