don’t have a word for this provis yet, but the idea is you don’t *have* to describe your dream just because you woke up and had been dreaming something. sometimes it’s too convoluted and tho it was terribly interesting at the time (possibly partly because you utterly and completely forgot to do reality checks—quick! don one now!), it just doesn’t seem that urgent now. partly because it’s just too convoluted and doesn’t make any sense, and yes, it has something to do with a grown man smearing ice cream on the floor of an antique car that takes two people to drive and doesn’t have working brakes, but that’s not really the point. and also how he next tried to shove ice cream in your face because he was mad at you for yelling at him (copying his new york accent a litle bit and then going off on a wry tangent about how you had just copie his accent, and then trying to do it again, but not quite getting it right), but (surprisingly) you were too quick for him and you dodged the ice cream and grabbed his *cheek* instead, and whispered in his ear harshly, *don’t* and then kind of bit his ear a little--you see? It’s all just too ridiculous to write down because it sounds hilariously absurd but at the moment it was actually kind of serious; he had been pon the phene with some lady you both worked with and they wouldn’t shut up even though obviously you needed to focus on getting the car to work properly so you could get it the hell out of there and back to wherever it needed to be and/or you both were supposed to be in order to do your job. but the point was that you were in charge, and you acted like it, and it worked. Mostly. What would have happened had not general discomfort (mom’s basement) and *the need to urinate* (any time any place) not woken you up? and there was a lot awesome stuff before that, like when you were (still in charge kind of too, even though your dad and your brother were there) having to hand out objects to a hotel basement bar full of students. They had each picked ONE object of significance, and you were trying to get some of them to help you distribute them, but (surprisingly) you were like almost the only person willing to be un-shy enough to just call out what the thing was and be loud and official sounding enough to get people to look up from their conversations or wahtever and see that you had an object and it was the one they had picked. There were plenty of awesome little objects, but the one I remember (it was towards the end of that segment—why no reality checks, dude? Just too into it or something?) was a little collection of five photographs, each about one and a quarter inch square, of various members of this girl’s family, each one featuring i guess it was her dad in a snappy looking military uniform from maybe a half generation or so ago. He had on the vertical kind of cap, you know, the kind that looks kind of like a cloth envelope? some of the pix had another military guy in them. mnostly they were in and around a little swimming pool in front of some city apartment; there was a bit of dilapidation to the concrete. the people in the pictures looked happy. there was more to it than that, but i’m going to invoke my nameless proviso, and not go into it. after all, i’m awake now *(reality check)* and i have other things on my mind. like the generally vacant, absent, spaced out way that i drove down here. one road trip away from all the girls, and i literally bought junk food and a drink at every single gas station. what the fuck? i ate a whole bag of beef jerky. what the. and i listened to a million podcasts, and i know they were about thinking and how people think and act and some of the rationality and irrationality of that, but i don’t remember much of the details right now. good thing i sent some emails to myself, to use for school or just for not being so stupid. all the time. when i sit in these little documents (i do remember thinking this though) and talk to myself as if i’m figuring out something profound, i probably am just figuring out something that’s totally obvious to someone else, but i would never know unless i share with someone else, preferably a group of people, and we can all evaluate each other’s thought processes and conclusions and everybody being biased is actually a good thing, because the effect of all those individual biases sort of beam-formed into a massive group ray of illumination results in something that could be (given enough civil conversation, the ability to disagree and have opinions, the ability to listen to each other, etc) considered to be described as somehow closer to the “truth.” I wonder, though. I mean, I get it. Share. Open up, be vulnerable with what you think of as your ideas, because the potential for taking them further is greater. Other people give you more ideas, and help you decide which parts to let go like molted feathers (there was also a podcast about feathers but i didn’t listen to the whole thing because (surprisingly) it got boring), and which parts stat exciting even when shared and turned over like fresh sod, and which parts, when gazed at by others, seem to blush, and flush, and get engorged, get wet, get hot, get a little wicked, and start to undulate a little bit, and look back over their shoulders, up at you, past their upraised rump... yes, i’m a primate. so fucking sue me. but i wonder if sometimes there’s some benefit in not sharing as well. like being in that echo chamber of your own mind for a little while lets stuff bounce around in the dark, in the rock polisher of your own mind, bathed in the solution of your own biases, both intentional and unconscious, so that when you finally do let it out and share it, it’s a little bit exquisite, a little bit softer around the edges, a little bit hard an shiny and makes you want to lick it. i think i guess i assume you gotta do some of both. Because if you stay in the rock polisher too long you get comfortable in there and you’re like fuck it, what’s the point of sharing; people are just stupid and they’re not going to get it, and they’re probably going to use my diary to wipe their asses with because they’re so fucking stupid. and it’s easy enough soon enough to forget that you’re stupid too, without at lesat some of them. but if you constantly share too much, it’s easy to end up... um, what’s the pitfall of too much sharing, not enough alone time with your “thoughts”? I mean, I’m sure there is one, but I haven’t spent enough time making errors in that direction to have it just leap off my palate fully articulated. maybe you can end up just amplifying the already-accepted so-called wisdom of the group. Maybe you turn into crabgrass, and start taking over the yard with the robust and obvious, and start playing football over the rutted field that has clear lines where everybody’s been walkingk, and you forget that there’s things like midnight mushrooms and wood sorrel and may apples and lichen, and you forget that there’s games other than football, and you forget that somebody had to invent football, and.... i don’t know, but i just i guess i’m just saying i think you need some of both. I think Dorothea knows that too, which is why pretty soon I’m thinking it’s time to read the next section of the book.