little sarah Big World

October 20, 2009

In Dreams

I’ve been having some disturbing and vivid nightmares since I got here.

I dreamt that I was camping near a lake with Whitney and some other family and friends. The dream was thick with an inquieting, auspicious and ominous feeling. There was a submarine resting on the lake, near the shore. We decided to take it down to the bottom, to explore. As we began to descend, water started seeping in under the door, then rushing. I wanted to turn back but my companions were anxious to see the lake floor. On the bottom, we found ourselves in an abandoned underwater suburbia. Everything was perfect and untouched, clean and tidy, with brightly painted houses, shining silver mailboxes and (of course) white picket fences. Everything was still, with seaweed floating silently in the front yards and paved roads that stretched out into nothing.

I guess creepy is an understatement. With my fervent pleading, we booked it out of there, back to the top. Then I woke up.

*   *   *

Then, in Potsdam, I had a dream that I returned home to Madrid to find my precious, white flowered nightlamp broken on the floor. I tried to pick it up and put it back together, but it was so brittle and crumbled in my hands.

This last one seems to me to represent my happiness here–so fragile, so tied up in tonterías (silly little things), like a nightlight, a little wooden mesilla, a fresh croissant.

But my happiness seems to have become a bit more durable of late. I always forget that I just have to hold on! Just wait a little bit. This too shall pass.

other beloved items include: a book from chad, sheets from laura, little alarm from Oviedo

The afore-mentioned nightlamp

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October 20, 2009

A Confederacy of Dunces

Just finished it. Here are my most favorite quotations:

“Ignatious, what’s all this trash on the floor?”

“That is my worldview that you see. It still must be incorporated into a whole, so be careful where you step.”

“When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life. Ignatious was about to say this to himself; then he remembered that he went to the movies almost every night, no matter which way Fortuna was spinning.”

“He rolled down the window an inch or two and breathed the salt air blowing in over the marshes from the Gulf…As if the air were a purgative, his valve opened. He breathed again, this time more deeply. The dull headache was lifting.”

This was a going-away present

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