Saturday, March 11, 2023

Dreams and Reading

Image of a stellated dodecahedron

The other night I had a very visual dream.  During one part, I watched a mechanical musical instrument, or possible a carousel, animate a flying pegasus cut out of sheet metal and suspended by brass rods.  This was part of a bank of fantastical creatures that sprang up as the mechanism turned.   

During another part, Mark and I visited a famous designer's museum/apartment.  They had five red metal canisters of decreasing size arranged on an art deco countertop.  As I looked at them, a picture frame appeared around them, and I found myself holding a history of art book opened to an article on the famous designer.  "Oh, Mark and I visited their apartment," I said.

Today (Saturday) has been sunny and warm, which is a nice change from the last ten or so days when the leaden skies have rained (and snowed) and dark days have required turning on as many lights as possible in order to stave off the overwhelming desire to hibernate.  As evening drschaws close, outside is cooling off, but just a few hours ago I was actually hot.

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy.

Today was a day for old idioms.  We wondered about the phrase, "have a cow," which Mark didn't hear very much of, but I recall was a stock utterance from 1975 elementary school and 1990's "Simpsons" episodes.  For an encore, we moved on to Frank Zappa's "Valley Girl."  

On the reading front, I finished "Good Omens," by Pratchett and Gaiman.  It was silly and fun, with twist ending that was thoughtful, but not too serious.  I've moved onto "Babel," by R.F. Kuang, which I'm enjoying for the most part—my minor quibbles with the book so far are 1) that the footnote asterisks in the text are very easy for me to miss, which disrupts the flow of my reading, and 2) the modern usage of the words "morph" and "ridiculous" (two of my danger words) by 1820's Oxford characters, which bumps me out of the story.  

On the writing front, things continue to go slowly. I am hopeful that the return of longer daylight hours will help.

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