Here We Go

A little tumult in the brain today.

And what else to do but publicize it to everyone? (To Lynn's confusion, which is, of course, a valid reason to do it.)

A history of a mild panic attack:

My teacher of all things Islamic asked me to meet her at a forum she was presenting at this morning on cross-religion communication, since she knew she would be late to Sunday school. I hopped into my little car and drove the hour into Charlottesville, and followed the directions until I arrived at an Episcopal Church where the parishioners were shifting between services.

I sat in my car, paralyzed.

From my musical experiences in high school, I've been in countless different denominations (and non-denominations) of churches. Everyone in their dressy clothes, dragging the children off to church, was about the most normal scene I could imagine.

Except that I now had no place in it. I watched a woman in a knee-length skirt walk by. A woman with her dark hair tied up in a pony tail. All the while, I stared at the hijab, carefully folded on the passenger seat (I haven't figured out how to actually drive a car and see while wearing one.) I don't normally wear the hijab, except to prayer and Sunday school. In some way, this has made me feel increasingly like a fraud, as if this particular part of my life is compartmentalized into a few hours here and there.

I didn't know exactly where I was supposed to meet my teacher. And I couldn't decide whether I should put on the hijab and go out into a crowd of Christians and, in some sense, publicly expose myself, or if I should keep my hair uncovered and demonstrate how I truly act in the world.

In the end, I pulled up the hood of my coat tightly, so that I could fit in as anyone, and walked up to the church to investigate. I didn't find my teacher after all, and drove off relatively unscathed to school--unless, of course, you consider that I started crying so much that I had to actually pull off to the side of the road on the way there. I've always been one for melodrama, but in that moment I had absolutely no idea who I was and where I fit into the world.

I'm still floating a bit in that stratosphere, hours later.

I thought certainly that watching the Steelers game would help, but it didn't.

I'm sure that it does not goes without saying--so I'll say it--that a certain object of my affections did finally drag himself home about two weeks ago. I don't know how to make that into a newsflash that's worthy of your reading time (both of you). And it's hard to be truly excited, since the only pleasure I've extracted from it has been talking to him on the phone. A sweet luxury to hear his voice after five months, but no substitute for actually seeing him. And I have no idea when that will happen.

At the very least, I'm less of a mess than I would be if I had not intrepidly ventured to Pittsburgh last weekend, camping out on the floors of various kind friends, and partaking of a marvelous dinner at sster's home. For a moment, I looked out at the world around me--a world of writers and familiar streets--and I could see, if only for a few days, somewhere that I belonged without question.

Possible commentary starters:

1. Do I need a therapist?
2. Do you think the Steelers will win the Super Bowl?
3. Am I overreacting to my own sense of displacement?

How I Met Nancy Kerrigan

It all began on December 21, when one of my friends named Becky here in Culpeper (hereafter referred to as Becky 1) called me at midnight.

She told me that she'd met the perfect guy for my other friend Becky (hereafter referred to as Becky 2), and asked me what her phone number was.

This all resulted in Becky 2 having a profoundly random message on her answering machine when she returned home from break. I found it all to be highly amusing--and almost identical to a scene in a screenplay I was working on under the tutelage of one Carl Kurlander, screenwriter of St. Elmo's Fire and Saved by the Bell.

It turns out that the character I most resemble is Screech. No surprise there.

But I digress.

Becky 1 hatches a scheme to introduce Becky 2 to said person. This scheme involves taking a truck load of people to go...ice skating.

It should be noted that I have never gone ice skating before, and that my prior roller skating forays were notable to my mother because she would see me speeding around the rink, then vanishing when I fell, then getting back up, then speeding around. Apparently this was hilarious.

I arrive at the skating rink with Becky 2 and her older sister. No one else is there thirty minutes later. Then, finally, Becky 1 and her boyfriend arrive, claiming that the alleged date would arrive soon. In the meantime, we watched many tiny people learning to skate by pushing buckets around the ice to keep their balance.

"I need some of those buckets," I thought. But they were only for children, it turned out.

When we finally went out to skate (the date still absent), I discovered one thing quickly: ice is slippery. I avoided doing anything silly like falling in front of thirty speeding children by pushing myself along the wall. Then, suddenly, I figured it out.

I was thinking two things as I proceeded at a slow but graceful glide around the ice.

1. Where is this guy, anyway?
2. Why on earth is that woman over there wearing age-inappropriate black lace tights and skating around on one leg like she's Nancy Kerrigan?

I was still thinking these things when the guy arrived nearly an hour and a half after the scheduled meeting time. To make a long story short, I got really good at ice skating (all things considered), Becky 1 dragged everyone out to a bar (I didn't drink), and The Date got kicked out by a bouncer because he's TWENTY and had been kicked out the NIGHT BEFORE from the SAME BAR.

In summary:

1. I can ice skate!
2. I didn't fall!
3. It was kind of exciting seeing someone get kicked out of a bar.
4. I can ice skate!

The Brief Dreams of Insomniacs

Since returning to Virginia, I've been plagued by insomnia. I stay awake for hours at night, rolling to look at the clock every so often and watch the hours ticking by.

Why can't I sleep? I wish I knew. I've been working hard to get my apartment organized, and I've been approaching the task with more than my usual vigor. I've started writing aggressively, since I now think I have a better direction for my planned series of essays on love, and a decent idea for a novel. And it's true that a certain man I'm rather fond of is due back in the United States in six days. (He was originally supposed to be back this past Sunday [edit cranky thoughts here]).

Last night, I actually got a few hours of sleep. My dream:

A ham sandwich (thinly sliced, on white bread), floating before a backdrop of soft pink and gray clouds. As I watched it, the sandwich would rotate slightly, so that I could look at it from a variety of angles. Yes, that was the entire dream, and yes, it went on for a while--until my lucid dreaming kicked in and I said, "Woah. I'm dreaming about a ham sandwich. I should wake up."

I have enjoyed some ham sandwiches in my lifetime, but not enough to dream about them. And I haven't found myself overly craving ham since becoming Muslim.

So, my questions:

1. Does anyone know any good cures for insomnia?
2. What do you think this dream means, if it's worth interpreting at all?

Happy sleeping to you all.