Pinocchio: Dreamed Friday May 21, 2010

I and the rest of my family are gathered at my paternal grandparents' farmhouse. My grandparents are both dead -- there is no reason to be here. Everyone is sitting ringing the otherwise empty living room. Everyone looks very bored, except for my sister who is sweating profusely. Her purple shirt is soaking wet and she is breathing heavily. I am afraid she might be having a heart attack. She will not respond to questions about her health, or speak at all.

My father nonchalantly tells me that I should go upstairs to the bedroom closet and talk to a wooden doll who has been living there for the last 40 years. I comply and climb the stairs. All of the rooms are empty. I go into the bedroom and open the closet door. There is indeed a wooden doll -- about 2 feet tall -- in the shape of a boy slumped against the wall in the closet. It's very dusty. A couple other toys are inside with him. He looks at me, somewhat disinterestedly, and then crawls over to play with a metal toy truck also in the small closet, taking advantage of the light I've let in.

I begin to gently ask him questions that he either does not understand, or does not care enough about to answer. He either can not or will not tell me where he came from or what his first memory is. I tell him I came from my mother. I tell him about some of my first memories, but he won't speak to me. He does not seem to understand that I am giving him the type of information about myself that I want him to tell me about himself. I don't trust him and begin to feel uncomfortable about his intentions. I decide he must have been a green splinter that my grandmother got in her abdomen somehow. A splinter that kept on growing and eventually worked its way out through her vagina -- some type of tree-based Guinea worm she was ashamed to get and did not know what to do with.

I ask him if he is happy living there in the closet, and he finally begins to talk a little in an innocent voice. He says its OK. I ask him if he wants to leave and live outside for awhile. I begin to strategize about how this might actually work -- But I don't want him living with me. I still don't trust him. I can't decide if he is really innocent, or if he is sullen and dissipated. His expression is always the same.

Anyway, he would never be safe outside. People would completely flip out if he was ever seen. He would probably end up being burned or imprisoned and exploited. Maybe if I held a press conference and told everyone up front of his existence, and asserted my ownership of him, he might be OK. People might allow him enough space for peace if I -- a regular person -- owned and vouched for him. But then he would have to live with me. I imagine him sneaking out from the closet where he would stay at night and stabbing me while I slept, or giving me a green splinter. Anyway, he seems totally disinterested in my ideas. I leave him up there.