I was sitting there in a comfortable chair

I walked out from this dream in which I was simultaneously a PhD student and a young professor teaching a Neuroscience course, the classroom was a big auditorium at the School of Medicine, we were more than 200 students and the place was barely enough for so many students. As a student for some reason I was late and I had to sit between a couple of men in a pretty awkward position. I felt suffocated and anxious and irresponsible. Like if that were not my place in the world.

Dunno why but I had no notebook but a Telecaster. It must have been 9 or 10 o'clock, the auditorium and the students reminded me of my first days as a PhD student in a Neurochemistry course in an auditorium at the Institute of Cellular Physiology, it was humid and hot, just like the weather between summer and autumn. At times, the place also seemed a fancy party hall.

As I felt awkward in this seat between a couple of men, I saw myself in front of the audience, as a professor. I was not exactly myself, but I knew I was the professor, it was some sort of a weird doppelganger. I saw myself as an enthusiastic professor, I looked like this guy performing Matthew Kimble, the brother of the main character of The new adventures of old Christine, maybe he appeared in my dream 'cause I recently saw him on Fargo, his real name is Hamish Linklater, but in my dream he was me and he was not an actor but a neuroscientist, and he was pretty young. He had a few tics, he constantly stuck out his tongue while he spoke and ran his tongue over his upper lips, he looked natural and enthusiastic. He had long, somewhat curly hair. His hair was so pretty. He was wearing a blue long-sleeved Benetton shirt, quite similar to the one I have. I kinda sensed that girls adored him, each time he spoke and ran his tongue over his upper lips and kept sort of freezed for a second or two, looking into infinity, perhaps organizing his thoughts, girls sort of murmured and sighed. The situation was funny, it didn't seem a PhD course, but a bachelor's degree course.

Hamish-myself walked in front of the blackboard with great confidence, and he spoke about the brain and how we have brain circuits for building a pencil and also a spaceship, but he really only touched these topics superficially. He looked pretty happy. He really seemed to enjoy his job.

Somehow, he took us to a place in which neuroscience seemed so cool and important, but, as I mentioned, he only touched these topics superficially. Nonetheless, the audience looked satisfied. At a point, he gave us a brief recess in which he took a marmalade sandwich or something like that, he said he hadn't had breakfast. Suddenly Hamish neuroscientist was sitting next to me, the couple of men had disappeared, and he smiled at me and winked, like if he knew we were the same person. One girl or two approached us and asked him if he'd ever play guitar just for fun, maybe at the end of the course. Then I realized Hamish had told the students he also play electric guitar and I thought of my Telecaster and wanted so hard to play a song.

I'm listening to this White Stripes album, I read somewhere that it was released 20 years ago and I think of you, the phone calls we had 20 years ago, when I had just bought Get Behind Me Satan and was so obsessed with you and dreaming about you while listening to this album. Did you remember me and saw me as I saw myself in this dream?

The sky is cotton candy

You appeared out of nowhere. In my dream I knew you, I knew your name, you were a student, and I was looking for something in a box, the box looked more like a wooden chair than a box and it was painted in blue. The wooden chair was placed at the desk, the desk was some sort of operating room. I was pretty focused in this sort of mental surgery.

We were inside a classroom, it was cold and pale. Lights were the kind of dim lights you'd find in an operating room. The day was so cold and cloudy. It was the end of a class. Students were leaving the classroom.

Accidentally I found a letter inside the box, and it was a letter from you, I knew your name, I pronounced it in my dream, our eyes met for a moment, you smiled. The letter was written on a white sheet of paper, had some paintings and a cryptic message, it looked like the artwork for Incesticide, Nirvana's B-sides album published in 1992, and the message implied that you were in love with me. 

I woke up and I don't know who you are. I forgot your name. This song hits my brain.

«I got my diddly spayed!»

«I got my diddly spayed!»

«I got my diddly spayed!»

Before going to bed I came to the studio, the cats knocked some things out of the closet and I picked them up and the situation reminded me of an Incesticide T-shirt I own. It's really nice, but I hardly ever wear it, it's too big for me. But the dream is not about a T-shirt. Or about you. You could be anyone. 

Maybe it's not that at all. 

Maybe it's that I'm getting old and it's about me returning to this elite university where it all began. Maybe it's that I'll find students like I did back in 2004 but I'll be older and I'll be mentally sterile.

Pain is the language that was spoken to me

 

Before I went to bed, I saw this video of a Marilyn Manson show in Rockville. Apparently, a guy recorded it with his cellphone camera. The sound was amazing, the guy must have been in the front rows. It looked like a cloudy afternoon, and I dunno why but, just when I saw Manson walking onto the stage, sort of wrapped in white smoke, and I heard the first lines of the bass guitar, I immediately felt that I was in Rockville, that I was a teenager, that music was the hardest drug I'd ever tried.

I woke up an hour ago, I have answered the comments that one referee made to a manuscript that I wrote and I sent to review to a popular science magazine, but I had a dream in which I was working at a university. Although it looked like my ideal job –an academic position for the rest of my life–, it seemed a silly job, it was not really what I expected to be.  Somehow I'd gotten that position in a very easy way. 

So, in my dream, I was with these guys. In the real world, I know one of them, I met him a couple of months ago, at a dinner in Monterrey, and we spoked about my employment situation as we drank a beer. This guy and the other two, at a point, walked out from the university and asked me if I wanted to go to eat at Tres Marías with them, in the car of the guy I know in the real world. It looked weird, it must have been midday on a weekday. The point is that my ideal job was a farce.