Well, that's enough of that

Okay, so that was diverting, but we now return you to your regularly scheduled amusing anecdotes about my life. Let's never do that again, shall we?

Have I mentioned that I've started running? I have. Three times a week, for 20 minutes. I've now done it two weeks, that's six times total, which doesn't exactly constitute a lifetime commitment yet, but I think it's more than a one-off at this point. I have done no strenuous physical activity whatsoever since arriving in this country, and I, as much as I'm not the sort of person who goes to the gym, doing a little activity really does make things go better—you sleep sounder, more energy, more focus. I believe this.

I wonder, however, if the sudden (if marginal) increase in my activity level is making me more anxious that I would be other wise. Like, perhaps something in my reptile brain has concluded that since I'm running so much I must be in danger. Just got a pile of letters forwarded from my mailbox in the Berkeley department, and in typical fashion, I'm putting off opening everything up.

I'm having bad dreams more frequently. This morning I woke up after having a dream which started as the dismayingly common "on stage without knowing my lines" dream. Common for other people, I mean—it's not a dream I'm used to having. In any case, I had to step in at the last minute as—you guessed it—Siegfried in Götterdämmerung. I had to jump in for his final scene, the hunting party where he's stabbed in the back by Hagen. And, as these dreams usually go, it wasn't until I was on stage that I thought "I can't sing! I don't know the words!" As unlikely as it sounds, the other characters on stage tried their best to cover for me, as the orchestra played on and on. I thought "If I just die realistically, it'll be okay." So I get stabbed, and I really ham it up, and then I snuck off stage.

But as soon as I got off stage, I saw this person I went to college with. Someone I haven't seen in four or five years, and that I didn't really know that well in the first place. I shall refer to her by name on the off chance that she googles herself and finds this: it was Mary Jane Rubinstein. She is a theologian, last I heard. But just as I went over to talk to her, she slipped off of the ladder or fire escape or whatever she was on, and plunged head-first onto the highly-polished marble floor. I could hear her skull cracking. For some reason there was no one around—in the dream, it had something to do with the fact that everyone, including the backstage staff and stuff, had to be somewhere else during the Immolation Scene. So I ran and I ran thought the backstage of the theater trying to find help. I thought I could take a shortcut, but that just led me to some are with tiny, tiny hallways, and I got more and more lost, frantic to find help for Mary Jane, and then I woke up.

Pretty standard stuff, I guess. About an hour later, I got a call from the BF. He thought I sounded out of sorts. It honestly didn't occur to me at the time that this might be why.

Last night, I saw the ENO's staging of the Handel oratorio Jephtha. GF: apologies for not texting you at intermission, but I had my hands full convincing my companion, the architectural historian, not to leave halfway through. It was okay. Good sets, some good directorial decisions, some okay singing. I'm still not 100% percent convinced that staging the oratorios is really a good idea.

Tonight: R— is back from Brazil, hopefully with stories.