A dream, in Romanian.

The other week I dreamnt-

On a cool-ish gray day I'm standing on the shore of this ocean with stony sands that ease into large clumps of rock, and suddenly from a distance from behind this one rock I see a seal move and dive into the water, and all of a sudden I know that I'm standing with someone who's (Romanian) and that's their seal, and I have to wrack my brains and tell them what's happening, and finally I remember the vocabulary and am able to produce, "Foca ta merge in apa!" ("Your seal is going into the water!"), as I point to where the seal was when it went into the water.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

(The word "seal" is one of the animal vocabulary words that you have to memorize in the Animals unit on DuoLingo in the section there that I've been doing lately, at the time that I had this dream.)

A leaving neighbor (2 of 2): Missed opportunity.

That same neighbor was also saying that he'd tried living in apartments near campus, but "apartment life" wasn't for him, so he moved farther out to the house where he had lived now for several years, now.

And, he and his roommate pay each the same amount of rent that I do for my back cottage, and we agreed it was all good prices, and that prices for apartments on campus are just too much, nowadays.

And, something in his eye made it seem that he was curious about my house.

But, I didn't say anything to him at the time, until I saw him again, loading up stuff in the back of his truck.

"Hey, you know," I was like, "If you want to see the layout of my cottage, just put on a mask and come over, I'll give you a quick tour."

"Yeah, I've always wondered what it looks like inside," he was like. "But maybe later, I have to pack now, I'm leaving tomorrow morning."

"Okay," I was like, and I told him that I'd be home for at least the next couple of hours, and he could just stop by whenever.

But, he didn't, and then, the next morning he was gone, and now he'll never see it.

It really makes you think about how chances and life can pass you by.

A leaving neighbor (1 of 2): Preparing to leave.

So, my one (mildly dark) (bearded) (rural-raised) (motorcyclist) (Indian heritage) neighbor is moving to a bigger city in the region, since he's graduated now, and he got an engineering job there.

The weekend before we left, we were chit-chatting when I was out in my backyard reading, and he got a pruning shear and took down two smaller trees-of-heaven that were in his backyard behind a shed but were dropping seedlings over by me.

"I hate those," he was like. "I like the way they look when they grow real big, but we had a bunch of those around our barn, and the roots go straight down and they ruined the foundation."

And, he made sure to hack into the top of the remaining stumps, to hurt the organism more and expose it to bacteria through its mangled section so it couldn't come back so easily.

He said that he talks to the (wizened) (hippie) across the street, and she has dementia and the Quakers look after her, and she showed up on his doorstep right when he moved in looking for her friend who had lived there, and that he visits her and talks with her a couple of times a week, but it's like time doesn't exist for her, if he's gone for a month and then comes back, she doesn't notice.

She likes to garden and pick up trash, he said, and she also collects glass bottles, so if you ever find a really cool-looking glass bottle, make sure to save it for her.

He also said that he had 18 motorcycles in the garage that he's been working on, he would be picking them up and repairing them and turning them around and selling them for a profit, and somehow he got too many, and now he's had to rush and sell them off to people, one guy was going to be coming by to pick up two that he had bought.

"I wouldn't say that to too many people," I was like; "You sound capitalist."

"Yeah," he was like, and he didn't seem chuckle or angry, but rather self-abashed, since the kids are like that nowadays.

And, a(n older) (black) guy came buy with a truck and a trailer then and asked him if he had any scrap metal, and he didn't, but I said I had a broken grocery cart if he'd wait for me to get it from my basement, and he would, so I went and got it for him and showed him how the plastic wheels were broken, and in front of my neighbor, the guy was saying that he could use the metal, or maybe he'd put some new wheels on it and use it himself.

Public transportation scenes from the city that I used to live in...

 ...when I was there like a month-and-a-half ago for an appointment:

1) A(n agitated) (dark black) man is smacking the walls of the station when I go to swipe in to the subway in the middle of the afternoon on the day that I arrive, and the (slightly chubby) (late middle aged) (black) lady in the booth motions me to go the other way, and when he moves further into the station, she starts to talk to me and says that she always does this for travelers, and has for years.

2) With that train, there had been an 18 minute delay, and it was coming in another 12 minutes (usually that time of day it's like 8-12 minutes between trains).

3) The next day on a packed car around rush hour, less than a third of people are wearing masks.

. . .

That was two of four rides, and I simply can't imagine having to face those situations a lot. Mentally, I've already checked out of being able to live there.

Interestingly, on social media, lately, professionals in the city who I follow have been talking about this, and I even saw one using the word "unusable," which I had said a while ago.

Some notes that never became blogposts...

...because I forgot what the heck they meant:

"- cross out

     - c[a?]ts in gr[oun?]d

  - sneeze + garbage

 - nuns leaving

   (encyc[...] ddess)

   --> old rest[aura]nt"

My library is overflowing.

I've always been pretty good about pruning it, and I got a bit ruthless before I moved, but now my library is starting to overflow again, with all of the books that I've bought for the different projects that I've been working on.

On my one taller, thin, tower-like bookcase where I keep my radio and was keeping a shelf of CDs, I actually rearranged and took down the CDs and put them in a nearby drawer, so I could use that shelf for books.

I think that maybe by end of summer I'll go through all of my books again sharply, to remove stuff that I don't think I really need anymore, with an even more critical eye.

Wonders of nature (2 of 2): Daytime stroll.

If you go pull up tree of heaven seedlings, the smaller ones have a nasty sharp smell, but the bigger ones almost leave your hands smelling like a tortilla warmer.

Like, to the point where you don't want to go wash your hands afterwards.