January 11, 2013

Thursday was the bottom of some cycle or other. I know it was the bottom because I feel better today, though the reason for any of it is difficult to say. Things are wrong, but that once said still leaves a mystery. Annihilated because the cleaning people did not come AGAIN–after I stayed away to accommodate them–though of course that was the tip of a sunken Everest. Exhausted by discouragement the way one never is by labor.

Went to school after long absence. Planted the Christmas cactus start (it was flowering over its tiny roots, a sort of coral orange), filled the bird feeder, did my syllabi. My schedule is lousy this semester, all five days, often with one class only in the middle of the day, but last semester’s was exquisite, so one takes the roll of the dice.

Took Marco to the Magnetic Theater for a show of comic sketches about sex. The show was several levels of magnitude better than what one expected– witty, after all, and telling and well done, and not too many plays on the name "Dick"–and Marco, who’d had a worse (or at least more objectively disastrous) day than I chuckled all the way through. His catastrophes are financial and I can help and have in the past helped him through. Mine are emotional, and though he could help to some degree, the offer is never made.

Woke to a very extended and detailed dream. Acres of rolling fields and bits of villages had been covered with canvas or other material, which made a sort of cave or labyrinth in which one could wander for hours in darkness. Fairgrounds were at one end of it, so perhaps it was a kind of carnival attraction, but we always entered somewhere remote, and wandered a while before we could get our bearings. The land obscured is different from the land revealed by day. Not having our bearings was part of the fun. Local artists had workshops or shows in various corners, and there would be remnants of human activity that might have been ordinary in the light, but which looked mysterious and complicated in the dark. I climbed one huge set of stairs, and at the top a big guy had decided to slide down the banister. I told him it was a bad idea in the dark, but he was so eager. He fell and broke his fingers, and ministering women materialized out of the black to help him and– it didn’t seem so ghoulish in the dream–lick the blood away. I was happy in the dark labyrinth, and kept welcoming the next puzzle, the next surprise, the next revelation.