I overslept and had a dream where I was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, hunting a group of vampires from Novosibirsk and buying apricot perfume at Sephora.

I always get the weirdest dreams. What a pity Freud is dead.

I’m looking for activities that will occupy my brain and give me some moments of not thinking about Eric. So I found a list of the best Spanish movies of all times and started watching a film a day. I don’t like movies and find them as difficult to follow attentively as most people do reading a phone book. It is a constant effort not to get distracted, which is exactly what I need at this moment.

The first movie I watched as part of this plan was EL EXTRAÑO VIAJE (A Strange Voyage.)* It was made in 1964, and Franco’s censorship hid it from viewers for 6 years. Of course, today it’s hard to see what it was that bothered the censors so much about this completely innocent movie. I was baffled, too, until almost the very end of the film. Yes, there was a young woman in a bikini but she appeared only for about 30 seconds and was seen from a distance. And the same young woman walked around in very tight-fitting pants. Still, not even Franco was deranged enough to censor an entire movie just because of that.

The last 15 minutes of the movie made it clear what bothered the dictatorship’s censors about EL EXTRAÑO VIAJE. The culminating scenes are dominated by a male star appearing in a variety of female outfits. There is no convincing explanation for why gender-bending initially becomes necessary to this character but the sudden eruption of queerness at the end of the film is both disturbing and beautiful. We discover that the comatose world of a piss-poor Spanish village of the 1960s conceals pockets of freedom and beauty where people access the liberating potential of shedding gender constraints.

Of course, we are still talking about a movie from 1964, so let’s not expect too much. Everybody who is “tainted” by gender-bending is punished in the end and the chaos seems somewhat contained. The trope of the “evil tr*nny” is integrated into the movie (in an utterly unconvincing way, I might add.) Still, it definitely makes sense to see EL EXTRAÑO VIAJE on the list of the best Spanish movies of all times.

* The movie is available on YouTube with English subtitles if anybody is interested.

Thank you, everybody, for being so helpful. Here, for instance, is a photo Jennifer Armstrong linked in order to make me smile. And it worked!

Some moments are really horrible. They feel like a huge animal is chewing on me. Today the animal is especially active.

It seems I have misplaced my parents. This is such a small town but I have no clue where I can find them. So while I’m sitting here waiting for them to resurface I decided to check out what has been happening in the world these days that I have been mostly out of it. What I discovered made me wonder if my mental faculties have been impaired:

1. Putin has become a correspondent for the NYTimes. Is that true or is my iPod making fun of me?

2. Fox News is nominating Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, it’s Fox News, so nothing can be too surprising.

3. Our university’s post office is closing because it has become financially unsustainable. Are we entering another recession or something?

There is weirdness everywhere.

We had the nicest, kindest people take care of us at the hospital. No one could have done more for a dearly beloved relative than they did to help us feel as little discomfort as possible under the circumstances. So I don’t want anybody to think that the story I’m about to share is a criticism of them. That would be the nastiest kind of ingratitude. This was simply one of those moments that give momentary relief from pain because of their sheer weirdness.

Before the C-section, we were placed in a waiting room where I was gradually attached to all kinds of devices and monitors. An endless stream of people was coming in to ask questions, get our signatures, offer hugs and kisses, etc. This was helpful because this is not the time when you want to sit alone in silence.

“Are you allergic to any medications?”

“Have you had any major surgeries before?”

“Do you suffer from heart disease?”

“Are you on anti-depressants? Have you ever been?”

“Are you Muslim?”

The last question put us all into a stupor.

“Huh?” I asked.

“Well, we don’t want to pry, but if you are Muslim, you can just tell us,” the nurse whispered.

“No, we are not Muslim,” I said.

“Oh, OK. It’s just that when you asked the Chaplain to come by later we wondered if you are Muslim.”

So now we have a new definition of Muslims: they are people who are not eager to see a Chaplain immediately and prefer for him to come back later.

I keep hearing warnings that people will say insensitive, hurtful things to me. I know this will not happen, though. There are only very kind, good people around me, and they will never want to wound. And if somebody says something that I might not want to hear, I will know that this is only because they are confused by suffering and will not judge them.

It is very good to be able to feel complete confidence in one’s circle of acquaintance.

So do you, folks, believe in the stages of grief theory or do you see it as an attempt to classify and categorize the chaotic experiences of the grieving? Has the theory ever been useful to you?

N and I keep sending each other loving text messages at exactly the same time to the second. It is very good to know that at the exact same time when I feel the need to say I miss him he feels the need to say the same thing to me.

The analyst says that for the kind of person that I am it will be very helpful to write as much as I can, preferably by hand. So I started a diary where I write down everything that happens. This isn’t beautiful writing because I find the idea of producing beautiful, touching writing about what happened to be repugnant. This is strange because I really enjoy reading heart-wrenching, well-written stories people send me.

The way I write in the diary is very pedestrian. It goes something like, “And then I had breakfast and made a huge mug of the stinky dandelion root tea. And then I drank the stinky tea.” The weirdest thing is that this actually helps, and I look forward to writing in my diary every day.