dreams...

i have been having an odd relationship of late with sleep, and i do not mean the normal (for me, that is) sense in which it seems to elude me most days. to the contrary, i have spent more time asleep than awake over the past few days, and that in itself is already strange.

the most bizarre part of the experience, however, is the intensely-vivid dreams i have been experiencing in said state. like last night, for example.

i found myself, near the end of that dream, laying on the roof of a building. it was a broad, mostly-flat surface, and i kept going back and forth between imagining the terrace garden that could be created in that space... and wondering what the heck i was doing up there in the first place.

that is when vertigo got a hold of me, and i could not convince a single muscle to move enough to try to find a door or a set of stairs that would lead me down from there. i finally managed to crawl a few feet. not so much that i was at the edge of the roof, but just far enough that i could get a glimpse of the landscape beyond the building.

what i saw was equal parts breathtaking and frightening.

i was high up enough to be well above the top of the surrounding trees. but they were not any trees i had expected to find. the whole world, as far as the eye could see, was surrounded by a sprawling expanse of lush green coconut trees, like something out of a tropical fantasy.

i could also make out a field of vegetables growing a short distance from the building, and i instantly recognized the large leaves of dasheen and other plants that one or the other of my grandmothers wold have grown in their gardens back in the day.

it was familiar... but frightening all the same.

i was definitely no longer in Montreal, or even back in Brooklyn. where was i... and how did i manage to find myself in such an awkward position?

this is when i heard the faint sound of a woman's voice coming from somewhere near the building. she was welcoming someone, and explaining that the resort they were standing in was once a working estate that belonged to her family. she went on to note that all the food they would be eating during their stay had been sourced from the property, and i got a sudden mental image of a figure walking through the picturesque field, filling a basket with items that would later become a colorful meal.

i realized at this point that all i had to do was to make enough noise for them to know that i was up there. but doing so would have meant crawling closer to the edge of the building, or even just opening my mouth to scream. however, the panic was so great at this point, that i was struggling to even breathe.

so i just laid there... paralyzed by fear.
___________

i awoke a short while later to find myself alone in the bed at almost one in the morning, still surrounded by that feeling of dread. i wanted to get out of the bed just long enough to walk to the studio next door where my favorite animator was working late into the night, or to even tap on the wall just loud enough to let him know that i was awake. but i could not shake that horrible feeling.

so i just laid there for the longest time... still paralyzed by fear.

now we wait...

i genuinely miss the days when insomnia was an occasional occurrence, as it seems to have become my default setting of late. i spent all of last night sat up in bed, watching the steadily falling snow on the other side of the windows.

it is now shortly after sunrise—in theory, at least—and it would appear that the promised twenty centimeters (eight inches) seems to have been spot-on for a change. i felt compelled for some odd reason to grab the nearest non-scientific device and verify that measurement.

that looks roughly like twenty centimeters to me. this is me we are dealing with here, so naturally i did confirm it with an actual measuring device to be doubly sure. [that is a bamboo knitting needle, by the way.]

however, as it is still snowing as i am writing this, the final snowfall amount is likely to increase before that storm front is done wreaking havoc. and, while the heaviest part of the snowing has come and gone, and the near-gale-force winds they were promising seem to have skipped us entirely, the worst part of this storm is yet to come.

Canadians pride themselves on being able to drive through the worst Winter conditions, and that is usually the case... except for the very first storm of the season. that is when everyone seems to forget how to behave in icy road conditions. without fail, this first snowfall of the season is guaranteed to be accompanied by a sharp spike in road accidents. the local news for the next day or two will be filled with reports of multi-car pileups of the kind that leave you wondering how the drivers at the end of that chain of destruction failed to notice the twenty (or more) cars ahead of them that had already smashed into each other.

being Canadians, they tend to take these things in stride, and you find the occasional report of people pulling hockey sticks out of their trunks and having an impromptu match right there in the middle of a frozen-over highway while they wait for the emergency services to arrive. firstly, only in Canada does everyone seem to have a hockey stick within reach at all times, and secondly, only in Canada could such a nightmare of a situation be turned into something so ridiculously cute. i shudder to think what a multi-vehicle pileup of that magnitude would look like back home in NYC, and i can almost guarantee you that anyone who pulls a baseball bat out of their trunk in that situation is definitely not looking for a quick game.

man, i miss New York!

it is now the middle of the usual morning drive time, and i am surprised at how near-silent it is out there. the weather service spent the past few days issuing dire predictions of strong winds whipping all of that fresh snow into zero visibility, whiteout conditions, but that part has thankfully not happened. however, most people seem to have heeded the suggestions to plan to stay home today unless absolutely necessary. you do not have to tell us that twice.

beyond that, we live on a small one-way street that is only a few blocks long, so we are usually one of the last streets to be plowed. no exaggeration... i have not heard a single car either being started or being driven down our street, and that will likely remain the case for the rest of the day.

i find it especially adorable that the people across the street took the time to put their recycling out for collection. i get the distinct feeling it will be sitting in that spot for a few days before the city gets around to remembering that we exist.

in light of all the dire warning over the past few days, we spent yesterday afternoon driving around Montreal, crossing things off a list as we went, and we were walking to the car to head back home from our last stop just as it finally began to snow.

while this is being billed as the first snowstorm of the season, we actually got a bit of light snow back in the middle of last week. i opened the curtains Wednesday morning (following yet another night of zero sleep i should add) to find this.

farewell, trough of delicious strawberries. it was lovely eating you.

we took that light dusting as a friendly reminder from Mother Nature, and we cleared up the last traces of this Summer's balcony garden project. the ceramic pots had already been brought indoors to prevent cracking due to freezing, so all that was left was to remove the last bits of greenery from the large planters, then stack and cover them to prevent the loss of nutrients from the soil due to melting snow... which is a joke in itself, as there will be approximately two-to-three days during the course of the next five-to-six months when it will be warm enough around here to melt snow.

now we wait for next year.

Jultember: tastes like a whisper...

i slept for exactly zero hours last night, which means that this month of daily posts is off to an especially restless beginning. this has pretty much been the case most days of late, and i have given up any attempt at maintaining "regular" sleeping hours, which means walking around in an ever-increasing state of lunacy until sheer exhaustion gets the best of me... which usually takes about two or three days. good times.

i was all set to veto doing this month of daily posts, but i decided to go ahead with it, mainly as i desperately need to distract myself from all of the nonsense rolling around inside my head that makes sleep near-impossible. so, i grabbed the first piece of paper i could find (that being a subscription card from a knitscene magazine), and i made a list of whatever random nonsense came to mind. there will be no particular order to how they appear—some may not appear at all—and most of the posts will likely be very brief, because that is the limit of my thought process these days.

and... yes... that is iced coffee. and... yes... i know that it does not help. however—in my defense—it is a blend that is roughly three-quarters decaf with just a splash of regular coffee for flavor (as decaf only ever tastes like a whisper to me).

25: absurdity seems to be contagious...

i had a firm plan in place to take care of a couple-few things today that i had been neglecting for the longest while. said plan was grounded in the strong hope/expectation that i would get a solid night of sleep. needless to say, i have been up since like two in the morning. 

i finally gave up trying at 3:43, which is when i climbed out of bed, and made myself a large cup of very strong coffee. that is where you find me. sipping cold coffee. weighing the items on that short list of "things to do". hoping that i can possibly get a single one done today. 

while i would love to say that sleeplessness is a once-in-a-while occurrence, if you have been here before, you will probably know that it is my default setting most days. and it began about five seconds after i was born... in the wee hours of the morning, i would add. clearly they should have known what they were in for from day one. 

my family's oral history—that being, the stories we tell each other at clan gatherings—includes accounts of me keeping everyone within hearing range up until almost dawn. my grandfather used to wrap me up in the middle of the night, and take me for long walks in the dark, if only to give the rest of the household a chance at some sleep. so... you know... this is pretty much all his fault. 

worse than not being able to sleep, i came to realize that i actually liked being awake in the middle of the night, when there was no one else around to get in the way of the nonsense that tends to cloud my mind. 

i once set out—somewhere back in my high school years—to make every single bread recipe in one of mom's old cookbooks. as a result, she would occasionally wake up to find a loaf of bread sitting on the counter, a testament to my having been awake all night. seriously... do you not take great pleasure in hand-kneading dough at like three in the morning? exactly.

to this day, i always know when i am in an especially pensive mood, as it tends to involve a sudden, overwhelming need to make bread. hey... i have never suggested that anything i do makes any sense.

it is later in the day, and i am pleased to announce that i just woke up from a (very out of character) nap. this likely means that i will not be able to sleep for the next two days, but it is better than no sleep at all... i guess. 

while napping, i had a a dream in which we were walking around a supermarket, looking for ingredients to make an orzo and  vegetable salad with a vinaigrette dressing... which brings me to the next part of the topic for today.

i love hearing people talk about their dreams—by which i (naturally) mean the ones they have while sleeping, and not their deluded aspirations while awake. it is such insight into what runs through their minds when you take away all of the distractions of waking life.

his dreams, for example, are disjointed and make little-to-no logical sense most days, while my dreams usually read like a scripted movie with a beginning, middle, and end. this seems to be an apt description of how we both approach life. he crafts a story out of absurdity, while i am stuck trying to find logic in everything. apparently i was a Vulcan in every single one of my previous lifetimes. 

then there are those occasional dreams that serve to prove that i am spending far too much time around him, as the absurdity seems to be contagious. 

in one recent dream, a young boy was in his room in the attic of an old house. they had been having some problems with mice, so mousetraps (the old-school snapping type) had been placed throughout the home, including one in his room.

he sat on his bed, studying a small hole in the baseboard, when a small head appeared and quickly disappeared inside said space. there it was again. and again. and again.

rather than being frightened, the boy was fascinated by the creature, and when it finally emerged from the hole, he was surprised to see that it was a girl. she panickeded when she saw the boy, and she ran back into the hole, but he assured her that it was okay to come back out.

which she did, and she proceeded to explore the room, while the boy watched and cheered as she gasped in excitement at each new discovery. then she started running back and forth, which amused him even more.

then, as she was turning the corner to run in a new direction, the boy remembered the mousetrap. he would have to act fast if he was to save his new friend's life. 

then it cut to a scene of him holding up one hand that was wrapped in a bandage, while using the other hand to scratch the head of the little girl mouse who was standing up in the pocket of his shirt.

then i woke up.