herding cats

Music: The Boo Radleys: Kingsize (1998)

I've just finished working on a "revise and resubmit" essay, and golly, I'm both frustrated and tired. I enjoy writing inductively. I like to read folks that write that way, too. My and Tom's essay on The Da Vinci Code is written inductively on purpose, to model the mystery form of the text. Alas: editor and reviewer alike wants us to take out the deduction hammer! So tiresome, and reminds me of my discussion with Gil: you are not allowed to write with nuance; some hurried reviewer will insist on deduction!

Anyhoo, this revise and resub, two more waiting in the wings, and the deadline for a brand new essay by June 1 unquestionably underwrites my nightmares. Last night I had a number "stress dreams" that, for some weird reason, I remembered when I woke up today. I shall reconstruct my favorite:

I'm driving with my five or six year old daughter to my new home through a series of ominously dank tunnels. I'm very concerned that she likes my new house, and I worry about her mother---whom I recently divorced but still love---and the cats. I have a cat carrier in the back with my cat Psappho in it, who just had life saving surgery, who is also Cosmo, another cat I am fostering right now (in the dream Psappho/Cosmo are the same cat). As I talk to my daughter about how "daddy and mommy are still best friends," I come upon the house, which is my grandfather's tiny, dirty two-bedroom bungalow [IRL my grandfather recently passed away, so obviously in my dream I inherited his house and moved into it]. I am worried about all the screen doors, because the entire bungalow is covered in them, and they slam open and shut will all the visitors. I get home and bring my daughter inside. My other four cats are happy we're back, and happy to see Psappho/Cosmo is with me (they do not notice my daughter). But I'm worried about the cats escaping, and soon enough someone slips out one of the screen doors. I catch him/her and bring her back in. Then my parents show up to visit, and as they open the door two more cats escape. I run outside to catch them. I am terrified Psappho/Cosmo will escape---I worry about living the rest of my life catching escaped cats. I am not worried about my daughter, because somehow by the end of the dream she does not exist/is just another cat, which means I worry about her escaping the house.