Virtual Light

i'm in my apartment, it looks different, of course, but i'm very sure of where i am. my uncle comes into the living room at tells me i'm late. i jump and feel very guilty about being late, i try and grab my coat on my way out the door but instead grab my dog's leash. it's not cold out so i dont really need my coat anyway. i am on the street and my uncle is gone, a woman asks me where my dog is and i yell at her that i am late and don't have time for her stupid questions. she sighs and begins so look very creepy... so much so that i am a bit afraid and now even more anxious to leave. i arive somewhere, turns out i was not late afterall. a man wearing a bright orange raincoat hands me a gadet that is sort of like a remote control vis-a-vi ipod. he tells me "you have 10 minutes, go" i known that i have to hack into this machine and use it to guide a series of little metal balls into concentric circles, forming a sort of target. once i have complete this part i need to get on a shuttle and direct it to nose dive into the middle circle. the balls contain a special alloy that will absorb all the impact (but only if i did the first part correctly) the balls on the outer circle eminate a sort of force feild that will keep the ship suspended vertically. i never get to actually do all this, but i sort of know that i can and in that way i complete my "mission" anyway. i am about the hand the ipodlike device over to orange-raincoat-guy when a new guy comes in, this one is in a black jumpsuit, but he's not a pilot, he is a scientist named Lared. Lared tells me that i have done well and am rewarded with the patent rights to any of the devices i helped build, only they wont go public until the year 2080, so i have to think hard about which device i'm going to pick (dream-logic, huh?) i pick the balls that absorb shock, and he tells me i picked the wrong one- i should have picked the raincoat. i am ashamed for making such an oversight and wake up feeling like i lost something very important.

I LOVE THIS BOOK!
i can't put it down, it sort of sucks me in... and i get very tied up inside when all of the "what the hell?" moments happen, i want to shout at the book "wait, go back, EXPLAIN!" and yet I describe this reading experiance as enjoyable. hmm.
the part where the Gustav was explaining his estrangement from Sophie almost made me cry because for some reason it seemed like something so plausible, something i would be capable of doing- just stop talking to someone" and it struck a very personal note with me.
the book feels familiar, like a dejavu, and i keep trying to compare it to another novel but i can't.
I love the way Ishiguro uses language, while the work is so unique and experimental, it still feels subtle- like it takes a while for the reader to remember that something strange is in fact going on.
i love the way the people relate to art and music- i don't quite "get it" but it's one of my favorite elements of the book. i wish i could understand more of the references and allusions to music.
i'm excited to see where it goes from here... i have a feeling there won't be many dramatic turns but lots of micro-dramas and isolated moments of action or conflict ect...

i am having such a hard time with this i don't know why. i hate my topic, or more accurately- i hate my relationship with my topic... it feels like we're fighting and it's the one that loses its temper too quickly and i'm the one sulking in a corner eating my hair.

it's been a rough couple of months for me in terms of writing anything so this shouldn't come as such a shock but i am dumbfounded by my inability to just go about this properly. blah! i wonder if there is any correlation between writer's block and dream block... because i've dreaming more than ever recently... but then that might just be because of this class.

i love research, but even that has felt forced and unnecessarily difficult so far. i also underestimated the amount of work our preliminary assignments (presentation, bibliography etc)would require. i've never really had the experiance of writing anything (for school) that took me more than a week...so that might be where some of the resistance is coming from.

ultimately i am excited and even optomistic about the project and the conference and even the process of creating this great thing with the class, wich is good (right?) but right now is hard.

so it goes...

i recall a conversation about "fever dreams" a few weeks ago and would like to share the only one i have ever experianced...
i was sick with the flu and had a fever somewhere around 103. in my dream i grew to be very big. it was fun at first but quickly became frightening... i couldn't stop how big i got, i kept getting taller and taller until i was so tall that i start to fall over and i was so "high up" that the fall would kill me. i woke up during this "falling" so scared, i couldnt fall back asleep. i have no idea why the dream continued to scare me so much after i woke up... i guess it was the fever.
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this is a dream i had very recently: i'm walking on lots of oddly shaped peddles; each time i take a step the peddles are pushed to the side to reveal a sort of pattern on the floor beneath me. i want to figure out what that symbol/picture is and i know i have to run around the entire area pushing the peddles to the sides. as i'm doing this, the peddles melt away like ice cream and i start to slip and lose my balance. i decide it would just be easier if i ice skate across the area and begin to do so. the ice skates carve into the stuff beneath my feet and it begins to fall apart. the breaks in the floor create a sort of crevice and i start to fall into it. now everything is very colorful and vivid and fast- i'm dissoriented but calm. i "land" in a garden with very strange flowers and vegetations, i'm really happy because i've been looking for a garden like this for a long time and have finally found it. i remember that i never got to figure out what that design was from before and this puts a damper on the effect of the garden. i decide that the pattern must have been of the flowers and trees i see there and go off searching for which exacts flower it was. i walk over a bridge made of a cork/foam type substance and look over the edge. there is no water but a path and i want to go on that path. suddenly i'm on the path and i look down and realize it's the same peddles form before but they don't reveal any sort of pattern underneath. i bend to pick up some of the stones and they are very warm, i decide to big a whole in the path and after doing this for a few minutes i realize my hands have turned yellow and this scares me. i sort of freak out and end up waking myself up- i think there was more of this dream left for me to discover and i woke up to soon....

a poem by Allen Ginsberg that i've been trying to find and share with the class. i finally found it in one of my books but cant seem to find any online text of it. it is called "understand this is a dream" it's pretty long so i'm not going to type out the whole thing right now, just the first few lines. the title is also the name of an emo band's, "the julliana theory", first album (and i learned that from googling)

Real as a dream
What shall I do with this great opportunity to fly?
What is the interpretation of this planet, this moon?
If I can dream that I dream/ and dream anything dreamable/ can I dream
I am awake/ and why do that?
I dream that I move
And the effort moves and moves
Till I move/ and my arm hurts
Then I wake up/ dismayed/ I was dreaming/ I was waking
When I was dreaming still/ just now.
And try to remember next time in dreams
That I am in dreaming.

things are moving along... geting better... my project and i are still fighting but we're geting counseling and working out our issues so hopefuly all will be good come february.
i changed many of the focal points of my paper from my original conception of it. doing so made it easier by making it tamer, easier to handle... but it made it more difficult too, it threw me for a loop, forced me to reconcieve the whole thing and redirect it a bit. i'm keeping the general idea of it but the process is now very different.
i have yet to really "prove" anything and it turns out that i might not be able to... but i know i can make a strong case for what i'm doing so i've got motive (motivation, maybe?)

i wake up in my room, I'm getting married and everything is very rushed. i go to some place (it's not the location of the event but some obscure outdoor area) and take out my dress. my dress is blue! this is not supposed to happen! i am upset and frustrated and try and tell people that there has been a mistake and they gave me a blue dress! no one understands, they all tell me that i am crazy and that the dress is pure white. i am very upset and i start to think that maybe i am crazy.

i leave this place to go for a walk (in the dress) there is a path leading up a small mountain with lots of snow. i walk up the path for a couple of minutes until a large bear stops me. he tells me i shouldn't leave home over the dress and that if they think it's white then it is white (the implication being that perception is all that matters) i tell the bear that deep down they know it is not really white and that i cant deceive people on my wedding day. he tells me i am very wise and shakes snow off of a large branch. he makes a huge snow ball and throws it at me, it becomes a dress that is the whitest thing i have ever seen, it almost hurts my eyes.

i thank him and am about to leave but he warns me that because i am so white now i might get lost with the snow because there is no way to make a distinction between the snow and myself. i tell him that i like it better that way and everything gets all wobbly and foggy and i wake up.

this is not my dream, its my close friend's. She and I have always tried at interpreting each other’s dreams, ever since we were little... a few weeks ago she told me this dream and i had no idea what to say... it's very disturbing and actually pretty disgusting. i was debating if i should post it here because it's just so unsettling and nauseating.
I’m putting it up with the disclaimer that it might just "gross you out" so if you don't want to read it don't, but if you do, please offer your interpretation so i might come back to her with some ideas. she stressed how much this dream bothered her...

i just want to publicly thank professor Tougaw and the class for a great experience. it's been a very unique class in its dynamics and assignments and i think I've gained a great deal... from getting to know you night to movie night to pizza night.... and all the nerve-wracking presentations in between...

I wish you all a beautiful new year's... before the jewish new year (which usually falls out on September), there is a custom of asking for forgiveness for anything bad you might have done to the people in your life- so to secularize this a bit I wish for formally ask forgiveness from all you for all the typos, spelling, and grammar mistakes... there have been far too many, but I'm trying to keep a sort of organic/spontaneous/free-writing type feel to this journal... still this being an english class... I'm sorry for all those utterly unnecessary mistakes that i know permeate this entry just as much.

May 2007 be a good year for us dreamers!