A.C. Wise

In a recent post, I lamented that my dreams are nowhere near as cool as Michael Swanwick’s. While on the way to the train station this morning, I remembered* a dream I had last night, which, while still not as cool, at least feels like progress.

I was sitting around with a bunch of people I haven’t seen since elementary school. A mouse ran across the floor in front of me, which prompted me to yell “My boots are full of mice!” I looked down and saw that I was wearing big, black, knee-high galoshes. Little mouse heads and tails kept popping up as the mice ran up and down my legs. I removed my boots, and poured a stream of mice out of each.

So there.

*I was prompted to remember this dream by a leaf blowing past my foot, which looked like a bit like a mouse to my half-asleep brain. I actually said “My boots are full of mice,” aloud, and the dream came rushing back to me. It’s probably best that no one else was around.

Yesterday, Michael Swanwick pointed readers of his blog to a collection of excerpts from his dream diary, which was published in the Readercon 13 program under the awesome title of Lord Vacant on the Boulevard of Naked Angels. As it turns out, the man is just as brilliant in his sleep as he is awake. He dreams in fascinating fragments of prose, filled with beautiful scraps and haunting imagery. I’m jealous. My dreams are nowhere near that coherent, or interesting. At the same time, I’m grateful that the world contains sleeping minds capable of dreaming like that. I’m also grateful that, thanks to Michael Swanwick, the world now contains this phrase: “Weasels wease. That’s all there is to it.” Truer words were never spoken.

Being A Round-Up of Randomness Under a Different Name

Michael Swanwick writes a short story on a Jarful of Keys.

Sad and beautiful: An abandoned book warehouse in England.

Kyle Cassidy takes beautiful photographs. Just in general. Seriously, spend some time poking around his site. He’s got some wonderful pictures of the Philadelphia Poe reading (linked from his journal) and a very cool series of pictures of fantasy and science fiction authors in their creative spaces at whereiwrite. Authors writing and/or surrounded by books - if it isn’t a fetish, it should be.

And some recommended reading top it off.

Dreams of Elephants and Ice by Mari Ness

Keepity Keep by Carole Lanham

Invasive Species by Janni Lee Simner

The Four Hundred Thousand by Livia Llewellyn