Another dream of decay (how many of these do I have?).

A tooth midway down the bottom right side of my mouth is loose, and I inadvertently wiggle it and it comes out.

I'm with people who recommend leaving it at home, and I do, just out somewhere like on the counter or something

Later, someone tells me that I should see the dentist right away to get the tooth put back in, but I can't go home right then and I get nervous and realize that I should have placed it in milk in order for that to happen.

Then, I can feel the gap where the tooth is, and I'm filled with this sad feeling that it will be there forever, but it wouldn't have been if I had handled everything properly from the start when I lost it.

Monastery tour a few Saturdays ago.

After the political campaigning and before grocery shopping, I went for dinner and the divine office at a local monastery near my house through a tour arranged by the conservative-leaning Catholic academic group on campus.

They’ve had these tours for several years and I’ve always wanted to go, but this was the first time that I was finally able to make it.

About eight undergrads and two early-stage grad students came, and most of the undergrads looked drawn and nervous, and the early-stage grad students were bearded (white) male converts in philosophic and historical fields where Roman Catholicism was important.

Also, one of the undergrads wore a long navy blue skirt and had big glasses and a large black lace mantilla wrapped around her head, and she knelt and kissed the floor of the church before a picture of the Virgin Mary right when we all walked in.

(She also later dropped that she had been in a monastery for a year, but now wasn’t.)

Oddly enough, during dinner, the prior mentioned a former newspaper religion writer who wrote a great spiritual article reflecting on workaholism, and then he mentioned the name of the guy who was a communications director who I had to deal with in reporting and who I mentioned by name in a couple of my articles as a representative example of a holder of a job position that should be eliminated due to its perverse duties.

“I don’t know what happened to him,” the prior was like, and at that I began smiling and laughing just a bit, which he noticed.

“Oh, do you know?”, he was like.

“Well,” I was like, “I do investigative reporting into higher education, and he ended up in that sector, and I’ve actually had to deal with him quite a bit when I was doing work on a couple of articles.”

Then, I paused for just the briefest of beats and was like, “I think he got into it because he needed more money for his family, but from what I can tell, he’s been engaging in a lot of unethical behavior and has fallen deeply into sin.”

At that, all of the undergrads’ eyes just got wide and they all just looked at me like “Who is this?”, but the prior seemed pained and right away was like, “I’ll remember to pray for him.”

He really meant that, too.  I had mixed feelings about the prior since he seemed like a virile aesthetic (white) (male) convert in his late 40s, but he had the right reaction when confronted with a very odd situation, which makes me predisposed to like him now.

He also mentioned he was originally from northwoods Wisconsin, which doesn’t hurt.

Old person a few Saturdays ago.

Earlier that day I had been doing get-out-the-vote work with a local progressive political campaign, and one of the people on the phonebank was this 73-year old (African-American) woman with a walker who introduced herself as “Mrs. [LAST NAME]” to me and was called that by everyone.

At one point, she put her hand over the receiver and called out to the candidate, who was standing across the room, “[CANDIDATE’S FIRST NAME], when is the election again?”, and the candidate called back and told her.

Later, I told both of them that that cracked me the shit up, because you could tell we were running a grassroots campaign.

“[CANDIDATE’S FIRST NAME], when is the election again?”, I said, repeating the words and mimicking covering the phone mouthpiece, and both of them really laughed at that.

It turns out that the 73-year old (African-American) woman with the walker had also just been arrested for the first time in her life the previous week, as part of an action against closure of recent community resources.

“Mrs. [HER OWN LAST NAME],” she told me, telling me what the cops told her, “It’s two-thirty in the morning and you have a walker, we’ll let you go.”

Then, she continued, “But I told them, ‘I came here as part of a group, and I’m not leaving until everyone else is!’”.

I then asked her if she stayed long enough in jail to try out the food.

She said no, but someone brought her a sub.

Odd person down the street from me a few Saturday nights ago.

A few Saturday nights ago I was coming back from the grocery store and was crossing the street, when I see a guy hunched on the sidewalk beneath a brightly white painted granny bike, and he’s moaning.

As I'm walking up from a bit of a distance, he gets up like he’s sore, stops moaning, gets back on the bike, and begins to pedal it across the street away from me, only very slowly and with great difficulty, since he didn’t seem all right and the front fender seemed to be scraping against the frame and the tire and making the bike turn a bit left.

He then stopped across the street, and he just stood there staring towards some garbage cans in an alley.

I reached where he had been and continued walking on the opposite side of the street, but I seriously wondered if he had been hit by a car and was disoriented or whatever.

So, I stopped and stood there with my groceries and looked across the street at him.

“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” I called out.

There was no reply, and he just stood there looking at the garbage cans in the alley, and then he just arched his back and threw his head back and gave a wordless howl.

I quickened my pace and hurried home up the block, and every once in a while I heard a howl, and I glanced back to make sure he was still standing there and not following me, though it now seemed like he had turned himself in my general direction, though he was still standing in the same spot.

When I got in, I closed all the blinds, turned on my lights, and called the cops to come check that guy out.

I wonder if he stole the bike, and I’m almost certain he was on some really effed-up mind-altering drug like PCP or something.

There’s a lot of kids and a decent amount of older people in the neighborhood, and I’d hate someone to bump into him or come out onto their porch or stoop and find him there.

The woman on the phone said they’d alert the cops to come check him out.

I specified his appearance as a white man in his late 20s or early 30s with dreadlocked brown hair, and on a bright white bike.

Conversation with a (Swiss) (Italian) colleague on how we’ve been.

The other week I ran into a (Swiss) (Italian) colleague who I hadn’t seen in ages.

It turned out that he’s been buried away studying for exams, and he began telling me that they were coming up in a month, how stressed he was, etc.

Then he paused.

“But I’m not sure if you care,” he was like.

“To tell you the truth, not really,” I was like, at which he laughed, as I explained that such stress was normal and I’ve seen it a ton, and as long as he checked in with his examiners to make sure that they thought he was ready to take exams, he’d be fine no matter what, pretty much.

Then, when he asked me what I’d been up to, I told him how I’d been an extra on a primetime soap, which I stated by name.

“What is that?”, he was like.  “I would know the show if it was Walking Dead, or porn.”

He then asked if we had the word “cameo” in English, which he pronounced “cah-meo”.

Conversation with my mother on activism exposes.

The other week I was talking with my mom and telling her about my plans for an upcoming activist expose, and she was like, “I tell you, [my first name], one of these days you’re going to end up in a shallow grave.”

Later I was speaking of the horrible academic job market, and how I’d like to continue on and prioritize writing projects like my activist exposes no matter what.

“With all your energy and talent, I’m sure there’ll be a path for you,” she was like.

“Yes,” I was like.  “Straight to a shallow grave.”

Odd dream of things decaying, with variations.

I pick up an old pair of comfortable (black) tennis shoe and see that they're falling open down the soles, they’ve worn so thin.

And when I pick them up, the shoes' soles falls outward, and it almost seems like they split apart into two pairs of two separate shoes with full-size soles, but joined together up at the top.

As I lower them, they merge back more into one pair, but as I raise them again, they seem to spread out more into almost two.

I do that several times and am confused, and am unable to decide if I was wearing very fashionable avant-garde black tennis shoes that looked as if they were two pairs the entire time I’ve had those shoes, but for some reason I only just realized that fact now.