Mmm, yesterday was the best Erie day I've had since, I don't know, two summers back? It started out with nightmares, sure, but then I had this ridiculously hot dream involving half-drag and disarray and a bet we can both win. Let the subject of the dream know immediately, and then spent all day corresponding about it, which left me in quite the state of distraction for all other affairs.
Which is okay, because I spent two hours of my day fighting with an old lady, so it's good that I held a lot back. My mom and her friend are really into this new thing, The Secret? Look it up. Oprah loves it, apparently, and I mean, it makes sense, because it's sort of empowering, and all about the power of our minds, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul guy is in on it. Let me just let you in on The Secret: like attracts like. That's it. If you focus on positive things, and expect goodness and abundance to come into your life, then you will. Likewise, if you think "fat thoughts," you will be overweight - the book claims that thyroid conditions are just something made up to shift the blame from our thoughts, the real culprit in, like, every illness or condition ever. Still with me? Because here's a real gem: those really ghastly situations, like the Holocaust or 9-11 or any war, ever, where staggering numbers of people lost their lives? Wouldn't have happened if those people had been thinking positively. According to the book, victims were drawn into those situations because they were on the same negative frequency. Needless to say, I found this wholly unbelievable and disempowering - it ignores the fact that our all-powerful thoughts have created some really powerful systems of oppression, and that one person's positive thinking, however powerful, may not always be able to contend with these other, older forces working against them. Maureen said that it wasn't up to me, or anyone else, to worry about that, because none of this is real, and this world is an illusion, and we'll all be better off in Eternity. I envy that kind of faith, really, but I can't bring myself to disregard all of this and clear my mind and wait for something better.
Speaking of something better: I got to see Kamal yesterday, for the first time since December! He got into both colleges he applied to, so we took him out to dinner in celebration, and he was his old silly self, but more grown-up, somehow. That boy really is like a brother to me, and dinner was like having the whole family assembled again, minus my grandmother. I watched television with my mother, and did some reading, and had just started Love! Valour! Compassion! when Marshall called and I decided to drop everything in favor of a long-awaited phonecall. Marshall's phone is all the time dying on her; luckily, she's got a webcam. When I saw her show up in that little grainy window, I cried. So much for being tough, huh? It got to the point where we were Mapquesting directions, then having to talk ourselves out of impulsive actions. Our talk got all teary and giggly and overwhelming, and her phone died for real before we could officially say goodnight - six hours after we started talking.
I was hoping for more hot dreams and, instead, got rape nightmares again. But then I had this bizarre dream, in which I was maybe sixteen and babysitting these four kids, but their mother was abusing them, I think? Something really bad was going down, anyway, and I took them out into the woods, where we lived in this ugly lean-to shelter. We snuck back into the house a few times, after making sure the parents had left, to get warmer clothes and blankets and things, and a few books, and I sent the kids off to school every day, looking mostly-presentable, and we were doing it, somehow. The oldest boy was actually Shaquil from the summer camp I worked in 2005, and he had the same hard attitude and tendency to act out and throw things around, and there was this rift between him and the other three kids, and it was really distressing me, and I was having such a hard time balancing all of it, but I mean, those kids never missed a day of school, and never went without what they really needed, and I woke up feeling sort of sad that it was only a dream, even though the last thing I need right now is to kidnap four children and hide them in the woods. I have a lot of dreams about taking kids from bad situations and trying to mother on my own, and that's probably not a great sign.
Right now, I'm going to finish Love! Valour! Compassion!, which is going to have to inspire my writing. If I get this story done, I get to go into Cleveland tomorrow to see dinosaur fossil casts! And y'all know all about my mad passion for natural history museums, so really, this story must get written. I always work better with a deadline, anyway, and now I've got The Secret on my side, and a phone date with Young Steven himself tonight, so I really can't go wrong.
Which is okay, because I spent two hours of my day fighting with an old lady, so it's good that I held a lot back. My mom and her friend are really into this new thing, The Secret? Look it up. Oprah loves it, apparently, and I mean, it makes sense, because it's sort of empowering, and all about the power of our minds, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul guy is in on it. Let me just let you in on The Secret: like attracts like. That's it. If you focus on positive things, and expect goodness and abundance to come into your life, then you will. Likewise, if you think "fat thoughts," you will be overweight - the book claims that thyroid conditions are just something made up to shift the blame from our thoughts, the real culprit in, like, every illness or condition ever. Still with me? Because here's a real gem: those really ghastly situations, like the Holocaust or 9-11 or any war, ever, where staggering numbers of people lost their lives? Wouldn't have happened if those people had been thinking positively. According to the book, victims were drawn into those situations because they were on the same negative frequency. Needless to say, I found this wholly unbelievable and disempowering - it ignores the fact that our all-powerful thoughts have created some really powerful systems of oppression, and that one person's positive thinking, however powerful, may not always be able to contend with these other, older forces working against them. Maureen said that it wasn't up to me, or anyone else, to worry about that, because none of this is real, and this world is an illusion, and we'll all be better off in Eternity. I envy that kind of faith, really, but I can't bring myself to disregard all of this and clear my mind and wait for something better.
Speaking of something better: I got to see Kamal yesterday, for the first time since December! He got into both colleges he applied to, so we took him out to dinner in celebration, and he was his old silly self, but more grown-up, somehow. That boy really is like a brother to me, and dinner was like having the whole family assembled again, minus my grandmother. I watched television with my mother, and did some reading, and had just started Love! Valour! Compassion! when Marshall called and I decided to drop everything in favor of a long-awaited phonecall. Marshall's phone is all the time dying on her; luckily, she's got a webcam. When I saw her show up in that little grainy window, I cried. So much for being tough, huh? It got to the point where we were Mapquesting directions, then having to talk ourselves out of impulsive actions. Our talk got all teary and giggly and overwhelming, and her phone died for real before we could officially say goodnight - six hours after we started talking.
I was hoping for more hot dreams and, instead, got rape nightmares again. But then I had this bizarre dream, in which I was maybe sixteen and babysitting these four kids, but their mother was abusing them, I think? Something really bad was going down, anyway, and I took them out into the woods, where we lived in this ugly lean-to shelter. We snuck back into the house a few times, after making sure the parents had left, to get warmer clothes and blankets and things, and a few books, and I sent the kids off to school every day, looking mostly-presentable, and we were doing it, somehow. The oldest boy was actually Shaquil from the summer camp I worked in 2005, and he had the same hard attitude and tendency to act out and throw things around, and there was this rift between him and the other three kids, and it was really distressing me, and I was having such a hard time balancing all of it, but I mean, those kids never missed a day of school, and never went without what they really needed, and I woke up feeling sort of sad that it was only a dream, even though the last thing I need right now is to kidnap four children and hide them in the woods. I have a lot of dreams about taking kids from bad situations and trying to mother on my own, and that's probably not a great sign.
Right now, I'm going to finish Love! Valour! Compassion!, which is going to have to inspire my writing. If I get this story done, I get to go into Cleveland tomorrow to see dinosaur fossil casts! And y'all know all about my mad passion for natural history museums, so really, this story must get written. I always work better with a deadline, anyway, and now I've got The Secret on my side, and a phone date with Young Steven himself tonight, so I really can't go wrong.
1 comment:
i'm so sorry you're having these bad dreams, but look how you're the heroine. hmm. swooping those kids up and being like heyll naw, we takin it to the woods! and i brought love! valour! compassion! to school last time, so we'll have to watch it soon. it's so good.
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