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It looks a lot like engine oil and tastes like being poor and small
Most of my anxiety dreams are about school or performance. I was not expecting to dream last night that I was suddenly responsible for the arraignment of a serial killer: I was handed a folder of papers and pointed in the direction of the courtroom, which looked a lot more like a conference room. Unusually for this kind of dream, I explained promptly to the judge that I was here as a favor for an overworked lawyer (fictional, a vague acquaintance) and my knowledge of law was nonexistent to out of date by two thousand years; I'd been told it was just a formality, but if my participation was going to invalidate the case against the man, I wanted to bow out now. After which things devolved into a film noir cross with Hannibal, because I was supposed to have tried to fake my way through the prosecution and left things wide open for the defense, and then I spent much of the dream trying not to be killed. I didn't think much of it until I woke, but there were unicorns in this world; they had nothing to do with sexuality and a lot to do with not wanting to attract their attention, because they were arbiters of perfect justice and that's terrifying. Roaming, half-mythical, not part of the judicial system. In a story, I should have been able to summon one and confront the killer with it, but the only appearance I remember is a quick glimpse from the roof of a nearby warehouse: it was standing like a heraldic statue, possibly observing, possibly absorbed in some other thought; it was not horselike and not human and I couldn't guess what it was thinking. I remember its horn was a kind of ropy amber color. I woke up before the endgame. Things were getting bloody.
The marathon on Saturday was absolutely lovely and I should write about the movies, especially Tremors (1990), which I'd known nothing about and hadn't realized would be wonderful. Sunday sucked jet stream. We watched the latest episode of The Great British Bake Off, but that was after midnight and doesn't really count. I'm not sure about today, but tomorrow is the PMRP's Fall Fundraiser, when a portion of the proceeds from all purchases at Eat at Jumbo's will go toward funding Night of the Living Dead this month at Responsible Grace and The Big Broadcast of 1962: A Byfar Christmas Carol at the Regent in December. I have some stake in the latter, therefore plan to eat a calzone for radio. First I need to figure out what, beyond work, I am doing with this afternoon.
The marathon on Saturday was absolutely lovely and I should write about the movies, especially Tremors (1990), which I'd known nothing about and hadn't realized would be wonderful. Sunday sucked jet stream. We watched the latest episode of The Great British Bake Off, but that was after midnight and doesn't really count. I'm not sure about today, but tomorrow is the PMRP's Fall Fundraiser, when a portion of the proceeds from all purchases at Eat at Jumbo's will go toward funding Night of the Living Dead this month at Responsible Grace and The Big Broadcast of 1962: A Byfar Christmas Carol at the Regent in December. I have some stake in the latter, therefore plan to eat a calzone for radio. First I need to figure out what, beyond work, I am doing with this afternoon.
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I am very excited by (or terrified by) these just unicorns.
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My anxiety dreams are super-boring and are invariably about topology homework. (I don't know why my brain fixated on topology rather than any of the other math courses I took in college.)
Your dream reminds me interestingly of that Sturgeon story, whose title I am blanking on. "The Silken-Swift," was that it?
People look at me funny when I tell them I'd rather have nightmares because the nightmares are at least more creative.
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I knew it was a monster movie going in, and I knew that it had a very unpromising poster. (Which I now see was trying not to give away the anatomy of the monsters, but it still makes it look like a much more conventional and much stupider movie than it is.) That was it. It was exactly the sort of movie to see for the first time at half past midnight on a big screen and now I would cheerfully watch it again anywhere, anytime. I love finding these things.
I am very excited by (or terrified by) these just unicorns.
I do not know if anything fictional or poetic will come of them, but if so, I will you know.
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Every now and then I have nightmares about some subject I haven't studied since high school, which it is of course vital and imperative and critical that I understand in the dream. It's always faintly confusing when I wake up.
"The Silken-Swift," was that it?
That is Sturgeon's unicorn story! I haven't read it in years. It's the lead story in his collection E Pluribus Unicorn (1953), which I think was my first exposure to his short fiction. (I'd started with the novels Venus Plus X (1960) and Some of Your Blood (1961).) I'll see if I can find it again on the internet.
People look at me funny when I tell them I'd rather have nightmares because the nightmares are at least more creative.
Yeah. There's the class of nightmares in which people I love die or leave or hurt me and those are boring nightmares; I don't like them and they feel obvious. The kind where I am visited by politically topical vengeance goddesses are way preferable.
unicorns
Whoa.
Yeah, terrifying. Would you dare to summon them to deal justly with the serial killer if they would also deal justly with you yourself? *gulp*
They sound beautiful, though
Re: unicorns
It seems to have been a night for anxiety dreams. I dreamed I was back in college, with sovay and someone else as roommates, and my bookcase fell down on my bed and I despaired of ever getting the books back up. Also my teddy bear appeared to have been decapitated (I think this was independently of the bookcase falling down). For once, however, I was not worrying about any exams.
The dream sovay had edited a translation (by someone else) of a medieval poem, apparently solely to make fun of how bad the translation was. (On waking reflection this would not be at all a nice thing to do. In the dream it was merely funny.) It was a very peculiar poem that ended in some sort of orgy. Said orgy may have been an artifact of mistranslation. The poem did not include any unicorns as far as I can remember, but I only skimmed it. It had been published in a slender paperback with the cover photo being an odd selfie of dream-sovay's torso (clothed, don't worry) reflected in a window, which I thought very unsuited to the book.
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Well, that would be the question! You either have to be very sure of yourself or not care at all about the consequences. And they'd know if you were doing it for the ego-boost.
They sound beautiful, though.
I think they were.
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That is an excellent summation of college anxiety dreams.
It had been published in a slender paperback with the cover photo being an odd selfie of dream-sovay's torso (clothed, don't worry) reflected in a window, which I thought very unsuited to the book.
Whoa.
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I'm glad the marathon was lovely. I'm especially glad you liked Tremors, because I remember it fondly myself.*
I'm sorry for the sucky Sunday. I hope the fundraiser's gone well for PMRP.
*Then again, it had a funny take on monsters, attractive women, and creative uses of both field-expedient explosives and an elephant gun. In other words, it's fairly close to being the perfect movie for a very large chunk of the 12-15 year old male population. I saw it in a first run theatre, and I believe I was fourteen. The fact that you found it wonderful is comforting, because I'd had a bad feeling it might be one of those films that I'd see again and be wondering just what I'd been thinking.
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It was a lot more interesting than the kind based around exams I didn't know I was supposed to study for or plays I didn't know I was supposed to be in. I feel the same way about my nightmares.
I hope the fundraiser's gone well for PMRP.
Well, it's tomorrow. I plan to do my part.
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These sound remarkably like the quantum unicorns from Many Waters, which I've been thinking about a lot lately.
therefore plan to eat a calzone for radio
This might be one of my favorite sentences I've seen all day.
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What have you been thinking about it? I loved that book in fifth grade; it taught me the names of so many angels.
This might be one of my favorite sentences I've seen all day.
It was a good calzone, too!
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Mostly about the way it subverts the tropes of the unicorns having been too stupid/stubborn to get on the ark, and about the way in which the unicorns basically go 'between' a la Pern, and also whether they or their passengers age in those winkings out between summonings.
I also liked the ways in which it made the unicorns something more akin to angels than to beasts and thus not in need of human intervention to survive. I have a literary kink for that sort of thing (see my fixation on Leviathan, Shor ha'Bor and The Ziz.
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I think I also had a framing dream in which I was about to tell you about dreaming about the book I described and then realized it was real.