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NANA 15, Wild Ones 6, Ache of Head

Still feel like I’m kind of running on empty over here, and it looks like my website is feeling the same way, considering how slow it’s loading this morning.

I have two reviews out in the world today, both at Manga Recon’s On the Shojo Beat column. The first is for volume fifteen of NANA, and the second for volume six of Wild Ones. The difference in quality between these two series is so great, it would be unfair to compare them, so for the moment let’s just say I really love NANA. Reading volume fifteen gave me the urge to do a re-read of the series so far. I haven’t started yet, but I think I probably will do this. Volume fifteen also provids one of those sporadic moments in which I identify strongly with Nana Osaki. Most of the time I identify really heavily with Nana Komatsu, but when it comes to career drive, it’s all Nana O. I suppose I’m three parts Hachi, and one part Nana, if you think of it like that. This particular instance was very rare, because it actually had nothing at all to do with career. I have (more than once) had the experience of watching everyone around me drifting away, or worse, the sudden realization that everyone is already gone (hello NYC in the couple of years before I left), and I was feeling that hard while reading this volume.

In other news, I have had a headache since Saturday evening, and it won’t really go away. Ugh. Oh, and the guy who draws xkcd has obviously been visiting my dreams. I’m almost forty and I still have these, including just last night. I also still have theater dreams. You know, where it’s time for your entrance, and you realize you never learned the lines/song/dance/etc., and in fact are not sure what the play is. Oh, and you’re going to miss the entrance anyway, because you aren’t in the right costume/shoes/wig, etc. Even after all these years. Wow, my head hurts.

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      • Gah, I have that one too! Sometimes I’m just coming up to a red light and the same thing happens—the brakes just don’t kick in fast/well enough. Occasionally I try to make up for this by slowing the car down with my own feet. Like Fred Flintstone.

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        • My most recent one, I was driving to get somewhere and realized I’d left without bothering to acquire directions. I stopped at some nice hotel and went in to ask. When I came out, my car was all boxed in by these other cars and I couldn’t get out without crunching them.

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  2. I never had those school dreams when I was in school, but a couple years ago I had (more than once, though I can’t remember exactly how many times) some weird dreams that I was still at UCLA (a weird, dreamlike UCLA that was nothing like actual UCLA, natch!) and had signed up for classes and then forgotten to go all quarter. In my dream this was not the first time it had happened, either. I was pretty laid back about it, though, so it wasn’t really an anxiety dream, idk. Very weird!

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    • I dream a lot about my alma mater. Enough to make me kind of want to go there, but it’s an 8 hr drive and I have no idea what I’d do except look around and go, “Okay. I’ve seen it. Let’s go home.”

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    • It’s interesting, I had those dreams when I was in school, but I had them *more* after I was out. And weirdly, though I do have dreams about my college, and occasionally even high school (this is the least frequent), probably 95% of them take place at my junior high.

      Also, I kind of love the difference between real places and dream places. :)

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      • Dream!UCLA is very weird! XD Part real!UCLA, part Santa Monica College, mostly the sort of place that could only exist in dreams…

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            • They are cool, though I have two issues:

              1. The bathrooms. I have weird… bathroom issues in dreams. They are often very elaborate and difficult to use, and even when I’m dreaming about my own house, I generally have to deal with unusable, very, very strange bathrooms. (When I’m *not* dreaming about my own house, I end up with, like, a toilet on the elevator, and the elevator goes all different directions, including on its side and upside-down, causing the water in the toilet to spill out all over. It’s very traumatic.)

              2. I am disappointed when I wake up. :D

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              • Oh yeah, I’d forgotten the weird bathrooms in mine. I’ve dreamt before about the music building at my old school and having a huuuuge open bathroom with no doors or stalls or anything. Just a sea of toilets and all of them are dirty and disgusting.

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                • Yeah, I have had similar bathroom dreams. Sometimes, though, the toilets are like, strange contraptions where you have to walk over a strange mound of elaborately designed metal receptacles (this is just one example) and, somehow aim your urine into one of them or something. I have an extremely strange imagination, and it seems to like to act out on toilets.

                  I have similar weirdness with showers in dreams. Usually they are in really strange areas with very odd plumbing and insufficient curtains/walls/whatever, so the water goes everywhere and you can’t turn it off, etc. I wish I could adequately describe the bizarre designs of bathroom plumbing in my dreams.

                  One toilet had a moat.

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                    • Your hidden rooms are much more fun! :D

                      I did have a dream about my house recently, in which it was a gigantic mansion with an underground theater the size of a baseball stadium. Heh. That was pretty cool. Though of course the bathrooms were crazy. *sigh*

                    • Wait! I’ve never had a weird bathroom dream. I feel so left out. My subconscious and I are going to have a long talk about this.

                      I’m not much of an outdoors man, so my strange place dreams usually take place outside. They are usually forest areas, cliff sides, or ravines.

  3. Anxiety dreams last a lifetime, I’ll tell you, in one form or another. This headachy thing isn’t good. xoxo

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    • Yeah, I wish I didn’t know that my seminary dreams are going to haunt me for the rest of my life. Well, at least now I’m prepared.

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      • This is actually a reply to your dream comment above, but I can’t reply there due to my blog’s weird 10-deep rule.

        You should send your subconscious an expensive gift for never giving you the weird bathroom dreams! :)

        When you’re having the outdoors dreams, are they scary?

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        • Yes and no. I’m usually transversing a strange landscape to get to a scary place. Like I have to cross this insanely long and weird shaped ravine to get to a haunted house on a cliff and I really want to get to the haunted house to see the ghosts, vampires, werewolves, etc. I wake up and say, “Man that is so messed up, what’s going on in my head?” I’ve learn to just enjoy the madness of my subscious :-)

          I’ve have to send my subscious an expensive gift basket of toiletries and hope it gets the hint.

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          • I’m sure mine is much more mad, so you can console your subconscious about that. Hee. Usually when I’m outdoors in a dream, I’m flying somewhere. Often it’s to escape sinister pursuers. I’m frequently being chased in dreams, though I can always fly, so that’s a help. Though I sometimes have trouble with my legs getting caught in power lines and such!

            I’ve have to send my subscious an expensive gift basket of toiletries and hope it gets the hint.

            buh dum dum *chick* :D

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  4. I shouldn’t have told. :) The funniest part is I’ll even have driving ones and I never drive!
    I do still have performing ones. Can’t see the music or remember the song, most often.

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  5. My nightmare is that I’m still in seminary and realize it’s the end of the semester. I’ve been so worried about failing one class that I’ve forgot to complete the assignments in another. I now realize I have a term paper due in 24 hours in the neglected class. I finished seminary six years ago and just typing about the nightmare is making my hands sweat. I am Pavlov’s dog.

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    • I had no idea you went to seminary! Ah, the things we randomly learn each day. :) I’m sorry for dredging up such stressful nightmares, though!

      I often wake from one of the college dreams not entirely sure if it was real or not. I’ll be there in the dark, trying to remember if I am supposed to be back in school, despite the fact that I live nowhere near where I went to college. It will take me several minutes to convince myself that it is not so. Fortunately, even in that state, I seem to be confident that I’m not supposed to be at junior high. Heh.

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      • Waking up with that temporal displacement is always heart stopping. Then in the daylight, when your senses have fully returned, you wonder how you could have every thought that.

        Yes, I went to a Presbyterian seminary, while I was a staunch Evangelical. I took a lot of classes dealing with the Church Fathers. They were instrumental in helping me decide to change to Eastern Orthodoxy. Not sure my seminary wants to claim me as an alumni anymore ;-) Their not use to making students more theologically conservative. I’m really glad I went to seminary, but it was one of the most stressful times of my life. I have the worst time trying to learn a foriegn language and in seminary I had to learn two in three years.

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        • Waking up with that temporal displacement is always heart stopping. Then in the daylight, when your senses have fully returned, you wonder how you could have every thought that.

          I’ll often, too, just wake up in the night worrying about something from *years* ago—often something that had very little impact on my life even at the time—as though it was the most important thing in the world. It seems ridiculous in the light of day, as you say. I should look up things about the science related to that. I’m sure it has to do with chemicals in the brain or something.

          That does sound stressful! I had to study three languages as an opera student (French, Italian, German), but it was more for diction than anything else, and no real pressure to become fluent. Thankfully.

          You know, I would imagine it isn’t that unusual for people in seminary to experience changes in their faith or ideas, even drastic ones. If you’re in an environment where you’re thinking and talking about it that much, it makes sense that you would end up asking yourself questions that you hadn’t considered before. Though perhaps your specific transition is more unusual. :)

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          • At the seminary I attended, the trend and the hope was for students to become much more liberal. I was part of the conservative conspiracy (as we dubbed ourselves). Part of what I enjoyed at the seminary was getting uncensored access to the way the other side of the theological spectrum thought and lived. The assumption was that everyone in the room was liberal and so there was very unrestrained discussion. There wasn’t any conservative bashing. They simply said what they felt without trying to justify or explain thier opinions the way they normally would if it was a more diverse audience. I might have disagreed, but I loved the honesty and enjoyed offering a different perspective. Not everyone appreciated my view point ;-). There were plenty of great discussions and the proof was that I was both influenced and an influence.

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            • I would say just from my short acquaintance with you that you’ve continued to be the kind of person who influences and is influenced through thoughtful discussion, rather than through a stubborn clash of ideas. I think I must have expressed many opinions here (and in discussion with you elsewhere) which, given what I now know about your religious convictions (which granted, still is not all that much) I’m guessing would not be in line with your opinions, and our conversation has never become at all antagonistic, or even close to it. Which perhaps is simply due to you keeping things to yourself because you are so polite. :) But it’s hard for me to imagine a discussion with you getting to an ugly place, regardless.

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              • You can thank the Lord for mellowing me out with age. Also my experiences being a undergrad philosophy major and in seminary helped me to learn how to present my opinions constructively and with humility. I try very had to respect people and their beliefs. I love learning how people see the world and how they understand the world we live in. To do that I have to engage in dialogue and not diatribe. I think everyone has something to teach me, if they want to take the time and patience to have an honest conversation. That’s why I enjoy getting to interact with you, because you have insights I want to learn.

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                • I think that’s a very healthy way to live, and I hope you are able to continue interacting with me without fleeing in horror. :D I have a lot of very strong opinions and personal convictions, but I also work very hard to approach others with an open mind, and to express myself in a way that is conducive to thoughtful conversation. I don’t always succeed (though, like you, I think I’ve improved with age), but I do try very hard. :)

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    • Oh, also sometimes in the theater dreams, I’ll be dreaming that it really is *now* in my life, and somehow I’m going back to work for a theater I worked for years ago (often this is the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, I’m not sure why), and I’ll wake up worrying about things like what will they say when I turn up to rehearsals having gained so much weight since I last worked for them—things like that. As if it were real.

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  6. so sorry hear about the headaches….I’ve had that experience and it is like you can’t remember what it felt to NOT have a headache. I like it better when I go a few weeks without one and then you can’t remember what it was like to even have one. sigh. Hope you feel better soon!

    Also, I’m dying to read xxxholic and maybe Eden: It’s an Endless World. Of course, NANA is always on my “want to REREAD NOWS!” list.

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    • I hope this headache/sinus/whatever business is over soon! I am ready to forget what it feels like to have a headache. :)

      I figure I’ll end up re-reading xxxHolic next week before the new volume comes out! :D

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