47 and 52

47. Did you have a dream last night?

i always have dreams.

(here are two, one from last night and one that last night’s called back to. in the first, i was out in a metal boat with two people, real people. saltwater came in on every wave even though i knew it was a lake in the way that in real life i know where my hands are. one of us searched desperately for some kind of signal, radio or cell, vague because in my dreams i know even less about physics. i and the other sat in the back of the boat, idly trying to bail it out or contemplating future feelings of sunburn and not thinking about how as soon as we escaped everything would be over. the three of us had, in the boat, reached some kind of understanding; the two of us understood, as the signal-seeker perhaps did not, that our rescue would prevent our deaths but also any chance of us maintaining our collective intent. the nature of this intent varied, but it was intensely emotional and possibly romantic and involved a highly complex network of social connections and a plan for the armed overthrow of a medium-scale political power.

in the second dream, i sat with i someone i love at a wooden table in a kitchen full of sunlight. my hands were on the table. there was a small vase full of violets. they leaned across the table– i turned my head to theirs– they gently but firmly put their thumb over my mouth and pushed.)

52. Is your life anything like it was two years ago?

in several obvious respects yes– still in college at same college, still a bio major, still a lot of the same creative projects. at this time two years ago i was just starting to push relationships into being that are most of the important ones i now have. i lived functionally alone and i was sad and lonely and messy and crazy and sick all the time; now i’m just messy and crazy. two years ago my job was undoable and inescapable and i prayed to be fired, or if i couldn’t get fired then perhaps to be hit by a train. last week i said to my boss “i’m very frustrated with my slow pace at work, i think i’m not getting enough done” and he said “well, you’re producing more than you think, but anytime you’re hitting these roadblocks you should let me know and i can come troubleshoot it with you,” exactly as though i’m a real person whose problems deserve to be solved. this time two years ago i hadn’t come up with a couple of my big life problems yet, but i had far more, and i wanted to die all the time, and that was very bad, and this is much better.