I woke up this morning feeling, for lack of a better term, hung over. I had a headache, I wasn't rested, I had a vague ache, and I couldn't think of any reason why. It's diminished, but it's been with me all day.

Coming back from lunch, I remembered a fragment of a dream I had last night where I was dying of cancer. Apparently it was misdiagnosed as just minor aches and pains until the very end. I seemed to have made my peace with it -- it was almost like some melancholy curiosity. The dream may have ended with my death, actually, although I'm vague on that.

I've actually been in a pretty good mood today, but still: meh.

I had the most horrible dream last night.

It started off with a sense of being vaguely off-kilter, but otherwise basically innocent, until about halfway through, when an incredibly negligent act on my part killed a child. After wondering what to do for a little while, I told a few friends. They accompanied me, then, as I went to tell the mother. I sat before her, her not knowing anything was wrong, and debated how to break the news to her. Finally I decided to just to tell her in the most stark, direct way possible, knowing full well that she would fly into a rage and mutilate or kill me. That seemed appropriate, and so I told her. I woke up as she was screeching, pulling apart my face with her bare hands.

This dream was also notable because it seemed, throughout, that a tiny corner of my mind was consciously directing the whole thing, well aware of and selecting for that dark arc. Part of me arranged the innocent part of the dream, knowing it would give way to something darker. Part of me knew that my actions would cause that terrible accident. Part of me decided that the mother's reaction would be so violent.

Oy.

Walking around a large, open building, with large, open halls, some place on the edge of the sticks. Large like a hospital, although I'm not sure it was a hospital. It could almost be a carpeted parking garage, but not. At one point we're just outside of it, and I fall into a ditch. It is filled with all kinds of old, dry weeds and looks shallow, but when I fall in it seems almost as deep as I am tall. bleuraven helps me out.

Wandering around with bleuraven, talking about random things. bleuraven asks why I'm involved in things, in society. She asks why I'm involved enough to be involved with it. I comment that I don't feel involved with it at all, and that's why I try to stay involved. She asks what I think about Lincoln, though, and I have to feel some affection for (what I think of to be) Lincoln. We talk about some Lincoln museum she's been to somewhere in the midwest, where there's apparently some optical illusion of Lincoln where he's 100 feet tall or something.

I see with crystal clarity what is happening in Washington D.C. regarding Iraq, and of course it's total insanity, just a ridiculous process.

Talking about Christmas (?) I remark that some unspecified "we" could dress up like Santa and drive around the neighborhood abducting (?) children. I think I was joking about that, like some bizarre art project, but there did seem a vague note of menace to it. I comment, "I'll bet there's a cop somewhere in this town whose just dying to bust someone like me. I'll bet there's a copy who's just dying to kick the ass of some hippy nerd and his multi-color van." I crack up laughing at this thought. bleuraven doesn't.

There is some meme in my email with a three-word subject line, something vaguely cutesy. I expect it's just another cutesy email meme, but for some reason it sticks with me. I think to check it, but there's not a convenient computer nearby. Some random guy walks down a section of hall with us, and I think I'm basically my usual self around him, and then he wanders of his own way.

We head back outside again. There are some old ladies by some computers, or at a registration desk, or something. There's another (the same?) ditch, and I fall in again. It's a vaguely unnerving experience, not very unnerving, but just slightly because I'm in a ditch almost as deep as I am tall, filled with dry weeds and who knows what else. bleuraven again helps me out, and I sit there being vaguely paranoid about insects and things for a moment. There's a bug sitting next to me, intently watching and gesturing to my finger, as if it's excited about it. My finger is bigger than the bug, though, and I can't imagine why it would be interested in it. Does it looks like a grub?

Wake up with my mouth open, dry, thirty, feeling something crawling on me. I sit there for a moment. My cat looks at me. I think I see a lizard sitting a foot or two away, watching me in the dark. I sit there for a minute, watching the lizard slowly melt into nothingness, brushing at myself, at the invisible bugs I can feel on myself. I get up and go to the kitchen to drink some water, and decide to write this down for some reason. I still feel vaguely dehydrated.

I guess I'm going back to sleep now.

Strange dreams last night. I received a visit from someone I used to know. It was sad, but also sadly reaffirming. In an unrelated dream, the universe decided to get all pissy about how long some of this shit was taking me. At first I was kind of intimidated by its attitude, but I eventually began to see through it and I woke up telling it off. This shit takes a long as it takes, and the universe had better learn some fucking patience. I also managed to piss off Vince Lombardi, but I contend that he was just being a tightass. I brought his truck back in the shape that I got it in, and if he's too much of a dick to acknowledge that then that's his problem.

Today is my last full day in T.O. I've been here just long enough that it doesn't feel quite new anymore. I've got a routine and the streets are small now, and that means that it's probably time to move on. I spent most of yesterday wandering the city, taking a couple hundred photographs, having a beer, dancing and singing a little. I also finally tried lupini beans and Korean walnut cakes, both of which are remarkably tasty. Toronto is an amazing city -- beautiful, crazy, friendly, dense but open, cool but homey -- but I can't wait to get back to Austin, and my gal, and the lot of you. I'm a lucky man. I have a wonderful life back home, and I miss it.

Has anyone ever heard of a custom of notching the edge of a coin, possibly two or three times?

Issues of fatherhood seem to be on my mind lately. Yeah, Father's Day was last week, but just more generally I've been thinking about it, it's been coming up in the course of various conversations, and of course I've been thinking about my father and our relationship.

My father is a pretty good guy, and I think he did pretty well by me. Our relationship is still fairly formal, though, and in some ways it feels as though it has become more formal over the past decade or so. Many of our phone calls begin with us spending a while trying to find some conversational common ground, kind of like strangers on a bus. I'm not entirely sure why that is, but it is. He's a pretty buttoned-down guy and I'm, well, me, so that may be part of it. Anyway.

Anyway, last night I had a dream in which my dad came to me and told me something pretty shameful he'd done. I'm not going to rat out my dream dad to you, so I won't go into the details, but... well, there are better things and there are worse things, and I guess he had some reason to be concerned. The thing was, I didn't care. There was an initial sense of shock, but it just really didn't matter. All I cared about was listening to him and figuring out some way to help him out. And he was ashamed, doubly so that he had to tell this to his son, and I wanted to ease his mind about that. More than anything else, though, I was glad -- not that he was in trouble, not that he had done what he had done, but that he had come to me to talk to me about it, that he considered me someone he could share something like that with, that he would take a risk like that with me, that I might be able to help him. While I managed to conceal it from him because lord knows he was having a hard enough time, I was actually excited. I was thinking about the details of the situation and trying to figure out what to do when I woke up. The first thing I did as I opened my eyes was to try to fall back asleep.

There were also some origami traffic cones.

Last night -- er, last afternoon -- I had kind of a crazy dream. I was back in California, and was going to be officiating for my buddy Robert's wedding. Now, that's fundamentally a little morbid, because he just broke up with his girlfriend, but it's also kind of odd, as mary_austin apparently just had a dream in which I had arrived to officiate her wedding in some classy attire.

Anyway, at first I just thought I'd be doing a reading -- as I will be for my sister's wedding. The ceremony was coming up in like an hour, but I figured, hell, I've done it before, I can wing it. The most important thing, of course, was getting cleaned up. I shaved as best I could, scrambled around for my clothes (which included a big flouncy white shirt), and rushed off to the wedding. Once there, it turned out that apparently I was supposed to officiate after all.

Something else happened, too, I think.

I had a dream last night in which I was being chastised for being so stuck up about my near-atheist empiricism.

Also, asparagusp and I were in my van, trying to avoid a sandstorm (that I think was full of killer bees) on our way down to some kind of firesale of old-skewl macs. Presumably, we were going to hit some bars thereafter. There was also a small bit of editorializing about the sorry state of scooter technology; I was briefly Bill Clinton biking uphill on an electric bike and was quietly bitching about how, despite millions of dollars in government funding, folks like Dean Kaman and his ilk had yet to produce a prototype of a halfway decent scooter.

Spain under the rule of Franco, but Mao's little blue (?) book kept coming up. Blue book not socialist philosophy, but... what? Rules for living? Rules for revolution?

Trade war revolving around some kind of south american tomato.

incan/mayan? gold.

group of people (cowboys?) would jump a wall, swing through a small lake(creek?) and go into this cave to get this gold, and then leave through some exit. One guy was worried about his son he never sees. Me and this other guy decided to try it. Got to the cave, but had to spear a skeleton(?) and a guard inside the cave dressed like a skeleton. Don't remember actually getting any gold. Other guy kept talking too loud. Exit led into office of guy who owned the compound. It looked like a car dealership. We were waiting to make our break, but some guy (a lawyer? banker? insurance guy?) saw us and was talking on his cell phone, alerting (we feared) the owner. We went into the owner's office. He was on the phone, talking to someone about some business deal. I speared him. He was barely effected by it (almost terminator-like) and just seemed annoyed, aware that we were trying to steal & escape. We started to run off, when I remembered to spear him a little more for his keys. There was a huge parking lot full of cars. I checked the alarm clicker, and he had some Cadillac truck. We got in it and drove off. Apparently there were two cars, now, the truck and a police car. We drove through the parking lot in the police car, where nobody noticed us. I wanted a bold escape, so I drove us off into the mountains. Delen-woman started dropping trees on us for some reason. We managed to make it through, but apparently that somehow meant that we lost. Then I saw rainy's email and there was some spam message about bizarre b&w glamor-shots style 3d holographic children photography.

Dream in which people's personalities are being overwritten with sanitized, cooperative "computer" versions of themselves. Actually happening, but being mocked w/ comparison to scientology/xenu.

honey man who accused me of writing spam "a simple man"
maybe someone compromised my psssword "well, do you mean the third screen?"
place in town with privacy. wet hillside with creek/pipe. kept slipping.
office with deformable mirror
officeworkers joking about getting into IT. frank? muppet receptionist, like scooter?
wstanding in line w/ sheila to buy cotton-ish candy thing. pizzas. midget cashier
lori talking about computers/ut
graffiti sign
european sports car (casey?) "you're driving my dream car!
sheila/thespian
brieann talking about robotech
some kind of event? a play? something else?
passed david heller in hall. didn't quite recognize me. I was carrying a pike? pole?
Fighting for chance to clear my name, re: spam
was there something where old man got beamed up, dismantled, returned?
got back too much change?

stalked by a guy
slashed his tire
running off with cat (ginseng?)

Company
Holocaust
Discussing on email list
Emails start appearing in book
Cold chill/wind
Plan for recovery
People start seeing themselves as victims -- innocently -- in mirrors, etc.
What was the holocaust project itself, though?

I received a call in my dreams this morning. It was someone who I thought was Abe, but also thought probably wasn't. There seemed to be something important to talk about, perhaps even something ominous, but I don't think we ever got to that. THAT'S the dream I had prior to the "We're running late/gotta get going" dream, which I had just prior to waking up, which I did just before the phone rang and no one was there. I answered the call, okay? I GET IT. I ANSWERED THE CALL.

GOD what ham-fisted metaphors.

No, that's not true. There's still a lot of reticence in my heart. My whole life has been a story of pushing past that hesitance, that ambivalence, and making progress only while dragging it behind me like an anchor. I know it far too well to pretend it's not there. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to address that.

A month or two ago, things were starting to get interesting. Weird, but interesting. Maybe a little too weird -- I felt like I was seeing through photographs, seeing through mirrors, seeing through my eyes, and everything that was happening around me felt like it was a direct outgrowth of my will. Which is fine, but I didn't like where it was going, like my shadow, my death-urge was at the controls. I could pick the route, but the destination was set.

I know my shadow, or at least, I know just enough of it to have a healthy sense of respect for it. I have heard its twisted logic, its infinite paranoia, its ruinous capacity for despair and surrender. I know at least one of its voices far too well, and I have felt it speak with my voice, and watched conscious in slow-time as it destroyed beautiful budding possibilities. It bleeds dirty tears through every noble urge I have. It is no stranger to me, and it is no game.

So I pulled back, grounded myself. It was the right thing to do. The past couple of months have been like a vacation; wonderfully relaxing, but they've run their course. Yesterday morning I got back in the saddle, chose to re-enter that strange space, put my mind back out there. I expected that things would pick up again, but DAMN. The VERY NEXT MORNING my dreams are bleeding into the world. I had no idea it'd happen so quickly.

Now that I think about it, I guess that's what this morning was about. A reminder from myself that I'm awake again. Hell, maybe I never stopped being awake at all. Hm. Well, good. I still don't understand a single bit of any of this, but it seems like I can handle it well enough.

Alright. Let's get to work.

Had a dream in which people were frantically running around and we were terribly late and we had to get going going going! The logical conclusion of the dream was that I had to wake up, so I did. As I woke, the phone rang. I answered it, and there was nobody on the line. Wonderful. It's my day off and there does not seem to be anything going on anywhere, but apparently I MUST BE AWAKE NOW. Congratulations, I am. WHAT IS THE EMERGENCY?

Also, the tip of my left pointer finger is asleep. WTF?

A few nights ago I tried something different.

I got into bed and spent some moments uttering a quiet prayer that had popped into my mind. "God, spirits of the underworld, spirits of the overworld, protect me and grant me safe passage to morning. Protect me and grant me safe passage to morning. Protect me and grant me safe passage to morning..." Then I lay there meditating, focused not on nothing, but upon the phrase "Show me my calling."

Then I fell asleep...

...

I was in front of my apartment complex. There was a large man, abnormally large, enormously large and mishapen. He was absolutely terrified, begging me to protect him, telling me that there was someone out there who was going to kill him. I did not know the creature he spoke of and I do not remember if it had a name, but a palpable sense of menace hung around it -- I was not frightened of it, but I was wary. The large man begged me to seek out this thing at the market (the bazaar?) and kill it. Partly out of a sense of law and partly out of a sense of fear I refused, but told the man that if the creature killed him that I would kill it in revenge, so the threat of that should be enough to keep the man safe. Needless to say, he was totally unconvinced and totally unconsolable.

...

I saw an image of a face, flat and dark and enormous, almost like it had been carved in a granite wall. It moved sluggishly but naturally, like flesh, like any ordinary face would. It seemed benign at the least, and I got the sense that this face, whatever it was, was not the threat.

...

I was in front of my apartment complex. I went up a set of stairs to the apartment across the way, when all of a sudden there was an enormous downpour. Torrential like a monsoon, thick brown water flooding the ground below, palm trees flapping helplessly in the winds. All of a sudden the staircase collapsed, spinning against the second floor juncture like an axis, like some sort of salvage ferris wheel. I was on it for the collapse, and rode it down to the ground, completely unscathed and unconcerned. I don't think I even got wet.

...

I awoke to my cat sitting in front of me, her fur glowing in the morning light. I lay there a minute, next to my sleeping girlfriend, trying to remember my dreams. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a small hand reach across my girlfriend's back, tap me lightly on the head three times, and disappear to where it had come from. I asked my girlfriend if she had just tapped me on the head. She mumbled something about waking her up. I asked again. She mumbled no and went back to sleep. The hand had looked smaller than hers, anyway. I propped myself up, looked around the room for a moment, and saw nothing. My cat started begging me to feed it. I went back to sleep.

...

I awoke into another dream, in front of my apartment complex. It was clear and dry, there had been no rains. I noticed that it was different from the apartment complex in my earlier dreams. I walked up the stairs to my neighbor across the way, and knocked on his door. I explained to him that I'd had a dream in which the stairs had collapsed, and that this might have been a warning -- perhaps about shoddy construction? -- and that he ought to have it checked out. He thanked me, and I left.

...

I had of vision of myself lying in bed, and I could see my naked body covered with long, fine, shallow cuts, like papercuts, that ran along the natural contours of my body -- between my ribs, along my back. I knew them as claw marks, almost certainly from that malevolent being, and I saw what might have been an image of it. Some emaciated, naked humanoid, possibly hunched over, with an almost yellowed flesh stretched taught over its bones and long fingers that tapered into claws.

...

The alarm went off and I woke up. I saw my apartment complex clearly in my mind, and realized that it was not like I had seen it in either of my dreams. I got up, remembering nothing clearly except the hand, remembering that I had had some interesting dreams but struggling to remember exactly what they were. I fed the cats and sat down in a big, soft chair, and meditated for a while. Afterwards I fixed myself a cup of coffee and sat, sipping it, trying to remember my dreams. The memories came this time, which was not surprising -- I often find that meditating first thing in the morning dramatically improves my recollection of the prior night.

Eventually I got dressed and headed to work, and had a pleasant although fairly routine day. I rode the bus home late that night, nearly midnight, and impulsively got off one stop before I typically do. I walked past a fast food restaurant that is not along my usual route, and noticed my neighbor's car in the parking lot. He noticed me and pulled up next to me, frantic. I'm still not sure of the exact details, but he was talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone while she was in their apartment and she told him that somebody outside was trying the front door knob, and now he couldn't get her on the phone. She was supposed to meet him downstairs after a few minutes, but that had been an hour ago. He's afraid that she'd been kidnapped or worse and now his cell phone isn't working so he was looking for a pay phone so he could call his next door neighbor. Or something. For some reason that I can't quite get a straight answer about, he won't call the cops. Anyway, he's glad to see me, and could I help him check it out?

My neighbor is a nice guy, but he has peculiar habits. He'll spend the night sitting in his car in the parking lot of our apartment complex, drinking beer and doing apparently nothing else. He'll sit there, night after night, apparently all night long. He'll happily talk to anyone who passes, and he watches the parking lot like a hawk -- which, given that we're not in the best part of town, is probably a blessing. He seems like a nice guy, but it's a strange feeling to have someone watching all of your (and everyone else's) comings and goings at all hours of the night. What I'm saying is that he seems like a nice guy, and I generally give him the benefit of the doubt, but I don't entirely trust him. I'm just weird like that.

But he is a nice guy and he does seem genuinely frightened, so I agree to help. I stop by my apartment to grab the only reasonable weapon I can find -- a hammer -- and to make sure that my girlfriend knows what's going on. And to make sure that he knows that she knows what's going on.

We go to his apartment. He calls her name, and there's no response. We try the door. It's locked. He knocks. No answer. He yells her name. No answer. We're debating what to do next, when the door opens and it's her. "Are you okay?" "What's going on? I was just in the bathroom." "For an hour? I was worried that..."

Anyway. Somewhat anticlimactic, but all's well that ends well; I excuse myself and quickly slip away.

...

I told my girlfriend bambina_cricket about all of this, and naturally she was a bit creeped out about the hand. Notably, she remembered me waking her up and asking her about it, although of course she didn't understand the context at the time. She's asked that I include her in any future prayers to dream gods and whatnot. Seems fair enough.

I haven't seen my neighbor around at all, which is peculiar.

This morning my girlfriend woke me up, smiling. She'd been poking around the side of the bed where the hand had come from, and buried beneath everything had found our copy of China Mieville's The Scar. I'd been wanting to read that, so, score!

Anyway, now it's off to bed.





... I need to buy a cricket bat or something.

A few days ago, I met an oneiric Chinese man who pretty much saw through my crap immediately.

Today at a Chinese restaurant, I got a fortune that read "To understand a man's mind, listen to his words."

Earlier this week I awoke and stared at my thumb. I flexed the stubby appendage, and for a few moments could only see it as alien and bizarre.

--

Last night I had a dream that I was aboard a galleon, where an older asian man was attempting to teach me the ways of Taoist mysticism. I told him that I was an open-minded skeptic. He seemed disappointed at that comment, and a little annoyed. I feared that I hadn't explained myself clearly -- I was an open-minded skeptic -- but he wasn't interested in my clarifications. Later I realized that I had been perfectly clear, that my very choice to utter such words meant far more than any semantics they might contain, and that the old man had seen right through me.

Watch the intent of your words.

I had a dream last night that someone was trying to explain the third dimension to me. I had a limited familiarity with it, but the subject was as obscure as the fourth or fifth might be in the waking realm.

I also had a dream that an angry, middle-aged suburbanite was trying to scratch my driver-side window. Probably because I'd just keyed his car.