I've ben having very strange, inexplicable dreams lately. Might be the combination of exercise late at night and also late meals.
The latest instalment I remember clearly:
I was shopping at a supermarket with someone and we bought a missile right off the shelf. It was about the length of your arm, and cone shaped, and came with a launcher.
Apparently the motivation to buy it was to fire it into North Korea (from my apartment window) and set off a conflict between the two Koreas. Except you can't open the window of my apartment, and once I pulled the trigger, there was just a white hot flare coming from inside the steel housing and a lot of smoke. I knelt with the missile for a long time, waiting for it to launch, and it never did. When we finally opened it up, it resembled gravelly soil - the sheer heat had melted the components into little pieces. Then, in the dream, I remarked to the faceless companion that was with me (not sure who it was), that it is a bit strange that a Supermarket was selling missiles. Maybe what had happened was part of its design.
Having just written this, it occurs to me that the stress of having a missile about to go off, but you don't know when, or if it even will...well, it's very graphic rendering of your boss saying, "Last chance". I think it was my way of defining the associated uncertainty and implicit peril. And the fact that the missile wasn't real and couldn't have been, represents the inherent falseness of the alarm, or at least, my confusion about it. That's my analysis, for what it's worth. It seems to make sense, doesn't it?
Did not have a very restful sleep as a result, and also Annie called at 10:10, and our half an hour conversation basically ended the bit of deep sleep (gamma?) that I was getting.
I saw a very interesting documentary of POW's held by the Japanese in Singapore. One lady visited her cell (a Japanese descended woman with an Australian accent but a Japanese mother) and seemed quite unemotional, revisiting the place where she'd been incarcerated. Until she found a little bird lying dead on the windowsill. Then she started crying and shaking uncontrollably. She explained that she had been just like the bird, wanting to be free, and like the bird, fighting and knocking herself against the bars of the window. But the bird had died without being free, and all her feelings were unlocked during this process of transference.
I remember once as a teenager a budgie that my brother had had for almost ten years died. I remember it as one of the last times in my life that I cried. But I remember thinking that for this poor animal, all its life, all it would ever have was gone. It seemed to me that life is an enormously small and fragile and fleeting thing, and our deaths bring us back to a startling humility as we are covered in ordinary stuff like soil, and leaves, a cigarette butt and plastic bottle top. There's really nothing glorious about death, despite our fantasies that their might be. It is simply the end of our waking lives.
Lots of rain in Korea. My inner thighs are very sore after last night'
s run, because the cotton formed a knot, which became wet with sweat and then started chaffing. The skin is raw and chewed away, so I'm walking around, trying not to look too much like a cowboy.
Will cycle tonight at 11:30pm on the indoor trainer. Don't think the skin will be painful as it's properly separated by the tight lycra.
Next week Monday is a holiday. Already thinking about that.
Today, though, is payday. ;-)
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