in dreams, part xi.

Still writing abut this so that other non-sleepers can have some Google results about combining Ambien/zolpidem with oxazepam during mirtazapine withdrawals.

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So, as much as I would love for medication talking time to be over, my shit still isn't settled down. I've been trying to sleep without Ambien or Oxazepam just because I'm not sure if either one of those has been contributing to recent stomach distress.

The most obvious result of this has been a general lack of sleep over the past week or so, culminating in a 2.5-hour night's sleep last night, and resulting in that oh-so-familiar Fight Club feeling of being "never really awake....a copy of a copy of a copy".

On the less boring side, my brain has been so desperate to catch up on REM sleep that it has manufactured some crazily busy and vivid dreams the past three nights. Said brain also seems intent on incorporating whatever music I'm falling asleep to into these dreams, not in a totally positive way.

1) Tonight's: J-Kim and I are part of the Lee Konitz Quintet while he's in Amsterdam, along with Johnny D and a drummer who is a cross between our actual Norwegian drummer friend Tollef and Samantha's beauhunk Smith from Sex and the City.

This dream starts out as a typical "bringing wrong equipment to a gig" dream: I bring my Guild, which is unplayably strung with one bass string and four high E strings (iow, not a normal or useful tuning), and, since I'm two hours late to soundcheck, I hook my expression pedal up incorrectly so that instead of controlling my volume, it alters my pitch. So as the band starts playing (and as I am plugging in my guitar for the first time), I try to fade in with some subtle chords and instead of course sound like an air-raid siren or space laser beam.

After several disastrous attempts to contribute to the music, I stop playing and watch, mildly interested in why the music seems to repeat itself exactly every 8 minutes or so, and then after 48 minutes or so, the five of us start playing soccer/football, while wearing our instruments (this was planned...the concert is in a park at dusk).

This is only the first part of the dream, the rest involves me being drunk and caught in flagrante delicto by a baby wearing a gorilla costume bursting into my room, who I then bit on the nose repeatedly, and then some time later waking up with several people's wallets and phones in my pockets, who were pissed at me b/c I was supposed to be "holding on to them" (including my newest IRL employer), but I disappeared into the night. I'd also gone to sleep or "passed out" without acknowledging F.E. de Lange's whatsapp messages inviting me to play darts (?), and Mara's whatsapp requests to know how the gig had gone.

I woke up quite distressed by all of this because in one night I'd: ruined my musical reputation; pissed off Lee Konitz; disgruntled my new employer; gone off the wagon, and gone AWOL. The irony of all this is that I wasn't even listening to Lee Konitz IRL during the dream: I'd initially thought it was, during our "concert", but I think even in the dream after a few minutes of "Lee"'s solo I was thinking, "Mmm...I'm pretty sure this is Greg Osby". But my brain was not having any of that, so I got to watch "Lee Konitz" play the same Greg Osby solo over and over again for 45 minutes.

2) Last night: I was working at the smallest, busiest department store imaginable. It was my first day on the job, and I couldn't understand anything that was happening. Various supervisors kept trying to show me how to do various things, like ring customers up, calculate taxes, clean the washing machines, give refunds from the video games....etc.

But I couldn't hear anybody because of this enormous drone in my ears. I knew what it was, it was Éliane Radigue's Kyema from Trilogie de la Mort, but I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, until I reached up to touch my ears and realized I was wearing my raggedy white headphones/earbuds. Which, as soon as I noticed, I was a bit horrified by b/c this is my first day at work and my manager is trying to teach me something that I'm not understanding at all, and it's because I'm wearing headphones.

So I take the headphones out, but the sound is still there. Weird. I reach up to touch my ears and there's another set of headphones there, a black pair this time, which I remove, but the sound is still there. This goes on for a while.

Ultimately, I'm exhausted by trying to turn off this sound in my dream that I am listening to in real life. In reality, I'm asleep with my white headphones on, listening to Radigue; in my dream, I hear the sound and know what it is, but can't figure out where it's coming from. This is a new one for me.

3) Two nights ago: had a violent and protracted dream altercation with this literally schizophrenic guy who used to stalk me a bit back in Atlanta in the 1990s. IRL, he answered an ad of mine looking for musicians (NEVER put an ad in the paper looking for musicians), and we played together and the music was actually OK, but he was quite obviously dangerously unstable: he'd been arrested a couple of times for assault and was constantly getting worked up into a state about very irrational things.

Anyway, in the dream, we were in Seattle, in a giant downtown park, and it was dusk for like 6 hours of dream chase/fight. The weirdest part of this one was that at a certain point I was trying to throw an enormous and fully-packed/loaded suitcase of music gear at him, but I couldn't get it to move. It was one of those dream moments where you're trying to make something physically happen and it just won't, and you can't understand why not. I tried and tried to move this suitcase, but nothing.

When I woke up, I felt like I'd worked out the day before and done a couple too many dumbbell curls with my right arm: my bicep was throbbing. So....I injured my IRL self in a dream fight? Another exciting new twist.

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top guitar hero brazil.

I've been experimenting with "new relaxation techniques", one of which, a theta wave headphone track, may have just given me the worst dream I've had in recent memory. I'll flesh this synopsis out when I have time, but essentially the key data points would be: a Top Chef kind of show but for hundreds of guitar players instead of chefs; set in Rio de Janeiro; I was partners with Amy Adams who pretended to be very nice and sweet to me at first, like we were best friends and really hitting it off, until the cameras were rolling and then she incessantly made fun of my belly during the first challenge, which everyone found hillllarious; me subsequently running mostly naked through the thankfully deserted halls of the TV studio in a way that reminded me very much of Carrie (they're all gonna laugh at you).

When I eventually made it back to my room, I found that Amy had turned the other contestants against me so thoroughly that they'd destroyed my suitcase and remaining clothes and so all I had left to wear for the remaining two days of the competition was a cooking oil-soaked camouflage outfit I found in the shared kitchen (it was MutliCam, a term I just now learned for the first time). I think it was used frying oil.

That evening of course, the cast and crew all went out to a chic and stylish outdoor terrace for delicious Brazilian food and cocktails, tanned and dressed in pretty awesome outfits and enjoying themselves immensely while I sat alone in my wet-yet-crispy camo jumpsuit. After an hour or so of this, I decided to seek relief by going off to shop for new clothes (at 9pm or so) via Rio's public transportation system, and well as you can imagine I got off in the bad part of town and was chased by people with machine guns and machetes for several hours.

I did experience a nice moment walking home from Favela Massacre mode where I stumbled into a tourist attraction that was basically these gently fluorescent caves with crystalline pools of water lapping at themselves in a quiet manner. Very peaceful. If you could hear my theta wave recording this would make perfect sense. When I returned to the TV studios in my by now rather supremely uncomfortable camo, I limped into the ungently fluorescent shower room and slowly shaved my full beard into a bushy handlebar moustache. I emerged from the showers to find everyone else returning from the final, mandatory rehearsal, which I had of course missed, and thus I wouldn't be allowed to participate further, though I could stay and help clean up afterwards if I liked.

I was well, a bit "down" after all this as you can imagine. This being Day Three of the dream I finally had an impulse resembling, "Hey, wait: doesn't this all sound suspiciously like my normal neuroses (body image; social anxiety; performance anxiety) combined with the real-life events of the last month or so (hundreds of guitar players; unfamiliar public transportation; shaving off a beard; I just watched like 3 days of MasterChef)....maybe it's a good idea to stop and FUCKING CHECK AND SEE IF THIS IS REALLY HAPPENINGGGGGG" and I immediately woke up to discover that I'd only been asleep for two hours. Suuuuuuuuper relaxing.

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comfortafel.

Traditional Day One nutrition regimen in progress, but first a brief moment of ugly yet soothing rainy day windstorm food. It's so boring I don't even know what to call it.

Last night's epic dreams: I found an exhausted, fat clone of me in a closet and had to kill it (pretty straightforward); then we acquired two zebra colts but then also Amsterdam flooded and my poor brain spent hours imagining what every conceivable lifeform looked and sounded like drowning. No cats though, thanks for that.

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chicken + spinach casserole.

20 kalamata olives
1 rosemary branch
1 tbsp crushed red pepper
1 courgette
1 onion
6 cloves garlic
6 cans peeled tomatoes
3 tbsp olive oil
(these quantities make twice as much red sauce as you need)

125g mozzarella
125g ricotta

2 free-range chicken breasts
400g fresh spinach
salt
pepper
Parmesan for grating

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marathon, man.

I just had a marathon dream. Not about running a marathon, ha ha ha ha ha ha, that would be way way less realistic than the dream I did have: it was O'Neill's birthday, and he and basically everyone we'd ever hung out with were on some kind of celebration circuit adventure around a dreamworld Atlanta. I unfortunately was like an hour behind them schedule-wise, and this must have been pre-cellphone days b/c the only way I could ever find out where they actually were was to follow one step behind them. Come to think of it, have you ever dreamed about using a cell phone? I myself have not.

So it was like this: I go to the first place they were supposed to be, Johnny's Pizza, which used to be managed by O'Neill's sister-in-law J (who, fun fact, he slept with once or twice in real life long before she was officially related to him, you didn't hear it from me). But the O'Neill party had just vamoosed: an empty table for 20 or something was sitting there still steaming or possibly smoldering, having obviously just been vacated by a pack of blunted savages, chairs overturned, pizza crusts and empty beer pitchers strewn everywhere.

And J was like (you have to know her voice, almost every word is at least two syllables), "Oh heyyyy, they just left, yeah, they're over at Eric and Kim's now". I'm thinking oh super, that's only a half-hour away, and I turn and head for the door but then I'm all wait where do they even live? I've only been there once and that was maybe ten years ago and I was on some serious drugs at the time, so I turn around to ask J to remind me but by then she had disappeared into the back to go perform dreamland pizza parlor management tasks and the waitress would only tell me that she "couldn't be reached right now".

And on and on, place to place. It was a complete scavenger hunt: after driving for hours and finally finding Eric and Kim's, of course the party had moved on, but Kim had been left behind to wash an enormous pile of unrealistically dirty dishes and told me glumly "yeah they went over to Churchill's to meet Al (her brother, dead) and Mason but that was only for one drink". She handed me a warm can of Miller Lite, already opened.

I took a swig and grimaced. Why did they insist on going to Churchill's? They would always pick the oddest, least cool places to drink. In real life I marveled at this for years, but I now understand that they just carefully selected corrupt, rundown places within drunk-driving distance where they would be likely to befriend the disgruntled bartender (free drinks!) and/or would be highly unlikely to run into anyone they knew who wasn't a total alcoholic.

Anyway at some point I ended up on foot, downtown, but not in a big-building part, in a deceptively rural-seeming part (these exist), where I ran into Cynthia Nixon (Mara and I had half-watched a Sex and the City rerun just before bed), who I totally, completely don't have a thing for at all but she really looked the best she'd ever looked, rather unrealistically good. Almost actually in flames, very nearly on fire.

She was also surprisingly friendly. It was getting late and after a few minutes she confided that she was lonely, so lonely, thus although the clock was ticking and I was falling behind schedule, she eventually talked me into an exploratory kiss. I totally expected this to be a pleasant turn of events, but she tasted exactly and shockingly like fresh blood, super-realistic and very unsettling, and so while being profoundly repulsed I then yes also understood why she was so lonely and I felt quite bad for her.

So I said something semi-reassuring like "let's try this again later" and then we immediately ran into Occhalini (also dead in real life) and Berrell on the deserted road outside a third unrememberable friend's house who was on vacation with his parents. Cynthia and I decided to try and use the bathroom there and coincidentally see if we could find a drink, we were supposed to be celebrating right?

But on our way in we ended up accidentally letting the dogs out, or so we thought, but then I saw a doggie door, so maybe the dogs were supposed to be out anyway? There was no way to know for sure, but then screams from outside suggested probably not: the dogs were now out in the road, cars whizzing by frantically. Of course one of the dogs was Trinka, my first dog.

Cynthia and I ended up somehow putting the dogs back inside but she wanted to take with her this trashy antique wooden cupboard which is actually one of our coffee tables in real life. And on and on. I only eventually caught up with everyone at O'Neill's parents' house at like 5 in the morning. The sink was full of dirty dishes crusted with a bolognese sauce, the only non-microwaveable food O'Neill knew how to cook for many years (not counting these soup sandwiches).

It took me about an hour to say hello to everyone (dreamtime), it was quite the rogue's gallery. By the time I got to O'Neill, I found him standing in his finished basement looking quite satisfied, with a chewed-up cigar and a giant tumbler of gin and ice, which I took from him without a word and drank in one sustained gulp, saying "let me freshen this up for you" and heading for the refrigerator.

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Questions for discussion:

1) Is it really so unrealistic for me not to have a cellphone in America?
2) Why would everyone choose to go over to Eric and Kim's anyway?
3) Why do I continue to have "romantic" dreams about women I'm definitely not consciously attracted to IRL? This is a first for me. Mirtazapine, I'm looking at you.
4) Exactly what am I doing watching Sex and the City?
5) etc.

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braketime.

 

Above: the Zeedijk at sunset Friday night.

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After a three-party weekend, it's time for a little clean livin' methinks. Green apples! Ginger stuff! Cabbage and other farty-smelling cruciferous things! Oily fish! Lots of chili peppers. Cottage cheese and peaches for whenever real decadence seems in order.

Today is mirtzapine reduction day. Of course last night I had the best sleep ever, revolving around an amazing dream in which (deep breath): I was part of a crew that landed on a vast alien world, yes, like Alien/Aliens/etc but apparently not dangerous at all, although one crew member and I (Maggie Gyllenhaal, who I do not have a thing for) got separated from the rest (of course), and encountered this one sort of friendly but not-functioning-correctly cowboy alien, and he eventually kind of passed out, so (as anyone would in this situation) we carefully popped his cowboy-hatted head off (like a Lego) and underneath the head was a 0.5 liter (approx) flask of thick dark red viscous liquid, which of course we drank, and then we became (no pun intended) spaced out for a while and the rest of the crew couldn't find us, and then we wandered around kind of drunkenly a bit, giggling and generally having a good time, until we stumbled across a set of computer screens in which we were represented as video game characters, and on the screens we could then see where the rest of the crew was, so we physically located them and I immediately told the ship's doctor that we drank the red stuff and he looked horrified (understandably, in retrospect) and called off the mission (everyone back to the ship!) but then he immediately got a text message on his mobile telling him that he'd had his medical license revoked and he said he'd been "scrubbed out" (a surgical joke! in a space dream!) and looked rather cross, then Maggie and I went over to a semi-secluded area and somehow exchanged space suits and then went back to the video game screens and started killing aliens that way, it resembled Robotron X quite a bit.

At least that's the part that I can explain. Many many other things happened that I only sort of remember. Mirtazapine, I'll miss some things about you.

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some velvet morning.

Last night's dream: I'm stranded on a desert island, and I spend every day trying to (re)arrange grains of sand to represent all of the individual notes on Tangerine Dream's Phaedra album.  I go to sleep, and in the morning the wind has erased the score and I start again.

Today's appetizer experiment: letftover polenta tots with homemade BBQ sauce from the freezer. I still don't think they need a condiment, or if they do this isn't it. It's probably this.

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mirtazapine/remeron day 130.

So it's been a while since there's been a medication update, and that's because 1) things have been pretty stable and 2) I've decided I don't want to be on this medication for the rest of my life. The sleeping is still mostly great, pretty much the best I've ever slept in my life, although last night I in fact had a horrible night of sleep, I just felt physically "weird" and my hands kept falling asleep no matter where I put them.

Also my dreams were full of 3) me running around in a videogame subdivision battling king cobras, komodo dragons and African lions, no doubt a side effect of watching Animal Planet on the treadmill at the gym, and 4) an initially very helpful pie/ice cream vendor on a bike with wonderful-looking products who talked to me for some time about exactly what I was looking for in a piece of pie/ice cream, then silently took the $20 bill I offered him and rode off without giving me any pie or ice cream. I'm pretty sure the vendor was King Krule, a pun/irony that I didn't notice until well after I typed the previous sentence.

Regarding 2) above, I feel like things have leveled out to where I understand what this drug is all about, and unfortunately I've decided I can't really deal with the physical weakness, the persistent unignorable sugar cravings and the pretty intractable emotional distance/apathy. Don't get me wrong, the emotional distance was completely necessary at the outset and all in all the past 4.5 months have been an awesome vacation from a few several years of pretty-nihilistic depression, but at the moment I have a hard time really experiencing a complete emotion, mine only seem to go up to 50% or so. And that's a bit depressing (but luckily only 50% depressing ha ha thank you we're here all week).

Thus, my short-term plan is to enlist a brain doctor to gently massage my grey matter, and then taper off of 30mg mirtazapine down to 15mg and see what happens. And for those people who are Googling "mirtazapine/Remeron" and "weight gain/loss": I managed to not gain any weight in four months, but it was a rather unfun effort. The drug definitely wanted me to double in size.

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nocturnal admission.

I'm sick. Shivering and moaning annoyingly on the couch, my only consolation is a bag of Cool American flavor Doritos (Americans would know this flavor as, yes, Cool Ranch).

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Also, and unrelatedly: I had my first ever experience with "sleep eating". A couple days ago I bought 500ml (a pint) of milk, an unusual purchase for this household, we usually don't have anything but pretend milks and creamers. I bought it b/c we've had this butterscotch Jell-O pudding sitting around just begging for someone to make it and we just have to keep throwing up our hands and saying "sorry" b/c we have no actual cow milk. 

The next night at some fortunate snacking moment, a homemade brownie showed up, and yes, I pried open the milk carton to have a tiny glass of ice cold milk with my brownie cause, well I don't have to explain cause why. But I made sure that I left enough for the potential Jell-O. 

Cut to this morning, 6:15am, I'm feeding the cats. While making sure everyone plays nice at the food bowls, I construct half a brown rice cake with tahini and raspberry jam (don't knock it til you've tried it), and as my last bite is being thoughtfully considered by my tooth I think to myself "one more tiny glass of milk won't hurt. We'll still have enough for Jell-O". 

But ehhh...there's no milk. I look really hard for it, b/c I know it's there, and I've just finished eating something that would be perfect with a cold glass of milk. But the moment is rapidly passing and the milk is nowhere. Dejected, I mentally frown at my roommate for ruining a perfectly good milk moment and trudge back to bed.

But it's also weird, because it's totally unlike her to have a glass of milk at night. Still frowning on my way up the stairs, I have a couple quick flashes of oh yeah a great dream I just recently had about an awesome bowl of cereal, it was like the perfect bowl of cereal. Somehow pacified by this a bit, I get in bed and enter a hypothetical slumberland. 

I wake up at 11am, we both kind of do, and while making coffee Mara asks me, "have you seen the milk?" Now this is troubling.  Of course we have the expected discussion, "You mean the real milk?" "ehh....I was also looking for the milk this morning", "ehh that's weird", etc etc. By about the third time I say "Hmmm...I'm pretty sure I didn't use the milk", I'm not actually very sure at all that I didn't use the milk. We look in the garbage can: empty milk carton.  

Turns out my dream about cereal was not a dream at all. While asleep I made a bowl of cereal and ate it. And did not remember it the next day. All while completely sober. Should we be concerned? 

Also: this.

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dreamland.

This morning I indulged in two of my dreamtime obsessions simultaneously. I had, of course, killed someone, as I do about once a month in my dreams. It's never malicious, or at least it's never premeditated, and it's often in self-defense.

The killing part is usually the short part of the dream: the long part is the disposal of the body and/or fleeing of the crime scene. Usually it takes the authorities anywhere from 12 hours to 12 months to start looking for me, and then I'm "on the lam" as they say. 

This morning's episode was an especially surreal variation: I woke up at 5am or something and was browsing around Ye Olde Internet before going back to sleep. For relaxation purposes, I'd been reading a bunch about Texas BBQ and how you pretty much can't get all of the best stuff in one spot, you kind of have to drive around to little towns throughout central Texas. 

So when I did finally manage to fall back asleep, naturally my post-murder fleeing of the police was combined with a tour of central Texan BBQ joints. In a parking lot, eating brisket in my car, hunkered down in the driver's seat so the flashing blue lights wouldn't illuminate my face, knowing my sauce and debris-obscured fingerprints were completely untrackable should I have to ditch the car for any reason. 

~~~

I´ve been thinking about southern food a lot, must be the unsouthern weather here.

Shrimp Remoulade.
although Commander's Palace's version is served on marinated hearts of palm with Creole tomatoes, tarragon and a spicy lemon dressing.
Crawfish Cornbread.
Brigtsen's Red Beans and Rice.
Smoked Duck and Pepper Jelly Sandwiches.
Cochon De Lait Cajun Pulled Pork.
Bourbon and Caramel Tiramisu

~~~

cat of constant sorrow.

I don't have bad bad dreams very often. I mean, if I've been drinking too much, i'll frequently have dreams that revolve around some sort of repeating physical trauma, like trying to break up a vicious, sonically-horrible catfight while also simultaneously being stung incessantly by sizeable scorpion/spider creatures, or being slowly and unrealistically ripped apart by multiple tornadoes. But there's rarely any emotion involved in these dreams besides fear and panic (unless pain is an emotion?).

Also I never have the same dream twice in one night. But last night's double feature was like watching two cuts of the same movie. And it was HORRIBLE. It/they literally left me with a feeling I've never had before in my life: hopeless, imminent DOOM.

The gist is that I and a few close friends were on some sort of flying euthanasia/suicide plane/hotel. There may have been a bowling alley. We'd already been given whatever substance was going to kill us, but it was working very slowly. And so we were all kind of looking for each other, I guess we'd separated so that we could all "go to sleep" peacefully or whatever, but then a kind of sheer panic set in where you just needed to see everyone else. But you didn't know what room they were in.

I'm leaving out lots of things that are quickly fading from my memory, but the worst part was suddenly realizing that you wanted to say things to people and couldn't, and it was all going to be over in a matter of hours. Phlblblblbl.

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circular.

So, I'm reading the weekly sales flyer thingie from our local grocery store, the Dirk (that's what we affectionately call it, Dutch people never seem to do this, or do they), because, you know, times are tough, things are tough all over, etc.

So I'm standing there like a 75-year-old man reading the sales insert, and...there are maybe...75 things on sale (75 is the only exaggerated random number I'm using today). There are two fresh vegetables on sale. One is escarole. The other is pre-chopped kale in a bag.

I know what they want me to do with these, but I'm not going to. Let's think of some other ideas for these two. Otherwise it's going to be a long winter. Caldo verde and white beans + escarole spring to mind, and sound pretty good, assuming I'm allowed a tiny grating of manchego on top. 

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(the next day)

I awoke after a TERRIBLE dream, one of these performance anxiety/fear of public failure dreams that I occasionally have, but this was the worst one in a while, basically revolving around me being unable to gather all of the equipment I need to set up for our theatre piece, and the clock ticking.

They normally last about 150 dream minutes (2 x 75), but these minutes seem to go on FOREVER, with me constantly struggling to stay focused and look for the things I need, constantly fending off obstacles, while I know someone is waiting for me at the venue.

This time the obstacles were mostly friends/acquaintances showing up out of nowhere wanting to talk, like "so, hey, man...how's it been going." And I'm like: "Hey, man...(rummaging around)...ehhhhhh.....it's....ah, OK....(rummage rummage) hey, sorry, I really have to find this tiny RCA-to-1/4-inch adapter, maybe you can help look for it? Actually, there are two of them. You don't have any gaffer tape, by the way, do you? I'm also looking for a yellow balloon if you happen to see one. And a watch battery for a kitchen timer."

And they're like, "Yeah...I can help you look, no problem....so, I just got back from London...and I ran into Gavin...do you know Gavin? He was that guy from the thing that what's-his-name set up over at, uh...um...the place, that place called, ah...fuck, with that asshole bartender! Jesus, that guy was a douche..."

Meanwhile, I'm (rummage rummage)ing and can't find ANYTHING, hindered dramatically by the sloth-like speed at which I'm moving. In my versions of these dreams, the 2 x 75 minutes in question typically span from just before the time we're supposed to be soundchecking to just past the time we're supposed to go onstage, normally ending with me miraculously only having half my gear and still not being at the venue yet.

So I woke up panicked and exhausted and realized we didn't have any milk for coffee, and I thought again about the kale. And I had a vision of a frittata, one with a kale-almond pesto, caramelized onions, and a little roquefort. I wish the cosmos would find a less traumatic way to tell me these things.

UPDATE: I made caldo verde for breakfast, minus sausage. It was totally delicious: lots of garlic and a pow! of smoked paprika being the kickers.

pseudonymity.

Above: Sunday's sunset.

I just dreamed I met someone whose kids were named Absinthe and Persimmon. I think they may also have had tentacles.

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This is one of the first "fancy" dinners I ever tried to cook, in 1997 I think. I remember it being wonderful, but I'm trying it again tonight and we'll see what we think. ANSWER: Pleasant enough, but I'll be in no hurry to repeat it.

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You may have noticed that every other foodish blog in the InterWebz has done a Thanksgiving recipes post. We did not. Although we did participate in a medium-scale Thanksgiving meal (15 people or so?), I must say that the highlight of it was the absinthe (perhaps the source of the tentacle dreams?). Good carrot cake, too.

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brainstorming.

Unfortunately I find myself awake and sleepless after a very disturbing dream about an ex-girlfriend. And there wasn't even any sex.

I was sitting at a table in a modern Italian restaurant (a la...Babbo, let's say, but not Babbo) before it had opened for dinner, say 4pm, in a tuxedo, waiting for something, all the lights were off inside but there was still enough light outside so that you could see everything fine. A menu was on the table. A wedding party noisily exited of one of the back rooms, just having done some post-wedding thing, post-wedding because the bride was in white, and...lo, the bride was my ex.

We were surprised to run into each other there, but not like, "Wow, haven't seen you in forever," more like people who see each other regularly and are just surprised to run into each other somewhere unusual. I said something like hey, that's three years in a row we've seen each other here at this place. She sits down next to me but facing me, it was one of those banquette thingies, and starts talking about something. When she turned to her right, toward the rest of the restaurant, to look around, I could see that she was wearing a lot of makeup, as brides tend to do...but there was something really garishly wrong about the part around the temple side of her left eye.

Not wrong like, this is the part where she's actually dead or anything...it was just unfinished, strangely white and shiny. So while she was talking, I blended it in with my thumb and it looked better.

And, sadly....that's all i remember. The bad part was Lynchian in it's level of scary evilness but the specifics elude me. Well, a little girl's body was pulled limp from an ocean harbor by a crane, but then the sun shone on it and it was alive and waved to the crowd; also, I'd hidden a Christmas present for someone (R. Scott Hanson I believe) somewhere and couldn't find it. I knew it was in a high place, somewhere that I had to stand on tiptoe to reach. But while I was looking for it, I was also embarrassed about the gift because it seemed cheap and lame, it was some kind of old "classic" piece of literature in it's original paperback version, with notes scribbled on the cover. I think Scott's parents were getting dressed to go out during this.

None of this was scary, just menacing...the bad part was happening simultaneously, though, and it had something vaguely to do with my ex, and with me being part of a group of 6 very bad people who received instructions about what specific bad things to do via an intricate system of cubicles and P.O. boxes. There were toilets involved as well. Ominous, no?

And so you see, I am awake, with only a couple of hours of sleep under my belt. Leaving me to ponder things like "what will I do with the thawed salmon in the fridge?" I also have some merguez I bought yesterday, mm-hmm, yes...now watch as I attempt to deploy some maple syrup as the bridge ingredient here, and a dab of orange marmalade as well, for a kind of Seattle brunch vibe:

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marmalade-glazed salmon with merguez sausage and maple sweet potatoes?

1/4 cup orange marmalade
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1 garlic clove, pressed
250gr salmon filet

4 merguez sausages

2 sweet potatoes
1 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp butter
grated nutmeg

toasted pine nuts, minced chives and minced cilantro for garnish


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We'll see...