I think it’s uncool for meat-eaters to get chirpy and self satisfied when a vegetarian eats a piece of meat.  I can promise that this vegetarian will not be secretly loving meat nibbles ever.  But some vegetarians do slip up or indulge or fall off the wagon because most of them weren’t always vegetarians and meat tastes good to them.  There should be no war between meat-eaters and vegetarians.  There is no need.  It’s stupid.

Still, I have to admit that I’m prone to my own juvenile moments.  I’m sure if you’ve been hanging around this blog for long you’ll already be able to count many proofs of this on your hands, so I’m not going to give you more right now.  Let’s just say that it has been confirmed this week that a local person I knew didn’t like me doesn’t like me.  It doesn’t bother me because I don’t like this person either.  We were never friends and it’s pretty much a non-tragedy that we never will be.  I think we’re both pretty happy with this arrangement.  However, this person has actually snubbed me pretty sincerely and after quite a few snubs I finally gave up doing the polite, cause there’s only so many times you can bother acknowledging a person who pretends not to know you.  So I engage in some small wicked fantasies about a future in which things are different and I have the opportunity to very politely make this person feel like total shit for being a total shit.*

The point is: a very small number of meat-eaters are total shits who are waging a juvenile war against people choosing not to eat meat and I can point my finger all I want but I know I play my own juvenile games and so I think I’ll fold my finger right back up and redirect my attention.

I’ve been having lots of bad dreams lately.  I have spent a lifetime learning the subtle differences between bad dreams, disturbing dreams, and nightmares.  It really doesn’t matter what you call them unless you spend a lot of time in them because when you do you need a rating system to describe (even just to yourself) what level of fear or depression or horror you spend all your sleeping hours experiencing.  I wonder if I have a version of Stockholm  Syndrome with regards to my life of bad dreams and nightmares?  They have held me and my subconscious captive my whole life and at this point I think I might freak out more if they stopped than if I continue to have them the rest of my life.  More than that, I think I’ve come to think of them as part of the fabric of my being.  Who would I be without the haunting?  Who would I be if I had mostly good dreams or no dreams at all?  How would I take my own psychological temperature?  They keep me in a constant state of unrest and they chain me to themes I have thought I’d like to be free of.  But it has come to a point where this macabre landscape of desperate sleep is like a spiritual imprint.  A tattoo on the psyche that glows in the dark.

There’s a part of me that believes that all dreams are real in an alternate universe and if the nature of my dreams completely changed it would be like dying.  I don’t like the bleak borderlands of crows I walk in my sleep but I’m used to it in a way so that when I’m still walking them in daylight I know it’s my two lives crossing each other and nothing has been undone.

I’m trying to slow down the gears of preservation.

It’s been a phenomenally long day.  I’ve worked all day so I don’t have to work so much tomorrow.  I took a three hour “break” to make a double batch of corn chowder and slow roasted tomatoes.  It’s late and I must now commence “wind down time” which takes about two hours.  I can’t go from focused activity to sleep without a very long period of numbing my brain into enough stupefaction that it will accept sleep without demur so that I can launch myself into the road again to save an infinitesimal kitten and a stupid puppy both bent on dying and an old boyfriend who wants to play tennis while an old friend accuses me of stealing everything from furniture to cheese.

You have no idea how much anxiety those things caused me last night in my parallel reality.

Good night.  I hope you go to bright calm places in your dreams.  I hope you don’t see me in mine!

 

 

*Yes, it’s all cloak and dagger here.  Remember what a small town I live in.  A few of you actually live here too and I’m terrified that in spite of my careful vagueness you have already figured it all out.  But you can’t.  There are only two people who know the details and we’re very SPY.**

**Remember that many people in this town don’t like me and more than one person has snubbed me.  You are not SPY enough to dig my secrets out of my subconsciousness.***

***That is not an invitation to try.