REM blogging.

No, I’m not talking about the band, I’m talking about when blogs–or at least people with blogs–enter your dreams.

Monday night/Tuesday morning I dreamed I was at a feast. There were about 20 people gathered around a large and sturdy old wooden table. Most people were fuzzy and I don’t remember who many of then were (although in the dream I did know them). There was a vague sense that these were people I know from online, but I may just be projecting that, post somnium.

I know for sure that Lisa was there, because I was telling her about my dilema. The feast was in celebration of Suebob’s birthday, and I felt that my birthday present was inadequate. One end of the table was stacked with large glittering gifts, all boxed up and wrapped in shimmering paper and large colorful bows. My gift was simply a pen–although I think it was a rather nice pen–and it wasn’t giftwrapped. I wanted to duck out of the party and quickly buy and wrap a big present, but I wasn’t sure where I was or if there were any stores around. I liked the pen and the idea of giving it as a gift, but it seemed so underwhelming next to the tower of pizzazz at the end of the table.

Next thing I knew, Suebob had cornered me, so I presented the pen. My last recollection is of seeing my right hand, palm up, with the pen laid across it. Unfortunately, I don’t know what her reaction was.

Let the purge begin

As promised, I began purging some of the useless excess from my apartment (and thus, my life). Here’s what the purge list looks like so far:

  • A two-and-a-half foot high stack of old magazines and professional journals
  • A small stack of way obsolete university textbooks
  • A small stack of regular books (listed below, in case anyone wants one)
  • 14 t-shirts
  • 9 collared shirts
  • 5 pairs of pants
  • 5 pairs of shorts

I feel lighter already, although this is only scratching the surface. Here’s the list of books that I’m getting rid of:

  • A stack of Canadian literary journals from the 1980s (Canadian Fiction Magazine, The Antigonish Review, The Malahat Review, etc.)
  • The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)
  • Slowness (Milan Kundera)
  • The Back Room (Anne Copeland)
  • Slapstick (Kurt Vonnegut)
  • Two Solitudes (Hugh MacLennan)
  • Return of the Sphinx (Hugh MacLennan)
  • An Appetite for Life (Charles Ritchie)
  • The Great Depression (David A. Shannon)
  • Bradshaw On: The Family (John Bradshaw)
  • The Arabs: Myth and Reality (Gerald Butt)
  • Pinball (Jerzy Kosinski)
  • Home Fires (Kenneth Radu)
  • Travels (Michael Crichton)

Must purge more…

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I’m not a “joiner”

Yet here I am, joining the crowd who do Smattering’s Friday Five. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. No, it’s just that like I said, I’m not a “joiner.”

So here goes:

1. What makes you homesick?
Nothing. I’m not inclinded towards homesickness. I’m always very excited to be where ever I am, because I love places, almost all places. Even really lame or awful places are exciting to be because I love discovering why they are so lame or awful. Even Cincinnati, which was as dull as dirt, was exciting in it’s own bland way. Or, more accurately, I was excited to be discovering–first hand–the city’s dullness. The only places I can think of that I couldn’t wait to get out of were Beja, Portugal, and some dead little town in the middle of Provence, France (which is odd, given that I love Provence).

2. Where is “home” for you? Is it where you are living now, or somewhere else (ie: Mom & Dad’s house, particular state/city)?
That is difficult to say, because I don’t feel particularly “home” anywhere. My apartment in Westmount is somewhat “homey,” especially with Spiff the cat there to yell at me every night, but I never pine for the place. Neither of my parents are alive, and I left the the town where I grew up almost 20 years ago (and have barely gone back to visit), so that certainly doesn’t feel like home. (Perhaps this is why I don’t get homesick.) If I had to declare a home, I would have to say the Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood in Montreal is as close as it gets. I’ve lived in that area for ten of the almost 15 years that I have passed in Montreal (with hiatus to St. Henri, Quartier Latin, and Westmount), so that is the place that I know the best, and the area where I feel most natural.

3. What makes it home for you? People? Things?
People, cafes, bars, restuaruants, and stores that I know and love. But primarily it is the memories–this is where my brightest and fondest memories exist (aside from travel memories).

4. Where is the furthest you’ve been from home, miles-wise?
If we assume Montreal (the Plateau) is my home, then 4149 miles (6677 km). That would be Budapest (1995). (Here is a fabulous distance calculator.)

5. What are your plans for this weekend?
As usual, try to get organizized. Specifically, I’m going to tidy up my study, get my income tax papers together, and purge some old clothes, books, and magazines. I’m also going to review my Mexico photos and maybe put up a little presentation in here. Somewhere in there I hope to find myself hanging over a table full of pints, but I have no specific plans for that in terms of time or place.

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Dream!

This was a scary one, and it happened many hours ago, so it’s a bit fuzzy now. There were many, many details, but all I remember is the gist of it.

The setting was some kind of “roughing it” campsite, much rougher than the cabanas where I stayed in Mexico last week. The environment was more like a rain forest than a warm jungle. It was cool and damp, and there was a lot of off-and-on rain. There were probably 15 or 20 people around, and although I don’t know who they were, there was a sense of familiarity, as if we had spent some weeks together already.

This would have been fine, except there was a pervasive feeling of something being wrong. Specifically, something wrong with me. I have dreams of supernatural powers fairly often–levitation, flying, telekinesis, etc.–but this one was much more powerful. In my dream, I knew that I had somehow tapped into an immensely powerful force, one that I was unfamiliar with, and did not welcome. It was in me, although I didn’t want it.

In my flying dreams, I can take off and fly by an act of will, but there’s a cost in terms of mental energy. It requires a huge amount of concentration, and it drains me quickly, although once I feel I’ve hit the spot, so to speak, I can take off and fly for as long as I can hold that thought. The same applies to bending things with my mind, or moving things from across the room. In my dreams, I am quite good at these things, and I confess that I’ve tried them all in the waking life (since I remember how to do them), but have never been able to muster the kind of mental concentration and subsequent transcendence as I can in my dreams.

The scary thing is that I always feel as if this power is not entirely within me, but is something external that I am tapping into–something truly supernatural. It scares me, which prevents me (in my dreams) from going too far into it, as I feel another presence that I’m not ready to confront.

In last night’s dream, the power I held was to shake the ground, from deep within, like an earthquake. I don’t know what it meant, and it scared the bejeeziz out of me, yet I felt compelled to do it. I carried this secret around for some time, and finally started to confide in people that I could do this. Of course no one believed me, but after I had enough people who were at least curious, I lay down on the ground to demonstrate.

Please remember that my state of mind was not that of someone showing off, but of someone needing to show something that should not be shown–as if I were revealing the scene of a crime. I was scared, but I felt a deep compulsion to see this through, to get it out. So I lay on the wet ground and started to concentrate. I could feel it building in my brain, and then the power came over me like the nightmare that it was and the ground started to quiver and tremble, and then it to shake and shake more. The sound was tremendous as the ground hammered into itself beneath me, and the hastily-built camping structures around me started to collapse, and the earth on the surrounding hills began to avalanche. People were screaming and I kept it up, more, more. Then, just as I felt as if I was about to go completely over the edge–to who knows where–I finally eased off and the ground calmed itself and finally lay still.

I was scared to death, and so were those around me. What was this power for? Why me? Why can’t I just ignore it? As people started to crowd around I felt myself being lifted and everything took on a different feeling and then I realized I was waking up. So I woke, and I lay there in the dark for a long time, too afraid to move. I finally reached over and turned on the radio, seeking something to distract me. Eventually I dozed off, without realizing it, and had a scrap of a dream about a poltergeist in the room moving things around. I woke from that and turned on the light for a few minutes, just to reset my perceptions. Finally I fell back asleep and slept peacefully until morning.