πάσχειν γάρ τι τὸ μανθάνειν ἀτεχνῶς ἐστι

I dreamt I left some sort of high school and was waiting at the bus stop with three women on a large, abandoned road. The wind was howling. Suddenly one of them pointed to the horizon and I saw there was a large, black tornado gathering and coming our way. At first I was unsure if flight was really necessary, but the women began acting terrified, grabbing their things and running away. I started to run, too (but in that way that you're trying to go much faster than the dream will allow), towards the miqlat (bomb shelter) of the high school, managed to wrench open the giant iron door, and dived in. My feet were still outside as the tornado swept by and tried to suck me out, but the people in the miqlat pulled me in and closed the door.

Once inside, I wandered around in shock and took in the people who were quietly milling about, tending to their kids or injuries. A group of people approached me and I became nervous. They beat me horribly for the entire long rest of the dream and it became apparent that they were IRA.

***

The other day, Y. came up to show me proudly how he'd put on his arm tefilin (my old pair, which I gave to him last year). I thought he was showing me the correct way he positioned it, which sadly so many people cannot seem to grasp, and praised him for it until he walked off happily. Later, H. explained that he was showing me that he was covering it with his shirt sleeve, which as he told H., he learnt from me.

I'm feeling adrift these days.

Things with Y.'s school progress slowly but surely and lawyers are involved. Hopefully something will come of it. The school wrote a scathing letter saying that our allegations are vicious slander, yet in typical, stupid hareidi self-righteousness couldn't resist adding that they only hit "in an educational way."

Today Y. and I were talking about our two cats, Mercutio and Cleocatra. Y. asked what Mercutio would do if he ever got his hands on "the Gingi," an apoplectically violent redhaired cat that lurked about our neighbourhood once before a certain pair of people may or may not have illegally deported him to the spring Lifta, at the gates of the city and far away. I told Y. that really, the Gingi was Cleo's enemy; they had gotten in some sort of fight once and although nobody knows what happened, every time she saw him she would work herself into fits of hissing hatred. Mercutio, I explained, didn't like him but didn't care much.

Y. disagreed. He said that if Cleo hated the Gingi, so did Mercutio, because "she is his wife, so they are one body, and that means he feels her hatreds, too."

***

I dreamt that H. and I just generally went about openly with tefilin and a talith gadhol, like the Gr"a. We were with my old yeshivah on a shabaton to some university library, another odd location on par with a previous dream in which we went to a First Nations art festival. It was Friday day. H. and I were looking at a corner bookshelf when some Granik, dressed the same way we were, came up and started shouting at H. I intervened and dragged H. to safety, where we sat down on some steps. The steps were exactly the texture of real university library steps, tiled and sort of dusty.

H. left to go to the bathroom and I was left alone as a butch woman wearing a talith qatan came up to me and started asking about my tefilin. To my surprise she seemed like she wanted to wear hers more, too, and wanted to know what the important laws were. I asked her for writing materials and she handed me a scrap of cereal box and a pen. I wrote down,

TAKE OFF YOUR TEFILIN WHEN:
1. Engaged in manversation
2. Going to bathroom (shel rosh, cover shel yadh)
3. Sexual thoughts

By "manversation" I meant "stupid conversation" and I guess I was referring to "lightheadedness," the idea that you shouldn't goof around with tefilin on. She took the scrap of cardboard and thanked me. The advice I gave her was actually pretty accurate for real life.

I had a freaky dream wherein it was Purim morning and I, the only person in the room not in costume, was putting on tefillin. However, I couldn't remember how at all. How many revolutions around the arm? Who knows? I ended up putting on way way way too many as the black kept falling off the strap. When I saw my rosh yeshiva (dressed as his wife) come over, I ran to the other side of the room to avoid him seeing me in such a state of ignorance, then realised that was probably a pretty big hefsek so I'd made things even worse. When I put on the shel rosh, almost all the black fell off it.

I dreamed I was in the old city with my stepchildren, plus one imaginary stepchild (a boy between the ages of the other two, kind of fat and washed-out-looking). We were beside the school of my real stepson, Y., just sort of talking and kicking at the flagstones.

One of the school's teachers came out. He approached my stepdaughter, M., and asked her sternly to come with him into the classroom (which would never happen in real life, because GRLS ARENT ALLOWED). She looked at him, a little alarmed, and asked why. He said to discuss what she had mentioned to him earlier. She pretended not to know about it, but I could tell she did, and the teacher said, "To discuss the problem that you and your brothers are not exactly model citizens."

"Excuse me, actually all my stepchildren are model citizens," I said.

"Who was talking to you?" he asked while not looking at me.

I started to ignore him and began putting tefillin on Y. (in real life this is one of his favourite activities). When I finished, he was very pleased, but as I felt my own arm, my tefillin were missing. This made me feel very nervous. I asked M. to come and get my tefillin with me and she took my hand, accompanying me to their obvious location - Pizza Rami.

The dream happened in Hebrew.

***

In another dream, H. and I were on a rattly tram car in Mumbai. H. informed me that we had to get off now and we gathered all our anacronistic suitcases and colourful scarves (?). Suddenly I remembered that I didn't have my tefillin on my arm, so I told him to wait while I put it on. To my horror, the leather tore. "That's what you get when you put them on and take them off so much," said H., who then comfortingly added "I'll teach you a special way that the Jews here in India do it which will stop that from happening again."