Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Well, funny you should say that.

When I was about 10 or so and just starting in on my record collecting (with all the Beatles releases, natch), I had the occasional dream that there was a room past my parents' bedroom that was a library filled with rows and rows of vinyl, cassettes, and other music formats. I knew this was pretty much an impossibility on a few levels--first, we weren't about to build another addition, and second, I highly doubted I was going to have that much music any time soon. At the time I personally owned about 15 albums and a handful of singles. It wouldn't start growing until a few years later.


Fastforward to 2012:



This is an external hard drive the size of a 3 x 5 index card and about a half-inch thick. It currently holds over 100,000 mp3s ripped from my cd, tape and vinyl collection or downloaded over the last ten years.


So yeah...this was one impossible dream that actually came true, no construction needed!

Got my coffee, got the Giants/49ers game on the TV, got my computer up to do some writing...no pressing errands, no other plans for today...things are good. :)

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Had an odd dream this morning. I dreamed that I was dreaming about one of those stunt-car-crash shows and watching how some kids in the audience were laughing their asses off, even though the crashed cars were sliding perilousl close to them. When I woke up in the dream I was at my parents' house and explaining the dream to my sister, when I was informed by my dad that I had to go out and shovel. I looked out the kitchen window and saw that there was a good couple of inches of snow outside.

When I woke up for real, I realized the window was still open and it was a bit chilly outside, and that may have influenced the dream about it being cold and snowy.

My brain is weird sometimes.

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The last two fingers on my right hand are sore, but I'm not entirely sure why. I may have banged them on something and forgotten what...it feels like the aftermath of having whacked them against a door jamb or something. Weird. Maybe I'm getting arthritis. :p

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It came a bit late, but I realized where I was going wrong with Chapter 6 of CFMWH. I was taking the easy, boring route with a storyline, so I threw a few wrenches in there. Also, just moments before I powered down for the night, I quickly typed out some prompts of the chapter's storyline that I can work off of, and they work SO much better. I think that was also the problem I was having--I was trying to plot out the entire chapter without making those quick notes first, and it was taking three times as long. I think if I resort to these prompts, it could work better and quicker.

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Note to self: time to charge up the Dana again. I may need to use it again pretty soon.

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Is it bad that I want to stay in my jammies (and socks that Emm made me) for most of the morning and just relax? Yes, I thought so too. ;)

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Best Political Quote EVAR:

Powell also spent several moments discussing the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim, saying he was upset he had even heard the rumors from senior Republicans.

"What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" he asked. "The answer is no."

(yoinked from a WaPo article, quoting this morning's Obama endorsement on Meet the Press.)

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So...how's the weekend been for you?

Had a dream last night that I was visiting the old record store that I used to work at. Thing is, it wasn't the same store as the one that used to exist in real life. This store, actually, existed in previous dreams and looked vastly different. In fact, it was more of a music/book store that had a small enclosed area for kids' books with a little play area (this in fact may be from a real store or classroom that I can't find a real destination for).

It even had a section in a different part of the mall--at an entirely different mall than the one the real one was at, mind you--that was a smaller outlet. This part was rather interesting in that it reminded me of the job I had at the theater in Leominster, when it had a two-screen addition across the parking lot (Newbury Comics is there now). In the dream I'd stopped by and talked to a few coworkers, hiding the fact that I'd completely forgotten that outlet was there.

And today while I was ripping a few songs from lynxreign's collection, I hit upon a few songs that I hadn't heard for ages and for some reason equated them with this dream. We're talking songs from about 1996-97, my first year or so at that store, back when it had just opened and we were incredibly stocked with everything, back when working there was fun. The music only made the memory of this dream that much more vivid.


What is it about these dreams I've been having for the last few years, where I'm visualizing places that I apparently used to know way back in the day, which in fact didn't exist? Places like a city square that would be situated where the corner of Beacon and Arlington would be in Boston. A giant mall (with a megaplex in the center rather than as a mall anchor) that I should have remembered as a child and would probably have been situated in downtown Worcester. A version of the upstairs apartment at my old house, only situated on the first floor and in a different part of town. A cool basement apartment that I supposedly lived in with a real roommate I had from a 3rd floor apartment. A version of my freshman year dorm with a completely different layout. A diner/restaurant with tiered seating that should have been placed on the corner of Beacon and Mass Ave in Boston. A giant movie megaplex with so many different screens that I never actually get around to finding the theater I'm looking for. A version of the Media Center at the former Emerson College Library that had been refurbished. And my version of the record store that never existed.

Where did all these vivid false memories come from? Are they just weird iterations of memories, jumbled with fantasy of what I wished they'd been? Or made-up memories of places that no longer exist? Sometimes I wonder if it's just my memory wishing some places still existed--the freshman dorm, the Media Center, the record store--and a mixture of places I wish did exist and places that I wanted to escape from. These are all places I see so vividly that I wish I could at least go there and see them and see how close to the real thing they were, regardless as to their existence. I wish I could take them and incorporate them into a number of novels yet unwritten.

But all I can say is that everyone of these dreams have exactly the same ambience to them--loss. Loss of things changed that are out of my hands. Loss of things I remember fondly that I no longer have access to. Loss of things I wish I'd gotten but never had the chance to acquire. Loss of a time I can't go back to. All I can do is remember them fondly, or try to forget the pain that went with them.

Strangely, I feel that eventually my days at YC are going to creep in there as well. Every other job has...