10/30/2005

This is the 'trick' half of the equation.

*I am ready to walk with the ghouls on Mischief Night.

A Review of My Brilliant Day

I have a recurring dream that I experience some variation of whenever I have anything pressing coming up in my life. I’m always in school, usually undergrad, and there’s this class. For some reason, it’s often Spanish; I don’t know if high school Spanish had that much of an effect on me, or if the obvious symbolism inherent to a foreign language is too easy for my lazy hack subconscious to pass up. Anyway, there’s always this class, and I’ve been missing it. More precisely, I’ve forgotten that I’m enrolled, and I always find out that a big test is coming up, and I never know how many tests or assignments I’ve already missed. These dreams always cover a good portion of the academic semester, as I continually fail to study correctly or get on top of anything.

I had that sort of dream last night, and I kept waking up, and it kept flitting back behind my eyes each and every time.

And yet, I try to cling to portions of these dreams, as there’s tiny perfect moments inside them, distillations of perfect feelings, idealizations of places and rooms and architecture. Consummate friendships and relations. Something better than truth, something perfect in the sleeping eye, to beautiful to merely imagine - it must be entered. Our dreams can usher us in. I used to dream of hotels all of time, and sometimes I still do. There were the most magnificent places. Utterly flawless environs. I’ve been in a lot of hotels and none of them really live up. But they weren’t the best hotels anyway.

So I woke up today, and I did some work, trying to get myself organized. I’m so easy to distract. After a while I figured I should wash, and then I decided to go out and buy some sustenance for the day.

Perfect sustenance includes:

1 loaf of rosemary and olive oil bread, round

1 tub of coffee

1 pint of soup, any variety

1 stack of tea bags

I didn’t have much luck with the soup. I had expected the hour we all time-traveled back through early this morning would give me the jump on soup collection, but it turns out the chicken place I visited was all out of their homemade soup already. The old man at the counter didn’t look like he’d be amused if I walked out without anything, so I ordered a chicken sandwich; he shakily wielded a large blade and chopped strips off of a random fried breast as my eyes trailed around the menu, written in gigantic letters all across the back of the wall. Dotting the space like bits of corn in chowder (HOW DID I MISS THE SOUP) were gag signs, many of them nagging wife jokes.

The old man lathered honey mustard atop the chicken bone he left inside my sandwich, no doubt as an early Mischief Night gift, and I left the place. Locating the bread was more of a success. I ate the whole loaf, and the chicken. Didn't have as much tea as I expected to.

So I went back to work and I e-mailed my partner on the project, and eventually she e-mailed me back saying that she was kind of disorganized but things were getting done, and she hoped that our meeting tomorrow wouldn’t last for more than two and ½ hours; I had not expected it to last for more than forty-five minutes, and I got really paranoid and began flipping through documentation to reassure myself that I was doing the right thing. I was, or so I still think.

I went over some of the papers I was supplied. Many of them still stank of cigarettes, and I tried to think of the people involved in their creation.

Anything to get my mind off what I was doing.

I started looking at random comics that were sitting around. I recently got all four issues of that Howard Chaykin/Russ Heath miniseries, Legend, for about $4. That’s about $20 off the cover price, which was pretty good. Comics are pretty expensive, you know.

I typed and typed, and I rustled through things, and I would up sitting around and reading most of that issue of zingmagazine I mentioned yesterday, and then I made a silly mistake on my 100+ page document and had to go over about 30 pages to correct it, and then I played on the internet and nothing really captured my attention.

And everything dragged on and now I’m writing to you, dear reader, and after I finish here I’m going to take a walk and buy some coffee, even though I have plenty sitting around in here, because really I just want to take a walk and I need the exercise and I like the coffee at the donut place. And then I’m going to come back in here and work through the night, hopefully not too much of it.

Then I meet with my partner for tomorrow. It’s Halloween tomorrow, so maybe I’ll have time for fun, in between prepping for a big meeting on Wednesday, and a bigger trip on Friday.

And Friday afternoon/evening, I guess I’ll sleep then.

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

*Ah, that felt good. I will have a real Halloween post up sometime tomorrow, probably after dark, ho ho!