Thousand Cranes

I've been through some sad times lately. As flippant as I am about it to others, I really don't think I'm dealing with it very well. Usually, people say that you need to cheer up, do things that make you feel better. That didn't feel right to me. I don't want to slather over my feelings with a layer of cheap happiness. I wanted to do something to really express my sadness.

I settled on making a thousand paper cranes. I don't suffer any illusions that it will grant my wish. It's really more about the process. I make ten cranes every day, no matter what else is going on. I'm about 450 cranes in at this point. I think what it's come to mean to me is that by working every day at a larger goal I can really accomplish something. It's a small change, achieved not through huge effort but through persistence and patience.

Small changes, followed through with, are what's going to make my wish come true.

Here's the first hundred, pictured with the knitted corkscrew of doubt and the blackwork pomegranate of shattered dreams (and pants).

Dream Diary III

The names of people I know in real life have been changed to save myself the embarrassment of it getting out that I dream hooked up with them. They will have different soap opera names each time to add a level of obfuscation. So Chad from last time is not necessarily Chad from this time.

Dimitri and I were married and we lived in a huge mansion in Hollywood. We had a lot of children, who all had soft hair and pronounced smile lines like their father. Dimitri and I were both high-profile lawyers.

We were having a large party at our house. There were some men there demonstrating some fancy novelty cigars. During the demonstration I was seated next to an African man. When it was over, he got out his wallet, as if to pay for the show. I tried to explain that it was a free demonstration, and I saw a pink flyer with a strange symbol sticking out of his wallet.

Suddenly, the mansion was under attach by people waving banners with the same symbol on them. These sorts of attacks were a frequent occurrence at our house. We were often the victims of terrorist attacks due to our work.

Afterwards, I went to check in on the children. They were unharmed but very upset about the attack. They asked me why we didn't stop so that the attacks would end, and I told them that the people just needed to know that Star Wars was a good movie, and Dimitri and I were the only ones preaching that particular gospel. I showed them a clip of it, and they agreed that it was good, but they weren't sure that it was worth risking everything for.

Dream Diary II

The names of people I know in real life have been changed to save myself the embarrassment of it getting out that I dream hooked up with them. They will have different soap opera names each time to add a level of obfuscation. So Chad from last time is not necessarily Chad from this time.

I was the main character in some kind of survival horror game, a man trying to save his daughter. The game was developed by an American game developer in English, but it was loosely based on an anime. Very loosely. It was poorly designed and buggy. I kept getting stuck in the geometry and none of the weapons really seemed to do anything. You had to rescue other characters in order to proceed but it was very difficult since their AI and pathing was so bad. In order to get new abilities, you had to beat Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz in a jump rope challenge. At some point, a hint appeared in enormous stone letters on a building in the distance, but they crumbled to dust before I could read them. I waited patiently for the animation to loop so I could read it, but I kept getting distracted and missing it.

When I wasn't the character from the game, I was also me beta testing the game. During this process, I was wandering through a building crowded with people who belonged to two opposing factions. The occasional fight would break out, but mostly they stayed in separate rooms.

During the dream, I "woke up" and decided to log this in my dream journal. I was using a highlighter that had a bit of black ink on one side of the tip. I was writing it and trying to conceal what I was doing from a man who was my lover. I was afraid to tell him about my dream journal, but when the truth came out he didn't really care. I woke up and had to write it all over again.