An excerpt from "A Field Guide To The North American Yaga":

"The Yaga is easily entranced by complex machinery--most especially computer hardware. The North American variety has displayed a marked preference toward the creations known as "BattleBots"."


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Location: Work
Amusement: Burt's Bees Cherry Lip Gloss
Listening: "Sugar" ~Tori Amos

I intend to continue the entry on religion and
my slightly over-zealous co-workers, but prior to that, a little digression.

Sometimes I dream. Not as often as I used to, nor as vividly as I used to for reasons not known to me yet. These days, more often than not, I either don't dream at all or barely remember fragments when I first wake that literally dissolve within minutes. Sometimes, though, I manage to hold on to an image, a sound, a taste or scent or texture that eventually becomes permanently established in my memory:

A wedding invitation from a friend (if I knew who in the dream, I don't know now), folded carefully into a paper airplane and launched out over the waves.

A familiar sidewalk at night, palm trees, a flock of pigeons exploding into flight around me and falling back to the pavement as snow.

Trying to explain to a friend why I can't take off my leather gloves.

A conversation with Michael Douglas about creative frustration in a beautifully appointed library.

Sitting bareback on a black horse in a room where the floors are glass and strewn with deep red rugs.

Target shooting wine glasses.

"Song To The Siren" by This Mortal Coil looping over and over again in a white room while Peter explains computer hardware.

Diving into the water two blocks from my apartment and swimming as hard as I possibly can toward something I know is out there.

And, perhaps the most detailled one in the past six months:

xenlion: This started off with a group of us walking through a vine-covered tunnel on the way to a formal dinner at an open-air restaurant, summertime, somewhere that felt like Memphis or Kenya, and then being ambushed. We were in formalwear. Everyone in the party was suddenly pulling out these hand cannons--gorgeous guns--but it's hard to find cover in a latticework tunnel with semi-automatic fire coming in from all sides and above.


xenlion: I'm pretty sure it was Kenya. I was there on business.


yagaysgs: *nod*


xenlion: We somehow got out--me and several others in suits--and got under cover in something made of burlap and glass, almost like a tent...


xenlion: ...and I realized that the back of my dress (which was black and backless to the waist...) was soaked in blood. Apparently I was hit in the kidney area and bleeding to death. Everything was tingling and I was light-headed and I suddenly couldn't move my legs. I fell onto a pile of burlap sacks in a corner. Someone handed me a laptop and there was an email on the screen telling me that my father had died earlier that day. I got the impression that this was all linked to drug trafficking but couldn't figure out which side I was on. I was expected to give orders, though-- people kept asking me what to do about the encroaching guys with guns as some others were trying to stop the bleeding and calling helicoptors on cel phones.


xenlion: I lost consciousness after telling them to destroy the hardware in the tent, torch the rest and leave.


yagaysgs: Definitely no John Woo for you.


xenlion: You were there as well.


yagaysgs: Did I kick out the jams with my wicked kung-fu?


xenlion: You were wearing a yellow feather boa around your neck and a tux. I think it was my boa. You were teasing me, fucking with it in the tunnel when the shooting started and got too distracted to take it off.


xenlion: I remember finding it funny that you looked so serious when I told you my father had died and that I was pretty sure I was dying as well--that look on your face with these straggly yellow feathers around your neck.