things are a clickin'

James Joyce class was strangely exciting tonight, what, with only two students in Prof's office. We read"The Sisters" and the "Encounter" -- interesting to read him this time around, much more melancholy (sinful!) than I remembered. As usual, prof/psychoanalyst (aka Dr. Joyce) would use some clinical examples about his own patients, noticing small details like the way one patient walked into his office, or how this one Prof was upset about not getting his Grey Poupon (sp?) instead of regular mustard and how that Prof related "Grey" to his black and white existence -- his crummy dept., and loveless life, among other things. And I guess what kept circling around my mind was that nothing is purely random, which I find so bothersome but uncertain why, exactly. I guess I have a strange faith in random things occuring to me. I hold on to a faith that I'll stumble into something that will bring me joy -- but does that really happen without my own effort, I wonder.

Did I say how Dr. Joyce said dreams aren't random? Uh, okay, let me just say that yes, I know how totally naive I sound, but hey, it's not like I ever had massive doses of Freudian classes in college; it's just that I am becoming increasingly self-conscious about what I say, what I do, what I write about, what my body language says -- how everybody else translates my public persona. Self-conscious mixed with anxiety of some sort.

To top it off, I had my second (almost) death dream: 1) I died in school -- die (whoa, I just typed "die" when I meant to write "did" I blog about death dream 1?)

2) this week the dream was: I am flying home and suddenly I am writing a mass email announcing my impending death, that is, that the plane is going to crash b/c of a wing malfunction. So in my email I joke around and apologize for writing frantically when it's quite possible that I might actually live the crash, but then I write that I might hit the ocean and freeze, and then I insert some dumb movie about sharks eating me alive (I forget the title of the flick, but had a couple scuba diving in the bahamas). Then I start acknowledging loved ones and friends and -- get this -- then I say, oh by the way, you can check out my blog (with jazz hands flapping in the air). Ah. So okay, I'm totally bonkers.

I wanted to transcribe a section of "the Encounter" that I really enjoyed but my book is hiding.
Time's up anyway. I'm bloggin' when I should be writin' my paper!!! Hard to face it when I just don't feel like sitting here and doing some more work. Crap.