illusionofjoy | In the dead winter sky

How I managed seven and a half hours of work yesterday is beyond me. Frankly it wasn't a pleasant seven and a half hours. While I had deemed myself well enough to actually go into work, my body wasn't going to let me do so without a massive protest. I actually knew this was going to happen, but when my alarm woke me up, I knew that I couldn't call off for a second day in a row; I need money.

I laid in bed for about a half-hour, listening to the news on NPR. Every ten minutes there would be a weather report and the same dreaded line would be repeated: "wind chill advisory in effect for the Pittsburgh area with gusts up to 10 to 20 miles per hour, making it feel up to 20 degrees below zero." My sinuses ached every time I heard the words. I figured that I'd be able to go out still sick if the temperature were normal for the region, however these extremes would probably knock me on my ass.

I was right, of course. Waiting in the bitter cold at the trolley station left me feeling miserable for the entire ride downtown. I spent the day at work with a horrible pressure in my sinuses that made my eyes tear up as I sniffled, sneezed and coughed my way through my workday. When I went home, I went straight to bed to take a nap.

I woke up later, feeling better for having not been in the cold or required to work. missjoi picked me up from my apartment to go over to her place. At that point, the bitter cold had given way to a snowstorm that was blanketing all of south-western Pennsylvania. The roads were a mess as sleet and freezing rain pummelled their surface. Still, the denizens of Pittsburgh drove as if they lived in a perfectly dry area where there were no hills. "Slow down" is not in the vocabulary of a Pittsburgh motorist.

Last night I had an interesting dream. Joi and I were downtown. Of course, it wasn't actually downtown Pittsburgh, but some twisted dream version of the area, where there was an outdoor café with a CD player at each table. We were listening to and critiquing CDs together when I saw someone across the street whom I thought I recognised.

She was a curvy black-clad, pale-skinned thing...the usual goth-club suspect, one would assume. I stood up from my table, and grabbed a handful of candy wrappers. I walked over to the girl, whom I was now certain I had seen before or had known in a different life. She was standing next to a garbage can. I lifted my hands, in an attempt to throw the candy wrappers into the can, missing it entirely. Instead, the wrappers all went down her shirt, into her exposed cleavage, disappearing into the void between her breasts.

I was appalled by what had happened. "Oh my god," I exclaimed, "I'm so sorry!" Unwilling to retrieve the wrappers myself, I took her by the hand and continued my diatribe as to how remorseful I was that she now had a bosom full of waxed paper.

Suddenly neither one of us were standing. She was sitting in an old easy chair next to the trash can and I was on one knee, still holding her hand. "It's okay," she said, "I still [inaudible] for you." At that moment I understood, but several seconds later the word wouldn't present itself to my memory. What did she say? She what for me? It seemed like the most important thing in the world to find out, but before I could ask, the scene shifted again.

I was suddenly in an indoor atrium, being chased by thousands of blue jays. I knew I had to outrun the birds and somehow I managed to by climbing up a muddy hill. The birds didn't chase me there nor did they fly up. They all vanished. I sat at the top of the hill, a sheet metal ceiling just a few feet from my head. I could touch it if I reached up. The landscape inside the building was moist, as if a heavy rain had just fallen. The ceiling was opaque, however, with no signs of water valves. Furthermore, not much sunlight was getting in - it was twilight in the atrium. The scene shifted again.

I was in an apartment building, waiting for the elevator. I was going to visit the girl from a few scenes prior. I was alone waiting for this elevator when I realised that I wasn't waiting for an elevator at all, but was standing outside a giant dumbwaiter. There were no metal doors or floor buttons - just wooden panelling and a rope...how silly of me! But...where was the staircase to get to the other floors? Where was the real elevator? She lived on another floor...not the one I was on. I was standing on the fifth...or maybe the fiftieth floor...I couldn't be sure. All I knew was the she was on a different floor - one above the one I was on and I had to get there, somehow. I stood in the whitewashed, windowless hallway, perplexed as to how I was going to get out of where I was at.

Then Joi woke me up.