November 16, 2015

We sat on a bench by the wall that went around a shallow pool. I was telling the person next to me how some institution was harboring alien life forms and they asked me how I knew. I recounted seeing the depressurization and defrosting chambers in the labs used to safely retrieve specimen from the deep waters. The aliens themselves mostly resembled bulbous cephalopods.

Someone brought in a ray-like creature and started swinging it around in the air on a end of a string. They started narrating about how it saw into the oasis and I corrected him by saying “you mean aliens” which apparently threw him off guard and made him very defensive. I related the oasis he mentioned to “a window to the stars”.

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We were standing on the beach and he told me about how he “doubted technology”. He started talking about the waves of the ocean and how they predictably went up and down - perhaps to illustrate the regularity of nature that seemed to be in danger in our current times. He made a joke about people being on an island and I told him it wasn’t funny but thanked him for sharing anyways.

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We were walking together through the mall and she asked me if we should get dinner. Our fingers briefly touched but neither of us seemed fully committed to holding hands. We stopped at the restrooms after wandering around the food courts for a while. The men’s room seemed to be relatively clean, the yellow light reflecting off of the tiled walls. There was a “special” urinal on the left that was set a lot lower than the other one and was labeled for “Muslims”.

When I walked out, I picked up my sweater from the counter to the left and looked beyond the railing. There seemed to be a large zen garden in the middle of the mall. I watched as a cottonwood tree bear sugar-apples and was amazed at this connection. I felt a desire to share my discoveries.

I walked up the the roof and we were suddenly playing some kind of execution game. I shot someone with a finger gun and they praised my abilities while I thought it would be rude to admit it was mostly due to luck. When I climbed up to a higher level, I was taken to the side and threatened that I would be shot if I didn’t know how to sing a particular song. I told them that I’ve only listened to the lecture and haven’t watched the movie that this song originated from.

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I was talking about politics with someone and they referenced a book that I thought I knew. “Oh, that’s by Hancin, right?” I asked. I quickly corrected myself, “oh wait, that’s a linguistics paper”. I went on to explain how it was about how second language acquisition was affected by the speakers native language.*

When I stood up and turned around, a student nearby was introducing our library to a group of people on a campus tour.** The discourse of the group rapidly took a turn to other issues. “Everyone’s a little racist, right? Just look at the Chinese.” someone said. This group started getting larger and louder as people were laughing at the other similar remarks. I quickly got out of the way and walked off.

– *Guess what I read right before sleeping :^)**The surroundings actually more closely resembled the Performance Arts Building