magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

I don't know where my dream began. The bit I remember started on a rocky mountainside reminiscent of, but rockier than, Qufu. And thinking about it now, also a bit like the post-apocalyptic bit of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, but again, rockier. I'm sure it really was inspired by thoughts of Qufu though, having just discussed said town last night. But I digress.

I was on a mountain side and knew that there was going to be a devastating rockslide. If we didn't leave right now people were going to die. It fell on me to get everyone down off the mountain. And it was a total melodramatic action movie moment.

We stayed one step ahead of the rockslide and poured out of a door in a Southwestern facade, the sort of thing you'd expect the Alamo to look like if you've never seen it. Our facade was one in a row of five or six, all of which people were running out of as the dust of the rockslide billowed out behind them. I'm not sure if each facade was connected to a different mountain, or different parts of the same mounting. I remember thinking that although everyone got out okay from the one I was responsible for, people may have died in the others.

As we headed away from the facades across a field, the flames of an explosion shot out from one of them. And then they all began to collapse. When the dust and smoke had cleared, the fields were underwater, between six inches and about four feet deep, and full of fish like wildflowers. Most of the kids I was in Rome with were there and we headed out into the water. The fish seemed curious about us.

---

The advertising poster boards, up along the entire length of the north wall of the 14th Street tunnel this morning, still sans ads, threw my sense of balance off as I walked. Something heavy glanced out of my right eye destroyed the normal sense of buoyancy that I experience in the tunnel, pulled along by the strip of white lights overhead.

At the far end, the subway musician who does alt-pop favourites, usually leaving me with Radiohead or Smashing Pumpkins or REM stuck in my head as I transfer to the red line, was murdering David Bowie (or more likely Nirvana's cover of David Bowie).

Stepping off the elevator at work I was almost immediately hit with the first twinges of a headache. I had been feeling fine up until this point. In the hour an a half since then my throat's gone sore and my focus (mostly mental, only partially optical) has almost vanished. Maybe the building is making me sick. It happens. Maybe it's a psychosomatic response to the stress of this huge project having to come together in less than 24 hours.

It could also possibly be in part because of this, from Marisa:

. i would like to hang out with you again too . i think that my instincts were correct when i guessed that we would get along very well . i honestly feel that we have a cool connection .

. and in the spirit of honesty . i think i want to say something . to be sure .

(. i know that i can be quite dense at times in a particular way . well most of the time . and i don't like to mislead people .)

. so not to be presumptuous . but to be sure . i feel i should reiterate that i am dating someone right now that i really like . and although we are not exclusive nor do we necessarily have any idea what we want . i sort of want to focus on that and see where it leads .

. not that you would necessarily even want anything more than friendship . so maybe that didn't need to be said . but i said it . i guess that is just how i am . little miss blahblah .

. blah blah .

To which I responded:

I had sort of actively avoided asking any questions about that. But I guess it is better out in the open.

In the spirit of honesty and not an attempt to make things at all awkward, I suppose I should say that I'm still kicking myself about that. After all, you're attractive and smart and funny and totally the type of person that I wish I was dating.

And this, from Stef:

Also are you just busy or did I send you into a downward spiral talking to you all of four times in September, you haven't updated your blog, are you ok?

Oh well I'm sure you're fine and I'm just self centered.

Me, again:

Yes, talking to you does leave me upset for a couple of days, and it did keep me from posting a few entries in September in which I had nothing but mean things to say to you. But mostly I've just been insanely busy.

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A day of triage. Another trip up to the plaza. In the rain. But I slowed down and actually looked at things. It's cool to see work that you've done up close and larger than life. Panels that I designed on my 19 inch screen, now in 3d, on real material, full-size at 4x11 feet. And a carpet 100 feet long, with white stars cut into it. Sure the stars are offset to the wrong side, but it's a 100 feet of carpet, and I had something to do with it. This is, after all, part of what seduced me about architecture. I helped visualize this, and now I am inside of it.

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Also, I updated my NaNoWriMo profile the other day. November's coming up, and I want to give novel writing another try. Today I've found that I'm listed as one of the five 'Wrimos of the Day'. I don't know if they're randomly chosen from recently updated/created accounts or if someone actually hand picked me. It's not the exposure of the front page of the RISD website, but I still feel special.

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A trip back to the plaza on my way home turned into 4+ hours, overseeing the union guys constructing the 'Making Your Vote Count' exhibit. Yes, I know, ironic on a few different levels. Claire, my NBC crush, was around and about. She was stressed as we all are by this project though, and not as flirty (or is it only friendly?) as the last time I saw her.

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Getting off the subway last night, I noticed that my bangs have reached the length where I can chew on them. Tonight, stepping out of the subway, totally immersed in Death Cab for Cutie and Kate Braverman's story in the new McSweeney's, I threw my head back and half expected the pink city sky to embrace me. It only drizzled, slightly. I wanted to stretch my arms out and twirl, eyes closed, in the middle of the street until I fell down (or got hit by a car, I suppose, but that wasn't part of the fantasy).