Songs for the sombre

And here I am, standing in the shower, contemplating the simplicity of belly button lint, how it just arrives out of nowhere and begs to be cleaned out. People with outies just wouldn't understand, I guess.

Through some strange combination of shampoo and bodywash, I smell suspiciously like breakfast, but as in the good wholesome fruit and granola kind and not the fried sausage and eggs kind, thankfully. Delicious. If I basted myself in yoghurt I would be all set.

Had a dream last night that I was sitting in a room with a threadbare grey carpet on one of those plastic chairs they have in public school. There were lots of people talking, but I wasn't listening to them because I was staring at the loose change scattered across the floor on the other side of the room. I sat there for about four hours doing that.

Another scene kept cutting in and out: a gentle sloped hill dipping into the sea, covered with a tall grass with long white cottony fronds at the top, swaying slowly in the breeze. People were walking down the hill through the grass, veiled in white cloth that billowed out behind them. Everything was blurry, in slow motion with a story narrated overtop. Very cinematographic.

And every time that segment ended, there I would be, sitting in that room, ignoring conversation and staring at the coins. I could make out at least two toonies from where I was sitting and eventually I left my chair and crawled across the floor to them. As I was collecting, a little east-Indian girl walked up behind me and she was incredibly cute, so I gave her some and she left shortly after.

The white people continued to flow down the hill, never really reaching the sea and all of a sudden there was a lady there in sharp focus. She was dressed in green and gold silk brocade with garish gold jewellry and debating interperetations of Tactitus' Annals with a man, who I don't remember at all.

I am listening to Peter's podcast again and I still like what I hear. I am ignoring the mountain of dishes on the counter and sharing a pot of green tea with my African violets because they like it too.

I have to go buy some milk.