filamentousYesterday, I helped with housework. Mostly I tried to make less of a mess of my office. I shelved a lot of books, though we have officially been out of shelf space for quite awhile. The time has come to divest myself, once more, of books I know I will never read again. Like 75% of my Stephen King hardbacks. I've actually taken to stacking books on the floor, against the walls.
nineweaving assures me this is an old Yankee trick for keeping one's house well insulated. So, yeah. Housecleaning. I also spent about an hour clearing stuff off my iMac's hard drive. I made it through quite a bit more of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, which I'm enjoying much more than I thought I would.---
A dream from last night. Recently, the dreams have been more vivid than ever. I suspect the Lamictal is the cause of that. They play like slumbering movies, whenever I shut my eyes. There is no way to distinguish them from waking reality, not while I'm inside them. No amount of deviation from waking reality ever tips me off. Back to my inability to dream lucidly. Sometimes one will recur for days; sometimes not. Anyway, one last night was especially distinct, and I thought I'd write it down here. I haven't written my dreams down here in a long, long time. There's a line from a movie I saw recently, and I cannot now for the life of me recall which one (I see a lot of movies). "No one ever remembers the beginning of a dream." Is that from Inception?
I don't know how this dream may have begun. I was older than I am now, and seemed somewhat more masculine. And yet hardly particularly masculine. I was wearing a finely tailored suit made from silk that seemed both red and black, depending on the way the light struck it. I had a tie that seemed made of the same silk. I was barefoot. I had a walking stick carved of bone, inlaid with something like ebony or jet.
I was walking along a wide quay, and there was a great assortment of ships docked all around me: old sailing ships, new sailing ships, barges, fishing boats, doggers, schooners, dorys, boats that seemed constructed all of rusted gears, boats of sleek chrome that almost blinded me if I looked at them too long. There was a very young Asian girl scattering yellow rose petals across the quay, and I understood she was paid to do this, but that it was also a sort of sacred duty. So, I walked on yellow rose petals between tall ships. People passed me, and either they were dressed like me, or they were women in elaborate dresses that made me think of the thirties and forties, though these were not simply dresses from those decades. They were at home in that time and place, and were of that time and place. There were crisp uniforms and raggedy men and women whom I understood, instinctively, were various sorts of sailors and fishermen.
The girl with her basket of rose petals passed near, and I tipped her, the way I'd seen other people doing. I know I was not of this place, that I was only visiting from somewhere else. No one stared, though. I didn't seem to stand out in any way.
I came near the end of a dock and stood watching as a ship's cargo hold was being loaded with enormous steel containers. A crane lifted them from the dock and set them onto the deck of the ship. The sea sloshed loudly against the stone foundations of the dock. A pretty young woman came and stood next to me. I can only recall a single line of dialogue for certain. She said, "You take such a long time to get anywhere at all."
She was wearing a cloche, and her hair was blonde. Like my suit and tie, her lips were either black or red, depending on the angle of the light. Her eyes were a dark, dark green. I think she was wearing a long fur coat. She wasn't as tall as me (but few are). We stood there, talking, watching the ship being loaded. Back towards the shore, I could hear a brass band playing. Men led a procession of camels and llamas past us, and we turned to watch.
It was a quiet dream, and it seemed to be leading somewhere. But like its beginning, which I can't remember, I can't recall where it might have led. I have this snapshot.
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We played more City of Heroes and Villains last night. We created new characters so that we could play villains in Mercy Island. Most of the missions consisted of fighting a race of humanoid serpents, pretty much what WoW calls naga. I do like this game, but am having a hard time imagining how I can juggle two MMORPGS and the SL rp, and still have anything remotely resembling a real life.
This evening I have to have my passport photo taken, and I look like shit. At least I can wait until early this evening to have it done. By then, maybe the bags under my eyes will no longer have bags of their own.
