彩虹里

Played a drinking game with a few friends while watching a ridiculous Japanese zombie movie called "Wild Zero." The days are flowing by like a river, each one the same yet totally different. A month left in China, a period of time that once seemed relatively long to me, but I know how these weeks go. And on Thursday I am taking off for Changsha 长沙... nervous, excited, not knowing what to expect.
I finally bought a pair of pants I like at a local Walmart-like super market. My other pants are far too baggy and ratty looking. The weather is quite cold these days, something I haven't really experienced in China before. Every late morning we open the window to a view of the haziest smog and a bleak set of tall buildings. Certainly there are prettier parts of Nanjing. I still have not gotten around to walking around the old city walls, what's left of them anyway.
I do like the 3-day weekends, sleeping in is so nice especially with the curtains drawn and the room is cast in that certain light, perfect for sleeping when you are simply so exhausted. I am needing to take advantage of opportunities for naps from time to time. Naps can just be the best thing in the world as long as they dont exceed 2.5 hours, for me anyways. I took a nap last week at one point and in two hours had a plethora of dreams I actually remembered. I haven't remembered a single dream practically in the longest time.
Of these dreams, most remarkable was one in which I was in 青岛 and I heard on the news that Bill Gates had commited suicide.. the news was saying 盖茨自杀了 and I felt like a dope for not knowing about it until exaclty 24 hours later. Then another dream included me noticing that another program member Tim had a copy of the Tribune's TV guide with a picture of Marv from Sin City on the cover and I was like, "Tim, why do you still have a copy of that TV guide, that is so old." Perhaps the most eerie and visually stimulating dream I had involved Shawna and I together again in some strange town. In this small village everyone was playing some sort of games. There was a lake that kids were hovering and flying over with kites using the wind's force. This was in the distance, then further off to my right was a small castle where a long line of couples in wedding attire. Couple by couple would take their turn to race up the castle wall which was like a climbing wall as fast as they could and had to be holding hands the whole time. The men wore top hats and the women white veils. I had to pee so I found an abandoned bathroom, the interior dark and dank with squatter toilets just as in China, and they were very reminiscent of the more rural toilets where you have to pay 1元 to use. I looked out a crack in the bathroom wall and saw a woman in the distance whose back was turned and she was facing a big opaque lake. I left the bathroom and heard whispers with the wind and I thought maybe it would be Shawna, but no one was around. The sky became so gloomy and dark like one day when I was working for the Forest Preserve and we were collecting seed as an epic storm rolled in. I went around the other side of the bathroom looking for Shawna and said aloud that we hadn't made love in a long time. In the distance there still stood the woman facing the vast lake and I felt afraid. It reminded me of a ghost story my dad told me when I was little about a woman without a face in a rice field. So I went back to the area where I could see the lawn games taking place and I felt comforted again, but I was still searching for Shawna.
What do I do in lonelier moments? Watching clips of Across the Universe, the renditions of Beatles songs often calms me and brings me to a place.