Dream 2

There is a series of three very nice houses separated only by a line of rope or chain. There aren't any walls or roofs that I recall. I live in all three of these houses for different lengths of time throughout the semester. I am discussing with someone which weeks during the semester I live in each house. As it turns out, the home that I like the most is the one I am living in for the fewest amount of weeks. There is a discussion about this being ironic.

Dream 1

There were many parts to this dream, and many of them I do not have enough memory about to articulate in story form. There is actually only one that I remember enough to write about. Here we go.

A friend of my mom shows up at my dad's house in Hesperia, CA. I know which friend it is supposed to be, but she looks like a woman with whom I went to graduate school. She is parked in the middle of the street rather than at the curb or in the driveway. I'm sitting in my dad's living room doing something to my toenails (painting them? I later tell my mom's friend that that's what I was doing but I think I was lying). The phone rings and I don't pick it up. I look out the window and my mom's friend is signaling to me to pick up the phone. There's some miscommunication as we gesture through the closed window but finally she calls again and I answer. I make up some excuse for why I didn't answer the first time. She is sort of frantic and tells me that she needs someone to take care of her dog for a short time. I ask how long and she says 15 days. I am shocked and feel that that is a long time, but I don't let her see my reaction. She tells me it's an emergency. I tell her that I will have to ask my roommate, as I do not have my own house. [In this next part I talk to Annabel, my roommate. I can see this part in my head, but it's hard to put into words.] The answer is no and I am very relieved that I will not have to take care of this dog. At one point I see what the dog looks like. He is white and brown, short, and very strangely fat and lumpy. I don't remember much after this.

There are other segments of last night's dreams of which I only remember small pieces.

- There was a mountain with streams of water, but suddenly lava filled the streams. I was working with a group of people to race against the lava, but I don't remember how or why.

- I'm in a bathroom about to take a shower, when I notice that the bathroom has many creatures (mostly insects) scurrying about inside. I am absolutely terrified and manage to kill one of them. The creature looks like 10 black widows have joined hands and were standing in a circle. I know it is poisonous, as with everything else in that bathroom, so I smash it with something. I race out of the bathroom and tell someone about it (my dad, I think, though we're not in his house). I remember thinking that I was not going to go back into that bathroom, but that's where the memory ends.

Dreams.

I have very vivid and very frequent dreams. Sometimes I wake up feeling absolutely exhausted because I was made to do things all night long in my sleep. A few years ago, I began a dream notebook in which I wrote down every dream that I had. I noticed a trend. At that time, my grandpa was very ill (he died a year or so afterward). As perhaps you may have expected, my dream notebook revealed that I was dreaming about him consistently. His condition was different in every dream. In some dreams he was able to walk. In others, he was on the brink of death. Sometimes he would be able to talk to me; sometimes he would be somewhere else and I couldn't find him. Eventually the dreams became so upsetting that I stopped writing them down.

I don't know why we dream, and thus far no one else knows conclusively. I am particularly interested in dreams, however, because I do it so (sometimes annoyingly) often. I thought it'd be interesting to challenge myself to blog my dreams for awhile. My interest in this, as with everything it seems, may wax and wane. Another possibility is that once again I will get so deeply overwhelmed by recalling my dreams that I have to stop to save what little sanity this tired brain feels like it has left (*whine whine* my life isn't bad at all, to tell you the truth; so it be with anxiety and depression that my reality is perpetually skewed). My hope is that I at least continue for awhile. I need a damn hobby. And I need to write. Or something. Don't let this brain dissolve to mush now that I have a graduate degree.

On that note:

"Sleep tight, ya morons!" - The Catcher in the Rye

Rising from the Ashes (or, simply, Signing Back In)

I'm back!

For what? I have no idea yet. How long will I stay? I have no idea yet. What repels me from writing ANYTHING is that whenever I look back at what I have written in the past, I cringe and want to puke. I think I even wrote this exact same thing a couple of posts ago. Essentially, my brother and I both have really awful memories. Ha! I mean that in a few ways. The way I meant it first and foremost was that we can't remember anything/very little. This sort of thing might help us remember. I don't mean to say that it will help us reconstruct the memories of our past (do we even want to!?), but that it will serve as away to document present memories that we would like to remember in the future. Well, he won't be posting here. Only I will be. I don't even know what I will write, if anything.

It's time for work. That I do know.

Caked-On Thoughts, Pun Intended

As I sit here writing this, I feel as though I could eat three thousand Cadbury Creme Eggs in one sitting.

Since approximately May 25, 2009, I have lost 16 pounds. I still have 17 more pounds to go. Usually I have absolutely no desire to eat anything that I do not believe is good fuel for my body. This week I have consumed beer, pizza, pancakes, and donuts. I was hesitant to drink the beer. I purposely cut my calories down that day so I could consume three beers with little guilt (though it is never truly guilt-free, as I still worry about the damage alcohol will do to my body overall). Pizza is (was?) my favorite food, so I consumed my first piece greedily. I picked up a second piece, counting the calories and frowning, but shoved the crust into my mouth and savored each and every bite that followed. Somehow the pancakes and donuts fell to the pit of my stomach with much less resistance. Mouth. Teeth. Saliva. Falling. Falling. Falling. Plop.

I could not, would not, crave beer. But I could and do crave pizza. And while I never used to crave donuts, I find myself thinking quite frequently about the donuts sitting on top of the microwave in our kitchen.

I am good at refusing to eat these foods. The fact that I ate them does not really bother me. The fact that I wanted to eat them and still want to eat them does bother me. It bothers me perhaps more than it should. I do not want to want them.

Before I decide to delete this post (long pause), I should click "Publish Post" and hope that this served some sort of therapeutic function for me.

Sometimes I wish I could remove my brain long enough to wash off the grime before replacing it and effortlessly enjoying a new day.

I Feel As Though I Have Lived To See Far More Than 8,917 Sunsets

I am alone in my apartment tonight. At least until the people with whom I live arrive home.

I came home from the gym to a series of dark rooms. First the entry way. Then the living room. Then the hallway. There were various other equally dark rooms to my left and right as I made my way to my own dark room. I use "my own" loosely, as it is my own as well as Matthew's own and Sam's own. I like looking to my left and seeing Matthew's desk. A portrait of J.D. Salinger that I painted for him three Christmases ago is slightly tilted in my direction. It makes me wonder if he did that on purpose, to share our favorite author's face with me. A tube of lip balm sits to Salinger's left, and to his right is a tennis ball, only slightly dirty with a dried sea creature of some sort sitting on top. The dried sea creature is burnt orange, and upon further inspection I believe I can see a single sharp tooth protruding from what I surmise to be the front of its body. This burnt orange dried sea creature with a single sharp tooth protruding from what I surmise to be the front of its body should make me feel somewhat uneasy due to its out-of-place nature on the top of a tennis ball that sits on top of an old VCR player that sits on top of a wooden desk, but instead its jawless mouth with a single sharp tooth is screaming voicelessly, "You're home!"

Today I walked from my apartment to my school's library. I traveled to the fourth floor and sat down in Salinger's "aisle," I word I also use loosely because only a one-foot space is dedicated to a collection of both Salinger's own texts and those written by others about his texts. I looked through every option in that one-foot space, and I randomly selected a portion to read out of a text of which I have now forgotten both the author and purpose. I felt happy sitting on the floor and reading about the Glass family. My eyes burned as I thought about Seymour Glass and the moment he pulled the trigger of the gun pressed firmly to his temple. It was at that moment when I decided "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" would be the primary text I use for my thesis. I do not need to know why Seymour killed himself. There is no way to know, no way to find out. In fact, I am not sure that that short story is even necessarily about Seymour's suicide. I believe it may be more about Buddy's means of coping with Seymour's suicide. Making sense of it. Perhaps even glamorizing it. How does this story help Buddy to make sense of it? What purpose does this short story serve for Buddy? I could care less about us. Seymour is not my brother. It does not matter how much I feel Seymour is a part of me. This short story was not written, I think, to help me or you understand the death of Seymour Glass.

I went to the Seal Beach Animal Care Center today and held a cat with an infected eye. I truly believe that for a moment I thought that if I just lovingly stroked his fur for long enough the infection would disappear.

I Am Not Remotely Depressed, But These Ramblings Would Have You Believe Otherwise.

At some point, I will not remember this moment.

I am listening to the construction workers outside. They are using tools I cannot name. I peeked out of the window and a man in a white hat smiled at me. He was holding a tool I cannot name. I smiled back and closed the blinds.

The balcony will be finished soon and I will get to view the results for the next ten months at least, but I may or may not remember what it felt like to sit in an empty apartment and listen to feet stomping loudly across the balcony floor as crumbling wood was ripped from its foundation and thrown to the ground below. Most of my day has been spent sprawled out in various locations around the apartment with a book. The stairs leading up to the apartment are also being refinished, and the note on the door that says I cannot use my steps today (NO EXCEPTIONS!) keeps me sealed behind our freshly painted green door.

The second night in my apartment was spent trapped on my top bunk, writing a blog in my head that I think I knew would never get published. It takes me a very long time to fall asleep, but I never remember the moment I finally do not have to be awake anymore.

I was reminded that night of my first night in my new dorm room three years ago. I did not literally cry myself to sleep, because I am not sure I have ever truly done that, but if I were a fan of shameless embellishing I would certainly say I did cry myself to sleep that night. I am not sure there has ever been a moment in my life during which I felt more alone. Little did I know that the following semester would feel very much like that first night in the dorms, no matter how many people I walked past during the day.

Although many die-hard book lovers would have you believe otherwise, no book, no matter how remarkable, can truly quell feelings of loneliness. Try as you might to persuade me to believe otherwise, I know that a book can only temporarily provide relief from emotions we would prefer to feel on an infrequent basis. These emotions are merely being covered by the numbered pages counting down the time it takes for you to find another feeling you do not want to have. Loneliness is a bookmark and you will always find that place again.