Dream Diary: A Date with Christina

I have arrived at the home of Christina Ricci, to pick her up for a date. Her mother is Frances McDormand, and her father is unknown though an actor as well. The fact that they are film stars carries into the dream, yet they seem lower middle class, and their abode is humble. Christina’s parents are dressing her, with a great amount of fuss. As they wrestle her into her clothes (or perhaps they are giving her an insulin injection), she amuses herself by flashing and mooning me. I, in turn, make light of what she is doing, by complaining that she is blocking the television.

Frances McDormand is Chinese, and I engage her in conversation; however, she speaks a dialect, and when she names her home province, I cannot correlate it with any place I know. In the meantime, the family’s white poodle appears, and I recognize it. Apparently, it used to belong to my daughter. The mode of the dog’s transfer of ownership had been traumatic, and, recalling it, I begin to cry.

I am sobbing deeply and convulsively, unsure of whether I should try to stop myself. Will Christina and her family think I am unmanly for weeping, or will they appreciate my emotional openness?

Author: Harry Miller

I have traveled and lived in Taiwan, China, and Japan and am now a professor of Asian history and author of Southern Rain, a novel of seventeenth-century China. View all posts by Harry Miller