11 April 2004 - 8:03 a.m.

I liked yesterday's fried rice combination so much that I cooked it again for breakfast this morning, this time adding a couple of eggs to the mix. There is a kiwi fruit and a moon cake (both the last ones in the house) to round things off and tide me through until elevenses.

And after that, I really must dive into lettering and reading in earnest. Last night I succumbed to the lure of the list-ten-influential-books meme, and then answered a couple of emails while finishing my coffee, and wouldn't you know it but it was 12:30 a.m. the next time I looked up.

An odd, vivid dream last night: a college Shakespeare class was meeting in my junior year apartment - several year after I moved out. The girls now residing there had a bulletin board covered with flyers and plastic-shielded nametags that I couldn't resist weeding through and tidying up. I wasn't a student, but I was apparently there to help - a plant, as it were. The students were to act out scenes from Romeo and Juliet.

That's not the part that spooked me. What happened was that the dreamscape shifted to the fields and the sea, and out of the tall grass (bordered by multiple lines of white, flapping laundry) emerged a long-haired androgynous Juliet with the Nurse and another servant, wearing nothing but cut-off jeans and speaking in a husky whisper. I couldn't make up my mind whether (s)he was a man or a woman, even after glimpsing her full, bare breasts.

It was the most erotic rendition of that scene my dream-self had ever seen, and a few heartbeats later I was waist-high in the sea (still fully clothed) with Juliet, reciting Shakespeare's lines (but I don't remember which ones, or which character I was playing) and dipping her backwards into the water.

Writing it out, I can see where some of the threads of the dream come from, but that doesn't reduce its peculiar weight on me this morning. Which, given all the nattering between Romeo and Mercutio about dreams in the text proper, is perhaps appropriate.

Off to sing, then to sort. . .