I think my subconscious doesn't know how to categorize purely academic crushes (i.e. incredible, yet incredibly platonic, interest in an individual who's intellectually stimulating), so in my dreams it gives them romantic overtones. It's weird how my subconscious adheres to stalker theory, even as my conscious mind knows it's perfectly okay to be interested in someone without romance being involved.

Last night I stayed up rather late compulsively reading David Kalstein's Prodigy: A Novel, a fictional story about a high school, Stansbury, full of medically engineered (of a sort) supergenius kids, set in 2036. This comes on the heels of my near-compulsive reading of the latest Harry Potter book last week.

So this morning, I had a dream that essentially combined the two schools. Here's what I remember.

As in both the Harry Potter book and Prodigy, chaos was rampant in the halls of the school. It was the beginning of the school day, and into the teacher's lounge came the latest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, panting and dragging something heavy. Addressing Professor McGonagall, he asked, in a somewhat wry British accent, "So what do we do when a student dies, anyway? Do we just put him in a box and send him on home, then?"

The scene cut then to the professor's memory of the deceased student he just found lying in a corridor, awkwardly crumpled on the floor with his arm extended...and a raccoon snapping and tugging at it.

I guess the raccoon was someone's (the student's?) familiar.

What I do with my spare time:

My AIM buddy list is populated by strangers. Has been for a long time, really, but I didn't notice until I moved to a new interface and saw it all anew. Sometimes you get so used to the way things look that you just can't see them for what they are.

The new program, Adium, has a mechanism whereby you can give people aliases—e.g. substitute their real names for whatever screenname they've handpicked for themselves. DeadAIM has the same thing, but I just never felt like using it. But this time I figured it might look better somehow—sharper—if I had all the real names up there, all in a row.

So I fixed 'em all up with aliases for their real names, and it was great. Everyone had a name—I could reassure myself that there were real people somewhere behind that row of away messages.

But it didn't feel right. As it turns out, real names make the buddy list feel lonely. I don't talk to most of these people—and when their real names are up there, it's like they're mocking me. "Yeah, you know my name, but you don't know me." And it's true; I don't know them.

So I changed them back. Forget aliases. When the names on the list are screennames, rather than real names, it's as though y'all are exciting characters fighting the drama of life alongside me, rather than old friends whose attentions have waned...

Heh. Ronnie asked me if I was planning to go back to the MSA reunion again this summer. I had to tell him no.

Last summer, you see, I swore I wasn't going back for at least another five years. So I'm almost certainly not going to go this year.

And I find myself wanting to add caveats to that like "Well, if enough people I know go, I might" or "If I can get a ride, I might." If you notice, I can't even say it straight: "I'm not going to go this year." I have to add on modifiers and subtext. It's hard to let this ritual fall aside.

But I need to stop going for a while, 'cause so few people I know still come that it's ultimately getting too painful and embarrassing for me to go back right now.

Why painful? Well, I think it could be a grand adventure again if I had a few good friends to go with—but it seems so unlikely that that's going to happen. It's painful waiting for old friends to show up. And it feels embarrassing just imagining sitting there on the hill, watching these kids who are six years younger than me dance and revel. I don't get anything out of it anymore besides suspicious and [what feel like] pitying looks from the RAs.

Why keep putting myself in a situation I know will make me doubt myself?

It was okay last year, 'cause I met my younger brother's friends and felt like I had at least a tenuous place. But this year? I'd rather sit back that evening and dim my memories with drinks, rather than with new disappointment.

I continue pressing the MSA lever for far too little reinforcement, y'know? It was great once, but it just doesn't bring the crack anymore. ;)

"Started lookin' out for myself today..."
"I came down here to tell you...it rains in heaven all day long."

I didn't do this week's Illo Friday drawing yet, but I did draw a pig.

Was sick in bed for most of the past 24 hours. In that time, I ached and coughed and tossed and turned. I slept for about half an hour at a time, and dreamed about many things—most of which had to do with wars, not being able to speak English, being Jewish/Arab/Chinese and being forced to learn English in an internment camp, clutching scraps of blanket to myself (my blanket was alternately too hot or falling off), more wars, missing a flight and getting lost in the dirty depths of the airport, missing classes, tests, and the newspaper...

Such nightmares!

It's like in Siddhartha—I've moved through my "eating a lot" phase, my "drinking a lot" phase, and now my "spending a lot" phase. Don't know what's left.

There's a certain feeling of peace you get when you're taking medicine for an ailment, as you can (in many cases) sort of sit back and let the medicine work its magic. It's no longer your responsibility to grimace and frown at the ailment, as though you can beat it by sheer force of will—just letting go and letting the medicine percolate through you is soothing.

The scent of someone else's cooking, meat sizzling in oil on the stove, definitely reminds me of home. I'm sitting here, doing my own work, absorbed in MetaFilter and link-following, and that scent brings me back to some May evening at home back in '96, listening to this mix tape I just recorded. It's a Saturday, and I'd be out if sickness hadn't slowed me down.

Perhaps it's a change in my consciousness, or the Parkway view out my window, but it continually feels like May around here, rather than the September it is.