Demon dreams are disturbing. Having one you remember is even more so. Am I really that person who can kill someone, drive a sword through them, and walk away, listening to them scream until their breath runs out, with their blood on my hands, and not feel anything? Not rage, not remorse, not triumph, not anything. Blankness. Am I even partly that person? I don't want to be...

I know demon dreams occur to satisfy those deep urges we all have, so that we won't release those urges in the world at large, but it frightens me that any part of my mind has those thoughts to begin with, and that they're important enough that I remember their fulfillment...

Given the choice, though, I would much rather dream them out than act them out...

A chronic insomniac, I find myself staring at my ceiling at 3:00 a.m. more often than not. Since sleep is so precious, I've found that I can tell the moment I slip off... It's the moment at which, in my constant questing thoughts, I can no longer remember what I was thinking the moment before... Then, I've slipped into the chaos that resides between sleep and awake, and it is not possible to return from there unaided...

Maybe that's why I'm an insomniac... I'm afraid to lose that control over my mind...

Things have rhythm. I've discovered this, lately. Everything I do has its own cadence, it's own song, to it. My bike's tires whisper on the pavement while the pedals keep time. The waves against the hull of the boat beat an irregular cadence over the constant flapping of the sail, and the occasional humming of the rig. Even writing, I feel as if I'm conducting an almost-silent symphony of skritching that automatically notates itself in curliques.

Good grief. This is just stupid. Of all the places to spend a perfectly good summer afternoon, I'm here, listening to fidgety little kids singing hokey songs about "loving God." Now, if I didn't object to the idea of this kind of "God" on principle, I might think it was cute. Key word there is might. I object to songs of this simplicity and stupidity even when they aren't full of brainwashing religous propaganda. The fact that they're using pre-recorded songs on an electric keyboard rather than an actual instrument doesn't thrill me much, either. The end result is very hard to stomach, and I find it difficult, sometimes impossible to summon the requisite "clap.... clap.... clap...." at the end of each song.

But that's not all. Not only do they expect us to listen, they expect us to participate! Nope, sorry, I shan't be doing that. The "Lord" has not been good to me, and I won't sing that he has. And I won't bow my head in prayer. If I want to give thanks, I'll do it personally, not look at my shoes and mumble.

I'm sorry if anyone reading this is offended. But I just don't do christianity. And I think that should be respected. Which does not mean making me sit and listen to this crap.

All of these writers and tellers of fantastical stories amaze me. How can they make these complete other worlds come alive? I can picture many other worlds besides my own, on my own, but I can't make them take shape and come to life in written or spoken word.

But neither can I artfully tell or write my own story. It's already there to catch, but it seems so small and mundane on paper, so I don't often try to capture it.

No, where my power in writing lies is in the almost-truths of my existance. Not-yet-fufilled dreams of mine becoming fufilled. Bigger triumphs and graver defeats. These are the stories that I tell most convincingly, like it is, but with enough artistic flourishes to keep things interesting for other people.

And for me, those flourishes keep alive my foolish hope that my life might actually be like that.

Last night in my dream, there was music. This composer had only ever written one piece in his whole life, and then died before he named it, so its title was his name. Our band director picked it for us to play, and, suprisingly enough, we could. We could play it perfectly, sight-reading, on the first try...

It's a shame I never got past the first three lines of the page before I got woken up. It's not likely I'll ever sight-read like that again.

I know I twist the truth to serve my own purpose somtimes, but, god, is it frustrating when someone else tries to. They'll lie to your face about what you saw, what you said, trying to make you doubt yourself. And with no witness but yourselves, it degenerates quickly into a he-said-she-said shouting match.

And the truth is lost forever in the struggle to be right.

The whole concept of summer reading isn't bogus. No, I see it as perfectly reasonable to requires students to read books for school that they might not read otherwise. I even accept that we're required to think about them and attempt to understand them.

No, what i find intolerable about summer reading is the pointless writing assignments surrounding each book. What purpose do chapter-by-chapter summary/analysis/charachter development logs serve? I know what the book's about, I comprehend the role each character plays in the weaving of the plot, and I see the hidden messages and the "big picture" in the story. I don't see the need to dissect it and put each part into a lined-paper specimen jar. This is art, not science! You can't categorize every nuance of a writer's style, nor should you try. In my eyes, torturing writing like that is the eighth deadly sin.

Or maybe that's just my opinion as a writer. I know I would much rather have any work of mine appreciated as a beautiful whole, than have it clinically picked apart and judged that way.

Which makes me think twice about publishing anything. What if what I write is considered of literary merit? Will schoolchildren all over the world have my writing shoved down their throats in chopped-up little pieces? Will inept but well-meaning teachers feed it to them, fortified with meanings I never gave it, and symbolism I never intended, while the true spirit of the piece is ignored?

I hope not. But that's the risk of reaching out, and it's one I'm willing to take.

But I've still got summer reading to do. Bah.

It's interesting how differently people react to technological difficulties. I stubbornly try the same thing over and over again until it either works, or I get so frustrated with it that I have to leave for a while, after which I come back and fix it. My strategy works, for the most part, and I'm satisfied with it.

My brother and dad will shrug and walk away. They could care less.

My sister will fume for a while, then walk away, because she doesn't know how to fix it.

My mother, on the other hand, will blame the last person who used the machine (before her, it's never her fault), yell at them for a while, then go back and fume at the machine and the general ineptitude of the world while she fixes it.

I'd like to ask my "team members" to contribute their strategies - purely as a point of interest.