Nested parentheticals are so annoying. They are thoughts within thoughts, like dreams within dreams, intrinsically hard to follow (does form follow function or is it the other way round?).

Sometimes the subconscious is not so subtle. The last thing I did before I went to bed last night was to do a ten percent water exchange in my larger fish tank. I am currently doing those daily. When you’re setting up a new tank it’s easy to overload it with fish (the easiest way to do this is to add too many fish) before the healthy waste-eating bacteria have a chance to build up in the system (in the carbon filter, or the sponge (that is, if you’re using a sponge (is your fish tank sponge worthy?)). If your water starts to cloud, doing a small water change everyday helps the system to find it’s own balance (avoid all chemical fixes as they can fuck your tank for six months or more – the exception to that rule is rid ick (if your fish catch the ick – which looks like they have little air bubbles stuck to them, but is really a common tank infection) and the essential aloe based de-chlorinator). To change out the water I have a five-gallon pasta pot that I use in combination with a siphon.

In my dream last night I was in the pot with cichlids & plecostomus swimming all around me (Yes Beth B, “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.” Where is the albatross of my addiction? – Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (lots of lit crit people think the albatross is a stand in for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s opiate addiction), (Beth J. is in Nebraska at the wedding of her brother-in-law, Hi Beth J)), the water had been filled with a salt solution that was intended to clean my aura (If you want to clean your aura, take a salt bath by filling your tub with water and adding 1-2 full containers of ordinary table salt, or go jump in the ocean if you have one handy). I was in the pot, the pot was on a bar stool, and I was balancing it by holding onto the back of the stool. Lucinda, who teaches where I work and also keeps fish, was there overseeing my cleanse.

Later in the dream I attended a wedding, it was not the wedding of my ex Angela, which is next weekend in K.C., but I can only assume that’s part of what my brain was processing. An old friend of mine was there, she was drunk, and I had to take her keys away so she wouldn’t drive. Now that I think about it, this wedding dream might have been triggered by Beth J’s phone conversation (from a rehearsal dinner) with me last night, it then contained elements of Paul’s, my sister Sandy’s, and Angela’s coming wedding. Angela was my date to Sandy’s wedding, so that figures. The “give me your key’s scene” was from Rebecca & John’s country club reception. So my chemical computer pulled up all things wedding and smashed them together with each other and with a “go take a psychic bath” metaphor.

Perhaps that’s what dreams are: a ten percent psyche change every night, to keep the water in balance and the mind clean (or a chance to interact with the astral projections of your favorite celebrities).