My usual anxiety dreams are usually one of two types. One: I have to teach a class but I can't find space, or I have space and I can't herd the student together to teach. These dreams are endless rushing around and never get the class together and I wake up exhausted. Two: The other dream is that I'm back in NYC, and find I don't have a cell or keys or money (or sometimes shoes). I am often in some odd part of the city as well. I'm trying to get to my apartment, and everything is against that happening, but I often get unexpected help . I end up in an apartment that I forgot I'd kept, or go to an old friends place and they have gone, but their room is there and their roommates are happy to let me rent their gigantic furnished suite. These dreams feel anxious when I'm in them, but they tend to end happily.

Last night I slept badly and had the first vivid dream in some time. (No coincidence.) The dream was a sort of Zen koan.

Two psychic detectives, who leave their bodies so that their astral forms may seek out clues that help them catch evildoers. The first psychic detective boasts "I can get through thick walls, past security systems and find all the evidence criminals try to hide."

The second psychic detective says: "I have mastered the state of no-mind when I sleep. I have no will when in my astral body, and so the psychic currents sweep me to where I need to be."

Then their Sensei says "But you still will yourself into a state of no-mind, which means you have not truelly reached it, or else you would surrender all will, including the will to achieve no-mind. Of the you two, you are further from enlightenment than your friend. While neither of you have yet discarded pride, at least your friend saves his pride for that which he has truly accomplished."

That sensei is no doubt an accomplished private investigator in his own right, as he is quite the dick.

Last night brought fun anxiety dreams, well twilight stage dreams, when I was drifting off I kept dreaming that I was free falling from a great height. I would then start awake from fear. It's happened a few times in a row.

Thanks for all of the kind words about Clio. Fortunately, Saturday brought my friend Gill to town for a visit and I haven't seen her in a couple of years. We had a good couple of days where I was considerably less sad than I would have been on my own.

A lot of my anxiety dreams involve having to get from one place to another in a very complicated setting, such as an airport with multiple terminals and concourses that go every which way (or turn into train stations). Then there are the cityscapes where driving through a complex grid suddenly finds me climbing down a staircase (carrying my now-small car) or lost in Ginger's parking garage.

I haven't flown anything in almost twenty years, but I still have anxiety dreams involving obstacles on approach and on the runway, wires overhead when I'm trying to take off, and obstacles off the departure end. Traffic is never the problem, it's always towers, buildings, trees, wires, construction, potholes, pits -- and they keep changing.

Last night my dream involved 2 Catholic Churches in my home town (there is only one) and getting involved with a garden club/weird cult with robes that was stealing plants. Eddie Murphy was also part of the gang, but he left in disgust because the white people in the club could outvote the white people.

And I, as vengeance, had a Nazi dream. We were the Underground, and I was with Colin and other strangers, helping take care of his son. There were adventures, from which I escaped implausibly, but then I got captured. I was in the middle of being humiliated naked with Anthony Anderson, and I looked into the next room, and Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki were there, being afforded some amount of freedom.

I was scheduled to be tortured by the leader, so I gave my best puppydog face to Jared, until he pulled Jensen over to whisper to him, and I awoke with a slam.

Now I just feel depressed about real world atrocities, and can't calm down.

Which tidily matches the ones where I'm trying to wake up and can't.

Ugh, I hate those.

The ceiling in my bathroom has a leak. I am entirely unprepared for dealing with this.