Last night I had a dream about tall buildings that were sliding across the land like pieces on a chessboard. It was somehow the result of a new kind of earthquake. The buildings were running into each other. It was all highly cinematic. I was riding around in one building like it was a ship, and I could see from inside the building as another building came toward me and went through the building that I was in. Later, I could also see from the point of view of the building, and I was moving through forests and other buildings until I came to a large hole in the ground, and then I woke up.
There was a quick dream about a cake I was trying to bake, but I used only half the batter required, so it came out weird and twisted.
In the last of these dreams, I was floating in a kind of empty space that you might describe as being like the night of Brahma, a place where all of creation withdraws into a state of unrealized potential. I saw a kind of cosmic mist that was churning and spinning. A voice was explaining that beings were emerging from the mist so they could have the experience of being human. I saw a girl forming from the mist before I started to wake up.
I started the day feeling like I could face the world with a sense of purpose. I made a schedule that included an hour long work out and working on this blog and a tutorial, though it was hard to stick to the schedule. With more news coming out about the thousands of people dying every day from the pandemic, it was hard to think of anything else, so of course I become distracted with my friends' posts on Facebook. After lunch, I had a Facetime session with my therapist. We went over the events of the past week. I shared with her my perception of the current mood of the nation, or even the human race, as being like a gray fog that was permeating everything. I felt that I had to form a space around myself that would be like a bubble full of sunshine. How does one do such a thing? By invoking your own joy and hope. That might seem like a simple trick. It's not.
I called a police dispatch number and asked if someone could do a welfare check on Alycia. The operator asked why. I explained that Alycia was living in a wrecked car and might need help. She said that I should do it myself since I have that capability. I decided that I would wait until night fall, since Alycia would have nowhere to go at that time, but, strangely, that's exactly the time that she called me. She asked me to have dinner with her and to help her buy a blanket at Target. She was freezing. The dinner offer sounded like a kind of gratuity for helping her out, but I told her that people are being told to stay home. No one can go out for dinner. I offered to let her have an old blanket of mine, but she refused.
"You can borrow it, then," I said.
She was determined to buy a blanket of her own and ended the call. Later, I thought that if I had said that I could buy the blanket for her at Target and let her pay me back, that might have worked, but you can't reason with her when she's in this state. I felt frustrated. She was about to sleep in a cold car while it was raining. A person can get pneumonia that way. What if I just drove there and gave her a blanket? If you're freezing and someone gives you a blanket, you'll probably take it no matter what's going on in your head. I have an old blanket in a plastic bedding case that I was planning to give to charity anyway, so I put on my gloves and mask, put the blanket in my car, and drove to Alycia's car while listening to a Rachel Maddow podcast. I parked in front of her car, got out, and looked through the mist on the windows of her car. She had reclined the driver's seat and seemed to have wrapped herself up in a blanket, but it might have been layers of clothes. She was asleep. I called her name. I didn't want to scare her by knocking on the window. I called her, but her line when to voicemail, and I didn't see her phone lighting up. It must have been turned off. I thought of leaving the blanket by her car, thinking the plastic would keep it safe from the rain, but after I spoke to Steve on the phone, I decided against that plan. I called Cassie and told her what was going on. We decided that this was as far as I could go. She told me that I'm a good friend. I drove home and left the blanket in the car.
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