My water went off yesterday afternoon. Annoying and anxiety-inducing; I don't know when it'll come back on. I don't know if the landlord gave warning and I didn't get it because I don't have a phone. The last time it happened about 5 years ago, he knocked on my door and gave me an estimate for the outage so I was able to fill the bathtub beforehand for my water needs. I don't know if he didn't knock on my door this time because my cousin managed at some point to suggest to him that I "didn't want to be bothered", which is totally untrue and would be rude, and I told her to communicate to him that was not the case, but I don't know if she did that. Lots gets lost in translation in this family – and not just in language. 

And somehow, without going into any TMI detail, my gut knew about it and the accompanying inability to flush the toilet more than once, and the chronic issues with my digestive system over the past few years disappeared for the time being. It's a minor miracle maybe. 

So far, it's fair to consider it a minor disturbance and I tried to maintain my evening routine Saturday, but I did opt to not drink until way late. Maybe I didn't want to be distracted from the distraction of not having running water (and perhaps avoiding the need to pee more often). Not washing hands or brushing teeth are something I just had to endure, but not being able to take a shower triggered the neurotic in me. I won't crawl under the covers to sleep if I haven't showered. It's just not comfortable and I knew I wouldn't be able to fall asleep, so I knew I was going to sleep on top of the covers (which is no big deal since that's how I nap) and in that case why bother changing clothes to sleep? No different from crashing at someone's place when I was younger.

I did have trouble sleeping, which I anticipated and didn't set the timer on my CD player, but did slip into sleep at some point and had a pretty disturbing and harrowing dream. I was kidnapped and stabbed twice in the process. This is likely a reflection of my true anxiety about having no water; uncertainty and a hunkering down mentality. The kidnap situation lasted the whole dream through a variety of sundry scenarios including a blood-sport, fight club-ish free-for-all amongst the kidnappees. I mostly laid low and hoped not to be targeted while not expecting to survive. Towards the end of the dream there was rumor that lawyers were being sent for to deal with the situation and I thought, "Lawyers? What good are lawyers? That's even dangerous". At some point I established we were in Thailand as I (irrationally) wondered why kidnappings always happen in Thailand. But the lawyer arrived from England and came up the stairs asking about the "Yank", as in Yankee, as in me, and he took one look at me and continued to ask for the Yank. As he assumed I wasn't the droid American he was looking for, I waited for a few beats to let him hang in ignorance before I voiced up. 

Twenty five years ago that would've been racist. Nowadays it would be called "racist" but would also be stupid to call racist. I'm not gonna get into it, but from what I've witnessed in the progressive political scene from afar, the political left has really dropped the ball and gotten stupid, overreacting to every little thing and just putting people on the defensive instead of trying to educate and promote sensitivity. My dream British lawyer would've been racist before because it was institutionalized with negative assumptions and real effects. Today, the British lawyer should be recognized as having come from a certain background with his own experience that informs his subjective view of the world, and he may make assumptions and even mistakes, such as "American" equals "white" or Asian-looking equals "not American", but that doesn't necessarily make him racist now. Plurality needs to acknowledge that. Constantly putting people on the defensive for infractions they didn't even know of eventually leads to a backlash and them going on the offensive and that's pretty much where we are now; a cycle of brazen stupidity is complete with the true racists coming out the woodwork and proud of it.

And, yes, the lawyer in the dream was white and male. Would anyone imagine otherwise when I said "British lawyer"? Actually my true dream British lawyer would've been South Asian and female, but that's a different kind of dream (mm, that accent). He also had long hair and a ponytail, kinda like that Virgin Branson guy. This is all immaterial, mind you, I didn't need to bring it up but it was in the dream that he assumed I wasn't American and I noticed it. 

What I'm actually seriously curious or concerned about is why mindfulness practice doesn't come up when I'm dreaming? I noticed that afterwards. Is my practice not deep enough to have reached my subconscious? Are my reactions in dreams a more accurate reflection of the success of my practice? I kinda think so, maybe. In a dream, if I'm reacting to the dream situation like it was real, then that may indicate that in physical life I'm reacting to situations too much like they're real. The actual reaction should be appropriate, but in extreme and harrowing situations, I think a conscious acknowledgement of mindfulness practice should be present maybe.