i now understand that a tuesday is an illusion. what we instead have is a failure of monday to cease—effectively a second monday.

this particular second monday started very early with a dream. in this particular dream i was a close personal friend of elliott smith.

elliott smith, it turns out, is a regular guy. i know this because i lived next door to him, and we were mates. he had legos on his bedroom floor, fantasy books on his shelves, an old home-built computer on the desk, a playstation under the television, outdated glasses. a card-carrying geek, if so unimaginative an epithet may be ascribed. he had a set of utterly loving parents and a cat who knew her name.

of course, elliott smith is no longer living in the strictest sense of the word, though this didn't keep him from speaking with me throughout the dream. and listen when i say that he's just like me. in fact, all throughout the dream, he didn't say a single thing that i myself wouldn't have said, were i in his position. the entire experience was eerily similar to talking to myself. i know what this is like because i do it most of the time.

i've long given up on the theory that dreams mean anything, but think about it this way: a good novel is one that lies to tell you the truth.

i'm trying to say something here, i just don't know what. it's been quite a long time since i wrote directly about a dream because it's a pretty cheap source of words, invariably flippant, ridiculous, meaningless, and meritless. it should, then, be regarded as a telling thing when it is about just such a dream that i now write, after such a long hiatus*. exactly why it is telling i leave as an exercise for the reader (hints are red herrings: there are multiple solutions).

*hiatus n. period of laziness. see also: respite, suspension, you have become a boring person