A dream of a foreboding creature.

The other week I dreamnt-

As if I'm in a boat, I'm going around the far edge of the lake that my parents live on, the part that's more woodsy and that has marshes and woods and some houses every now and then, and there's no-one around, and I can see that that one A-frame near the shore on a heavily wooded lot has been torn down to the frame and is being rebuilt up from that.

"Look what they did to the lot," says my mother, who is with me, pointing to some places that have been clearcut.

Next, I'm in a house close to the shore, and there's a (fatter) (later) (middle-aged) woman who's kind of hunched over in a sparsely-furnished wood-panelled room, and she's afraid, but she also won't move from her house, I somehow know.

And, I know that there's something in the woods there and a bit farther inland, and I can see this tallish lanky sandy-colored thing with an almost human form, but with a pointed head that I can't quite see, and there's this giant lump jutting out of their neck, and I know that that's an egg and that that's where they nest their eggs, on the side of their neck.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

Video talk.

A few days ago at work at the resthome, I walked up onto one floor, and there was my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker next to my one (Chinese-Filipina) coworker, and they were both looking at some video on her phone and talking.

They broke up like right away when I came up to them, and so I asked my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker what they were watching, and she pulled out her phone and I can tell right away that it's the video of the guy who was killed by cops in Minneapolis, and as she begins to try to show it to me, I tell her first that I had heard about it, and that I don't want to see it.

"It is so awful," she was like, and you could tell that she was really worked up.

"How did you hear about the video?", I was like, and I was honestly wondering if it was through some (Ethiopian) friends or a(n Ethiopian) Facebook group or something, since she's (Ethiopian) (black) and not (African-American) (black), and if so, that would be socially interesting, because of the divides between (African-Americans) and other (black) Americans.

"I heard about the video on the news and I, I... search on Guggle," she was like, saying "Guggle" instead of "Google."

And you could just tell that she was really upset.

Reminscence of a retired school nurse.

The other week, the one resthome resident who's a retired school nurse mentioned working in a (poor) (black) neighborhood in the city.

She said you saw a lot of (smart) (young) (black) boys who were so open and so bright, and then around the age of 9 or so they would just shut down and you could see the light go out of their eyes.

She said that they realized that they didn't have a chance, and that's when they would start acting up and getting into trouble.

That experience taught her that you can never really compare (blacks) and (Jews), she said, since you can always straighten a nose or change a name, but you can't change your skin color.

Some Ramadan levity.

The other week at the resthome, a retired kitchen manager who I'd never met baked some really nice banana bread for everyone to lift everyone's spirits, and residents all got a slice like in a Ziploc bag, and then there was a big banana bread shaped from like a bundt cake pan that was left out for everyone on a paper plate with tin foil over it on the table in our office, and more than half of it was already gone from the morning shift by the time I got in.

(Later, I took the leftovers home folded into the tin foil, and I noticed a gift sticker on it telling us to enjoy it.)

Anyhow, it was really, really, really good banana bread, and I had like two pieces of it when I got in with my coffee, and I really wanted some more, but I held off to make sure that all of my coworkers had a chance to get some, before I really dug in.

So, later that afternoon, I saw my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker, and I was like, "Did you see the banana bread in the office? Save some for yourself for later, it's really good," and she was like, "Yes, I had some, it was good."

Then, she saw that I was confused since it was still Ramadan, and she was like, "I am able to eat now, because it is, it is...", and she made this motion by her belly as if she was searching for words, and then finally she was like, "It is my period."

I was still confused, though, and so I asked her if women can eat during Ramadan if they have their period.

"Yes," she was like.

"Oh," I was like.

Then, after a pause, I started laughing to myself and I could feel myself getting that smile that I get and I was like, "Ramadan is the only time of year, when women are happy to get their period."

She looked at me, and then she just burst out laughing, and she swatted her hand at me like she was batting me away and she was like, "[my first name], you are crazy!".

. . .

(I made sure to phrase the joke with simple words, so that she could understand it on the first go.)

Two subway passengers the other night...

...just before midnight, when it was windy and cold out:

Two minor children, one like eight years old and (black) and innocent-seeming and with a bright shiny face, and the other a maybe twelve or thirteen year-old (taller) (thin) (white) kid with dishwater hair and a pointed face and not quite a monobrow, and both are in heavy black hoodies and knit caps, and with black backpacks.

They talk about meeting someone who's going to pick them up at the other end of the subway line, and it's clear that the younger (black) kid really looks up to the (taller) (thin) (white) kid, and doesn't realize yet that he's improvising a lot and just talking like he understands and is in control of stuff.

And, at some point they start opening up the backpacks, and the (white) kid pulls out a couple small jewelry boxes, and he opens them up and starts looking at each ring inside, and he holds one out across the aisle to show the other kid.

And, the (black) kid opens up his backpack, and he pulls out a big silver Zippo lighter, and he tries to use it but he can't, so the (white) kid tells him what to do, and he tries it and lights it up, and after it's clear that he can do it, he loses interest and puts it back in his backpack.

Then, some stop comes up and they get out, much much before the end of the line, in fact well on the opposite side of downtown.

And, it's still not quite midnight, and the city is as deserted as it has been.

The next day, I think about Dickens and personality types from Oliver Twist, and how we might be getting back there, as a society, back to the inequality and the harshness, and also the unpredictability of life before cell phones, where you just never know what you'll see whenever you go out in the world.

It's more dangerous and more awful for people, but in some ways, it's more interesting.  There's just these little blips of pockets of people everywhere, and you never know who they are or that they even exist, until you happen to end up intersecting with them.

Coronavirus fearlessness.

The other week at the end of shift, me and my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker were talking about the disruption from coronavirus and the precautions that we have to take and also about the virus itself.

"I am not afraid," my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker was suddenly like, out of nowhere, and with an offhand bravado and a slight toss of her head.

"Why not?", I was like.

"Because I am not human," she was like.

"If you are not human, then what are you," I was like.

"I am robot," she was like.

Exhausting my puzzle supply.

I've been doing so many puzzles lately, I really went through 3 back issues and started doing all the puzzle types that I usually don't ever even do, like sudoku and like these one crosswords where you have to pair clues together that both give you one answer and whose numbers add up to tell you where to grid them.

To stretch them out, too, I started pulling the crosswords from the 2 major dailies in the city, every time that I work at the resthome, and I keep the newsprint pages with me and do the puzzles, then I just discard them wherever I am when I finish it.

To be honest, I like the gridless crossword puzzles that the one newspaper carries, since they don't have that puzzle type in my one crossword magazine that I subscribe to.

Anyhow, I think I'm going to keep up my grabbing crosswords from the major dailies whenever I work at the resthome.

My new puzzle magazine issue just came in, but there's no way in heck that that's going to last me a month or two, I'm doing puzzles so much and so fast.