At the beginning, the dreams were entertaining. The one I wrote about before was a little sad, but mostly surreal enough that it outweighed the sadness. Then came one about having to crawl over a very tall pile of fancy bound volumes of classic literature which were suspended in a bottomless pool in the middle of an office building in order to get to work...that was surreal and funny. Then things started to go downhill with the one about running into an incapacitated Rob Halford in a hotel downtown...that one was just really sad, and I haven't been able to shake it three days later. Except then Friday night I had one where Ryan Roxie was hanging out at the quiet storm with his new band and new girlfriend, and we were very flirty best friends. That was a nice one, except there was this other subplot about a couple of friends who were going through a really nasty divorce having to teach children in the same room....that part was rough.
Then last night/this morning I started down the official nightmare route with a dream in which I was some sort of undercover agent spending a weekend with a couple of sexual psychopaths in order to try to prevent them from torturing and murdering a bunch of young girls. It was really awful, and I managed to wake myself up from it at about 5:30am, but then after peeing I didn't want to go back to sleep and chance falling back into it. Argh. I appreciate my imagination when it is surreal and funny---I don't appreciate it when it is sad and scary.
Other than all the dreaming, I've been trying to lay low and shake the disease(bonus points if you can identify that reference!) I was "off" on Thursday except for the fact that we were catering for American Shorts, so instead of staying in bed I made spinach feta puffs and fig-olive tapenade and walked to the party store for plates and walked to the storm to load up and then went to the reading with Jilly. I felt pretty okay all day, and it was SO WORTH IT to hear Mary Gaitskill read--she is just awesome. The other reader (I can't remember her name because I'm a jerk--she is the co-director of the Gist Street series) read some amazing work which I loved, except she read it in poet voice which I didn't love. Especially since it was actually not poetry but prose. The film by Martha Coburn (Spiders in Love) was really cool and trippy, and it was great to be in such a cool space for the event. Everyone raved about the food, and we chatted with Scott from East End Brewing which was nice. Took our turn in babysitting the obnoxiously drunk 63 year old woman who was hellbent on spoiling everyone's good time. She kept going on about how she is an artist, and I'm sure she's a sad and lonely person trying to make a connection, but her complete lack of self control was totally offputting. It was nice, though, that most of the people there, either connected with the event or just attending, sort of took a turn with her so no one had to deal with her alone. That's what community is all about.
After the reading I came home and watched a documentary about Pasolini which was extremely interesting. I tried to watch Derek's Edward the II but I fell asleep.
Friday Rebby took me out to eatnpark for breakfast and then we picked some things up at the grocery store and stopped in Heads Together. I found The Garden and War Requiem, and she found Gendernauts which is the Monika Treut documentary about transgender people we saw together years ago. We watched that and then I had to go to work.
Work was sort of sucky...everything was humming along just fine and then right at the very end I got a huge rush that put me in a bad mood. I seem to get awfully cranky on Friday nights anymore...I gotta try to change my attitude, I think. This was a huge crowd of Greensburg hippies and they all wanted veggie burgers. Argh.
Anyway, I had to re-prep everything, and then while I was cleaning they started to play their earnest/whiny hippie songs. Sheesh. I was so not into it. Finally I was done and rebby came to get me and tried to put it out of mind.
Saturday I felt a little sore throaty and sniffly again, and the coughing started. Dammit. We watched the shows and had breakfast and then headed out to the strip to do some leisurely shopping. It was really, really nice---haven't spent a morning in the strip in ages and though I was afraid of being annoyed by people, it was actually very pleasant. A couple times we had to veer off the sidewalk into the street, but that was no big deal. We got green chile and marinades and coffee and kale and ribs and baking supplies and soy sauce and tamarind candy and sausages and chocolate covered pretzel sticks. We also had delicious coffees in the leaf and bean coffeehouse, which made me instantly jealous. The place is SO CHILL, and it sort of feels like you are at the beach even though it's in a garage on a side street in the strip. I love all the mismatched tables and chairs and the junk hanging on the walls and the handdrawn signs and the jazz combo playing in the corner. That's the kind of coffeehouse I aspire to...one where I can imagine people actually sitting around and fomenting revolution.
The shopping tired me out and brought the coughing to a fore. Dammit. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing laundry and making Portuguese Kale Soup. Also, watching Muppets From Space and The Garden, which is definitely the most surreal Jarman film I've seen so far, and possibly my favorite. It looks a little bit dated, like a late 80s music video, but there are some amazing images in it. I'll have to watch it again when I am less distracted. We popped open a bottle of shiraz to have with the soup when it was done....oh my. So good. I have been sort of obsessed with this soup since reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain..I've made vegan versions at the restaurant without the sausage but I wanted to try it all the way. Dang, that's good stuff, and I felt really good while eating it and for a while after. But, the cough and stuffy head came back, and I ended up conking out pretty early. We had been invited to two separate parties and I really wanted to make it to both of them...but there was just no way I was going to make it out of the house again.
And so, here I am, about to get ready to go to make the brunch, and then band practice. With a stuffy head and slight sore throat and occasional old man cough.
The good thing about prolonged illness is it completely kills my desire to smoke, though. I had about half of a cigarette friday night after the sucky kitchen shift but I didn't enjoy it at all. Let's see if it sticks this time.