Doom and Dream
2003-08-01, 9:18 a.m.

You know what's fun? Seeing your future at your place of work by analyzing your co-workers' speeds of descent into insanity. Or marvel at their lack of capacity to do so because the pool doesn't go that deep.

For instance, there's one guy that occasionally breaks out into a completely different personality, named Stanley - Stanley's the kind of guy that would have ridden the short bus to school. I'm pretty sure this is just a put-on for entertainment purposes, though. When you really see the crazy stuff is when people mumble to themselves when they think no one else is listening, or bizarre asides during a busy day. One guy proclaims that he has sex with geese. Another sings R&B tunes to himself all morning, I think so he can be in his 'happy place', as it were.

But really, most of us are in one state of crazy or another, no? I, myself, bear no exemption. I'm not usually crazy-obvious at work, however. It's not out of some sense of business savvy or duty or anything. It's more like I have no interest in getting to know these people too well, so I don't bother putting too much of myself out there. Maybe this is a crazy in and of itself. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it is. Bottling up isn't exactly healthy. But then again, I'm not interested in 'going out to the bar' with any of these people, either. It should make the Xmas party interesting. Ahem.

Meanwhile, I'm really starting to love this coming home from work and the night's almost over. In a situation like this, I'd normally tend to stay up later and wake up later, but the existence of a family precludes this. Such is part of the reason why I had (and probably will have again, let's be realistic here) such a long gap in journal entries, for instance. I'm a much better thinker in the evening that the morning (speaking of thinking, I think I'll go get my tea now). So I'd sit here after waking up, staring at the empty entry box, sigh heavily once, decide that I have no capacity to write and close the window. Frustrating, one might think. Well, one would be right. To say up later means not sleeping with my wife, and sleeping in means not seeing my wife in the morning, and then, when school starts, not seeing the kids at all. Did I mention that I love my job? I really do. It gets me all tingly inside.

I had an odd dream a few days ago. I managed to dream my own version of Return of the King, almost to its conclusion. Mind you, it did not stick to the original storyline very well. This was odd to me, in that I rarely dream about real people (I suddenly recall once, when I was six or seven, dreaming about time-travelling with Barry Manillow using a small, black, pyramid-shaped device-- too much TV for me) and almost never about fictional characters. My dreams are very occasionally disturbing (but not in a wake-up-screaming kind of way) and usually heavily symbolic, and I'm not usually prone to stress dreams (though I did have an Actor's Nightmare, once-- I was actually kind of happy about it, made me feel like a real actor *g*). So you might understand why I'd call this odd, beyond the obvious.

Most of the dream is awash, but there are two things I do remember clearly (if you're not familiar with that of which I speak, please, for god's sake, go read the damn series already). First was a scene of Sam, Mr. Frodo and Gollum wandering about in the belly of Mount Doom, and happening upon a nest of about 100 yelping dragon newlings, all looking for food from mommy. The trio seemed interested in avoiding mommy.

Second was Arwyn presenting a newly reconstituted Narsil to Aragorn as they sat at a wooden table in a candle-lit, cabin-ish room. This would not be so interesting a scene, but for the sword itself. I took it upon myself to make a (very) rough sketch of the thing, so my lack of proper words wouldn't lessen the bizarrity of the thing.

As you can see, it's not you normal bladed weapon. It's made of what looks like hollow glass (which isn't very functional), filled with water and bubbling like a fish tank. The pommel was wrapped in thin, tooled copper. And it glowed slightly, like there was a small bulb in the hilt that lit up the water. Then ,as you can see, there's two blades, and a third protrusion which is decidedly cylindrical. Go figure. And the strangest part is that Aragorn seemed awfully excited to see it. And Arwyn just had this little smile on her face that said, 'tsk, silly boys and their swords'. Again I say, go figure.

As for symbolism, I have no idea. I don't recall ever seeing anything even remotely similar anywhere else or in any other dream. Input analysis (and tips) are appreciated.

--End Transmission--