transparent thesis dream

8/1/2010
I flew into Boston instead of directly to Providence because the tickets were cheaper. So I called Julie to see if she was around town, and if she felt like hanging out. She did, and I drove down to meet her at her house in a forested valley. There were no speed limit signs, but the scenic road there looked pretty much like a highway, so I kept my speed at what felt like about 60 mph. I drove for a while, thinking about my Ph.D. and, admittedly, zoning out a little bit. Eventually I was jolted out of my daze by the sight of a speed limit sign--30 mph.
"Fuck," I thought, and looked at the odometer. It was worse than I'd thought--I was doing 90. I started to brake. I noticed police lights in my rear view mirror.
I heard a roar to my right. Before I had time to react, my car flew over some railroad tracks, missing a train by milliseconds. I pulled into a scenic overlook parking lot and waited for the train to pass and the cops to come.

Winnie-the-Pooh print flannel bedsheets were also involved somehow

last week

Flyover shot: over the Atlantic Ocean, towards the rocky coast of Sandusky, Ohio, a resort island near Boston. The camera catches up with a girl finishing a three-mile swim; it's me and POV switches to mine. I reach the beach, grab a towel and enter a giant McMansion settled among the rocks.

Inside is an elegantly appointed gym where a bunch of Victorian-style grandmothers train people about my age in boxing. It's a Jedi-style appointment: you live in one of the bedrooms upstairs while you're training there, and apparently take manners/dancing lessons as well in the grand ballrooms.

I'm dressed and I have my gym bag. A girl I think I may have spoken with once on the internet approaches me in the enormous kitchen.
"Hey, can we do a fight?" she asks.
"I'd really rather not," I say. "I just got back from training."
She insists. I can't get her to leave me alone so I finally agree.
We wrap our hands and put on gloves right in the kitchen. Mine are exactly like my real ones except immensely high-quality, and dusty.

I block all her shots, and the first punch I throw hits her hard. She shakes it off and comes back, but within the minute I land a punch on her sternum that literally sends her flying into a wall at least ten feet away. She slumps onto the ground.

"TKO," says a Boxing Grandmother who has wandered into the kitchen.

"Nice one," says my opponent weakly. She is my water bottle. A few perfect globes of vividly orange gatorade leak out of her nose, which is intermittently my water bottle's nozzle.

I want to throw up.

My mom and dad are coming in from the dining room. My dad hates when I participate in any sport he considers too masculine, and my mom hates violence, so I tell them what just happened expecting that they'll be mad at me, validating my anger with myself. To my immense chagrin, they both raise their eyebrows. They are surprised and impressed.

Later I'm still upset about it, but now it's because I'm worried I'm only that "good" at boxing because no one else around is good enough to beat me, and if I ever try to compete at a higher level I'm going to get my ass handed to me.

morp

06/06/2007

i.
nick and i are getting married. i'm wearing a blue prommish dress: i am my own bridesmaids? the out of body experience i have while pictures are being taken confirms this as true. our rings are really ugly men's non-stone class rings type rings with everything (date, location, etc.) printed on them, and everybody gets one as a souvenir. eeeh.

ii.
julie got in a car accident: in boston there is a road near the edge of a tall cliff off the ocean that has a roughly 95-degree turn on it. she took it too fast and her car fell into the ocean. she got out without a scratch, but her car sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
"i'm not comfortable with that!" she told me. "my tapes and stuff are in there! now it's full of fish!"
her blog entry on the subject is just a link saying something along the lines of "refer to." when you click on it it goes to the entry about prom, which i take to mean she hadn't driven since then. she enters an "i need a new iPod because my old one drowned" essay contest whose prize for the top 5 entrants is a new iPod, but doesn't win, possibly because she entered at the last minute.