Thursday, March 20, 2003
Last night I dreamt I was on a bicycle riding with Little Brian and Adrian. We were riding fast through the city down big-hilled streets, then through a park. Eventually we came to a small private garden area with tall trees that let the sunlight filter down gently through the warm air. We met up with other guys that seemed to be friends of Brian and Adrian's. They were mean-looking types, dressed in fatigues, similar to skinheads but more relaxed and less victims of fashion. That part of the dream ended and another part started in which I was in a large gay bar sitting at the bar which seated at least 40 or 50 in a rectangle. Everything was normal—people were drinking, bartender was making rounds, music was playing. Then suddenly, all at once, everyone took out a candle and lit it and the entire place was silent. I looked around near me and saw an unlit pillar candle to my right. I pulled it toward me, but I didn't have a lighter. I looked around to get a light from someone, but the scene was so starkly beautiful—dozens of lit candles around the room—that I was speechless. The dream ended there. Called in sick. Oatmeal and zinc and vitamin C and psyllium and chloraseptic and peppermint tea for breakfast. Ugh! My throat burns. Patrick went to school because he knew his teacher wasn't going to walk out in protest against the war. After class he had to meet his language partner—a native Chinese speaker who is learning English up with which he got paired by the language program. They speak English for half an hour, then Chinese for half an hour. Our new CD+RW/DVD combo player arrived 2 days ago. We needed to archive some of our data using a method easier than the Onstream DI30 tape drive I've had for a few years now. In between naps, I'm reading Queer Forum on craigslist. There's much discussion about the war and the protests downtown. I don't feel the war is justified, but I also don't think there's much I can do to stop it. Is protesting in the streets helpful? I think partly yes, because it reminds everyone that there is more than just one voice on the matter. But mostly no—a month ago Bush already waved off the many protests around the world, belittling them as "a few focus groups." While browsing the Web, we laughed when we found out that there's a beach called Gay Head in Martha's Vineyard, Massachussetts. Surfed the Web with Patrick. Made Issue 5 for Lodestar live. We heard a car alarm tonight—very unusual for where we live. Patrick went out to look and said there seemed to be nothing unusual he could see.