I know how I want you to say goodbye

Last night I dreamed the memories of a boy who had become a monk, who remembered a time from his childhood when a stranger came to the house, a beautiful young man who carried in his pocket a folded piece of paper like an anatomist's sketch: lungs, heart, liver, all the rest. He did not quite frighten, but he unnerved. He lived upstairs and worked at all hours, and no one ever saw him sleep or eat. Once he got into a fight in the streets, swords and gaslight, and he did not bleed; he came home with his shirt in ribbons, rolled up his sleeves, and went back to his studies. Then finally he threatened the children, or one of his researches did, and the boy got hold of the folded-up paper that the young man had never let out of his sight. "Time," the girl said, like a name or an accusation or a rationale. "You came out of the west. You came with the setting sun." And upstairs in that slant-roofed, bare-floored, jottings-crowded room, the boy tore the paper into fragments, worn so soft and creased that it parted as if along a dotted line, and the young man came apart exactly the same way. I don't remember if it was sunrise or sunset then; I know he disappeared into one of those low, liminal lights. Maybe he was meant to be winter.

This almost made up for the rest of the night, which was a total waste of semi-consciousness. But I had spam this morning from Melva Caudill and Abdul Corona, which makes me think perhaps there's hope for humanity after all.

The last few days have been mostly shopping, housecleaning, and Hanukkah. Thanks to setsuled, I unearthed my family's old tapes and watched the original Star Wars for the first time since high school; most of my reactions can be found scattered throughout the comments here. We held a small Hanukkah party, which afforded me the opportunity to introduce fleurdelis28 and Shlomo to the bat in person. My brother and his girlfriend got me an unbelievable hot-pack sewn up in starry green cloth and filled with cinnamon, chamomile, lemongrass, peppermint, spearmint, valerian, willow, yarrow, yellow dock, and some kind of grain, and which smells like the best cup of tea ever.

I need to finish a lot of things.