The happy place

This dream I write down and what is significant to me is the lack impression it made on me even though it carries what I believe to be a very bad Omen.

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I dreamt I was in France. In an apartment.

There was an older lady there with black hair. She was sitting on the floor of a newly renovated room without furniture. She wore colourful clothes; a dark blue dress and a white blouse with a flower pattern.

She had a hammer in her hand. While we were talking, she used it like a fly swatter to smash little tiny pigeon chicks, size of gnats.

When they died there was no blood they just disappeared.

She did it very casually like they were no more than flies to her, but with enough force that even in the dream I was concerned about the parquet floor (but not the pigeons even though I really like them (in the waking world)).

She even swatted one with the hammer against my forehead, but I didn’t even feel it. She didn’t even pause her speaking then.

I can’t remember a single word of what she was saying. I only remember her mouth moving, and a faint smile on her serious face.

It will likely rain they say.

This weekend is predicted to be one of ceaseless rain.

It’s not bad I think. I like the rain it’s cold.

I like seeing the street lights reflected on the flooded streets and I like feeling the rain on myself like a shower. Like having a shower while dressed.

I don’t understand or care much for umbrellas but I think that’s partially because I’m not wearing mascara. Mascara will run 🏃‍♀️ down the face and create dramatic effects like on a goth CD cover when it’s raining. Although beautiful it’s a very niche look which often is not appropriate.

I think it’s appropriate with rain and it’s appropriate to walk around getting wet in the cold rain, to let the water soak and cleanse body and soul. To feel something. Like the discomfort it causes feels good for the soul the same way training feels good for the body.

Sometimes it feels bad.

👋

The small dog appreciates the city life, however he has a fear of the dark which makes him ceaselessly bark in all directions, like his brain has flown off to somewhere and he’s left an alarm bell in his cute little head instead, because it’s like nothing can get through to him when he is in that mode.

I picture it like the printouts in the log of some system spewing exception messages until restarted and then it would just proceed as if nothing had just happened.

He must have a vivid imagination for all of the threats he sees out there in his mind’s eye.

He’s also mostly in a very good mood and he excitedly starts each new day by wagging his tail wildly while alternating between biting my nose, licking my face and barking. It’s hard to not let some of that positivity rub off.

He has this problem however that his shit (the poo) ofttimes gets stuck in his ass-fur, and there it will dangle like a rank banana until he’s taken a shower in the bathroom sink. This whole ordeal troubles him greatly.

Speaking of which

There is this super cute duck Pokémon Psyduck who has an inflatable swim ring around his waist which I have been catching a lot of!

But I have a strong intense (yes, it’s that bad) headache now and I’ve not been sleeping so much lately. But it will pass.

Everything passes unfortunately.

Today as I was stacking firewood in the barn, I saw a dead little bird covered in dust lying on the floor.

It must’ve fallen out of the nest up there on the roof beams, maybe by accident or possibly in a failed attempt to fly.

It weighed nothing as I gently lifted it up in my hands to take it outside.

I know too little about birds to say what kind of bird it was, and furthermore like I said it was covered in dust. I would say it was the flying kind of bird, but what then was it doing on the floor?

The wrongness of the whole situation: a bird on the ground, and always the sadness of a young life cut short, struck me as a powerful bad omen which sent shivers through my system as I unceremoniously but with a sense of urgency tossed the little tiny corpse into the bushes outside.

I then went back and promptly continued the wood stacking as if nothing had happened.

As if nothing had happened! That’s most unsettling of all.

I wanted to write something about the fog out there. It’s really thick.

Almost like they didn’t render the top half of the buildings and the sky but blurred it with white and gray.

Like.

I feel nauseous. But I know this life is worth living.

I’ve got plans

But now I feel nauseous. The plans will have to wait a bit while I lay here on the bed next to my two dogs.

While I lay here letting my thoughts out without moderating them.

it’s funny that dogs who have such keen sense of smell would literally shove their noses up each others asses and then take a deep whiff like you’re supposed to do when tasting wine.

I tried to take a deep whiff of some dog shit, but felt nothing.

that’s how you train your brain to smell again they say, sniff on different things Like that every day, then suddenly it will come back.

I’ll try it. See me try it. I will smell this world. I will enjoy this life and will stop clinging to the weights keeping me down. I will soar again, and it will be an awesome sight to behold. Just watch.

I will go running again, listening to Ava Max, I’ve seen there are some new great songs but I do not want to deplete them of the positive charges, that is only for when running.

I will run

But first I’ll lay here with my dogs next to me. I love them.

I’ll lay here for a bit feeling nauseous.

I’ve long been wanting to write about dwarves. They’ve grown in my eyes.

I quit my job the other day. I feel unburdened now, light as a feather but still with a gnawing sense of unease at what might come next. It was from Paradise Hotel that I learned that you cannot put a leash on a wolf, and I have been leashed and it is that leash which has been chafing me and now its absence feels thrilling. So it’s true for a donkeys too.

I’ve been talking with my best friend when we were having 1on1 about which Patronuses we had, you know like in Harry Potter and I knew without thinking that I was (mine was) a donkey. (He is a bear). (This professional exchange is one of greatest significance in my life). I shall point out here, just because it matters to me (but has no bearing on this text in general) that this friend he too has a faiblesse for Dwarves (at this time I identified more closely to elves however)

Some might say that having a Donkey as a Patronus is some sort of self-deprecation but then they forget that Jesus rode into Betlehem on a donkey, to which they might counter that it was the symbolism of riding on a donkey of all animals which really made the point of Jesus’ so humble mindset, to which I’d say exactly.

Indeed.

Anyway so the dwarves, I’ve been listening again to Wind Rose, and once again I am struck by how a band can have six full-length albums without a single bad track, but mostly about the profound lyrics.

I see now the grim dignity of the Dwarves unyielding existence, how they stack on the walls even though they know they will all die. (I would also draw examples from lord of the rings, but for some reason those books didn’t make the same impact on me. I reckon it was the power metal element which finally opened my eyes. (Or the books were read at a point in my life when I wasn’t really receptive to the rich symbolism in there)).

Dwarves toil endlessly, are fiercely loyal and unyielding.

Dwarves are headstrong too, just like donkeys.

Their vices are greed and possibly gluttony.

So back to the point I am making:

I shall draw power from my inner dwarf as I now venture into a new chapter of my professional life, and if need be, I’ll call on my donkey Patronus.

I don’t remember what autumn smells like, maybe vaguely of compost or something, but I think it might have smelled like that today, at least a little, as I was walking taking some trash to the recycling bins. It was sunny and a bit warm outside. The first yellow leaves lay scattered on the parks’ lawns, sparsely like one leaf or so per tree. I guess it would more likely have smelled of summer still, like I don’t know, I don’t remember that either but I guess plants? Like plants?

The cute little black dog wasn’t very happy about the route as he doesn’t like to venture too far from his known territory and I was getting a headache.

It came suddenly, blazing all the way through the skull to the teeth, like I pictured Harald Bluetooth would’ve felt all of the time.

I think it’s the cold I’ve been having these past few days which might have caused this, at least partially, like a final stroke of that cold.

Having reached my destination, as I was stuffing the folded cardboard into the opening of the steel container recycling bin, a wasp flew out drowsily. She was at the end of her short life span, as these worker wasps are seasonal creatures who will die when the cold comes unfortunately (for them).

She appeared to be angry, but I think it’s the stress of finding food and the urgency which might come when death draws near and having nothing to lose is what causes the aggressive and reckless behaviour.

In one way I could relate as I too was irritable from having a dog who wanted to go the opposite direction and a headache I could feel my pulse with. And also the sweat; cold sweat on my forehead.

Anyways as I was walking the way back home, the dog now pulling the leash eagerly, the wasp followed me like a bad omen. least I thought I saw a glimpse in the corner of my eyes half way back home. By then the headache had subsided and I felt numb.

I was numb and sweaty, no longer burdened by the trash, the headache or the wasp. The dog was eager. Home we went to where the coffee was waiting, and I know what it smells of: coffee. I had put a coffee on before we went, and it was on the machine we bought when we (my wife and I, not the dog) were poor so it doesn’t have a timer. Which was good this time for it was still hot when we came home.

I miss the smell of coffee

Some quick highlights:

The kindle suddenly charges again, which means I’ll be able to see how it’ll go for Geralt. It’s quite a mess they’re in now to say the least.

I helped an old lady get on the sidewalk with her rollator today, it was red metallic and weighed next to nothing as I helped lift it onto the sidewalk, she thanked me and complimented me on my socks — there are wolves in them — She seemed to also weigh nothing at all and also she seemed very brittle.

It’s been warm and cold and I’ve gotten a cold.

I’ve been feeling good and bad.

But I am alive.

The dogs are alive too.

Yep yep

yes I’ve picked up my new glasses they are rounded because I have changed. Rounded like a librarian’s or someone who is about to make a profound work of art someday.

It’s a blessing to not be wearing sunglasses when looking at the screen, and it did lift my mood considerably.

I went out after work, after the rain. It was sunny but the paving stones were still wet and the air felt fresh, and on the sky there were thick clouds but somehow they were blue. For some reason I was listening to Cranes (the music band) because maybe I felt sentimental having had this odd dream last night.

There was a raid by the poke gym nearby. It’s really a fountain but in the augmented reality it doubles like I said as a poke gym. It was where I went to meet my wife for the second time, long before we married, long before Pokémon go was invented, I barely knew her back then, only that she was the most attractive woman I’d ever seen and with such a fascinating personality too, which made awestruck. She had big rings in her ears and a leather jacket from some thrift store or something, and she was really tough but anyway so the raid.

There by this fountain — a big greenish bronze statue with some fish spewing water in a ring from the bottom of this circular basin — were two extremely cool looking fellas, with trucker or baseball caps sitting casually on a green bench nearby, one of them running a cable from his phone to concealed power bank. I could see they were level 50.

I didn’t venture too near while counting down I just circled the area and didn’t talk to them. For example what would we talk to each other about? Why I have a female avatar in the game? (That’s cause here in this game I get to choose).

Anyway the raid started and it was an ugly looking black Pokémon who I would’ve guessed was a ghost but apparently was of type “psycho” which were then quickly decimated and I caught it but didn’t even appraise.

I did however add these two guys, you can do this now in the summary screen, and will now proceed to exchange gifts with them every day.

And now I am sitting comfortably in an antique white armchair.

O yes I got to hear today that i was in the high performer (top) bracket, earning the max designated pay raise.

I just had the dream that:

I was with my daughter and her cousin (my nephew?). They were having fun and playing the computer games or something, getting to know each other.

And then my sister came, she introduced herself to them and I felt affectionate towards her; I had missed her a lot. We went for a walk to discuss how angry and disappointed I was with my (our?) sister. She agreed about everything, so we talked like this in deep confidence about how betrayed I felt. Only then did I realise that she was the one I was talking both to and about (?), but she said it wasn’t her; it was someone else: It was important to her to point out that it wasn’t her her but another her, like she was split in two; the bad version wasn’t the one I was talking to, the bad one was in a mental hospital.

I almost believed her but then I remembered that I have no brother (whatever this has got to do with anything) and that she is my only sibling (this made sense to my dream logic, and was somehow important).

Suddenly I saw her face really clearly, bright like in a dressing room, or like caught by the flash of a camera: The face from when she was younger, pale and rose-cheeked with the red wart in it glowing like a lit RGB diod. Like a warning. I felt a horrible sadness then, almost suffocating, and woke up from this cruel nightmare.