"invited"

 We are being "invited" to do a diversity training.  I suspect it will be mandatory. This by an administration that cannot retain a diverse faculty.  Everyone just leaves.  But I'm sure this training will fix that.  

Dream of voice

 I was demonstrating some techniques for speaking. A strong, authoritative, baritone voice; then a high pitched head voice. 

Dream of Birds

 I was in the backyard (of house I grew up in). There were these fantastic birds there, with bright colors. One, though, was a little man with a high-pitched voice. Then I realized it was a dream and then practice levitating these strange creatures, or using hand gestures that made them collapse to the ground. 

3 dreams

I was being introduced in a fulsome way, in Spanish. I was the greatest critic in Spain, etc... I smiled as the audience applauded. They kept applauding. Then I looked down at the paper I was supposed to deliver and it was in English. I started to talk in Spanish, stalling. It looked like my paper was far from brilliant and I didn't know what to do... 

***

There was a reservation at a restaurant.  My father was there already, and we were to sit around a table in an uncertain way (two chairs on the ends where only one should really be).  I sat down across from my father and we began to talk. I knew he was dead and hence invisible to all but me. He reproached me for missing other appointments, but I pointed out that he only appeared to me when he wanted. My brother came and was wondering why I was talking to myself. I pointed out that our dad was there. I asked my dad to make himself visible to my brother, but then he (dad) disappeared from my sight as well.

***

We were grilling in some kind of basement, making food for some kind of event, with B and her sisters. One put the food on the floor before grilling it. I put it on a table of some kind and then found some already cooked potato omelets and used a piece of them to clean off the kabobs that had been on the floor. I mixed the omelets into the snow that was on the basement floor to hide what I had done.   

Estudio crítico de...

 One of my Lorca scholar friends had a seven or eight pages lifted verbatim from his book, published in a book with the unimaginative title: Estudio crítico de Romancero gitano. It could be a series, like those Twayne books of yore. Do they still exist? They would be books written at a low level, for the undergraduate reader, say, and were often known for not being very good. It would have been a good idea to have a series of critical studies easy to understand but also at a high level intellectually, but I guess that isn't the way academic publishing is structured. 

Hawk

 A huge hawk landed on my balcony while I was doing zen practice by zoom. I couldn't get a picture of it. 

My brother-in-law is in emergency surgery in California. I thought this hawk could be an omen. 

Hermits

 I listened to a video on Beckett, with James Gunn, an editor of his correspondence:  "Hermits don't write 20,000 letters."  

***

I'm looking at Ill Seen Ill Said again. This is my favorite S.B.  There are several books on Beckett and music.  I always mention this because, well, there should be as many books as you want on this, since it justifies the writing of just as many books on Lorca and music.   

***

I was moved by a recommendation someone wrote for me, and shared with me. It seemed exaggerated. Who is this fantastic guy they are talking about? But then I figured it out. Certainly other people can be critical of me too, but they don't have access to my own great store of self-denigration. I shouldn't act as though my own flaws were visible to all once I step out the door.