I had a wonderful dream that I was in Portugal again. I was in a restaurant after the results of some sort of election. I was sitting alone at a table and the waitress came to me and told me not to look so serious, warning that my face would stick that way if I didn't smile. She gave me something from the kitchen to cheer me up. I wasn't aware I needed cheering up, but I appreciated her warmth that made me feel at home. A while later, people started filling my long table and I had to scoot to make room. Lots of happy men dressed in sparkly beaded folkloric costumes had just arrived after a performance and sat down at my long table. A smiling brown eyed man with short brown hair was to my left. My dad was sitting to my right, talking with a few non-costumed Portuguese men across the table. My dad was saying he didn't understand poetry, and I was explaining why some of us do and some of us don't, saying that some people read to understand a story, while others can read anything and feel poetry. A slender man with curly hair said something I can't remember, and I added at the end of his story, "but it was poetic." The whole table laughed at my joke, and were laughing so hard that I shyly said "okay, it wasn't that good." Everyone around the table had wonderful smiles and faces. I was happy there.
In the dream before that one, the Alcoholic was gorging himself on all my food every time I turned around. I had finished one bowl of food, but I noticed he had left three half-finished bowls on my coffee table. Annoyed, I asked him why he dirtied triple the dishes and wasted half my food. He said sorry, I looked away for a second, and when I looked back at him he was gorging himself on half a cantaloupe without even asking first, or asking me if I wanted any.
I'm happy that I survived past solstice and the sun will return again. I did some random painting yesterday, purely for pleasure, putting ancient Minoan makeup on a little clay mask I had lying around. I wondered if the ancient circles surrounded by dots represented the sun, because the other day I learned that the sun Goddess was most likely the center of worship in Crete, and most everywhere at the time. Maybe the four symmetrical suns on the face represent the four directions?
I studied a related field, but I've noticed that every time I have a theory about archaeology, my suspicions have turned out to be correct. I'm always surprised at the connections some archaeologists didn't make, about things that seem so obvious to me, given what I know about surrounding civilizations in the same eras, ancient natural disasters, near eastern Goddess worship, and such. While other people in quarantine began addictions of substances, I became addicted to history. It sustains me. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about before I drift to sleep.
7:46 a.m. - 2020-12-23