Last Night I Dreamt, pt. Who Knows?

I had a very strange dream Friday night. Sometimes my mind comes up with these things that make me question just how much I am aware of what I am actually thinking. I'm no psychologist, but I sometimes suspect that we make (or unmake) decisions in our sleep, and wake up with ideas we did not have, or did not know we had, before. Ego to id: "I'm a reasonable man, get off my case."

Yesterday afternoon I went to a poetry reading at Minas in Hampden, given by Greg Williamson, my longtime poetry professor, and Joseph Harrison. Minas is a combination gallery-boutique on the east end of the Avenue; I have been there once or twice, but never been to the upstairs gallery where the reading took place. It's kind of a magical space, the upstairs: it's a very clean, minimal room with a window looking over the Hampden rooftops and distantly at the Baltimore downtown skyline. A little capsule of neatness in a neighborhood renowned for kitsch and delirium. There was a tiny exhibition of photographs taken at various locations on Greek beaches, but in the near-pitch black night, and with unusually long exposure times, such that the images were cast in a very eerie, mystical kind of light. I was reminded of what Drew Daniel of Matmos had said about the samples in their music, how they took samples of very quiet sounds and amplified them to deafening to reveal the subtleties that would've otherwise been buried beneath the perceptive threshold. Anyway, there were just over a half-dozen people in the audience, including my Poetry of War professor Mary Jo Salter and her husband, and Jordan and Sarah K., in addition to Jessica and myself. Greg read quite a few sonnets and a hilarious story(!) about getting ambushed by wild animals while working in the garden. Afterwards, Jessica discovered a nice navy blue jacket (which was in fact a woman's jacket--it had a little tag on the inside that said, "Coat, Woman's, Air Force Blue"), which I ended up buying, and then we found some cherry blossoms.

Last night while walking home from Jess' apartment I was forced to wade through a mess of drunk fratboys. It was raining. As I passed, one of them said, "nice umbrella, faggot." What a strange feeling; I haven't really been called names since 10th or 11th grade. I suppose getting past these things takes longer for some than it does for others. Or maybe I'm just too perpetually sleepy to imagine being aggressive towards people I don't even know.