There was a moment, when I was standing in the flickering green light in front of one of the coffins (someone trapped inside), that I turned my head a certain way, and peered out from the eyeslits in my giant pig mask, and I was overcome with not so much déjà vu as pure memory: I had dreamt this, I thought, just maybe six months before.

I had woken up from the dream thinking “where could that have taken place? What was I doing, standing in front of that coffin, why couldn’t I see quite right?” but what had really stuck with me was how the dream had ended. Something was happening outside of the basement, something awful that I had no power to stop while I stood in front of that coffin, and I would not find out what that was until all of this was over.

Slideshow of full album: here.

“We’re extraordinarily rich. We’re the top one percent you see, and we’re quite pleased with how things are going, so. We just thought we’d let you know. Thanks.”

“Yes! We support everything that’s happening! Long live capitalism!”

“We are staunch supporters of capitalism.”

We were standing in the median dividing the West End from a Leeann Chin; Maggie was taking her turn blindfolded and wandering the median with her poster, and I stood jovially at the edge with my “Feudalism Works (Even If I Don’t)” sign. We were speaking entirely in our “wealthy” voices (which just got progressively more British as the evening progressed). Oh I do love things! It’s so marvelous to own so many of them! Thank you for the bailout, the investments are going splendidly!

The woman in the crosswalk’s head cocked like a dalmatian’s. “Capitalism?”

“Yes! We’ve done so well by it.”

“Capitalism.”

“Tip top! Is that a thing we say? Tip top!”

“What’s capitalism?” she asked.

“HA!” I broke.

Then, “oh, wait, I’m sorry, are you serious?”

“Whatever, I have to go. I’ll look that one up when I get home. You guys have fun.”

I turned and stared at Maggie, who was now teetering on the edge of the curb as traffic rushed by, the chiffon blindfold around her eyes beginning to slip. “Well this is one of the nuttier things I’ve ever done,” I said.

Was what it said, for no discernible reason, on the Uptown’s marquee tonight as I left yoga class. A cold rain had just passed, and the sky was melting down the buildings like a slurpee. I love this city.

I’ve noticed that, both in exercise and in life, generally, the best motto I can find so far has been “but, it’s easy.” Most of the work is in overcoming my own resistance. I can’t do that, it’s too hard, I hate this, I should slow down, this is too much.

But, it’s easy. And suddenly you just float up.

When I moved home to Minneapolis, one of my best friends was about to leave.

“I got accepted!” she said one day. “Grad school, getting my masters in teaching for special needs. California. Then maybe I’ll move back to Israel.”

“. . . Yay!” we chorused. “That’s so . . . great, for you.”

Last week I found out she was visiting. In a couple of days, were we free Saturday? Did we want to meet at the State Fair, or afterwards?

“I HOPE YOU LIKE THE HAUNTED HOUSE,” I wrote back. “AND ALSO BABY ALPACAS.”

Adelia and I planned on meeting up with her around 2, and just staying a couple of hours. On our shuttle ride from the parking lot she told me about her own graduate school work: a paper she was writing about Walter Benjamin. “Basically the modern city and society is our downfall,” she said, as the bus warbled around another curve. I gripped the seat in front of us and focused on non-barfing exhales. “We have too much demanding our attention, just walking down the street: so many strangers we approach and pass, red lights, stop signs. We are constantly on alert for our own survival. And with the loss of craftsmanship, we lose the habit of telling stories. We no longer have the luxury to daydream.”

“Sooo, he wrote this in the ’20s?”

We stepped off the bus and into the masses.

It took us a few hours just to meet up with Jamie, due to the cellphone service/textsuck black hole that generally surrounds any area containing cows. We stoically watched a greyhound adoption presentation, twice, and remained unconvinced. I was attempting a gluten-free diet as of a few weeks prior, and I pulled out a list of the booths that would serve me. “Too bad everything’s deep fried here, even the fruit,” I said. We decided to get out of the Pet Center and meet Megan by the entrance. “I need coffee,” Adelia said, “and some breakfast, and a different eyeglass prescription, and a lot less ragweed, and fewer people around me, and where’s Jamie, and agh agh agh.”

Things weren’t looking up. “Meet me by the hammocks,” Jamie’s text bleeped.

It’s funny how mood, and with it, reality, can change in the span of twenty minutes. We got coffee. We swung on the hammocks, hiding within their billowing cotton like toddlers in a clothesline and pointing at the stuffed parrots overhead, until politely commanded off. We could see Jamie, but she couldn’t see us. “Tee hee,” we said. “There you are!” she cried. “Hooray!”

“Hooray!” we said.

And we stayed another four hours, creeping through the haunted house, gnawing cupcakes (they’re better with gluten, guys), patting animals on the head, taking ghost pepper challenges and screaming through the sky on the flying chairs. Because that’s the way we roll.

The next day, she was halfway across the continent again.

Full album: here.