(no subject)
I woke up from another stupid anxiety dream about fucking everything up at work, went to the loo, sternly told my brain we were not focussing on this bullshit, and went back to sleep to a deeply involved dream about visiting war memorials and castles in a place called Bakum, because I'd failed to get my connecting flight to visit my friend in a more remote town which was called "Finger" which was further west (pronounced differently, although I only saw it on a map). The whole country was called something in the vein of Slovenia or Slovakia but wasn't in Europe and was in some non-existent part of the world where logically you'd think Burma would be except more northerly and Steppe-ish and graced by three consecutive inland seas (one was called the Borovean, I don't remember the other two), which shared borders with, improbably, Afghanistan (proving that my subconscious has no concept of actual geography), and was across the Borovean from some territory which was described on the map as "being fought over by India and China, neither appear to be winning and [actually these other two colour-coded countries] have gained more territory". In the closing moments of my dream I was staying in a very brightly-painted hotel room, waiting for my flight home (it was supposed to be the previous day but apparently Bakum's major airport operated on a fairly lax approach to schedules and for some reason in my dream this did NOT send me into an insane panic spiral), and I had just sold a large red abstract canvas of my own creation to a man for £2000 and was internally laughing my head off. He seemed very happy with it - I realise it's under what people are supposed to pay for paintings of that size (nearly five feet by four feet) but for verisimilitude it was actually on a canvas I'd acquired for free when I was at secondary school (same dimensions) and in my dream I'd also painted it when I was there, so the paint was free too, and basically it represented a massive profit on a few hours' work many years ago and would help prevent me from being out-of-pocket for my holiday to weird fictional north-east Asia.
The castles, or what I remember of them, were pretty rad. One looked more like an English Gothic Cathedral, and there were some English tourists complaining (of course) about the large wooden structure - like an encircling ramp - which had been built about 200 yards out from the edifice. It rose up to about 3 storeys up and went back down again - you weren't allowed inside the castle itself for safety reasons. The tourists were complaining that it spoiled the view. I tried to explain to them that it was so that everyone - including people in wheelchairs - could see all of the castle up close and at different heights and that it was actually very thoughtful and practical especially for something we didn't have to pay to see, but they just huffed at me and said it ruined the look of the thing and that people who couldn't walk just had to "cope with limitations on their lives". I am afraid I said something rather rude to them and left.
Of the war memorials I remember one, which was a dried-out fountain with a kind of mirrored mosaic under a stone statue. It showed an ancient king astride his horse etc, but the mirrored mosaic itself showed his crest and was quite clever because it was all made of the same stuff - the crest was visible because those shards of mirror reflected light from a different direction, being set at a different angle. I remember being quite taken with it. My grandmother (Why was she there? who knows) was not impressed, which sounds like my experience of every family outing ever.
Yesterday was busy and outdoors and in theory productive in an important way: my brain hasn't decided to yell at me because I actually did everything I'd said I was going to, so that's good. I went out around lunchtime, got passport photos taken, got the bus down to visit Shira, whom I haven't seen in ... like ... six years ... and experienced an awful clash of emotions at leisure afterward - "hooray, Shira is back where I can see her" vs "holy god everything is so terrible and the reason she is back here makes me impossibly sad" (although, yaknow, not as fucking sad/angry as it's made her). Parted company with Shira, got the bus down to Soho and met up with Alex, who I suspect I haven't seen for about four years at least, and got my passport photos countersigned. Mooched around Chinatown with her, had a DELICIOUS PORK BUN for the ABSURDLY REASONABLE PRICE of £1.70 (if I am ever hungry in Central London again: Chinatown. I had no idea the bun guys were there. My god), got back on a bus burdened with more exciting groceries ("FIRED GLUTEN BALLS"; startlingly low calories for something so greasy, mainly because they are basically a thin film of fat over MOSTLY AIR).
Today, of course, I am meant to be doing a thing which frankly isn't likely to happen (walk/skate to the library, do research) because the weather is Happening again. I do have to leave the house (boo) because we're out of milk and because if I don't eat approximately a tonne of vegetation a day I become convinced I'm dying of fucking scurvy, and we don't have sufficient vegetation left.
So I'm looking forward to being beaten up by my brain but the whole "get soaked in the name of something you can actually do at home" thing does not appeal.
The castles, or what I remember of them, were pretty rad. One looked more like an English Gothic Cathedral, and there were some English tourists complaining (of course) about the large wooden structure - like an encircling ramp - which had been built about 200 yards out from the edifice. It rose up to about 3 storeys up and went back down again - you weren't allowed inside the castle itself for safety reasons. The tourists were complaining that it spoiled the view. I tried to explain to them that it was so that everyone - including people in wheelchairs - could see all of the castle up close and at different heights and that it was actually very thoughtful and practical especially for something we didn't have to pay to see, but they just huffed at me and said it ruined the look of the thing and that people who couldn't walk just had to "cope with limitations on their lives". I am afraid I said something rather rude to them and left.
Of the war memorials I remember one, which was a dried-out fountain with a kind of mirrored mosaic under a stone statue. It showed an ancient king astride his horse etc, but the mirrored mosaic itself showed his crest and was quite clever because it was all made of the same stuff - the crest was visible because those shards of mirror reflected light from a different direction, being set at a different angle. I remember being quite taken with it. My grandmother (Why was she there? who knows) was not impressed, which sounds like my experience of every family outing ever.
Yesterday was busy and outdoors and in theory productive in an important way: my brain hasn't decided to yell at me because I actually did everything I'd said I was going to, so that's good. I went out around lunchtime, got passport photos taken, got the bus down to visit Shira, whom I haven't seen in ... like ... six years ... and experienced an awful clash of emotions at leisure afterward - "hooray, Shira is back where I can see her" vs "holy god everything is so terrible and the reason she is back here makes me impossibly sad" (although, yaknow, not as fucking sad/angry as it's made her). Parted company with Shira, got the bus down to Soho and met up with Alex, who I suspect I haven't seen for about four years at least, and got my passport photos countersigned. Mooched around Chinatown with her, had a DELICIOUS PORK BUN for the ABSURDLY REASONABLE PRICE of £1.70 (if I am ever hungry in Central London again: Chinatown. I had no idea the bun guys were there. My god), got back on a bus burdened with more exciting groceries ("FIRED GLUTEN BALLS"; startlingly low calories for something so greasy, mainly because they are basically a thin film of fat over MOSTLY AIR).
Today, of course, I am meant to be doing a thing which frankly isn't likely to happen (walk/skate to the library, do research) because the weather is Happening again. I do have to leave the house (boo) because we're out of milk and because if I don't eat approximately a tonne of vegetation a day I become convinced I'm dying of fucking scurvy, and we don't have sufficient vegetation left.
So I'm looking forward to being beaten up by my brain but the whole "get soaked in the name of something you can actually do at home" thing does not appeal.