daylight saving time is hard on night owls. this morning i was deeply dreaming something wherein i was responsible for a group of people -- some fictional or anyway unknown to me, some not, like iris and sadie and other people i know were there. the nature of my responsibility was not apparent to me. we were on some kind of a cable car suspended only about 5 feet above an even and vast desert, moving along at a pretty good clip. the cable car creaked and swayed a lot, everyone was crowded around the railing, and some people had styrofoam cups of soup from a central kiosk in the car with an undershirted chef in it but they were standing gingerly to not slosh hot soup upon their hands or clothes. it was very hot in the car but like it was over-heated to account for extreme cold outside the car. i remember the raised rivet heads along the joints of the car had been painted so many times thickly, it was put together like the staten island ferry, rivet heads bigger around than quarters, and the window glass was thumb-thick.

so each time my snooze alarm in reality went off i would lose a person, and we all knew the clock was ticking, it's a 5 minute cycle, and no one knew exactly who would be next each time. i was only partially able to choose who would have to go. i was trying to choose the unknown or fictional people, obviously. people were led off by somber officials who kept their eyes down to avoid me, but they could step out of the doorway onto the sand and not fall from the velocity change, and they would become instantly small and distant behind us as we hurried away. it seemed that there was an ample supply of these officials somehow in the car but i wasn't aware of them until they shouldered their way around someone to take the arms of the next person to go. i couldn't stop them but could feel myself weakly gesturing and wincing apologetically. it was uncomfortable being there in the car with everyone, we were silent other than the loud creaking of the car on the cable. and then the snooze alarm would go off and as i was in reality hitting the button the quiet officials came and took someone away, and then the creaking sound would reassert itself. i was running out of strangers to send off, and i was anticipating having to choose whether to send iris or sadie away first, but also concerned that my thinking about iris and sadie would cause them to be chosen next, before some of the strangers even. and then this was true. everyone stepped away from iris and she was suddenly very isolated in a corner of the car looking at me very scared, in her capri pants and a t-shirt with all these little alphabetical drawings of cats on it, and the two men stood on either side of her and she just slowly faded out and became transparent, and disappeared. the men lit cigarettes, i think, and seemed done.

i feel like the creaking and swaying from the cable car is in my hands. i keep flapping them to shake it out. typing this was hard to do.