5/23/17

i'm thankful for the long strange dream i had last night, which involved me portraying the pope in some kind of play in which there were several scenes of the pope having sex with a nun (who in this case was portrayed by d). i'm thankful that there was also lots of dialogue in the play but in the dream i couldn't remember much of it (besides that it was vaguely iconoclastic and anti-war at times) so it was mostly just the sex parts with d and i in (and out of) our weird catholic costumes. i'm thankful that we both felt weird about not knowing the dialogue but both felt in the logic of the dream (which involved multiple performances of the play) that all we could do was our best, which mostly involved fumbling our way through the motions as a crowd of people watched below the elevated stage of the papal palace. 

i'm thankful to have realized that this dream probably arose out of a stupid argument i decided to have at d last night about how no one can see in through our bedroom windows when the blinds are open because of the elevation of our house and the weedy hedges along its periphery, which is an ongoing argument i have had at her and which last night at its (hopeful) apotheosis involved me going outside into the driveway after dark and looking through the window from various angles so i could tell her exactly what could be seen from the outside (which was the top of her head when she was on one side of the room and the rest of her head if she was on the other side). i'm thankful to understand after our argument progressed that i am a stupid man and that whatever "proof" i have was not what she actually needed, which was empathy and understanding for the fear the open windows gave her of exposure to the gaze of men and the threat of sexual violence, which is something that she as a woman always has to think about. i'm thankful to feel stupid that i didn't understand this sooner but i'm thankful to get it better now.

i'm thankful to be amazed by my brother, the actor, who flunked out of college and was always a bad student in school but who can memorize pages and pages of lines and recall them perfectly when he is in a play. i'm thankful that if he sets his mind to things (like this or like learning complicated clawhammer banjo routines), he can learn to do them and it's just a matter of setting his mind to them (which seems as though it should be simple but is probably harder than actually learning the things itself). i'm thankful to have thought of this and him last night while playing through the dungeon associated with my first divine beast in zelda and getting stuck because i couldn't figure out what i was supposed to do to a gear to make it turn and putting down the system out of frustration—i'm thankful to remember sitting on the carpeted floor of his bedroom when we were teenagers and watching him blast through dungeons in the wind waker. i'm thankful to know that if i keep being stuck i could text him for advice, which i think would make him happy.

i'm thankful that though i forgot to facetime my parents at our usual time last night, that's okay because they'll want to see the dog we're dog-sitting and so it's better for me to facetime them tonight anyway. i'm thankful that we've packed up our clothes and most of the food we're taking (i'm thankful for the weird reverse deja vu of packing up food we just unpacked after going to the grocery store on saturday) and will move over there on our lunch breaks. i'm thankful that the house is in town unlike the last place we dog-sat and that if we need anything from home, we can pop back for it easily. i'm thankful that we will do our best to maintain the dog's routines but to know that we're not going to either radically fuck up or radically improve the dog's training over the week we're with him and so will mostly focus on having fun with him.