I've been having vivid dreams lately. Last night I had two in particular that stand out in my memory. In the first one, I was in a raft with two young women, floating in a calm lake. One of them wanted to play, and asked me to spin her by her ankles and fling her in the water. Although we were just on a raft, it wasn't hard to stand up and run about the boat without throwing it off balance, so I grabbed her and started to spin. But then, as I was gaining speed and she started shouting with glee, the water began to fill with fish and the water became rough and we started to get tossed around. The water began to boil red and swarms of fish started to swirl around the raft. She asked me to let go and throw her into the water, but I instead dropped her into the raft and tried to protect them.
The next dream I had I was in a house alone with another woman, a strange but familiar amalgamation of several different girls I knew through high school. The house was falling apart, and water was pouring in everywhere; there was an inch of chilly water covering the floor and pouring down the staircase. Outside we could hear tanks and artillery fire, destroying the house with us inside. But she wasn't afraid, and we took each others hands and. . . Played mancala. And I don't mean that as an obscure sexual innuendo. We played mancala. I don't even know how to play.
I didn't actually tell you my dreams to make some sort of symbolic point. I wish they had an obvious symbolic point; as far as I could tell they were just totally arbitrary subconscious nonsense. I just thought it would be fun to tell you so you could throw out your interpretations and tell me what's going on in my life.
Anyway.
Once again my school day was regrettably incomplete, thanks to my rice cooker which inexplicably failed to turn on when I went in the other room for 20 minutes. Without my lunch, I'm useless, so I ended up opting out of my first afternoon class again. I feel really bad for it, but at least I had lunch.
On the other hand, if you consider what I actually had for lunch, you might think I would have been better off skipping. I'm not sure if I can entirely disagree with that sentiment. I made a pot of rice, with just enough soy sauce added to keep from boiling over, then melted in a slice of Swiss cheese, and mixed the concoction with marinara sauce. The end product was not unlike lasagna, and even if it won't win any culinary prizes, I still give myself kudos for inventing yet another alternative college meal. This morning was similarly inventive; I had cream cheese on my toaster waffles with lemongrass green tea. My diet has become paradoxically diverse and imbalanced at the same time. So far all the normal side-effects of a new diet haven't struck, which is slightly worrisome for what it implies about my normal diet.
In my World History class today, we almost managed to get to the ancient Greeks again. We briefly covered the collapse of the Minoan civilization, and discussed the Mycenaeans and their collapse. One young woman in our class argued that because of the nature of the Minoans, with condensed cities and constant trade with other nations, they likely succumbed to disease, and showed how a particular Minoan fresco could symbolize this. While we all generally agreed that was a fair possibility, although there isn't specifically evidence supporting it, Dr. Piccione explained that her interpretation of the fresco was invalid in light of other information, specifically that the fresco that she was showing was only an incomplete portion of a wall-sized painting, and that it was painted several centuries before the Minoans disappeared. Unfortunately, there's a lot of antagonism against this particular student in the class, and she got very upset and ranted for the validity of her points.
Although she is very stubborn and insecure about being wrong, I love to hear her arguments. She's the only person who really argues with the class material at all, and really does bring up legitimate issues that wouldn't otherwise be covered by the course. Unfortunately, most of the other students can't see past the bitterness, and everyone laughs behind her back like she's the biggest jackass on campus. She's wrong, a lot, I agree. She weighs too much importance on realistically trivial factors and puts far too much stock in the validity of her speculation. But dammit she still asks in the first place. The best anyone else does is know the material ahead of time, which is intellectually meaningless. Well, to give myself credit, I like to argue with the professor's more presumptuous statements in my head, but I just don't bring them up in class because we're still about two and a half millennia separated from the crusades and we only have four classes left. I'd like it to be as speedy as possible.
