Odd change with my dreaming lately.

A handful of times lately I've been half-dreaming and I move in my dream, and when I do that I actually move in real life and that motion jolts me out of bed awake.

The other day in my dream I dreamt that I stepped back and had to brace myself, for example, and my leg lunged out to the side on my bed, and it made me wake up really quick.

I think it's that part of sleep where your brain lets you move again, but for some reason my dreaming is still happening, since the sleep cycles must not be synched for some reason.

Beautiful library sight.

One of my favorite sections of my school's main library is this one far corner of the third floor that has a lot of books from India.

They're all bound in pretty identical bright blue cloth binding, so if you go to that aisle, pretty much all to the left and some to the right you look down and the books are sticking out and they're all slight variations on that shade of blue due to slight dye and fading variations, and they're tucked in and poking out so the shadows look all different, and every once in a while there's a book of a different color that's interspersed to give the appearance of texture.

It really is found beauty.

And, it's always quiet there, and it's getting towards the windows so you have gentle natural light, too.

My eyes playing tricks with a Haagen Dazs sorbet cup.

The other week after dinner with friends, I popped through the local drugstore for some sorbet to soothe my stomach.

After the checkout, I threw the sorbet cup on top of the styrofoam takeout tray I was carrying home upright in my hands, which I had wanted to do so I wouldn't have to use a plastic bag (yes, I'm that environmentally neurotic).

Anyhow, though I thought that the raspberries on top of the Haagen Dazs lid were pink, when I was out by my door getting the key out, I looked at the cup and they were all dark and black, and I thought to myself, "Wow, that's interesting, usually raspberries are shown all bright pink color like a pink raspberry slurpee, but these almost are really dark like boysenberries."

Then, inside, I set the container and the sorbet cup down, and next time I looked at it, the raspberries on the cup were pink.

Maybe there was something with the dark or some light filter out by my back door, to make them look a different color?

Jokes and publicity.

So, after the unionization hearings got publicized by social media in a way that admin never expected, campus atmosphere has severely turned against admin and for unionization.

So, I've been contributing public jokes, both to keep people reading and to keep people stirred, since that way people will end up talking to more people and the info spreads around.

Some undergrads or just-graduated undergrads, though, called me out by FB message for my running jokes about the president's ex-wife and this one dean being addicted to foie gras.

One said the first was slut-shaming (of the school president?!), and another said that the attacks were ad hominem and could turn people off.

Yet, an adjunct organizer I know said to keep them coming, and I'm actually designing the humor to get my framing categories out there.

My hunch is that people (especially younger people) aren't used to "going there" with authority figures, and are projecting their discomfort onto the material and mentally inventing a situation where some people might be turned off, to make the material and thus their discomfort go away.

Coffee shop banter with an opthamologist.

The other week I was having coffee outside on a Sunday morning at the coffee shop near my house, and this one opthamology student I know through friends joined me at my table for a bit.

We chit-chatted about her studies, how long the program takes, what's the letters after her name ("OD"), etc.

Later, the local bartender we know and her husband walked by, and they chatted with us, and because they were going to see a play later that night, we all started talking about plays.

Somewhere in there, I suggested that the opthamologist write a turgid play called "OD", about two childhood friends, one who goes to ophthamology school, and the other one who goes and gets addicted to heroin.

"And you know what?", I was like.  "It's the heroin addict who makes it out."

"Shut up!", the opthamologist was like, laughing, and swinging her hand as if batting at me.

Later, she left to go catch a bus and fetch her bike from a friend's house way in another neighborhood.

"Drunken antics," she was like.

Graduating student thanked me.

The other day I ran into a graduating student at the gym, this one (white) guy from Cali who I had in my first batch as a freshman and who is now graduating.

I was walking over past him, and he jumped on the chance to talk to me, and he aid that he wanted to thank me for teaching writing, and that he really remembered what he learned when he went over his one paper on this one short story with me in the spring of his freshman year, in particular how we used this one technique I had taught in class.

"That's really nice to hear," I was like, "Especially since that's usually my weakest unit!".

He seemed taken aback, so I had to explain my comment more, and I just said that different things resonate with different people, and I had noticed over time that that technique has tended to resonate the least.

Later, I was thinking what nice feedback that was, and that what I teach really does affect people.

I also was trying to remember if I took out any loans that year, since if I did, in effect I was subsidizing his instruction, which is kind of a f*cked situation.

Since tenure-stream jobs are drying up, too, and because of that the entering Ph.D. students are getting more noticeably credulous and dumber since the smart people are selecting themselves out of Ph.D. programs, I was also wondering about what's the quality of teaching future students will get from people in my position.

Oh well, f*ck that.

"Not my problem."

(That's my new motto.)

. . .

Offhand comment of my one library supervisor.

The other week, I was chit-chatting with my one (older) (black) library supervisor, and he asked how I was doing.

"Good," I was like, "But a bit tired, I was up late last night reading a Balzac novel."

"Really?", he was like.

"Yeah," I was like.  "It's about this woman and they had been hinting at her secret for a while, and I finally was getting to the part where they tell you what her secret is, and next thing you know, it's like one-thirty."

"That sounds like a soap opera," he was like.

"I guess it is," I was like.

I then asked him if he read for fun, and he said no, and then I asked him if watched tv or movies, and he said no, not really, and then I asked what he did for fun, for recreation.

"I listen to music from my youth," he was like.

"Oh, like the late nineties?", I was like.

At that, he laughed, "Yes, let's just keep it at that."