post 157

By anders pearson 24 Oct 2000

for most of my childhood i dreamed in cartoon. i don’t know why, but everything looked drawn and filled in with bright, solid, flat colors rather than realistic gradients and realistic clarity.

when i was about 3 or 4 years old, i used to have this recurring nightmare wherein, i and my sister were in some small house in the woods (the kind of warm, charming place you would expect to find nestled deep in the forest in some old faery-tale with a fire in the stone fireplace, bowls of porridge sitting out on the table and the occupants (bears, dwarves, whatever) nowhere to be seen). an enormous (about a meter in diameter), endless blue caterpillar with giant barbs on every segment slowly winds its way through the house from the back door out the front and out into the dark forest outside. since the caterpillar was so big and the house so small, my sister would keep getting caught up on the barbs and carried along with it out the front door and i would have to run out and frantically disentangle her before she got dragged all the way out into the dark evil forest.

that dream seriously terrorized me on a regular basis for several years. so now i go and look at mimi’s latest drawing. i’m sure it was intended to be happy and cheerful, but it gives me the creeps on a pretty fundamental level.