[personal] Dreaming of Japan, and other updates
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Sometime in the last few days, in conversation with someone (I cannot recall who now) I made the observation that I am very rarely lost. I don’t always know where I am when walking or driving in a strange-to-me place, but I always know how I got there and how to get back to wherever I started from. I really do have a very good sense of direction.
So naturally last night my subconscious decided to serve me up some humble pie. I dreamt that Mother of the Child and I were in Japan, walking through a Tokyo neighborhood that looked suspiciously like Portland’s West Hills, admiring the classical architecture. We wound up being invited into one of the houses, which was the home of an absent yakuza crime lord. For some reason, I borrowed one of the yak’s cars — a tiny, ancient Subaru — to head back to our hotel to pick something up, leaving Mother of the Child behind. I got to the hotel, a Best Western in a location that looked suspiciously like Nebraska, and realized I had no idea how to get back to the yakuza mansion. Not only had I lost the_child
Anxiety much? I don’t find that dream so hard to interpret.
In other news, the_child
Also, I’m making a lot of progress on Sunspin. I expect to have Calamity of So Long a Life out to my last few first readers in another week or so, well ahead of schedule. This will give me time to work on Little Dog, I think, given my production scheduling.
This evening, the_child
Tuesday, January 31
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211
Note they’re also reprising, with a slightly different cast, in Seattle tomorrow night.
Wednesday, February 1
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033
If you’re in the area, turn out and support live, local literature!
More from my site

I have an excellent sense of direction and yet I frequently dream of getting lost (usually without involving the yakuza though). For years, I had a recurrent dream of trying to get to a mall/department store and taking a wrong turn to end up on what looked like an exaggerated version of Brussels market square with no idea of how to get back where I wanted to go. Eventually, the dream progressed to the point that I found the mall/store I’d been looking for only to get lost inside. And then the mall/store promptly burned down.
So I think that dreaming of getting lost is a fairly common theme, even if you rarely get lost in real life.