At the sky

I was driving home from my friend's and saw the moon, big and orange-ish, with a dark cloud layered in front of it. It looked as if, after receiving a lesson on how to draw the eyeball first and THEN draw the eyelids over it, a student had taken an inky brush and made a cloud to look like an eyelid over the moon. 

First world problem- all of my new favorite artist's many songs (her immense talent I have determined by hearing two) are UNFINDABLE online and on any music site ever. 

Also, first world victory: I found a parking spot in my part of the mall parking garage where the oppression of the garage-static is lifted, just like when Sylvia Plath talks about her bell jar being lifted by electroshock therapy just enough for a little fresh air in to give her a little bit of will to go on or a little bit of something to wake up. 

There's no time to look at the sky when it's freaking cold outside. Screw it. Find your cat and curl up. 

But there's this one verse in Isaiah in the Bible:  "do you not know? Have you not heard? .... He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and stretches them out like a tent to live in."

And I think about how big the sky can be and how God uses the sky as a hammock. A pretty rad hammock. So the sky is a cool place. 

That's another thing! God doesn't get cold! Not that I know of. Jesus got cold, but God is the great and indescribable I Am; he is above temperature. He can BE fire and be comfortable. 

YAY GOD!

Prophet

I dreamed that I was trying so hard to catch a stink bug in this transparent compartmentalized box with a hole in it. 

When I awoke, there was a stink bug chilling on the straw in my drinking cup. 

I also dreamed that my mom got a new mascara that was really thick and black and wonderful and I was using it. 

In the morning, I was in a hurry and borrowed my mom's more accessible makeup. I grabbed a mascara tube I had not seen before. It was luxurious. (I just went out and bought a tube for myself.)

I am such a prophet. 

If only I could have dreams about bigger things. 

Then again, I kind of enjoy just being a minor prophet with very little pressure. 

On to another dream:

I was swimming back and forth in this setting where if I swam too far in one direction, I would start to run into people studying at desks. Sometimes I might slow down and read book titles (which I don't remember) or try to talk to the students (who didn't answer). I had a few swimming buddies, and if we swam too far in the other direction, we would come to a place with dingy ceiling tiles and bright fluorescent lights above the water. But perhaps I wasn't being clear about the library/student area: it is underwater, or at the level at which we swam. Above the library section was a still pool/garden in the home of a rich woman who was hosting us for some unknown reason. We arrived by carriage and marveled at her plants, lily pads, and gentle waterfalls in our swimsuits. 

Once I had a dream where I was bound and trapped in a pool along with one other person and when I was released I was admitted to a cruel and twisted finishing school for girls, the kind I've read about in novels, only I was a latecomer and that have me more of a denial that it was really happening, more of a drive to overthrow the school government. I think eventually we ended up in the headmistress' quarters, which included a huge faux leapord skin rug (this may be from another dream), and there were several of us with no idea of what we were doing, except maybe looking for something in the dark, but we got caught and the lights went on and it was all very calm and we offered to read a story to the headmistress in bed. 

Disclaimer:  I may have embellished that last dream for lack of true recall. 

Maybe all of my dreams really are prophetic, really truly. It's likely I'll talk to people in a library soon, and maybe annoy them, and I'm riding the train tomorrow, so dingy lights are taken care of. My friend takes me swimming sometimes, check. 

I should take myself more seriously. 

(heheh)

Lolita

Light of my life, fire of my loins. 

I thought these words were the beginning of my favorite Lana del Rey song. 

Before Lana put them down, they were the first words in the book Lolita. 

I always pictured Lolita as this unreal, ethereal blonde whose innocence could not be broken no matter what was done to her. I thought she was beautiful and perhaps a flat character who was not grown up but knew she wanted to do good things in the world, and make friends with animals, and skip through meadows. 

Instead, Lolita is a brown-haired, petulant, naughty, promiscuous girl who doesn't take enough baths and has no respect for her mother. 

And yet the narrator, Humbert, the man who falls in love (or lust) with this youthful teenage girl, is blind to her faults and instead sees his childhood lover; a sort of fairy; a mirage. 

It is as if he is so ill from dissatisfaction with all lovers that cannot replace his dead childhood love, that in one moment of desperation he sees a girl- and unfortunately the girl he saw was the greasy Dolores he comes to call Lolita- and crafts her in his head into exactly what he wants to see. 

Even as Humbert writes his memoir from prison and records Lolita's faults he deems them trifling and in the end writes that he wants his work to be an everlasting monument to the girl. 

The poor, poor man, frustrated to the point of madness since childhood - and had he been real, the purpose of his life would have been? Not to advise us, because his actions were star-crossed, inevitable. His lust, his love was mad and blind.  Not to make us change our minds about perverts by the writing of his book, I hope, except maybe to see them with a little less hate and a little more sadness and helplessness. 

Perhaps to show us how to love the Lolitas of the world.  To love blindly and with abandon the dirty and nasty young things nobody likes. 

Telemarketing

A new tactic, invented by a friend:

"Hello, what faith do you ascribe to? Islam? Well, how about you teach me how to face Mecca and pray on a rug" (after praying) "say, does your rug ever get dirty? Let me introduce you to some special prayer rug shampoos!"

"Hello, can I ask you what you need prayer for today? .... Okay, and you pray to ... Okay, thank you. Let us begin. Our Father, who art in heaven..." (After prayer) "now, I bet you've got some tarnishing crucifixes hanging around your house. I can guarantee you Jesus doesn't like to be neglected in our hearts OR on our walls. Let me tell you about some crucifix-specific cleaning solution that'll really make your Jesus sparkle!"

Prey on customers while they are recovering from making contact with God. Make yourself open to learning from them about their faith. Offer them something related. 

"Hi! Is there anything you need prayer for today? Oh, I see, you're an atheist. Well, do you sometimes find yourself wanting to cave to people like me who offer you solace in prayer? I can introduce you to a variety of sticks you can shove up your ass (pardon my vulgarity) to put you back in a crappy mood and remind you what you believe in."

Come back to me

I was just thinking about the movie "Somewhere In Time" with Jane Seymour and the guy who played superman who's paralyzed now (sorry, I forgot his name!). My family and I visited the hotel on Mackinac island in Michigan. It was a small fee to get into this fancy schmancy hotel to see all of the luscious furniture. Very worth it. They even had little nooks with real telephones that hotel guests could use to make phone calls and simultaneously look really classy. 

I was in the Barnes museum this afternoon. It is an art museum where paintings are hung (what's that word?)-style all over the walls along with metal door fixtures. The rooms are small and only a certain number of people are allowed in at a time. 

In this place, the Barnes, I felt the need to stand up a little straighter and put a little more sophistication in my step, and appear as if I was analyzing and truly appreciating the history and backstory and rendering, etc. of each piece of art. I felt almost like I had to follow the same rules as I might in a cemetery: no smiling, no talking, no laughing. There were people speaking different languages which led me to believe that this crowded place was so dang important that it was worth flying over from Europe to see!  And who was I to laugh and ruin their experience? I just drove an hour to get there. 

Side note: I saw a woman wearing a pair of pants from the retail location at which I worked; I almost asked her if they didn't make it hard to sit down because I'd heard that comment in the fitting rooms from other customers and wanted to know if it was always true. I'm curious about the products I used to sell. But the atmosphere was oppressive there; there was no talking to strangers except to apologize if I stepped between them and the object of their gaze. 

The bathrooms at the museum were lovely: floor-to-ceiling doors and walls and a sink in each stall, even the non-handicapped ones! But while sitting on one of their water-conserving toilets, I noticed that the Barnes used cheap old normal public-bathroom toilet paper. 

It was them that I thought of the Mackinac. At the hotel, which possessed a hoity-toity vibe rivaling that of the Barnes, the toilet paper came in separate sheets that came out of a box as if they were large tissues. They may even have been monogrammed, to match the "disposable" hand towels, which may as well have been made of thick cloth. 

If a place is worth flying across the ocean for, I think the toilets had darn well better have toilet paper you don't have to rip by yourself. It should be pre-ripped, folded, and in a box. And maybe even perfumed. 

Cheers to the Mackinac hotel. 

Though the movie is not with watching. Basically, reeves and Seymour are together in death. (Reeves!  That's his name!)

Twilight zone

I do hate those moments when I find myself there. Don't you ever end up in the twilight zone?  Nobody else is around and it could be 6 am or pm and the light outside your window is tantalizingly indecisive and your mind is still stuck on a drem so you can't quite remember the circumstances of your last going-to-bed, and it's rather frightening because you're unmoored from everything meaningful. Spatially, physically, you're still on your bed and in your room and it's still cold out and the air still has oxygen in it, but TIME!  To lose one's anchor on time is a serious problem. 

And I didn't realize that until this morning as I was reflecting upon the deep confusion that settled over me as I rather suddenly found myself awake this morning.