Myth Happens

And last night I dreamed I was in some kind of occupied war zone, smuggling inside my shirt a girl in the form of a white polecat. We had to meet up with a man named John Ward, who I kept calling George; I had already spoken with a very young, very nervous priest in a coffeehouse where I couldn't afford to eat, and a woman in a grocery store that sold carp banners and wreaths made of willow sticks and saltgrass. By night, outside the city, you could see cracks and flues of lava smoldering up through the asphalt. At one point, a car exploded.

Yesterday: the baby shower. My head crashed partway through and I spent less of the afternoon than I had planned talking with a collection of interesting people and more in a corner of the common room reading Margery Allingham's Traitor's Purse (1941), which probably accounts for the espionage dreams, but insofar as I can judge these things, it looked like a good shower. There were substantial quantities of food, homemade; I was impressed by the cucumber sandwiches. There were cupcakes, which we were encouraged to decorate in the most spectacularly tasteless manner possible, à la Cake Wrecks; I think the one which declared "Go Team!" under some white-frosting sperm won. There was carrot cake, topped (see previous) with tiny babies. And there were many presents for Rami, Selkie, and Figment; and they looked happy to receive them. I was glad to have been there. Even if the air mattress and I were not friends after about two hours on Friday night. I read Michael Powell until I passed out.

I am presently at Baltimore Washington International, which is offering free wireless for the holidays; I ran out of trip books yesterday, so I just bought Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with the leftovers of a Borders gift card Eric gave me for St. Swithin's Day. I have cranberries and gelt. I have earplugs, if the television screens really start to get on my nerves. This was a flying visit, but a good one.

Happy Hanukkah, too.