just be.

more than you asked.

• people accused of crimes really do themselves no favors by talking directly with the press.

tonight, a bonus: a little primer on u.s. supreme court justiceship.  

• article iii of the constitution gives the supreme court specific areas of jurisdiction: any case arising under federal law; any case affecting ambassadors, ministers, or consuls; any case involving admiralty or maritime matters; any case in which the u.s. government is a party; any case in which two states are the parties; any case in which a state brings suit against a citizen of another state; any case in which citizens of different states are parties; any case in which citizens of one state claim land under grants of different states are parties or in which a state or citizen is a party on one side and a foreign state, citizen, or subject is a party on the other side.
  
• it has *original* jurisdiction (that is, it can be the court in which the case is brought first, without first ascending through federal district and circuit courts) in cases affecting ambassadors, ministers, or consuls and in cases in which a state is a party.
  
• other than those specific instances of original jurisdiction, the supreme court is a court of appeals. this means that it is not hearing issues of fact except in those cases—it is deciding strictly issues of law, and historically (usually) as narrowly as possible and only those issues brought by the parties.
• that's it. a supreme court justice has just those powers and just those responsibilities. it hears matters of fact only in those specific instances of original jurisdiction. otherwise, it hears matters of law alone.
• so what qualification must a supreme court justice have? he or she must be able to understand and interpret the law as enacted—whether statutory (codified by a legislative body) or grounded solely in precedent (i.e., a court does not typically rule contrary to precedent set by prior court decisions, at least not in that court's own jurisdiction—hence the motivation to decide cases on as narrow a basis as possible).
• and that is it. if the justice does not like what the law is—whether statutory or based in precedent—it is not the justice's right, authority, power, or responsibility to decide against that law (unless a law itself is being challenged, as in the case of a challenge against a law's constitutionality, in which case the law being interpreted is actually the constitution and whether it permits or prohibits the law being challenged). if the justice does not like the outcome of the lower cases, it is not the justice's right, authority, power, or responsibility to rule on those facts again.
• thus, as you can see, the supreme court justice has specific powers and specific responsibilities. just like for most jobs, the most important considerations in choosing a candidate to fill this position are the qualifications to perform those responsibilities and respect those powers. other considerations may also be important.
• the short version? i do not care one whit about the content of your past decisions—whether i agreed with the outcomes. what i care about is whether your past decisions reflect your understanding and interpretation of the applicable law.
• actually, the same is true of any appellate-court judge.
  

in less pressing news, i am 10 rounds away from the toe decreases on my latest sock, which makes me very smug and happy. and for reasons that escape me, i continue to dream about seth rogan. like, more than once a week. strange but true.

book of dreams

i'm an odd egg, i know. i have dreams every night that i remember well. but it's more than memory. the characters i create in these dreams—who usually don't seem like i created them myself but like people separate from me—stay with me. all day, and often longer. often, they make repeat appearances in future dreams.

during the day, i think about them and the things we didn't resolve during the dream. last night, for example, i had two dreams, both rich in characters and in plot. you know what i learned in one of them? the symbolism behind smocking in a child's dress. i don't know whether it's true—whether smocking really does symbolize anything, let alone the interreliance of generations in that child's life—but it was real. profound, internal. 

my first love appeared in that dream, too. it was a complicated dream. there was fear but mostly really intense emotion, which is what i usually experience in my dreams.

in my other dream, the one that has remained with me and persists in distracting me from anything else i try to do today, including work, i was another person—i often become someone else during the dream, who has a whole identity, name, life, history, experience. i was ema la-somethingfrench (when i was in that creating part of the dream when i have conrol over things like that, i changed it to lalongue, which didn't stick, and kept becoming lavertu, just because that's the surname of an author i've been editing recently). i had a huge family of siblings—foster, adopted, step, half, a huge blended family—and a family lineage a la harrod's—the patriarch was the current in a long line of owners of a major department-store chain, and we had money out the wingwang. and i was intensely, passionately, devotedly in love with an employee, a nerdy, not-in-my-waking-life attractive geek who was working along with a huge team for years on a project to prove the innocence of my deceased brother brian in some scandal. 

but i digress. the point is that these people are real to me, in a way. not real like my real-life friends or family, but as real—no offense—as, say, a reader i've never met. obviously, i know that you are real, if, in no other way, in a cartesian sense. you are reading this, so you exist. and they aren't real in that way. but they are real in their persistence and dimensionality.

it's that that gives me trouble. i can't always abandon them—did i mention that i can't stop thinking today about the events, personalities, and emotions in the dream i had last night? part of me wants to, feeling either silly or unable to deal with them in any way that makes sense in this waking, real world. i can't just blather on a blog about every dream i have. sometimes they're far too intimate to share on a blog that otherwise identifies me. but part of me really wants to hold onto them. to memorialize them. to figure them out.

i think about trying to turn them into short stories (some would really be novels). but i lack confidence in my fiction writing and worry that i couldn't do them justice. i think i need to find a way to blog them anonymously. somehow, writing them down in some computer file or paper journal doesn't feel like the right answer, though i can't really pinpoint why. it's like i want these characters and stories to be out there, outside of just my brain.

geez, sorry for the rambling. these thoughts have been rattling around in my head all day, and i just had to get them out.

in heaven, you can feel the rainbows.

this was just one image from last night's dream.

the dream began when a friend and i were in a basement and turned to try to run back up the stairs out of it. but instead of being a basement staircase, we found ourselves on an aircraft carrier, with raised-dot metal floors, battleship gray everywhere, and the staircase up was narrow and tall. as we ran for the stairs, a uniformed man stopped us. we tried to stammer our way out of why we were there, and he said, "what kind of air force people are you, anyway?" i said, "um...new ones?" he was friendly about this and whisked us off to his office, tiny and gray, with lots of computers scanning radar of the islands, the ocean, and the weather. he showed us one with a huge, colorful touch screen. he pivoted gridlines to zoom in and change angles, zooming in on a small set of islands, and then made little circles to create weather systems. soon, a huge tornado threatened the largest island, hovering over a volcano. he changed the view slightly, then made a dozen or so smaller hurricanes over the surrounding islands.

after he released us to leave, we made our way to the ship's deck. soon, it began to pitch and roll (it was now much smaller than any aircraft carrier, just a big boat now), water washing over the deck. people began to struggle toward the railings at the stern, where a safe dock seemed to be looming and a larger-than-life woman appeared ready to help--but not everyone. she asked us a riddle and said that the first person to respond correctly or to give a "come up" (i didn't know what that meant, either) would be saved. i cannot remember right now what the riddle was, but i remember that someone else gave an answer that was wrong and was swept away into the water, much to the horror of the rest of us, clamoring for the woman's hand. then something occurred to me, and i responded to the riddle--not with an answer, exactly, but a "but wouldn't this make this happen?" kind of question in response. she brightened, offering me her hand, and said, "you came up with a come up!" as she lifted me to safety. the cries of the people left behind faded as i walked up the dock.

at the top of the dock, which wasn't a wooden dock but cement, like the kind you'd back your boat up to from your car hitch, lowering it directly into the water, i found myself in sort of an ethereal park. people there were at peace, some alone and some in pairs. i felt the same way. i heard a voiceover, sort of, the whole time i was there, as though i were explaining to someone (myself?) what this place was all about. no one here felt anger or pain. but we could feel anyone else's feelings by becoming part of them. not like living people did--we didn't absorb others' pain in any kind of pathological or harmful way--but in the deepest sort of empathy and compassion.

and we could feel the rainbows. not just the stripes, but the whole thing. doing this looked sort of like looking at a supersaturated photograph, but with the kind of splash across the image that one might create accidentally by letting acid wash over it quickly. a silvery-gold, translucent sheen over the scene that covered us in the warm, peaceful feeling of complete love and goodness.

there was a lot of interaction during this part of the dream, me meeting people and feeling their feelings. it was a beautiful time, a good feeling that stayed with me throughout the day in kind of a bloodstream kind of way.

one bad part came when the friend i was with (a different friend from the first part of the dream) and i went to the dock again. he asked a question about the passage, something about living people, something that made the woman who'd helped us out of the boat and to safety very angry. she said that this meant that he would have to go back, and he protested to no avail as she lifted him easily from the dock and back onto the boat. those of us on the safe side who had watched this were horror-struck. i made my way back to the beautiful spot again.

the worst part of the dream, which was quite brief, had me back on the struggling side of the boat again--i'm not sure how i got there, but you know how dreams are. i was frightened this time--not completely peaceful and unafraid like i'd been the first time i'd seen the water wash over the deck. the first time, i'd known no fear and knew that i was going to be all right, even as the water swept over me. but this time, i knew that i would not be safe. i was alternately terrified and just sad, feeling the terror in the people around me. i watched as our hands reached in vain for railings and the water sucked us under. it was an awful feeling, and i knew that this was hell.

most of the dream was joyful and full of reunions with past loves and friends. somehow, the message throughout the dream and especially upon waking was live without fear. i think that it came from this idea that i could deeply interact with those around me, relating to them on a profound level, but remain safe, sane, and at peace. somehow it was helpful to me as well as to them to do this, and somehow that translated to living without fear. and it's how i've felt all day. i wish i could explain it all better, but i hope that the feeling stays. i've had dreams like this before--i mean, not like this one in subject matter, but in terms of depth of feeling and message--and it's lasted for months.

weird.

it feels weird to be blogging--even thinking--about anything besides joe these days. but i went out yesterday to the waterfront with smartboy for the first time in...i can't remember how long. weeks? months? it felt great to get out of the house and feel normal for a little while. i'd dropped my iphone (!) on the sidewalk friday night and broken the glass, so we started our morning out with a two-hour (!!) trip to the apple store. since it was an accident that caused the damage, warranty--even my special paid-for warranty pro-apple-take-care-of-me care--didn't cover it, really. it couldn't be repaired and had to be replaced, which cost me $250. they gave me not only the new iphone, though, but also the broken-glass one, so i kind of have an extra ipod now. i wouldn't want to carry it around with the broken glass, but i could put it in my ihome and use the big ipod that i have there for...something. put it in my study with some speakers? i don't know. it's nice to have (though a little embarrassing that i now have a first-generation shuffle, a first-gen 60gb, a broken but functioning-except-for-the-inactive-phone first-gen iphone, and an iphone). and a macbook. and my work mac. i think i am, as accused, drinking the kool-aid. i also bought (duh) a case for it this time, which i'd looked at several times before and never did. learned that lesson once. anyway, i really like the case i chose--rubber, very tactile and easy and comfortable in the hand--and i think it'll prevent it from slipping off a stack of papers again if i should be dumb enough to put it there in the future. (which i doubt.)
so after that little adventure, we lunched at la feria (yum!), where we haven't been in ages. so good. i had the vegetarian sandwich with their salad that is SO YUMMY and a freshly squeezed limeade (gigantic and delicious), and we shared a plate of the sweet-potato chips with huancaina dip, because you just have to have those when you go there. omg. i was stuffed after not-so-much food, but it was worth it. yum. did i mention yum?
finally we were off to the waterfront. i walked a bunch while andrew shopped in places that tire me, and he met up with me later at target. and boy did i score at target. fancy new hair dryer (i do this once every couple of years--get a wild hair [pun intended] to try straightening it again and buy the latest new gizmo to help me do that; this, too, shall pass--a bunch of my new favorite hair product (infusium 23 leave-in treatment*, you ROCK!--thank you, emy, for showing me the way!)
also: a hello kitty lunchbox/purse thingy. SO cute. a few ideas of what i'll use it for, but really: $4? i couldn't pass it up.
the CUTEST tweed jacket for fall that is, of course, not pictured on target's web site. you'll just have to trust me that it is GORGEOUS. wide portrait collar, gorgeous shade of blue, fitted, perfect length, straight out of jackie o's closet. i nearly bought another style on the same rack, a cropped empire-waist jacket, but chickened out. i was going to go back online to buy it this morning, but it's not there. there are some adorable swing jackets there, though. :sigh: i cannot own every cute jacket and sweater on the planet, can i?
okay, enough of that. also bought a troy polamalu jersey--licensed, but a third the price of the ones at dick's. i am so excited. i put it on this morning (it *is* game day, after all!) and asked smartboy whether i looked like troy. he laughed and said, "yeah, it must be all in the number." i told the dogs that now i am all speed, agility, and quick reflexes. they'd better watch out.
found an adorable little evening bag in pewter satin with some pretty lace--clutch or it has a little chain strap--to take to wedfest07. gotta love target.
but the real score of the day: in the dollar section, it's an office-rama. i scored pens, paper, notepads, memo boards (takes me right back to college), mouse pads, sticky notes, and mugs, all with different office quotes on them. i could have bought more (not just because i'm obsessive, but because they had more different designs), but i stopped myself. i just don't use that much paper in my life. but gah. i was so stoked. i love a good dollar section. and i loves me a pen.
in other riveting news--because i know you've been on the edge of your seat up to now--i had not one but two romantic dreams last night. the first was odd (well, they're all odd, but you know). i'd gone to some remote northern locale with my mother, and we'd decided to play like we were foreigners who didn't speak english as our first language (stay with me here: the remote location was, i guess, in like canada or maine or something. i don't know. it was a dream. geography was clearly not the important part here.). so we put on these accents and pretended. we went to the train station and were totally baffled about the whole token system for getting where we needed to go, and this handsome young man who turned out to be grady something or other (remember him: he's the love interest in this one) turned right around from leaving the joint and followed us back inside to help us. he stayed with us, took us back into town--the little village where we were headed--and on the trip, apparently, he and i fell in love. very sweet story.
but fast forward a month (in my dream--overnight, of course, it was just a few hours, if you're keeping track), because i won't bore you with the sweet, romantic courtship, though it really was a fun dream, with townspeople and festivals and laughter, but he and i are inside with a bunch of townsfolk, and he's professing his love for me and, i think, about to ask me to stay there with him and be his wife. apparently, he's some sort of prince or something, i've come to learn, so this is why the townspeople care so much about what happens to him. anyway, just then, my mother comes to the door of this glass-enclosed room where this is all happening. it's snowing and blustery outside, and she's knocking on the door in the dark, all cold and wet and not wearing a coat. i blurt out--for the first time, breaking my accent in front of these people--"where is her coat?" with grave concern--and realize that they know. grady has already gone to the door to let her in by then, but she wants to talk to him outside. i know that he knows now that i've been keeping this from him, and all i want to do is tell him the truth--myself, and explain. inside, the townsfolk are moving away from me, suddenly hurt, bewildered, angry at the girl they'd thought was so wonderful and perfect for their darling grady. i am sad--SO sad--and mad at myself for not telling him sooner. he comes inside, and, before he passes me, another good friend of his--a female friend--takes his arm and wants to talk to him. he has this kind of glassy look in his eyes and doesn't even look at me. i try to get his attention and say that i really want to talk to him alone. he sort of says, "yes," absently, but walks past me, where another female friend takes his arm, and he turns and, again, in this distant voice, says that he's going to talk to her first. i am utterly dismayed. i am a pariah.
i leave, and the rest of the dream is scenes of me trying to explain it to him when we see each other on various occasions later, over a period of years. but he won't listen. he jeers, makes jokes, teases, never letting anything get close enough to hear. clearly, i've hurt him so much that no one can get close to him any more. i awake so sad that i'm actually crying.
i tried to go back to sleep to make the dream restart and go a different way, but he was no more. instead, it went a whole different direction. this was an entirely new dream, all happy. this time, i was the love interest of bobby flay. this dream was totally different. we were always in happy places, lots of laughing, and i was always me. his parents were there sometimes cooking with us--no fancy show kitchens, though: outside with picnic tables. totally funny people in this dream. and we were very snuggly--sitting on his lap, kissing. fun. of course, smartboy started making noise in the kitchen just as we were getting to the naughty parts, so he must have some kind of sense of timing or something :) good man.

* hint: though there are five lines of this stuff, i compared the ingredients. *cough* geek *cough* the leave-ins are all the same. (i compared because i wanted a giant bottle for reserves and a smaller bottle for traveling, but target had only repairology in the supersize, and i wanted to be sure that this would be relatively similar to the frizzology. whatevs.)

last night

last night's Dream was about keith olbermann.
longtime crush, no surprise. (that photo from a great story about him in rolling stone, btw.)

other excitement in my life last night: i ordered shoes to try on for wedfest07. three pairs from zappos and one from piperlime.
[brown shoes from zappos]
i'm wearing a vintage brocade dress in a sort of muted celery color that i bought on ebay last year--three-quarter sleeves; deep squared neckline; fitted bodice; full, pleated, tea-lengthish skirt.
[black shoes from zappos]
i'm positively giddy to report that the zappos order, which i placed at probably 7ish last night, shipped at 4am and is scheduled for delivery today.
[aubergine shoes from zappos--i think i'm in love with the color of these]
i've ordered with them before and experienced their amazing service and shipping, but they continue to amaze me nonetheless. [black shoes from piperlime]
when i was looking for wedding shoes, i'd looked everywhere in town and found nothing; eventually, i ordered six pairs of shoes from them, tried them on at home, returned four--no hassles, no cost whatsoever--and kept the two i wanted. they give you everything you need to complete the return and it could just not be easier at all. totally easier than shopping in person, even. and the prices are competitive with dsw--better than most places, and a selection that cannot be found anywhere else. and the search is without comparison: you can filter by shoe size (including width), heel height, color, and price, and sort by even more options. you can also browse by brand. i just can't recommend them enough! (my piperlime selection is *adorable* but hasn't shipped yet. they charged me $10 for two-business-day shipping or i could have done free 4-to-7-day shipping; zappos does free overnight shipping automatically.) anyway, the ones i like best may not be the most comfortable, so we'll see. soon!

a hard turn

as they say on tv, when changing from a tough subject to a light one.

i haven't blogged about much other than joe and karen lately, mostly because they and work have been all that's been on my mind for a while. but i'm giving myself permission to record a few random thoughts.

first: lisa, who needs to keep her own anxiety dreams--i have enough of my own without now having hers (how does that even *happen*?), thankyouverymitch--will envy my new iphone ringtones. the carl stalling project original cues from bugs bunny and merrie melodies. i LOVE them.

second: our tivo seems to have been born again. i get up a few mornings each week to find that it's been watching christian tv. i'm a little worried--not that there's anything wrong with it being christian, just that i fear that it might be, you know, judging me.

and finally: i had a, um, grown-up-girl dream about hamish linklater last night (not the anxiety dream--a different dream). i think i must be ready for the new fall season.

aliens are eating my brain.

or maybe it's the mad cow disease.
three nights ago i was chinese.
two nights ago, i was briefly locked up by a corpulent drag queen who had removed his wig (but not his wig cap) and danced the most bizarre and disturbing frenzy of a whirling scary-dance evar. so bizarre and disturbing that, when the image tried to reappear before me last night as i went to sleep, i forced myself to think of anything else instead so i wouldn't dream it again. yeah. ew. (and i don't feel this way about drag queens generally--even corpulent ones. just this dance. )
then last night, i dreamed that i was running a camp (a job i had about 15 years ago and loved so much that it frequents my dreams--apparently, my dream job) where plenty of odd things happened. first, my friend annie worked there (she'd be great at that--she should have worked at a camp this summer), and her husband drew showed up to surprise her, but i flew all around camp to find her (i fly a lot in my dreams) and she was nowhere to be found. bummer. then we had a '50s theme party at which my mother showed up decked out looking stunning in a black dress (which i think might have been more '40s than '50s, but still--straight out of one of my old photos of her). lots of odd dynamics going on in that one that i won't detail here.
and another theme party was a beauty pageant spoof--a la drop dead gorgeous (one of my favorite movies). and denise richards showed up, in full costume as becky leeman. we palled around for a bit, even.
but the really odd bit came at the end. it came time for everyone to leave. the camp was now a big stone castle, and i watched sadly and silently from a window on high. the starlet crowd left with denise and their sailboats and such. other crowds left together as well. the scene turned sepia, and certain significant players left in da vinci-esque flying pods alone into the sky, off to adventures about which i wondered in awe and envy. i wondered what awaited me and when it would be my turn, powerless to leave. i watched everyone else leave and finally found myself not in the window but clinging to the ledge between two windows. i turned to look inside and found an ancient-looking ritual going on. an emperor inside to my right was overseeing the event. a swordsman to my left was swinging his sword, chanting an incantation, and with each line, slicing down layers of a bust of a man (but who seemed to be real, not marble) until it was razed. the incantation resulted in a determination of how many more people would die. the first incantation resulted in no deaths. during the second incantation, sacrificing a second man, the sword's tip pierced me as he swung, but it did not kill me--i just felt the pain in my chest as he swung it. and it resulted in them calling for the death of one person. and the third incantation, sacrificing a third, killed me and called for the deaths of two more people.
death, apparently, lands you in midlothian. more specifically, on midlothian turnpike across from cloverleaf mall [apparently razed or at least slated for such this year]. walking and carrying two plastic shopping bags of your stuff. on a really hot day and wearing inappropriate amounts of clothing--say, a black coat. at least, this is what it meant for me that day. i walked west, trying to get to the little town where my dad lives, 17 miles away. i saw some commuter buses coming, so i thought i'd try to catch one and asked a man about to catch it whether it went to that county. he said, "yes, so why isn't your name on it?" humph. so i called the house and left a voice mail--no one to pick me up. so i decided to try to walk for a bit before calling a cab, but it was getting dark and i was a bit skittish about the 'hood after dark.
and then zuzu woke me up. thank god, because who knows what the hell my brain is going to throw in there next.

town aflame

i think i've mentioned before that the same chemical imbalance that causes migraine also causes vivid dreams--most of them (in my case, at least) nightmares. this morning at about 2-2:30, i woke in a sweat from this one. i didn't let myself blog it right then, but i did force myself to walk through it enough to remember every detail so that i could blog it this morning.

my traveling companion and i have already explored the rest of town--the department store to the west, the shopping area and cinema to the north, and the odd little area to the south that had, among other things, the complete (and i mean complete, down to signage and rusty tanks) entrails of an old, closed-down gas station up for auction, piece by piece, each piece set in its own display case and labeled. i had expressed sadness to my companion--a female, but i can't remember who--for the owner, who'd probably owned the place for decades, as this was a place that had clearly been around since vintage tanks had been displaced by spiffy new ones and full serve replaced by efficient pay-at-the-pump self serve. we'd been to the huge general store and restaurant, the hub of town where everyone was catching up and talking, the din so deafening--in a happy way, but still, deafening is deafening--that we'd gone on our way.

throughout our visit, i'd seen smokers everywhere, dropping still-smoldering butts on the dry ground, and i'd smudged out the sparks and smoke with my sneakered soles, sputtering all the while about their irresponsibility, fearful of a fire in this arid clime. apparently there'd been a drought for some time, and every butt seemed to ignite the ground it touched.

now we were at the diner in more or less the center of town, along the main street. and there was a grizzled old reporter from a place called putnam county reading a newspaper while eating his doughnut and drinking his coffee--and he dropped his long, ashy, smoldering cigarette to the ground. this time, though, the yellow sparks spread faster than i could seem to rub them out. and as i did, and my companion on the other side of him helped, we heard a roar. we turned, and behind us saw the general store and restaurant, which had been full of people earlier, explode into a bright orange ball of flames. had the fuel tanks up for auction still contained fumes? at once consumed by heat, grief, and terror, we sought the best path away, knowing that the flames would seek more fuel and head up main street toward us. the reporter and his fellow customers seemed still unmoved.

we looked north, east, and west. east seemed to be getting engulfed with the flames from the southerly flames. north looked best. i yelled to my companion to run north with me and grabbed her hand, but before we could move, the cinema and shopping district exploded before our eyes into the same brilliant orange and yellow, like autumn leaves gone horribly wrong. nuclear and huge and rushing toward us like a charging beast. i looked west, and there seemed to be a clear path toward the department store, still intact. i jumped behind the cigarette-dropping reporter, still unaware, or at least uninterested, in the destruction going on around him, i grabbed my companion's hand again and started to run west with her, when that direction became impassable with flames as well. the heat was visible and shimmery surrounding us, orange walls of fire closing in from every direction when i awoke.