What’s worse? Hearing me bitch about trying to get an insurance company (the name is Franklin-Madison, and they have left a suspicious web-print) to deliver simple paperwork for an accidental death policy, or hearing about a dream I had last night (which is technically today, but screw it)? I’m betting a dream would be more interesting, right, Rex?

Nicole and I are sitting in some kind of watercraft, bigger than a johnboat, smaller than a yacht. It’s motorized, we’re just off some ocean shore, and many, many other watercraft are on the water, which is gently but firmly rocking. From my vantage point in the back of our boat, the scene looks like a Gustave Doré etching, but in motion, and in monochromatic gold. Suddenly, rain begins to fall, the ocean turns quickly turbulent, and our boat (I can’t see Nicole anywhere, and I’m sure not piloting it) is being “tempest-toss’d”–that compound-adjective immediately popped into my head when I awakened. For some reason, I have brought a notebook with me that’s getting soaked, which is causing me almost as much distress as the possibilities of capsizing or being thrown into another craft. Somehow, through what seemed like a half-hour of chaotic wave-hopping, I stayed port-side, though I was sliding around the deck (it wasn’t a yacht!) and at times was briefly airborne. The water suddenly calmed, and from flat on my back I sprung up–and awake.

It was the most physically intense and rigorous dream I’ve ever had. Perhaps it derived from a deep need within me to be immersed in nature and fully drained: this pandemic is not great for either desire, thought it doesn’t prevent it. I do think the golden vista was related to a character’s scene in The Indian Doctor, where, with her lover, she’s looking out from a Welsh hillside upon a village she thinks is both backwards and beautiful (in reality, it was very obvious CGI); the notebook, my notary public log, which I just used for the first time, yesterday.

Better than a corporate rant? I hope so.

Streaming for Strivers:

Gently rocking waves of percussion and guitar.