clearbluecup

I am walking into a cathedral. The thick, heavy stone walls are cool and dark and there are pillars here and there in the great hall to hold up all the weight. The ceiling seems low, and the space is dark. I am here as a tourist, but as I walk into this room I feel like I have belonged here all my life.

Light begins to pour into the room, and I notice that there are windows all around the outside walls. The biggest window is at the front of the cathedral, and it is both wide and tall, taller than the room itself. As the windows fill the room with light, the chandeliers burst into flame. Candles and crystal arranged in the shapes of flowers and geometric stars dance and ignite all around me, and I am filled with exquisite light. I bow my head in thanks.

Then I notice a man at the front of the room, wearing cream-coloured robes and a small conical hat that stands up off his head. People come up to him, and an exchange takes place between them. I am curious, and I push through throngs of praying women in dark robes to go up to the front of the room and find out what is happening. As I look I see money change hands between the tourist and the robed man. Then I see an advertising poster, with happy tourists riding some kind of machine over snow-capped peaks.

Suddenly, a door opens in the front corner of the cathedral. A giant mechanical worm passes directly in front of me, heaving and groaning with noise. There are tourists riding astride the worm, their legs hanging down over the aluminum panelling, their noses pink with cold and pleasure. I recoil, the heat and noise of the engines ringing in my ears and rising in my throat. A crowd of people presses forwards, pushing me towards the giant worm. My heart is pounding, and I duck out of the crowd.

It becomes known to me that this is the All-Terrain-Worm, and the man at the front of the room was selling tickets to tourists for a ride on this worm. "Due to the nature of the mountainous terrain around the cathedral, it is impossible for tourists to explore the area on foot or in private cars. In addition, the All-Terrain-Worm is the only way to see the vast underground chambers and passageways the cathedral is built on." I try to get past the worm to see beyond the open door. The incline doesn't seem too bad, but the driver of the worm shouts "It gets a lot worse than that, love! You'll never be able to get far on your own. Buy a ticket for the All-Terrain-Worm instead!"

We decide to explore the rest of the cathedral, and enter into an adjoining room. The light is cold and harsh, like flourescent institutional bulbs or an overcast day that casts no shadows on the ground. The walls and pillars are the same as in the main cathedral room, but this room has ledges crowded full of people all around the perimeter. Below the ledges is what looks like the frame of a boat, but I get the feeling that it's not actually a complete boat - somehow I think there is no bottom, and there is some kind of ethnic cleansing or torturous punishment being meted out inside that boat. I am filled with the realisation that the poor unfortunate souls trapped down there are about to be buried alive. A blond woman pushes through the crowds on the ledges, pulling her son behind her. I fear they will fall off the ledge and be trapped in the abyss forever.

We decide to keep exploring, and come across a food court in another adjoining passage. There is advertising everywhere - buy Pizza Hut! Jacket Potatoes! Baked Bananas with lavender and cream! I go up to the counter to purchase two Jacket Potatoes and one Baked Banana with Lavender, and Tom gives me several 2euro coins. But when I pay for it I use a 50euro note, and the guy behind the grimy counter passes me back what looks like a badly-done russian forgery of a 50euro note. I can't shake the feeling that I've been ripped off, and it was my fault for not using the coins. But we take our food and go to sit and eat beside some low rectanguar zen-like pools.

- - - - -

I am outside the cathedral, walking over deep snowdrifts and rolling hills. As I come to the top of a hill, I see the adjoining town laid out across the narrow valley and up onto the neighbouring hills. The sky is drawn close, an indigo velvet curtain pulled slowly across a bedroom window. All the houses are built very tightly together, and their pink and yellow walls meet so closely that the town itself seems like a persian carpet spread out over the valley, or patterned icing on a sweet cake. There is snow all around.

Dream Research

"Solms argues that dreams are a key to bringing psychoanalysis, effectively the study of the subjective experience of the brain, closer to neuroscience, the objective and more scientific counterpart."

The interesting thing here is how they relate the current work back to Freud's original idea of dreams as wish fulfillment. I remember taking a Psychology of Dreams course in my final year of University, and sitting in class trying very hard to follow my prof as he outlined the very sophisticated theory surrounding the difference between sublimation and representation in Freud's dream theory.

Freud's not just the Oedipus complex, you know. (Although he is all about wishes, and the fears that arise from the thought of having those wishes fulfilled...)

Our friends are getting married next week, and so I went out to the shops in search of a dress to wear. My criteria were simple, or so I thought.

1. Fits well

2. Classic style (ie: I'll wear it again sometime)

3. Not White

4. Not Black

5. Comfortable and summery

I went out during lunch hours and after work, I looked in the high street shops and down the side streets. I tried lots of things on, even things I wouldn't normally think to wear. And oh, the frustration! Apparently every woman must look like either a pastel-pink 50's housewife or a slinky patterned fluffy ruffle. I did find one dress that made me fall in love with my reflection: a dark teal green silk dress cut in a retro 20's style, with a round neck with only the most tasteful ruffles, and a knee-length slightly asymmetrical skirt made of several panels of fabric stitched together, which created a lovely wavy texture in the skirt without overdoing the ruffling. And it fit me like a glove. Price tag? €425. Oh, the pain!

With rising panic I went out at lunch yesterday, determined to find something, anything. And I found a dress quite unlike a dress I would normally wear: pink and green, patterned, strapless, and cut in a 50's style. But the combination of the cut, the particular pattern of the fabric and the tone of the green makes it absolutely adorable. What gets me is that I couldn’t escape the tyranny of fashion. When the fashion houses decree that the 50's have returned, that means that they have returned with autocratic force. No other affordable, wearable style exists in the shops. A small bonus, I guess, is that I have discovered there is something flattering about the return of the natural waistline. But do I believe the time has come for me to bring out my sewing machine more regularly, time to learn how to draw patterns and create my own style.

An entertaining vocabulary test for those of us who enjoy words that nobody else understands.

Also, check out the list of top scorers. Some of the descriptions of the people are priceless, such as Alan Crooke (maker of bilingual palindromes and rhymed double acrostic sonnets). He scored 188. I scored 148. The guy who created this site scored 168. A fourteen-year old boy named Allan C. Jackson III (the third!) aced it.

psst! what the heck does acrostic mean?

The busiest part of the summer is fast approaching, and now that the wedding (and our anniversary) is past the momentum is really starting to pick up. I've got another day and a half at work and a shopping list as long as my arm, then it's back on the train down to Cork to meet Elicia and her daughter at the airport. A quick weekend visit, then back up on the train for a week of manic work in which I HAVE to start meeting deadlines before I go on holiday, then I'm on the train again up to Derry to be the Godmother for Elicia's daughter in her christening ceremony. Back down on the train to Dublin, then two and a half days later I'm on the plane to London. whoosh.

I'm trying to imagine myself landing in Edmonton and walking out of the airport. What will it look like? How will it feel? What will I think? Intellectually I'm prepared for a great disillusionment and emotionally I'm hoping for a great homecoming, and I believe it will be something inbetween. In my dreams I'm flying: swooping through baggage check-in and airport waiting rooms, diveboming through long prairie drives, fluttering about visting friends and family, soaring up and around on a thermal of music and dancing.

I am riding the bus to the train station. It is friday afternoon, and the bus is busy. I am nearly late, I have shopping bags hanging off every arm and a heavy backpack. My mobile rings. It is elicia, saying that she isn't going to make it down to visit on the weekend. It's a long way - an 8 hour journey by bus, and with a one-year old it just doesn't make much sense. And I'll see her next weekend anyway, and then again in Canada. It's ok, see you soon. I heft my bags off the bus, one hand holding the phone and the other grabbing onto the railing in the stairwell of the double decker bus, trying not to let the sway of people getting off the bus shake my balance.

I am riding the train back to cork. It is friday afternoon, and the train is busy. In the last minute before the train departs from the station, a teenage girl and a young boy sit down beside my co-worker and I. They're travelling to Killarney, and they're speaking in northern accents. Are they going to see the Corr's concert? No. The heat sets in and I lean back into my seat, trying to let the sensation of being pulled backwards across the country soothe me while the trees out the window blur as I purposely relax my eye's hold on reality. I feel a small bit nauseous.

I am sitting in my living room, on the couch that maura and gavin left behind when they moved out. Some day they will come back for it. I must buy a couch. A plastic wine cork is sitting on the table, and the corkscrew is in my hand. Dissapointment, deadlines, transaction codes, dirty bathtubs, spiders in the corners of the ceiling and some shadows flickering in the corner of my eye pile up in a great smelly heap in my mind. I think about this test that Alison linked to, and inadequacy seeps through me like black ink. I wind the corkscrew horizontally through the plastic cork, then I wind it through the same hole but in the other direction. I make another hole above that one in the same fashion, and then another below the first hole. Then I make three more holes perpindicular to the first three. Then I start to pick at a bit of plastic hanging off one of the holes. I can't quite grab it with my fingernails. Suddenly I throw it back on the coffeetable and sit on my hands.

I am walking along the road in the pouring rain. My rain pants swish swish swish and I can feel the force of each raindrop hitting my plastic hood. I can see a drop hanging right on the edge of my hood, waiting for the moment it's weight is forceful enough to surrender to gravity. "I definitely prefer kinetic to potential energy," Lee said last week as we waited in a stationary train for an hour and a half for a switching fault to be fixed. There are giant puddles everywhere, and the raindrops are hitting them with such force that the surface of the water is covered with boiling bubbles. Tom's rain pants go swish swish swish beside me. We come to the edge of the park. Some distance down the road there is a loud explosion and what looks like water shooting out of a drain. My heart is trying desperately to leap out of my chest and run away home. "What the hell was that?" we ask one another. Was that the force of the ocean rising up through the drains with such power that it blew a manhole cover into the air? I think it was. We walk along the road in the other direction, tiptoeing like children around land mines.

Today I am vaccuming, cleaning the bathtub, repotting plants, evicting the spiders, finishing jobs I'd promised to do ages ago, organising my stuff, preparing for my journey and praying that everything will turn out alright.

We're trying to work out the schedule for our holiday in Canada, and we've reached a bit of a blockage. I know it's my decision, but please humour me with some feedback here cause I'm going mental trying to work it out. Should I:

Go to Regina (July 8-11)

Hang out in Edmonton (July 12-16)

Go to Motion Notion (July 16-18)

Hang out in Edmonton (July 19-20)

Leave (July 21)

Or:

Go to Regina (July 8-11)

Go Camping in the Mountains (July 12-13)

Hang out in Edmonton (July 13-16)

Go to Motion Notion (July 16-18)

Hang out in Edmonton (July 19-20)

Leave (July 21)

I'm really torn here. I want to see the mountains again and have some time to go hiking & camping, but I really want to see everyone in Edmonton too. Somehow I feel like people take priority over mountains, but Tom & I would also be able to spend some quality time together in the mountains. The latter plan seems like it doesn't leave enough time for just "hanging out" in Edmonton. I'm getting so stressed out over this holiday, and that just doesn't make any sense at all.