lindsayliveshere.org

Dreams, insects

Sometimes I dream about high school. The feeling of un-done, the crush of math homework that I can’t solve and the test that I have not studied for. Sometimes I dream about teaching. The chaos of bringing a roomful of people to attention, my throat straining for volume, the screen in my brain blanked to nothing but static, snow, noise. Last night I dreamt I was pushed to the front of a room of my high school classmates and told to take charge.  No one listened and in fact they found joy in ignoring me.  The combination of these two dreams must be a bad sign.

Annie Dillard writes in Teaching a Stone to Talk:

I like insects for their stupidity. A paper wasp – Polistes – is fumbling at the stained-glass window on my right. I saw the same sight in the same spot last Sunday. Psst! Idiot! Sweetheart! Go around by the door! I hope we seem as endearingly stupid to God — bumbling into lamps, running half-wit across the floor, banging for days at the hinge of an unopened door. I hope so. It does not seem likely.