Vacation Lessons

When I fly, I like to pull tarot cards for myself. Usually this results in cards that are about travel. This time around the tarot suggested that I be more mindful in setting up habits around how I use my time.  The three-card-pull was a capstone of little observations I stumbled upon while away from home, work, and the Internet.

My friends, who are only a year or three older than I am, are not exactly elderly, but they are in the early stages of being old.  This is better than being old like my parents, but still, as the saying goes, “We’re not exactly spring chickens any more.”  I have also fallen out of good fitness habits, and was in better shape this time last year than I am now.  If I want to be spry in thirty years, I need to be actively spry and limber now (glares the the joints of his toes).

The systems of air travel in the US are brutal to the under-privileged, the foreign, and the elderly.  To navigate in the world one needs a good credit card, a modern cell phone, mental acuity, and good English language skills.  And guess what, air travel is simply a simple manifestation of a much larger system of privilege.  I imagine that I’ll need to stay on top of how the world works as I age.

I spend far too much time on social media, and far too little time playing the harp, reading tarot cards, exercising, learning Middle Kingdom hieroglyphs, or writing, and various “adulting” jobs like meal preparation, laundry, and general maintenance.  I suppose this means actively scheduling time.  Given my inclination to relax and recharge after work, I should probably limit my social media to a half-hour or so in the afternoon.

I can survive on just one sixteen ounce cup of tea per morning.  This feeds into the decision to aim for seven-and-half hours of sleep.  This means both going to bed a little bit earlier and getting up a little bit earlier.  It also means I should more aggressively reclaim lost bed geography from the dog.

If I had to select which Tarot card symbolizes reclaiming lost bed geography from the dog, I’m pretty sure it would be the Nine of Wands, with the Seven of Wands reversed for those nights when she sprawls her body athwart the bed and crushes my knees and feet into each other.

Dream: Hiding from the System

Dreams... have been vaguely unpleasant.   Friday night both Mark and I had unpleasant dreams, so I wonder if something in the environment hasn't been agreeing with us.  I don't know what Mark dreamed, but I dreamed we had a big fight.


Although, now that I think about it, Sunday/Monday I almost had a lucid dream when I caught myself flying and Mark asked, "What are you doing that for?"  We were at Reed College.  You needed a student or alumni card to get in anywhere, and they'd paved over Eliot Circle and replaced it with a concrete plaza and fountain.  The dorm I lived in seamlessly turned into a retail mall and I commented on it to Mark (this is what I get for reading a critique of NeoLiberalism in academia and the Digital Humanities before going to bed).

Earlier in the dream, a bunch of us broke into some kind of campus office, maybe a museum office.  J.G. (a professor from work), D.K. (dressed as a computer executive), and others were there.  I think I had managed to shimmy through a window and let everyone in.  We were looking at an exhibit (or something) when we heard a ton of folks enter the building.  "Hide!" someone said. 

D.K. and I managed to avoid some folks, but then there were too many, so I said, "You're my boss," and I started talking loudly about needing to lock doors.  We blended in with the horde of folks checking each room and re-locking offices.  There was a complicated exchange with a rotating deadbolt mechanism on a chain that allowed you to pull a deadbolt after you when you locked a door (which would be like laking the door from the inside, but I didn't realize this in the dream).  

There was more about needing a card to get through an electronic gate at all the Reed buildings, and something about someone who dropped a USB RAMstick... and then Mark was talking to me about flying.

Dream: Eleanor Rigby on the Beach

Dream:  I was on the coast.  Someone's house was also a shop of some sort where they sold crystals or books or tiles or art objects.  I remember a sliding glass door, and a mom and two daughters.  The father was kind of old and crusty in a 1980's gruff-but-friendly neighbor kind of way.

The father and I left the house.  He started to climb up the sandy cliff (dotted with tufts of sand grass) surrounding the house.  I was flying, but this seemed normal.  We were singing and trying to remember the words to "Eleanor Rigby" and were focused on the "Eleanor Rigby / Died in the church and was buried along with her name / nobody came. / Father McKenzie / Wiping the dirt from his hands  as he walks from the grave / no one was saved" part, although "Father McKenzie / writing the words to a sermon that no one will hear" is in my head, too.

And there was something about a tour of old ladies in a train of old metal rain barrels turned into a "cow-train," only I think these were mooses.

Dream: Batman and Umbrellas

The dream this morning was that I was Batman.  Sort of.  My enemy was a giant tap-dancing villian who would stomp on people during his dance.  My strategy was to clean the floor with a slippery cleaner and make Dancing Man trip and hit his head.  This didn't go over as well as I planned, and I ended up running away from a mad dancing giant.

At some point I remembered, "Hey, I'm Batman; I can just use my batter-rang with a line and tie him up."  I never got a chance to do this, as the Dancing Man transmogrified into a small boy and hid in a secret passage behind a refrigerator.

There was a shift, and I was zooming around a large campus-like area underneath a giant, black, double-handled umbrella.  The umbrella caught winds, and by leaning left or right, I could steer it through the air (sort of like when I used to parachute--only by hanging onto the double-handles of the umbrella).  K.B. was there, dressed up in a slanting black half-veil, pill-box hat/stewardess barrette, and a dark formal dress, and I circled around her.