silent partner

I was at some kind of wedding celebratation with people from my country. There were a group of people at a table hear us, who looked rough and tough. They were singing some old songs that support rebel fighters / terrorists (depends on your view). Some butch women from that table came over to our table. I was with a friend, Valerie, who is also from where I grew up and is married and lives there. The butch women wanted to fight us because they knew we didn't 'agree' with the politics of the song. They accused us of not supporting them by saying, "Oh, you are from...(name of place)". On our table there was a big jar of Vaseline. One woman grabbed my hands so I was on the ground and she held me down. Next thing she said she liked me or something like that. I got up and said "no way". Myself and Valerie went to sit at a bench which was in another corner of the room farther away to "talk about it". It was like we were getting ready to gossip. Valerie said that one of the butch women was married with 2 kids and was (excuse the expression) "banging" her sister's sister. My reaction while she was saying it was a "that is terrible" expression, but my reply to her was "that is stupid because your sister's sister IS your sister". Valerie said that in our culture, people would not say "that is stupid", but they would take the statement at face value and understood what she meant. Then I felt guilty. I woke up.

At first, I was filled with the questions of 'how' and 'why' that this texts raises. I wondered if there would be an 'answer', a solution that made sense of the strange way time, moving about a city and relationships were being presented. Slowly, (perhaps realising that it would take a while to get to the end) my focus as a reader shifted and I felt I was reading some of the passages as much in their own context, instead of just as part of a larger meaning. I was enjoying the shifts in the relationships and identites. It started not to bother me whether Ryder and Sofie were strangers, lovers or husband and wife and accepted they could be all three or had been at one time. I became more interested in what they were saying to each other in some of their exchanges. I enjoyed the way the text showed the different tones and hidden meanings that exist in exchanges between two people who supposedly know each other intimately. I do think that reading the book in a course on dreams opens my mind to be more accepting of the more fantastic and 'unreal' elements in the book.

I am not remembering any dreams these days. My theory is that I am going to bed late, sleeping very 'heavily' and the alarm is literally blasting me awake. Saying that, this morning I was "in between" waking and sleeping, in a very light almost-awake sleep and I was having the rather monotonous dream that my car had to be moved from the driveway it was blocking. It seemed very real - in a way I knew I was not awake but the dream seemed to be nagging me to wake up and move my car. It was that same thought over and over. In reality my car is not blocking the driveway but was a few days before, when I went to visit the people where I used to live (it's their driveway). It seems like a very minor anxious thought in waking life "is it ok to leave the car there?" from a few days ago, came up in my half asleep state in a repetitive and annoying way. I have much more anxiety about getting everything done at the end of the semester, but instead of dreaming about papers due and finals, the brain seemed to be stuck on one small thought from a few days ago.

Research.. research... it sounds so college-like, so intelligent, so....time consuming! I actually like the 'idea' of research. Perhaps like a detective I will come across something that is deep in the bowels of some library which shines a bright light on a great idea... This is a dream! In reality, I search the Cuny+ for a couple of hours, get some titles, go looking on the shelves to discover... the book is nowhere to be found or when I do find it, the title does not match what I am looking for. One example, beware of books with the word 'Modern' or 'Contemporary' in their title - they could be written any time in the last century. Keeping in mind that this is supposed to be a blog entry and not a rant, I have to say, the internet "rocks" when it comes to looking for articles and criticisms. I can only imagine how time consuming it used to be to go through journals and magazines to find articles, instead of just typing a topic into a search engine to get the article available to download in a few minutes. I think to get better at research the skill I would like to develop, is the ability to hone in on what I need more quickly - then I could get beyond the 'search' to the all important 'reading' part of 'researching'.

My friend had these two dreams in the same night (or technically day, because he works nights.) In the first Diane Von Furstenberg ( a fashion designer ) is opening a new restaurant. He is sitting in the restaurant at a table with other guys he did not know. He takes note of the interior - white, wood and with black panelling, and large open windows. Turns out, he is there to get a job as restaurant manager. Interesting restaurant, because there was also a masseuse giving massages right in the room. Next, he is on a higher floor in an office building giving a presentation as to why he wants the job. He said the dream felt detailed and intense.
In the other dream, he is at a gym with a man he knows in real life. This man is Fijian and stocky. The equipment at the gym is old style - iron and steel / metal and pipes - no cables. All the guys there working out are weight lifters. As my friend put it, "there was no aerobics". He and the Fijian guy were discussing how the old machines are way better than the new ones.

It's true that the people of the fictious city, and we the readers, are left "Unconsoled" at the end. The ending is intruiging and still somewhat elusive, which is fitting with the rest of the novel. I think I have just scratched the surface. Sometimes, like Ryder, I simultaneously know, and don't know what is happening in the book. I found that when we spoke about the novel in class, it became more comic in the re-telling than it was when reading it. It seems to be the type of work that will be funnier when it is re-read. (For me that is reminiscent of the movie "Trainspotting" which has some heavy drug scenes, deaths, betrayal, addiction etc. - but when I re-watch it I get more and more into the music the jokes and the style, so it becones a different type of experience). I think that without the expectation of a definitive 'conclusion', that I would have on a second reading, it would give me more time and space to delve into and appreciate the style of the novel, and understand the relationships and sub-plots better.
I do enjoy and admire the style and strangeness of the book. I like that it makes me think about what is possible in a writing style.

I dreamt I was in another place, not NY, but a town with a town center shopping area. The houses were older style than now. In one part of the dream there was a child who was 'mine', but I had not brought her up. (I do not have a child in reality.) Her age shifted a few times. The scene I remember most clearly is that I was in town center and she was there also with her father, who I knew (not necessary her biological father) and people were asking me, "Is she yours?" My answer was "Yes, can you believe it?" implying that I was too young to have daughter of teenage age. Then I said - "Well, I am not that young". Next part I remember, she was younger, about six or seven and she wanted to go into town on her bicycle. We were in a house and her father was sleeping in another room. She told me that he told her she must leave five minutes earlier than usual to go into town on her bike, because he had recently been talking to someone who told him that the traffic was getting worse. I was in her room looking for what clothes etc. she would need. I could hear her tell someone what was going on. Then I was telling her that "men get to a certain age and they go a bit funny - it's called menopause". She then asked me if she should ignore what he said.

A mouse in hibernation