DAY

Wildfires are burning all over California. Winds blowing from inland push the plumes of toxic smoke into San Francisco. Orange sky.

Allergic to the smoke, I've been sick and housebound for weeks...

DREAM

I dream I wake up. I'm in a strange room on the west end of a big complex. I had intense dreams, and start to write them down. But 'friends' intrude & demand attention and just won't leave.

For hours I keep recalling new dream-bits, and scrawl notes on whatever paper I can find.

At first I felt self-critical, ashamed--"my dream-obsession distracts me from real life!" As if my performance in daily life is impaired by attempts to get FIVE MINUTES uninterrupted time for myself! But after hours of methodical disruption I'm starting to feel skeptical. And angry.

Rather than accept this assigned strange bedroom-with-interruptions, I seek my normal bedroom with the view of the San Francisco Bay (at least when wildfire smoke isn't obscuring it).

I find my room, but some else is using it. How generous of my 'friends' to offer my room! And they opened all my windows to air it out--letting the wildfire smoke and ash in! Thanks a lot. I close them all again. Intend to reclaim my room--with its nice LOCKABLE door.

Out my windows, I see a huge Saturn glowing red in a dark predawn sky. Slowly I figure out it's really the sun and moon in an annular eclipse, distorted because it's so low on the horizon; the sun flattened, the moon not! Somehow Luna's immune to atmospheric refraction. I knew it was nearer, of course, but is the moon THAT near? Two broad limbs of sun look like Saturn's rings. Well, hotter... the moon in the middle glows too, though; dimmer than the sun, but not much.

All smoky, red, dim. Another deadly day. Enough smoke to keep me trapped indoors--and borderline sick even then. The ordeal goes on...

Now the scene shifts. The time too; the smoke is gone. I'm in the Student Union across town, at San Francisco State. I'm a student between classes; I need to skim a long article. Walk all round the building seek a quiet spot to read. But all the study carrells have been replaced with tiny prison cells. True, they're all unlocked and empty--some postmodern artist's statement about schools and prisons as similar institutions, not real Trump Administration cells--but I'm still not going in one! LOCKABLE doors. From outside.

Wherever I sit to read, rentacops glare at me; they seem to read my looks or autistic body language as non-student, crazy, criminal. Can't study anywhere, they keep interrupting me.

In contrast, my friend Zooop moves furniture in a big public space to create a nook to 'study' in, then naps on a big foam pillow on the floor. They won't let me even study; but they let HER sleep in public!

The pollution index may not be consistent today, but the aggravation index sure is.

• Others let smoke in my room: my housemates have been careful so far, but my vulnerability's worsening--I react now to smoke I found harmless last month.
• Weird Saturny image: a lucidity prompt, trying to get me to see it's a dream?
• Friends get to sleep even in public spaces but I can't: whaaaat???
• Consistent harassment: The rule seems to be "Do inner work, get interrupted." Why? The smoke has disrupted my sleep, but why personify it as mean officials?

CORY'S DREAM

"I was wandering around a big complex. Government officials kept harassing me. I got so tired. I wanted to sleep, but they wouldn't let me use a bed. Finally, I found a big pillow or pad on the floor, in the corner of a busy lobby, and I slept there, in public! THAT, they let me do."

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