Sunday night

I’ve been having these very intense dreams. While I was in England I dreamed constantly of being asleep in my own comfortable bed in California, despite the fact that I had not been there for several months before I headed out of the country, instead spending the summer in New York—where I am right now. These cocoons of turquoise knit sheets that haunted me made me know that it was time to leave. The dreams were so intense that I would wake with morning amnesia, something that I’d never before experienced. And the intense disappointment I had in finding myself still in my dingy student house so far from the sun and my self-sustained grownup life was so hard to bear day after day after day, eating bread and yoghurt because I couldn’t bear to face the mess twelve people made in our one kitchen.

Now, I still have intense, real dreams, ones that I remember and savor because they are so much more interesting than my real life. Yesterday I was in the middle of writing an email and watching Monsoon Wedding and I dreamed that the sister of the friend I was writing to was getting married, but I couldn’t see the bride’s face, as I don’t know what the sister looks like. Sometimes I dream that I send my best friend growing up a postcard I bought for her in Ireland, and she will figure out that someone cares about her (yes, still, even though it’s silly, I know) and she decides to not have the drink she was about to pour. It’s not my job to save a drunk.

Either my brain is trying to stimulate itself before it dies of boredom, or there’s something wrong that I cannot fix by babysitting to earn the money for a plane ticket. I carry this dissatisfaction within myself, always hoping that somewhere new will help me find the life I want.

There is this core of frustration that lurks deep inside: a loneliness that follows me around, and it’s growing tiring. I thought angst was supposed to be this whole teenage thing, then you outgrew it and were able to go on without being consumed with jealousy. I played duenna to many of my friends, and have grown into a spinster—didn’t you see the pictures of my spinning? There’s this part of all of us that cries out “What about me?!” and it’s hard to stifle. Nor do I think such a voice should be stifled, and compromising isn’t going to satisfy it for long.

I don’t know where this is from but I didn’t write it:

"To touch her through the glass of air would be transgression, though I love her in her loneliness, prism'd in analysis (therefore therefore therefore, as if the bare fact could be talked into something more special), untranslatable as this: she wants someone to touch her. Through the glass of air she sees the world flown clear of her reflection, though her mind beats out: it hurts it hurts. To bear touching her, through the glass of air."

In the morning this will probably strike me as silly, but it’s really true. of course, it may also be the direct result of being given, two weeks late, a crockpot for my birthday. yes, i'm sure it's very useful, you know, eventually, but I just never thought, "Hmmm, I need a crockpot RIGHT NOW!"

Meanwhile, buy the Proclaimers’ newest album Restless Soul. I’ve been listening to it all weekend. You know, they're the guys who did "500 Miles" from the Benny and Joon soundtrack, and "I'm on my way" from one of the Shreks. You haven't lived until you've heard their completely serious version of "King of the road." This must be said out loud, very evenly and flatly to understand why this is such a great cover: "They get down with their bad selves." They even get a bit, shall we say, funky.

We had a family reunion last year, and all the girls had long, rippling dark brown hair. It was nice to fit in.