Home is where...

It's already been almost a week since I left, and I only stayed four days but I already miss my bungalow on Hat Yao. And most of it was the brilliant bungalow I scored. Southern Thailand is a bit pricier than the north, but you can still find reasonable deals. I ended up at a place called Silver Beach where there was a bit of construction going on (since it's low season), some nice new bungalows, and the tiny building I stayed in. As soon as I got there, I used the last of my iPod charge, put on some loud music and unpacked everything I had in my bag. I really felt like I was setting up house. The bed took up most of the main room, but there were shelves on either side and that's where I put my stuff. I big clean mosquito net hung from the ceiling, and there were windows on each of three sides. The front porch had no railing but served as a good place for reading. The bathroom was amazing. The shower was, as per usual for that level of accomodation, not separate from the rest of the room. The toilet was a stand-up on a ledge, that I flushed using water I scooped from a cistern next to it. The sink had no actual drain pipe running from it to anywhere. Rather, any water that went into the sink splashed on my toes. I just looked at it as cleaning my feet, I guess. My door mat was in the shape of a dog bone. There was an amazing palm tree of foam on my front door, and two fish kissing on my bathroom mirror. Photos tk. I've moved on to bigger and better things. Met up with my dad. Stayed in a cool place in Bangkok with crazy lighting and a rooftop pool, then an overnight train to Nonkai which was straight out of the fifties or something, then a really amazing little guest house in Nonkai right on the Mekong, and now on the other side in Laos, at a pretty, modest place, full of antiques and things. I am happy and excited for all that lies ahead (two more weeks away from happy U.S. of A) but still yearn for my bungalow.

in between asleep and awake...

In the past couple of weeks, I have started to remember my dreams. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that a couple of weeks ago I went through the box T. left in my closet nearly a year ago now, and I found that he had left in it his old, paint-splattered clock radio. For a while, I have been using my cell phone as an alarm clock. It's pretty convenient after all, but when I found the clock radio, I thought it might be cool to wake up to the news. So that's what I've been doing lately--remembering my dreams and waking up to the news, on npr, of course. As opposed to my previous muddy morning consciousness interrupted by a cell phone ring tone, I now have a splintered morning consciousness of my own dreamscapes spliced in with whatever npr is broadcasting at 6:30 or 7:30 or whenever I set the alarm for. It's kind of neat. I can't remember what was on the news this morning, but my dreams involved flying on some spaceship-like plane to Australia for a funeral and Argentina with my family, and then acting in a movie on the plane, and being filmed in a sex scene and then criticized for my performance, and a strange resort in Argentina and shopping with my mom at a Trader Joe's (in what was supposedly Buenos Aires but doesn't seem like it in remembering it) where she stocked up our shopping cart like we were staying for weeks when in fact it was simply an overnight layover, and the plane tickets were around $9,000, and that was supposed to be a deal. What is up with dreams? There is a scene I wrote forever ago now but I am using it in a new story, about a character waking up in a semi-dark room, and I'm stuck on the following passage:

"The dogs howl and bark before the sun, their desperate chorus tugging at the sheet of night shrouding the city. The sound invades her dreams, the thrum of animals creeping into the neverland that she will only know wakefully in pieces. Pieces of people she’s known and hasn’t known and still knows. Pieces recurring in nonexistent places: a war-torn pier in Brooklyn, a school in a skyscraper on the Mall in D.C., a swirling ship docked in a coastal city that she has seen from the sky, that she has always lived in and will always live in. Dream-pieces that the dogs tear into smaller pieces and tear and tear again until they are the dust that settles finally here in the room where they fell asleep."

I've gotten the comment from a few readers that they don't understand the part about Brooklyn and D.C. and the coastal city. And I'm curious as to whether other people besides myself have dreams that take place in settings that don't exist in the non-dream world but that are amalgamations of places that do exist in the non-dream world, and are places they dream about again and again. Anyway, that's what happens with me, and I haven't yet figured out the best way to explain it I guess.

In other news, our funny/sexy/sad reading went really awesomely well on Thursday night. Click here to read what Lizzy had to say.

And I found a decent article about Obama's shifting consciousness regarding Palestine and Israel. It is disheartening but also I guess we'd have a better chance of Obama changing his tune once he got in office than Hillary. But there will never, not ever, be a guarantee for that, and that's the problem I'm having today. The American presidential machine sure does make me feel nauseous.

all-nighter?

Upon being scooted out of a cafe at closing after sitting for three hours furiously reading and thinking, I find myself back in my room, contemplating an all-nighter.

I find myself standing in the doorway of my bedroom, trying to decide whether to work in bed or at my desk. Desk would be wiser, of course, but it's so cold over there near the window and the wooden surface of the work table is in its own special chaos. Bed...is so much more comfortable, and it seems to be what I've opted for, but would someone please save me and bring me a nice armchair? I have a space for it, in the corner near all my books...

Oh, someone please save me! (Prince Charming? You out there?)

I have fantasies of an army of helpers coming along. I would parcel out bits of my work to be done to each one, asking how much time they'd like to put in, tailoring their assignments accordingly. It would be fun (and fun is first!). I could set up a get-Amira's-homework-done factory right here in my room. I'd even provide snacks!

Oh, woeful procrastination, how did you get me to this point? Yes, and now I'm blogging, procrastinating still, high on caffeine, as the hour of my fate draws nearer and nearer...