(no subject)

The lovely nbbmom requests that we revisit posts from a year ago and reflect. I actually didn't post on November 28th last year, so here is the next post I did, dated December 1:

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Courtney Love Understands Me!
How's that for a title worthy of a barely-teen stalker wanna-be? Though anyone who stalks Courtney Love better be prepared for the possibility of Courtney kicking their butt to the moon.

I mentioned earlier that I often dream of the ocean at night. It's always a calm, onyx sea, and there are usually strange fish or other...organisms...under the surface. I don't necessarily feel in danger or anything -- I don't feel I'll drown or get eaten by sharks or anything, but there's something disquieting and just wrong about it. It's a dream that makes me uneasy. Sometimes I wonder if it's just because I'm so familiar with the ocean, that I know somehow that I'm dreaming (though it isn't lucid). Things are rarely 'normal' in dreams, and maybe my unease with my dream ocean is a Castanada-esque 'look at your hands in your dreams' way of letting me know it's not real.

Anyway, I have another reoccuring yet vaguely unsettling dream. I'm standing on the ground, looking at the dark night sky. There are tons of stars, of all different colors, but they're moving randomly around. Some just vibrate in place, some slowly cruise around, and some shoot out of the sky like meteors. In this one, I'm sometimes afraid I'll fall into that crawling chaos (which really does seem Lovecraftian in a Nyarlathotep kinda way), but I definately know something is wrong with the sky. Since I'm a big astronomy fan, maybe this is like the ocean dream.

So, I'm listening to Hole's "Violet" after work, and the first two lines, which I've never noticed before, go like this:

And the sky was made of amethyst
And all the stars were just like little fish

and I was like, "Yeah...I know what that's like." No crashing sense of empathy or anything, I just liked the lyrics.
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It's interesting, cuz I've been thinking lately how much those two dreams have changed since I've been divorced. I have dreamed of stars, and they are more or less normal (nothing is ever really normal in dreams). I have dreamed of the ocean, and though there have been organisms swimming in them, they've seemed normal as well. I've even dreamed of the sea in the daytime, which was rare before. The sense of dread I've had with both dreams has been absent.

(no subject)

Some ramblings about my holidays last week.

Ate lunch one afternoon at a marina on the Intracoastal that my family frequents. Decent food and a wonderful view of Sebastian Inlet. There's a boat for sale there that I've had my eye on for a while. It's #2 on my list -- there's a beautiful boat at a marina a few miles north that is my #1 choice. Both are still for sale, several months after I first saw them. I'm hoping to get one of them late winter/early spring. As I was walking back to the restaurant from the docks, there was a nice, late-model 32' cruiser docked up waiting for the fuel pump. On the bow, it had a tiny little white pennant with a black cross in a red circle. I did a double take...a Klan pennant on a $75,000 boat? I figured I saw it wrong and ate my lunch, had a Red Stripe, life is good. I walked by it again on the way out and noticed another, larger flag in the cockpit that left no doubt. Definitely Klan. I know assholes always advertise, but this guy takes the cake. I'm a firm libertarian, quick to defend the rights of others and their opinions no matter how un-PC, but I found myself contemplating the legal fees arising from "accidentally" scuttling an expensive pleasureboat.

Sunday night, the last night I was home, I fished the Intracoastal dock facing west into the sunset. There was no wind and the river, over two miles wide at that point, was smooth as glass. The running mullet broke the surface with fins, tails, and occasional full-body leaps. Dolphin and snook were feeding on the mullet, causing an occasional splash and smooth ripples that probably traveled for miles. The setting sun cast a blood-red color across the surface of the river, tiny wavelets would reflect the indigo behind me. "I am happy," I thought to myself, and I didn't necessarily mean at that moment, on vacation. Yes, I am questioning all sorts of things in my life. Jobstress and business commitments are testing me. I am not living where I would choose to live. I have a very slippery grip on my relationships, a current semi-relationship that has no future, and a future virtual-relationship that has fascinated me these last few weeks yet has no corporal present. Yet, no life is perfect. There is always a danger of thinking: "If I only lived here I would be happy" or "If I only had this particular job I would be happy." Somehow, there is always something ahead, some other wish or obstacle that seems to prevent us from full bliss. Full bliss is an illusion, an asymptote that can never be reached. I live life now, I am happy now.