Went up to Seattle to visit A & G. I walked into an abandoned underground train station to try and get a drink, but nothing was open. The architecture was very turn-of-the-century, much like the bathrooms in Wheeler with the ornate moldings and sinks, or a bit like Budapest.

Went up to Seattle to visit A & G. I walked into an abandoned underground train station to try and get a drink, but nothing was open. The architecture was very turn-of-the-century, much like the bathrooms in Wheeler with the ornate moldings and sinks, or a bit like Budapest.

First, my cousin Renata was getting married and we were going to her wedding. I was wearing my black dress with the ruffled edge, but I also had on a blue v-neck t-shirt on top, and blue jeans underneath, and I was barefoot. We kept going back and forth from the hotel to the reception area, but I kept forgetting my sandals even when I took off the other parts of my outfit that didn’t go with the dress, and CHT got mad. It looked a bit like Florida (or Houston)–sprawling and overcast.

Then Pei from high school was getting married and I had to get to the church on time. I didn’t; I had to go up a big hill at the east end of Solano, and through a park filled with frisbee-ers, and down along rails and a concrete walk into the front door of a Thousand Oaks-esque schoolhouse. I was late, and walked in the front of the room where she was giving a speech. Interestingly, I don’t remember seeing her groom. It was all very low-key; she was wearing a pink dress, everyone was dressed down. Stella was there, and my mom. Pei walked around and gave everyone a construction-paper envelope with three pictures of the person and her together, with the lessons she’d learned from each person written on the back. She gave me something else and I walked up to the front, thinking I’d have to participate in the ceremony, but it turned out a lot of other people got it as well.

I put on sunscreen and went outside for a while. Michelle M. was in my dream, inside a room on the left side of a hallway. I came back in and opened the bathroom drawer and took out a little pot of pale yellow Jane eyeshadow, which had crumbled to powder. I dipped my fingertip into the powder and smoothed it onto my eyes–on my lids and under my eyes–and then realized the contrast between the pale yellow and the deep brown color of my skin, which had become covered in the large, spreading, plentiful cinnamon-brown freckles typical of fair redheads. They covered my face almost completely, melting into one another. I stared in dismay. My mother came in and started telling me how it was a real shame and that I should have protected my skin better. She said it was permanently damaged and would never go back.