MOST PECULIAR

So last night, had a dream. I was talking with all these former students. Tons of them. First, I was working odd jobs as the world had gotten a little more dystopian, the virus had caused vast devastation, and society was sort of falling apart, so I took a job at this theatre/food dispensary up in the mountains. My boss was former student, and had hired me to do odd jobs. Part of the pay, which wasn't much, was getting free lunch. This was important in the dream, as food was scarce. I showed up for the first day of work, and nobody was around who could tell me where to go or what to go, so I explored a bit, came upon some other former students, all putting together a revival of Drowsy Chaperone which we had all done several years ago. I didn't seem to be going so well and most everyone was distracted. I explored some more, still no sign of my boss. Finally, it was time to eat, and  I lined up with everyone else for the grub. The food was like the worst kind of high school cafeteria offerings imaginable, but we all ate it. At last, we got word that my boss, who had morphed into a sort of mythic status, was somewhere in Italy, and we would all have to swim across the Mediterranean to her. Who she was was no longer clear, but off we all went, swimming the sea. AS we swam, we came across a bunch of mines, floating along in front of us, covered with triggers that if we so much as brushed past would surely explode. It took what felt like a long time to get past them. Finally, we arrived at our destination, which turned out to be the city of Ravenna. I asked people if we would see the famed Monster of Ravenna, but nobody seemed to have the slightest idea what I was talking about. The place we all came to was this huge mansion, full of citrus trees, mostly limes and oranges like the ones we had in my backyard growing up in California. And then reality shifted, as it so often does in dreams, and we all decided to take a walk to the movies. As we did, I was once more a teacher, and all the other people in the dream were my students, and we had this long talk about whether anyone had learned anything of value yet in their lives.

Weird but true. Which seems to fit most of the world these days. Weird but true. There seems to be this great desire to act as if none of this has happened, that it was all a long, rambling dream with no point, no meaning, and no connection to our lives. Which would be cool if it were so, but just doesn't seem to be the case. Over a thousand Americans die each day. Over two hundred thousand dead worldwide. That's a lot of dead people, however you want to frame it. I don't get the people who dicker over the mortality rate, the infection rate, and so on. Huge numbers of people who otherwise would not be dead, are dead. End of story. This virus spreads incredibly fast, and the best weapon we have against it is social distancing. Those are two pretty basic facts that no one can deny. And yet, we bicker about our civil liberties, and restaurants on Mother's Day, and getting massages. It is strange, to say the least. That' s my go to word. Strange. It just fits.

I watched part of a comedic propaganda video where this guy was pretending to be a variation on the typical liberal. The basic premise was that this guy completely believe whatever the media and the W.H.O. told him, and he'd proclaim how he didn't want to make any decisions about his life, and that he'd like to stay in isolation forever. That was the joke. It went on for over eight minutes. That's kind of overkill. Like that skit on SNL that always comes about midway through that seems to go on forever after making its one joke. My friend who posted it thought it was hilarious. Fine. To each this own and all that. But this same friend wrote this very long post about how we all should be nice to each other and sensitive to our feelings the day after Trump made his now infamous remarks about shooting up with disinfectant. Yet another strange incident in a universe seemingly built on the Strange Principle.

The other thing that happened yesterday was a zoom meeting with a bunch of fellow writers where we discussed the first sixty pages of my latest screenplay. It was quite nice. I seem to be on a bit of a tear with this one, and hope to have the first draft done before the end of the month, so that I can clean it up a bit and enter it in the Austin Film Festival. Which I know is strange too, given that there might not be a festival this fall. But one must move forward. One must continue to seek meaning. One must endure stupid videos posted by friends.

Here's a song. It's Strange Days by John Lennon.