dream_choir epitome of incomprehensibility I'm in a room next to a pool, grey industrial walls, and it's where my choir meets. I was supposed to hand my music back earlier, and someone who looks like Sandra shakes her head at my lateness. She punishes me with "one deportment mark," which is like a demerit point. What possible harm that can do me, in a community choir for adults, is unclear. But shame fills me and I start whining, saying that it's not fair, she could cut me some slack since I have ADHD and I'm not good at getting things in on time. "TWO deportment marks," she frowns. I go into the next room to the pool. I see some text on the bulletin board and hear related audio bouncing off the walls - it's all part of a South Park episode where "Cartman and even Kyle" think that Canada's First Nations are complaining too much and should suck it up. "Is that supposed to be shocking or edgy?" I wonder. "Whatever it is, it's lazy writing." And then I realize that, on some level, Canadian South Park is a manifestation of my psyche. I'm not taking enough responsibility for myself - which is what the South Park kids are, much more dubiously, accusing others of doing. But when I see Douglas, the choir director, coming into the room, I just make a serious face and say how Sandra gave me two deportment marks for getting my music in late. "She shouldn't have. I'll sort this out," he promises...and I'm left wondering why some people are sympathetic to my plight and others aren't. Is it something in them, or is it how I present myself? Is it because whining doesn't work and mentioning ADHD backfires? Not whining is a good plan, yes, but why are people so turned off by the mention of a neurological difference? Do they think I'm using it as an excuse? Am I? Yes. And yes. Sandra is the problem, but so am I. I wish we could both be better. Surely reasons aren't excuses - don't have to be. 220223 ... e_o_i The practice room looks like it's in McGill's MacDonald campus. The director is Erica of the bright green eyes. So it appears I'm back in youth choir, although I'm about my current age. But when my brother comes in and does something relatively unobjectionable - talks, perhaps, though we're not actually practicing yet - I hit him in front of everyone. My mother's in the room too and she's not pleased. She takes me into the back left corner and gives me a resounding slap in the face. This registers to me as pressure but not pain, as if I'm getting a sufficiently needle-numbed tooth drilled into. I have a vague consciousness that I can't imagine such a thing fully because she never did that to me in real life. Still, I see a black_and_white cartoon panel featuring this slap - it's made my cartoon head vibrate. I go back to the front right of the room (or front left, now I'm facing that way) and ask Erica which way I should point my arm. See, we were singing a song with actions, and I wasn't sure whether to point my arm back on Word 1 and to the side on Word 2, or vice-versa. She won't answer me. It's clear from her expression that she saw me hit my brother. But I want to pretend that things are normal. At least, I want her to answer the question. Why WON'T she tell me about the arm movements? Shouldn't I know the correct choreography, whether or not I hit my brother? Aren't those things separate? (In real life, my father and I would have this dynamic sometimes where I'd insist on him answering a question, but he'd regard answering as "giving in" and would refuse to do so, which I found incredibly frustrating. That's one family dynamic that's improved: I don't (often) bug Dad anymore by saying things over and over, and he'll try to answer things honestly, or tell me why he doesn't think the question makes sense.) Anyway, I ask this over and over. Eventually she says I need anger management therapy, which is in the Ottawa Science Museum part of the building. Naturally. When I get there, a nondescript teacher explains that she's given me a brain implant that will make feel incredibly bad - whether through sadness/guilt only or physical symptoms as well, it's not clear - about 15-20 minutes after I do anything violent. "Violence" is defined as physical aggression or threats thereof. At first I'm horrified, in a somewhat muted way, that she did that to me without asking. Then my objection shifts to the time lag. Why not make me feel bad right away? Then I might not know when I've done anything wrong. I'll be afraid of doing anything even SLIGHTLY violent. "That's the idea," she says, or something like it, but I lose interest in the conversation and wander over to a large billboard. It features white letters on a black background that spell out every literary work that has a similar concept. "They've GOT to have A Clockwork Orange," I think, but they don't. Instead they've got a vowel-heavy word starting with A and looking somewhat like it's in transliterated Avestan: it's the title of a spinoff of the Burgess novel. In Aiihussia (or the like), the main character is female. "Why does the gender matter here?" I think, frustrated. "Why does it have to match?" And that brings me into an illusion manufactured by the teacher-scientist, in which I'm a female mammoth. SPECIFICALLY female, and a sort of matriarch to the herd. Only they've been avoiding me because I'm too violent. I'm on the top of a platform that the other mammoths can't reach. From there, I watch them pacing back and forth. One young male has blood on his tusks, and I don't want to go down for fear he, and maybe others, will attack me. I don't want to die so soon, even in my fake mammoth life. Instead I brush against the evergreen tree whose topmost branches reach my perch. I can't be violent if I don't go anywhere, right? Apparently I pass the test, and I'm returned to human form in a few minutes, without the feeling-sick implant. That was some sort of psych-out. I can leave the building, which has decided to become downtown Concordia, but I don't know how to get to the main exit, so I go down a set of side stairs, perforated metal that my boots clank against. I grip the hand railing and look down to see a foot railing too, on each side: it's hazard yellow like a reflective safety vest. 220309 ... e_o_i I'm at a mall again, which is connected to the place where my choir is having a concert. Only it's 7 PM and the concert only starts at 8. What should I do? Have supper? I wander around stores and a room whose walls are half glass, giving a panoramic view of the city outside. I create staircases to multiple basements: they pop into existence once I make a model of them out of stacked peanut butter sandwiches. But now it's almost eight and I need to be onstage with the others. They aren't in the dressing room they were before. I open one stage door and I see another choir there with flowing greyish-green outfits. A young teenage girl turns around and smiles as if she recognizes me from somewhere. Mischievous, like she knows I'm not supposed to be there, she puts a finger to her lips and I close the door silently. So the youth choir's going first. That's a relief. But how do I get backstage without going onstage first? I ask two teenage boys who are standing on the stairs leaning over the railing. They point to another set of stairs, a narrow spiral one branching off from where they're standing. I start to go up it, but it gets smaller and smaller and now I'm climbing it like a jungle gym, holding onto the rungs. The boys are there behind me, lounging now as if the climb's been easy. "If you fall down, will you do this?" says the one with the darker hair. He drops a bottle cap to the floor several stories below and it bounces right back up. I look down, far down, at grey concrete covered with peeling paint. "If it weren't a dream, I'd probably die." "It's best to land on your feet, not your head," the lighter-haired boy advises. "Except if you land on your feet with enough impact, your bones will go into your knees." I picture bones breaking and piercing nearby flesh: what's if a breastbone spears my heart? Best not to risk it, even if it a dream. I look up, ready to go on...but the scene changes. 231220 what's it to you? who go blather from