Slept strangely. At around 9:30am I finally had to admit defeat when I was having a half-dream about a strange face. It seemed an old woman with leathery, puckered skin and a mouth on her right temple. This mouth had no lips and thin, needle-like grey teeth. The scary thing about her was that she seemed to know all about me; she knew I was lying there trying to get to sleep and that she was a half dream I was having. And the more I thought about her, the more she cackled at me. She seemed pleased with each new detail I noticed--first the second mouth, then the wiry hair, the bulging eyes, and the long, limb of a nose.
So I woke up, drew something for about four hours, and went back to bed at 2pm. This time I had a dream about living in a very cold valley with big dark trees. I lived in a poorly lit wooden cabin on a pile of rocks and there was a pretty girl sleeping in my bed. She seemed worried and continually wondered why the lights weren't working very well. She told me her boyfriends were looking for her and she didn't want to be found--she wasn't very enthusiastic about that. I looked out the window which, since the house was on the hill of rocks, gave me a good view of the tree tops. There was a heavy mist on them and cartoon witches occasionally bobbed up out of it as they flew by on their brooms.
What've I been up to? Let's see . . . Last night was the Acorn Review class. A week earlier I'd voted "no" on a piece most of the other students had voted "yes" on and the passage of time had made me sorrier that I hadn't put up a stronger argument. It was a poem about white people being told they can't "dress black" or listen to rap. Before, I disliked it because it seemed silly but, after having seen how important most of the students seemed to feel the issue was, I'd been wanting to scream at them, "This isn't a social problem! It's a social quibble! If your worst problem is that people are telling you [as the poem says they are] that if you listen to a song with drum and bass it must have electric guitar . . . Well, count yourself lucky! And while you're at it, laugh in the person's face! How the hell can someone think this is a big deal in a country where some people aren't even allowed to marry who they love because of a prevalent bigotry?! This poem is the voice of the spoiled teenager!"
That's what I wished I'd said. Probably better I didn't as having put up the meagre argument last week, that "the emotion is disproportionate to the subject matter," I could tell I'd already made enemies. Not a good class for making friends, although some of the old campaigners (people who've taken the class multiple times) are starting to seem like okay people to me.
Ugh. I feel like I'm missing something . . . Oh, yeah, food . . .
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