Recovering

Saturday-Tuesday, June 16-19, 2012—Long Beach, CA

A very deliberate morning. I didn’t wake up until about 10:15 (which is actually a bit earlier that I’ve been getting up recently—I’ve gotten into the habit of staying up until three or four in the morning over the last few weeks). Since then I’ve been lying in bed reading, City of Fortune, a popular history of the Venetian empire, by Roger Crowley, which is turning out to be quite good (I fairly recently read his book on Lepanto and the Battle of Malta, which was also well done). This morning will set a nice tone for the rest of my day, which should be low-key to say the least. I plan on working out, studying Greek, and cleaning the house bit. I also hope to get a little work in on more long-term projects, such as my revamping of BSP. I’m feeling a little unfocused lately, like my post-school unwinding has turned into something more approaching laziness. I also feel, though, that I’m starting to get a bit of a handle on this. Slowly, but surely I’m chipping away at things I need to do, want to do in this “free” time. I know too that I should appreciate that I have to time to fall into a bit of sloth—it won’t be that long until things start getting busy again, and not always in a good sense.

I’ve noticed that when I start getting “lazy” it’s because I’m actually in a place where I’m not ready to move to a next stage in life: I can’t commit my energies in any one direction because I don’t know exactly what I should be doing. Losing this main focus, it becomes harder to deal with the little things I need to get done. What’s the point of vacuuming the house when the universe lacks a center and therefore is largely without meaning? (OK, that’s way over the top, but the point is still valid.) Whatever else that can be said about my current state, I’m definitely in transition, as a person, as a writer. I just have to accept that this is a good thing, something I’ve been working towards …
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Three days later. Something (I don’t remember what) caused me to stop the above passage and ‘m only now getting back to it. Looking back at what I wrote I’ve already come to slightly different conclusions. Though only slightly different, I think they are important and throw some light on where I’m at at the moment.

In the last few days I’ve felt a relatively small but very noticeable uptick in my energy level. Since I’ve been working out steadily my body is also feeling much more limber and responsive. I’m beginning to see that a lot of the issues I’ve been dealing with over the last several years, both the physical and emotional/mental ones, tie heavily into the fact that I’ve simply been completely exhausted for a very long time. Taking a look back at my life, I’m beginning to see the details of why this is. What’s interesting/depressing is that the only reason I haven’t seen this is that I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had the time to do the most basic self-upkeep for a very long time; it’s a wonder that I haven’t completely cracked up.

Let me catalogue these times a bit.

Since 2005 I have completed four novels and a book of poetry (within these books there has also been a highly significant artistic shift, which took a ton of effort for me to accomplish). I’ve also created a publishing company, which, at times, has involved a great deal of effort. Added to all this, I’ve transitioned into teaching and have had to learn to do this on the run, while mostly teaching outside of my areas of expertise, which has been rewarding, but also labor intensive; I’ve actually never worked so hard on anything in my life (with the exception of my first two novels). While doing this, since early 2009, I have had to deal with the constant stress of trying to live in Southern California without a car, which has entailed ridiculously long and dangerous scooter commutes that have taken their toll on me mentally, both in regards to the stress of the rides themselves, but also because their length gives me less time to do the other things I need to do. Added to all this has been a series of sinus, digestive, anxiety problems that have really dragged me down, swiped more of my energy. Taken together, all of this constitutes by far the busiest and most difficult time of my life (even busier and crazier than when I was in graduate school and working full time, which just about killed me).

Now that I’ve finally put the brakes on things (to a point), I feel as if I’ve been caught up in some massive wave that’s just now broken (or maybe I’ve just now noticed tha it’s broken). While there have been many rewards, the price of me riding (or at least getting pushed along) by this wave has been high, in regards to my health and especially my relationships with other people: many of these have collapsed and most have been seriously neglected. The biggest price has come in regards to my relationship to myself. Since 2005 I’ve been a writing and teaching machine—but not really much of a person. The next phase of my life, I’m beginning to see, will be dominated by my trying to figure out how to again be a person, someone who’s life is full and rewarding in more than just a work sense. I can be an artistic and academic draft animal no longer.

A bit of a side note. I can now see why I was having so many anxiety issues last summer in Greece. While that trip was a vacation in many ways, it was also a challenge to myself: I was using it to look outside my current life, to find something better and more real. The problem was that I wasn’t quite ready for that. Or at the very least I bit off far too much too fast. In retrospect, I should have done what I’m doing this summer—unwinding and taking stock at home—and gone to Greece this summer, when I would have been in a much better place. The reason I was flipping out there was because I was flipping out in general. Suddenly being dumped in a new cultural situation far from home added a whole new layer of stress to my life. My anxiety wasn’t so much a problem as it was a healthy warning sign—get your act together, Rob—your health, your happiness depends on it.



Day-to-day life? Glorious relaxation. The amazing realization that there’s such a thing as relaxation and perhaps I can someday learn how do it well myself. Reading. Finishing the Venetian history I started a few days ago. Read A Single Man, by Christopher Isherwood, which was a bit disappointing. An angry little book, depressing, with a cop-out ending, In my opinion. It’s well written, though. It also features some nice passages on Southern California. I might have started a big reading project. A few days ago I started rereading Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. I read this and the Within a Budding Grove, the second volume, years ago and they had a big impact on me. I got bogged down in volume three, though, (maybe I just didn’t have the time at the time) and abandoned the work. This summer is the perfect situation to revive my Proust quest. So far I’m really enjoying Swann's Way, seeing things in it I couldn’t before. Reading Proust, I’m seeing, is a perfect counterpoint to the way I have been living my life these last years. Proust is about nothing if not slowing down and tasting life, reveling in our moments, even the seemingly smallest ones. It will be interesting to see how far I get into his work this time.

 Been working on BSP too, getting the books in e-book form. I’ve also almost got the print edition of Edgewater finalized; I’m now looking to have it officially out sometime in mid-July (I might get out an e-book version slightly before that.



Thinking a lot still about what my next writing project should be. Non-fiction seems more and more like what I should be doing. I’ve been interested in writing about art and artists. I have a few ideas rolling around in my head in this area I still haven’t quite nailed down.

No Greece, In Search of Relaxation, Marguerite Duras

Tuesday, June 5-6, 2012—Long Beach, CA

 

Lots of stuff going on. I’ve officially shelved the Greece trip. Or more accurately, I’m postponing it until next summer. I’ve done this for two main reasons. Money is the first one. I simply don’t have enough to take the kind of trip I want. The second reason is more complicated. I’m coming to understand that I don’t just want to take vacations to Greece. As I was telling my friend Katie in an email today, I want to have a deeper relationship with the place than that; I’m pretty sure that sooner rather than later I want to live there, at least part time. This involves a reorientation of how I get back there. I need to start laying the groundwork for this more serious venture on this side of the Atlantic. Admittedly I’m not sure what this groundwork is. I know, though, that getting my life together as a writer is a priority (dealing with getting the Backwaters novels published is a big part of this). I also need to get serious about learning Greek. I got a really good start on this but by last January I was so crushed by school that my studies fell by the wayside. I’ve started up again, though, and I’m hoping to have a productive Greeky summer.

Another reason I’ve postponed the trip is simple exhaustion. Lately I’ve been depressed about my inability to write, to have much passion for writing. I’m now seeing that I need a fallow period, that my inability to write stems partially from the fact that I’m completely exhausted and burned out on the lifestyle I’ve been leading. The truth is, I’m not finding much joy in most of the things I do; I’ve been busting my butt teaching and have written two novels and part of book of poetry over the last five years—and all this has taken a lot out of me. I need other things in my life. I’ve kind of forgotten how to have fun. I need to simply relax and try and relearn (or maybe learn for the first time) a few basic things about living. I need more friends. I need more time for contemplation. I need to step back a bit and simply take in the things around me. I need a big break in regards to just about everything.



I had a really weird dream the other night that Steve E. suggested I write down before I forget it. I was teaching at some college, not either of the ones I’m at now; it was more a university than a community college. It had a vaguely east-coast feel; at least some of the buildings were made out of bricks and there was ivy growing up parts of them. I was in a class giving a final. I remember thinking even during the dream that the final seemed kind of like a scam, like it was too easy to really be a final. After the test I went back to my apartment, which was in a building on the campus, not too far from where I’d just given the final. I was only in my apartment, though, for a few minutes before I heard something going on outside. I looked out a window and saw a bunch of cops pouring into one of the bigger buildings on the campus; somehow I knew they were there to make mass arrests of the students. Before I could really take too much of this in, though, I heard someone banging on my door. It was a single cop, a Latino guy with a small mustache, who had come to take me away.

He took me into a building and then into what looked like a giant men’s room. Once in there he started asking me all sorts of questions about supposedly subversive activity on my part (I don’t remember the specifics on this, but I do remember that he was pretty vague in the dream so there might not be all that much in the way of specifics to remember). At some point I asked for a lawyer. The cop then pulled a blonde guy who looked straight out of 1976—feathered middle-length hair, big-collared shirt, etc.— out of a bathroom stall. Apparently he’d been in there banging some girl. At this point there were suddenly more people there. A judge? Other cops? I’m not sure now. I do remember that I was being peppered with questions at this point that I didn’t understand; I wasn’t sure what I was being accused of. Around this time a female student was brought in as a witness against me; she wasn’t anyone I recognized. I remember she was just beginning her testimony when my the alarm on my clock-radio went off. I woke up in a truly foul mood, much of which followed me well into the day.



 Been reading Marguerite Duras recently. I’ve never read her before, though I’ve been interested in checking her out for a while. A few days ago I blew thru a short novel of hers called Black Hair, Blue Eyes. It’s a pretty awful book. Very elliptical, minimalist, experimental in a lot of bad ways. Some of it moves well into self-parody, of herself (I can tell this even without having read any other of her books—her methods and perspectives are easily sussed out), post-war French literature, and French culture as a whole. There were aspects of it, though, that interested me, that made me want to read something else by her. Right now I’m about a third of the way thru her later novel called The North Chinese Lover. So far it’s a much better work: it does all the same things as Black Hair, Blues Eyes, but in this case her technique really propels and elucidates the story (in Black Hair, Blue Eyes it kind of was the story). With this book I can see why she’s so popular and highly regarded.



I haven’t felt much of a need to write in this diary recently. I’m realizing this is partially because I’ve been using it as a way to vent about teaching, which is now done for the summer. However much I end up writing here this summer I can now see that I have a chance to do some new things with these pages, some more positive things. Complaining to flowering (the flowering of something other than my complaining). I’m looking forward to this, to relaxing into something more fun.

Rediscovering My Center

Tuesday, May 30,2012—Long Beach, CA

Lazy days. As soon as I was released from school my desire to do much of anything has dissolved. Actually that’s not quite true. I’ve been doing reading, writing, and I’ve resumed my study of Greek, but all in a low-key kind of way. I’ve also been physically active: I’ve been riding my bike, running on the beach, and lifting weights. The beach running is the most important of these activities. I gave up running years ago, and lately I’ve noticed how creaky and stiff my body has become; while playing baseball with my sister’s kids a few weeks back I realized that I could no longer really run (it was scary feeling so limited and old). I’m trying to see if this can be reversed. So far I think it can, up to a point. Thus far my body is responding well. It’s just a matter of how far I can take it.

Still going around in circles on whether or not to go to Greece again this summer. I’ve been doing some serious number crunching and I’m beginning to realize that I’m not in as good of a financial position as I before thought. I’m also wondering if a long trip is something I should be doing now. Besides my money issues, I’m just plain tired. I ran around Greece all last summer and then had a long, intense year teaching. Maybe this summer should be about recharging. I also would like to reconnect with friends I’ve neglected over the last couple years. Traveling in California a bit this summer also sounds good; I really want to get up to Sacramento and Santa Cruz at least before school starts. On the other hand, the idea of floating thru a few Greek islands for a month sounds so wonderful, peaceful, and in some ways necessary. Though the money’s tight I could pull it off. I’m also worried that if I don’t go this summer and money suddenly becomes tight I might not be able to get back there for years, which is a big consideration.

Another series of issues I need to address revolve around publishing. BSP needs a lot of work. I also need to get serious about getting out both the poetry book and figuring out how to deal with putting the Backwaters books into the right hands. I’ve spent the last few years working very hard as a writer and now it’s time to put the same sort of effort into the publishing side. In other words, I have the books and now it’s time to do something with them. Maybe going to Greece is partially a way for me to avoid dealing with aspects of the literary world I’m not particularly good at and do not enjoy. If nothing else I know that teaching takes so much time and so much out of me I know that’s it’s dangerous for me not to jump on things when I finally have the time—it’s easy for years to vanish that way and for publishing opportunities to be missed, perhaps for good.


On a different front … It’s interesting how different I feel about things as soon as the pressure of teaching is off me. For months I’ve been semi-obsessing about what’s been going on inside of my head and about things that are supposedly missing from my life. But now that I have time to just BE a lot of that has fallen away and I’m back to being the semi-happy materialist I am at heart. I’ve been worrying about my soul when all I really needed to find my center apparently was a little time to run on the beach and write. Overwork and lack of personal freedom weigh heavily on me. I need a lot of time to myself in order to keep my center—it’s just who I am, a necessary ingredient in the functioning of the photon assemblage that is Rob Woodard. Somehow I need to figure out ways to relax more and regain perspective during the school years: I just can’t lose myself for the six or seven months of the year when teaching gets really challenging. Being happy is being yourself. I need to do a better job of keeping track of me.

Freedom

Tuesday, May 22, 2011—Long Beach, CA

I’m finally finished with school. Actually I finished early Saturday afternoon, but it’s only now beginning to sink in to me that I’m free. The last few days I’ve mostly been just trying to unwind, as well as get a few things done that had been piling up on me during the last week of the semester. I’ve got a lot I want to do over the next few weeks before I go to Greece (yeah, I’ve almost one hundred percent decided to go), but most of it is stuff I want to do—work on my website, BSP, etc.—so doing these tasks is almost part of my general coming down from the semester. I’m still feeling very uptight, which from past experience I know it will be another week or so before I really start relaxing. I seem to be walking away from this semester easier than I have other ones, though. I can’t decide whether or not this is a good thing, whether or not I’m just learning how to relax or that I’m so bored and angry with my job that I simply don’t care as much about it a I used to.

Though I’ve only been free of school for a handful of days, I’ve managed to do a lot of thinking, mostly about where I’m at with my writing. I’m positive that I’ve been going down a wrong path with Sunshine Seas. Now that I have the time to think straight, the little doubts I’ve been having about the work (which I’ve been pushing away, to the point where I haven’t discussed them here) have moved front and center. I can now see that there’s a false note in there somewhere; it feels slightly phony, contrived. Also, as soon as I had a little time to work on it I immediately began to get bored; I think I’ve been puffing up the project just because the idea of having time to write was so enticing to me during the semester. What I need to be doing, I think, is continuing with the Backwaters books: I don’t seem to have much to say outside of that context. I’m still a little burned out on that universe, though, so maybe I just need to not be writing (other than here) for a while longer. I do have some new ideas regarding where Backwaters is going that I’m excited about, so who knows—maybe I am on the verge of something there and my continuing break only has a short time left. There’s nothing I can do now except wait the muse out.

Still struggling with myself a bit. As always these kinds of struggles get reflected in my reading. I’ve abandoned the Jung biography. It was to … well, boring: fact after fact with almost no framework. I’m still interested in that world, though. I picked up Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, and Reflections as a substitute. I’m also starting Philip K. Dick’s VALIS. Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank has also hit my to-read shelf, along with a history of the modern witchcraft movements in England called Triumph of the Moon. A wide range of stuff, but that’s because I’m still a little unsure of where I should be going in the area, in a lot of areas actually.

Ready to see people (at least to a small degree), to get out and do things. Planning trips to Sacramento and Santa Cruz as well as Greece. I’d like to try and get out to Mono Lake this summer too. Lot going on. Lots I want to do. I need to recharge a little first, though, be lazy for a while.

Cleaning Things Up, Next Stage Searching

Wednesday, May 13, 2012—Orange, CA

Finishing up finals—within about forty-eight hours I will be completely done with this (unpleasant-ass) semester. I got my schedule for the fall finalized today too. I’m still underemployed, but things aren’t any worse than they are now and in some ways they’re better: I have four classes, and, with the exception of a Thursday night class, they are all in the morning. This is important because the main issue I’ve been having with my work has been slept depravation because of having early morning classes scheduled after late night ones (two years straight of this has really messed me up and I think might be exasperating my nagging health problems). The Thursday night class won’t mess me up much either, because it’s the last class of the week for me. In other words, I don’t have to get up on Fridays. Thursdays will be a long day, though. I have an 8:30 AM class at SCC, then I have to drive to IVC teach a 10:00 o’clocker, and then I have to head back to SCC and hang out until my 8:00 PM class starts. The rest of the week, though, will be a piece of cake. Considering I could have been very underemployed this semester, things have worked out pretty well.

Since I’m not going to be working at all this summer (whether I end up going to Greece or not) I plan on using the time to start laying the ground work for my transition to the full-time literary life. This means nailing down the website and really putting time into BSP. I’ll also be looking for a new author to bring in, someone who will help articulate the new direction I see the press heading in. What I’d like to do is have it turn with the way my writing is going, which is much more socially oriented. I really want to get away from the whole post-Bukowski thing, which I feel is completely played out. I’d like to see it move into a more green-political direction. By this I mean I’d like to put out work by the current equivalent of, say, Gary Snyder or Edward Abbey, along with some more overtly political work, Chomskyesque essayist and the like. I’d also like to bring in some socially relevant sci-fi and maybe even see if we can resurrect a few older titles that have gone out of print that should be available. I’d like to think at some point publishing books falling under all the categories will be an option—if chosen well all of these options link up in important ways.


Feeling pretty pent up still, in regards to my personal life. I feel ready to spread out, be more. I know I’m repeating myself, but I really need to get back to writing. I want to hit that hard this summer and have at least a nearly complete draft of Sunshine Seas (I have several stories that have coalesced in my head and should flow out of me pretty easily once I finally get the time to deal with them). I’m starting to envision a big non-fiction project as well, incorporating ideas I’ve had for a number of essays for quite a while, perhaps interspersed with pieces I originally saw going into a Greece book, which has no coalesced in me at all as a stand-alone project. I’m not sure exactly how to describe this project. A kind of semi-urban Southern California-based Practice of the Wild might be the best description. Big historical explorations set in a bioregionalist framework. A ethno-eco exploration spreading out from a L.A. Basin starting point. Big questions posed. Hopefully some big answers found. (Man, does this sound arrogant? I Hope not; I just have some sizeable ideas floating around in my head at the moment that I think will ulitmately sort themselves into something of some importance.)

Still the same personal weirdness and frustrations with my inner life. I’m continuing with Jung’s biography. Still having weird dreams as well (I had a really odd one the other night, but I can only recall flashes of it, not enough to really examine it). I’m beginning to understand a fundamental issue I’m dealing with at the moment and its importance: I’m essentially a materialist in search of meaning that in some sense is beyond that realm. Am I speaking of something that could be called religious? In some sense, I suppose. What I’m really looking for is connections, that to which material is can be reduced—a universal power. I sense these connections all the time, but just barely; I feel alienated from myself and ironically the material aspects of existence on which my vision of existence is based. There is some knowledge I do not have, which has left me in a place where I lack perspective in certain very important ways. There is something that is both within me and outside of me that I don’t understand. I am disconnected, in my understanding … from something …

Slowly Quieting Down, Stupid Dreams

Sunday, May 13, 2012—Long Beach, CA

Emerging from the semester. Feeling the workload lessoning, that there’s something to me besides that job. I’m also beginning to think about what I think about and feel when I’m not just buried in work (work that only interests me in certain respects). I’m also feeling a little better ohysically: my digestive problems seem to be less severe (though I’m still fighting what has been a pretty unpleasant sinus infection). I’m beginning to wonder if they’re being exasperated by stress. I know, or am at least nearly sure, that they are physically rooted, but I’m no longer sure if that’s all there is to it. It will be interesting to see how I feel a month or so down the road once I’ve had a chance to de-school a bit. I’m also going to be using this time to really experiment with my diet to see if a food allergy issue might be part of it. Next week I will beginning a cleanse, where all I’m going to be eating are fruits and fruit juices, vegetables, and rice. Hopefully a week or so of that will give me some answers.

Still diving into Jung, as well as trying to delve into my dreams. I’m getting frustrated, though. Crazy gobbledygook is all my subconscious seems capable of churning out. (I’m not going to even attempt to write down what I’ve been dreaming lately—it’s all been so thin and scattershot that I couldn’t even find a starting point.) I’m beginning also to understand how little rest I’m getting when I sleep. My mind’s spinning fast at all times, spinning out the shallow dreams of shallow sleep. What am I so stressed out about? It can’t just be work. I’m feeling so alienated, from most everyone, yes, but also certain aspects of myself, which is far more worrying. I’m feeling as if I simply failing to connect with certain very basics aspects of life. My life is missing something, has been missing something for a very long time. But I’ve hit some sort of end point—I have a need to push past this point. I am not unhappy, just blank and floating. I know I’ve said all this before—just going over old ground from different angles. This may not be bad thing, though—I might find the right angle into something I’m looking for.

Finished Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Very interesting at times. Confusing and a little flakey at others. Like I said, though, perhaps a good starting point for further explorations. Currently reading The Portable Jung (edited by Joseph Campbell). And a big biography of Jung by Deidre Bair. Worked a tiny bit on a Sunshine Seas story I’m calling “Fatu Hiva.” It’s frustrating to have to just pick away at it. Writing needs sustained effort. If a writer can’t commit deeper connections aren’t made and it just becomes about words instead of stories.

Endless Work Ending and A Weird Dream

Sunday, May 6, 2012—Long Beach, CA

I can almost see the light. By tomorrow evening I’ll be down to just having to grade one more big stack of papers and then my finals next week—after that it will be freedom. It’s going to be so weird—and so cool!—to finally not have a million things to do, to not work all week and then all weekend as well. I have so many things I want to do; I’ve been feeling like my life’s been on hold for months and months. I want to finally get out Edgewater, get my new website up, turn all the BSP books into e-books, and hopefully do some readings. And I of course still want to get to Greece (if I ever hear about my schedule for IVC and know if I have a decent income in the fall). Hell, I almost forgot—I want to write! I really want to sink my teeth in Sunshine Seas, plus I have other ideas I’d like to explore. Being able to finally see daylight has got me really straining at the leash, to the point where these last two weeks are going hard to get thru without my going a little nuts.

Still reading Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul. I’m not sure what I’m looking for in it. So far it’s interesting, but not earth shattering. It seems like a decent stating point, though—but for what? This turn in my reading coincides with my growing interest in my dreams (I know there are clues there as to what I’m looking for).

Last night I had an odd one. I should have written it down when I got up this morning (but I literally woke up way behind in my work), because a lot of the details have faded. I remember I was with my childhood friends Eric and Steve. I’m not sure how old we were in the dream, but I think we were more or less our age now (though, my age at least seemed to be changing slightly thru the dream’s course). I remember driving down strange dirt roads near some beach in the beginning of the dream, though I don’t think Steve and Eric were there at that point. I can’t remember much about that part of the dream. At some point after that, though, the three of us are wandering thru surf shops. I’m looking to buy a new board, but all the shops have stopped selling decent boards and mostly just sell clothes. Later we’re all at a hotel room Eric rented (he apparently doesn’t live where Steve and I live in the dream). I remember telling him how cool it was that he got a room so close to the beach. Then Steve put peroxide in my hair, as a joke, I think. I remember looking in a mirror and watching my hair lighten. I also remember it curling into a kind of eighties hairdo where it was short on the back and sides and long in the front and on top. Then the hotel room Eric had rented morphed into a house, maybe my house. I remember looking in the backyard and seeing my Ford Ranger truck, which I got rid of in 2009. Then a bit later I looked back there again and saw that someone had stolen all four of its wheels; it was sitting on wood blocks. (I used to have lots of dreams about the truck getting stolen and or stripped the last few years I owned it). A bit later I looked out the window again and the truck had been stripped until there was nothing left but its frame. I vaguely remember going outside (into the backyard?) and confronting someone about it. I don’t remember what came of that.

Later the house morphed into my grandparents old house on Pine Street in Los Alamitos. In the dream, though, the house was empty, no furniture or anything; somehow I had come into possession of the house after they’d died. I remember at some point going out to the front porch and seeing that kids from the neighborhood—between the ages of maybe eight or nine to about fourteen—were stealing plaques, knickknacks, and various other similar type things of my grandparents that for some reason were on the porch, hanging from the outside of the house, or in the drive. I remember confronting them, trying to get them to stop. I think they may have argued a bit, maybe made fun of me. Later one of the kids, a girl of fourteen, was clinging to my back as I rode a bike near some sort of canal or ditch. I remember thinking we shouldn’t be doing that, that she was too young to be going away with me. Other stuff happened but it’s all just shadows and fragments I can’t make much of. I do remember finding a wet suit somewhere near the end of the dream. I picked it up and it was incredibly heavy, like it was partially made out of lead. I remember thinking how dangerous and tiring it would be to surf in it. When I got up this morning I thought how strange it was that I had the wet suit part of the dream long after the part where Eric, Steve, and I were in the surf shops. I don’t remember where Eric and Steve went after the house had morphed into my grandparent’s house. I think Steve might have been around for part of that.

I have little idea what to make of this dream. I think I’ll just live with it for a while and see how I feel about it later. Maybe a future dream will build on it and give me some more insight (parts of my dreams often reappear in other dreams, sometimes quite often, over many years).

Again, other than my weird dream it’s mostly been work. I’m fighting a sinus infection too, which is slowing me down and making my teeth and jaw hurt and sometimes my head too. Went to the Angels game last night. They beat Toronto 6-2, I think. I took my nephew and Vic for my nephew’s birthday. It was fun. I needed to break; I haven’t done anything of note on a weekend in months. Listening to an album called Music of the Crusades at the moment. I picked it up a month or so ago. I’m not sure I like it. I was looking for instrumental stuff from that era and it’s turned out to have a lot of vocal pieces.