Morning glow, and its avoidance
I biked up East Rock today, something I never had gotten around to in my entire tenure in New Haven. As a result, I saw this city I've lived in on and off for four and a half years from radically above for the very first time. Oh, sure I've been on top of buildings before, and all of those have been transcendent experiences for me (I still remember one morning two summers ago, trashed with these sketchy grad students who I think were trying to sleep with some high schoolers in my summer program, on top of a downtown apartment complex watching the sun rise glorious and orange over an utterly silent city), but never this high, never with the chance to see a half dozen sleepy little New England towns, all the upward jutting stone of Yale, the shiny metallic cluster that makes up downtown, all that heavy steel and concrete that makes up the harbor, a big swath of Long Island sound, not to mention ten million little topographical bits of sky and cloud, rivers and trees and meadows. I've been biking my whole life, and that ability to finally do here what I can do in L.A. -- walk out my door, hop on a bike, climb a hill for half an hour and find myself in the midst of some very calming trees with a commanding view of everything around me -- well, while L.A. still wins for untouched nature (no joke! Read the entry here on Franklin Canyon, and know that the true center is marked on a tree stump in a bit of grassland where you're incapable of seeing major development in any direction. Ask the rangers if you need help.), this ride provides me with a peacefulness, a fulfillment, and a connectedness to where I live that just might radically transform my emotions about this city. At least, it will if I do what I intend to do, which is get my ass up there every morning I can.
Yeah my writing's sloppy today, but it's purely the need to bang this out fast and with enthusiasm, because I have to wake up in less than six hours because I'm touring the New York Times tomorrow with a bunch of Yale writing people in order to learn exactly what sort of manner my print journalism job will be obsolete in a dozen years. Which should be a blast but OH THE PAIN OF UNSLEEP!
Dreams once again monstrous strange, my brain coughing up bits of everything from a highly futuristic world full of evil Aeon-Flux-like villains with lots of weapons and scary machines in narrow, metallic corridors, a day in a bookstore finding imaginary books that speak to me, somehow going on a trip and getting trapped in Mexico, the only way out involving catching a cruise ship (which of course I missed, repeatedly). Then swimming out into disgusting waters trying to run them down, of course failing, ending up in a swamp where drinking unfiltered water gave us strange diseases. Then somehow sneaking onto a boat that looked like the Titanic or the Queen Mary, the only way to stay on being to successfully audition for a musical, at which point I suddenly realized I was this girl I knew in college. Then as my mental camera zoomed out, somebody tried to creepily seduce her and she accidentally fell off the ship, saved only by the hoodie she was wearing, which caught on the railing. Not knowing whether she was choking on it or saved, I woke up.
Dudes, what the fuck. What exact sort of subconscious ferment is producing this incredible overabundance of dreams, and curious ones at that?
Well, time to find out whether such a thing also occurs on vastly curtailed sleep. Till the next installment!
Yeah my writing's sloppy today, but it's purely the need to bang this out fast and with enthusiasm, because I have to wake up in less than six hours because I'm touring the New York Times tomorrow with a bunch of Yale writing people in order to learn exactly what sort of manner my print journalism job will be obsolete in a dozen years. Which should be a blast but OH THE PAIN OF UNSLEEP!
Dreams once again monstrous strange, my brain coughing up bits of everything from a highly futuristic world full of evil Aeon-Flux-like villains with lots of weapons and scary machines in narrow, metallic corridors, a day in a bookstore finding imaginary books that speak to me, somehow going on a trip and getting trapped in Mexico, the only way out involving catching a cruise ship (which of course I missed, repeatedly). Then swimming out into disgusting waters trying to run them down, of course failing, ending up in a swamp where drinking unfiltered water gave us strange diseases. Then somehow sneaking onto a boat that looked like the Titanic or the Queen Mary, the only way to stay on being to successfully audition for a musical, at which point I suddenly realized I was this girl I knew in college. Then as my mental camera zoomed out, somebody tried to creepily seduce her and she accidentally fell off the ship, saved only by the hoodie she was wearing, which caught on the railing. Not knowing whether she was choking on it or saved, I woke up.
Dudes, what the fuck. What exact sort of subconscious ferment is producing this incredible overabundance of dreams, and curious ones at that?
Well, time to find out whether such a thing also occurs on vastly curtailed sleep. Till the next installment!