The Year of the Great Silence

One great thing about being ill: My dreams get very lucid.

This one had me soaring above a landscape I identified as part of America; it was almost picture postcard what one expects from Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, sparse lands with great mountains above them. Below there was a horse and rider, galloping fast into a town. The hills seemed to loom blue behind, and I couldn't quite work out what the houses were made of; logic suggested wood, but I couldn't see much forestation.

Then I went further on, very high, like a bird with a big beak, a toucan or something, but that didn't quite fit with my impression of where I was. I saw orange soil on the mountains, forests of pine and trees that changed colour. Coming down, I saw a tall person moving in the woods, and it was as though I was seeing a story, or advice, that when you saw someone you lifted your gun as you might at the approach of a wolf or a bear, and you didn't go near them. There was also something else, something about them not looking very pleasant, or some ominous sense of them not being right. And everywhere was all very silent. In the dream there was a sense of me writing a book about travelling the empty places, a series of sketches, but who would want mere word-pictures without dialogue?

And if there was no-one to be found or trusted, who would be reading the book?

The name of the book was the name of this post.

My initial sense is that the dream is born of an apocalyptic news cycle+illness combo. My brain likes to entertain me.

Dark Skies

I may have to abandon it this year.

Expenditure through the holiday plus a replacement dishwasher plus extra extra new stuff may have scuppered it; not sure yet, but realistically speaking, I feel it stretching off into the distance...

This has delighted my mother, who phoned me today to tell me on no account to go.

'I know there is no point me trying to put pressure on you,' she said, 'I know you will do exactly as you please. But remember that my life would be unbearable without you, and that the boat doesn't need to sink for something bad to happen. You could just fall off. You can be very clumsy.

The stars are bright enough where you are.'

And on that inspirational note, I surrender to this awful cold, put the fire on, and cuddle up between my cats to dream of Northern seas...