Wine Dreaming

Wine: a most sacred of drinks, a drink closely tied with humanity, a drink worshiped, studied, and loved. Wine has become an essential in the daily lives of a large majority of people in this world. I live in Italy, the number one wine country perhaps in history. The amount of wine I drink equates with the amount of water I drink in my day. I purchase a bottle of wine nearly every time I walk home from school. I've therefore developed an intimate relationship with wine and I've spent alot of time getting to know it. I've discovered that wine, when consumed before beer, is sure to give me a wicked stomach ache. I've discovered that wine makes me laugh at things that aren't funny, like bottled water. I've discovered that I remember random facts and details about things I'd compeletely forgotten, like lyrics to Sway's garage band song that he'd written a week before and forgotten. These thoughts burst out at awkward times and the things I say are totally unrelated to my thought patterns at that time. I've also come to some conclusions about the effects wine has on human chemistry. For one, I've deduced that wine is the cause of the widespread body odor epidemic that has taken over Italy and perhaps all of Europe. I've noticed that its impossible to fend off morning B.O., in myself and others, after drinking wine. It is also evident to me that wine, somehow, makes Italians like Americans less. Not when we drink it, but when they do. It's like wine contains some sort of anti-American mineral that effects Italians almost instantly. I'm studying wine and I'm getting kind of proficcient in the subject.

Wine does something to me, though, that is particularly strange. I've been hesitant to ask others whether this happens to them after they drink wine but figure that I've got no image to maintain on this blog any longer. When I go to sleep on nights that I've consumed alot of wine, particularly red wine, I have the most FUCKED UP dreams you could ever imagine. Seriously weird shit. Alarming shit. I noticed how crazy the dreams were becoming on a particular night a few weeks ago. I passed out in my pitch black bedroom and woke up because I felt the presence of someone at my bed. The roommate who shares a room with me (and who will from now on be known as Casalinga) was also passed out and I thought perhaps she'd woken up. I sat upright in my bed and asked her what she was doing, only to realize it wasn't her standing there. It was Poeta. "Poeta, what are you doing here?" I half shouted. He didn't answer. "Where's Selvaggia?" I asked, thinking he had come in with her and was trying to get me up. Still, no answer. "Poeta, this isn't funny, you're really creeping me out!" I shouted this time, waking Casalinga. "Gabby," she said "Poeta isn't here." I insisited that yes, he was. He was standing over my bed, looking at me. I understand that that darkness in my room was such that I wouldn't have been able to see him if he really were there, but I saw him standing there. I was so convinced that he was there that I began swiping furiously at him to try and grab him. Air. "Gabby, are you okay?" Casalinga asked. "HE IS REALLY HERE!" I screeched, turning the light on. He wasn't there.

The next really weird dream I had was even more fucked up. I'd killed off an entire bottle of wine by myself on a Tuesday night. I'm going a little overboard, I know. I dreamt about chickens. Chickens battling each other fiercely because the winner chicken would get to eat all the baby chickens. The baby chickens were in a chicken coop, squawking wilding and flapping their little chicken wings. It was one of the most terrifying nightmares I've ever had. The fully grown chickens battled in a sort of chicken colosseum accept I was the only spectator. It was bloody and feathery and dirty. I've never seen chicken entrails but my brain somehow managed to make them up for me. It was disgusting. I haven't eaten any beef or pork products in nearly a year and I'm pretty sure the chicken gods were trying to convince me to give up poultry, also. I haven't eaten poultry since I had this dream, chicken gods, I promise! The winner chicken was totally white and covered in the blood of the slain. Somehow it was roaring in victory because apparentely dream chickens learned how to roar and then it charged the baby chicken coop. It ate each and every cute little chick. When it was done, it came after me, and I woke up.

A few nights later I drank alot of wine during a family dinner. Lately I've been thinking about Little Cayman and how much I missed a few really good friends I made there. I've been thinking about the sun that always shined and the waves that crashed gently outside while I slept. I live on the Jersey Shore and it always effects me when I'm not near an ocean. I often think about this when I fall to sleep here in Florence and compare how I felt then, in LC, to how I feel now. I remember falling asleep that night pretending I was back in my bunkbed at the Little Cayman Research Centre, listening to the waves and basking in the Caribbean breeze. I woke up in Little Cayman. I woke up in that bed, listening to those waves, feeling that breeze. My best girlfriend from that island was just waking up, too. We ate cookies for breakfast and put on our snorkel gear and went out to the reef. We met up with two of the guys we became close with while we were there and our T.A. from the trip. The five of us then turned into barracudas and swam around hunting lionfish. While I was on LC lionfish hunting was a very large part of my experience there, but I'd never actually wrangled one of the suckers myself. I must have killed about twenty five lionfish before my dream ended. It was funny because all of the lionfish were golden and were arranged in much the same way as the golden rings would be in Sonic the Hedgehog. I suppose the lack of video games and television here in Italy has started to seriously affect me.

I had another dream just recently after a long day of hanging out with the boys. Readers, this dream was genuinely DEMENTED. Psych ward dreaming, for real. I was with Carino and he and I were about to go out for the night. He was helping me get ready; he has the unmatched ability to make me feel good about the outfits I'm wearing. He helped me pick something out that made me look stunning, helped me do my makeup, and then turned me around to look at me. He stopped me halfway. "GAB! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHIT? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?" I was nervous. "What? I'm sorry. What?" "YOU NEED TO Q-TIP YOUR EARS RIGHT NOW!! THERE IS SO MUCH WAX IN YOUR EARS I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'D LET IT GET THIS FAR! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?" In my waking hours I have a severe addiction to q-tips. I'm overly self-conscious about there never being wax in my ears, ever. I get stressed out if I don't q-tip twice daily. Dream me was absolutely mortified that I would ever have wax in my ears at a level so disturbing to Carino. "Let me fix this." he said, grabbing a gigantic q-tip. His eyes turned to fire, then, and he lit the ends of the q-tip on fire. If you've ever seen cartoons where children are afraid of the dentist and he comes at them with a drill buzzing and laughing manaically, thats what Carino was like. With fire eyes and a flaming q-tip. I ran from him, hearing his shouts of how this was neccesary follow me and get louder and louder in my ears.

The next night I dreamt again that Poeta came into my room. I'd had alot of white wine and fell asleep effortlessly. He came in later and laid down with Selvaggia and I for the night, sleeping soundly with us. I woke up in the morning and asked where he'd gone, but obviously he'd never lain down with us.

Just last night I drank a couple of bottles of reserve with Selvaggia, Benny Lava, and Sway. We had a very long conversation about gypsies having a gypsy convention and all wearing matching gypsy clothes. I was, in my dream, the weaver. I was forced to weave clothes for gypsies because they needed to sell them. Accpet gypsies can't actually use their time, according to their religion, to make money. They therefore cannot work and have a trade. I was kidnapped and forced into gypsy trade labor. Selvaggia, though, came to rescue me. She was wearing a spandex suit and had a cape. She annaihilated gypsy after gypsy with her "Justice Rod" and brought me back home to safety.

I now propose to all of you, readers, to do the same thing. Get yourselves a dream journal and a couple of bottles of wine. Some of you, I know, are partial to boxed Franzia. DON'T YOU DARE DRINK THAT IN MY PRESENCE EVER AGAIN! And absolutely not for this project. Get a good bottle, one that you'll really enjoy, and drink away the night. Then dream. Tell me what happens? Maybe then I won't feel like wine is making my brain function at a slightly more fucked level.
Arrivederci, for now.
Love, Gabby