If only...

I had a dream last night about my high school, except I was offered a position teaching there. I got a room right next to my senior English teacher's (who apparently has moved onto a different high school in town, according to my friend Amanda) and told to have at. I still hadn't quit my real job, but all these people I work with THERE were at some sort of convention at Mercy. I had somehow found my old uniform and wore it to work. Some of my real students (past and present) were now attending Mercy--both boys and girls. Very few students had uniforms on. My DH was substituting in a math class across the hall (although there are no class rooms there). It was actually kind of cool, but my "co-workers" were talking about the pay and then I remembered that if I worked at Mercy, I'd be beyond poor. Then I woke up.

Just finished my gym book, Fudoki by Kij Johnson. Sar, I think I'm going to send it to you. It's about a cat that loses everything...and then becomes a woman in 1100's Japan. It's also about an old woman and her recalling her life as she prepares to die.

Some quotes:

"You're dead. I don't think you'll wake up from that."--Kagaya-hime, p. 28

"It is only age that tells us what is precious, what is new."--Harueme, p. 45

"Cats are too fierce for gods; they came godless from Korea many tens of years ago, and they worship no one."--Harueme, p. 45

"How can you be a single thing, a cat and nothing else? You do not seem to be very creative, if that is all you've managed to become."--road Kami, p. 47

"Yesterday I was the girl chasing frogs (unsuccessfully, I add, and just as well: frogs are better left an unattained goal.)--Harueme, p. 59

"For she did not walk fast, as she retained a cat's lack of enthusiasm for long marches."--p. 74

"The truest grace comes after the squirming and the fighting and the panic. To accept tragedy without despair. Can you do that?"--Gardener, p. 87

"If I were to ask her what the point was of being a cat, what would she answer? And what is the point of being a woman?"--Hareume, p. 89

"I no longer remember the younger ones' names; it seems pointless, like naming maple seeds."--Hareume, p. 97

"He did not behave in any human way; he was totally and unequivocally a horse, which is to say stubborn, occasionally stupid, frequently lazy and occasionally savage.--Which is quite human, if I think on it."--p. 100

"We all cry all the time at court, and anything will set us off....The disadvantage to this is that at times of great sorrow, we have not deeper expressions of grief than those we have already used for a thousand more trivial things."--Hareume, p. 104

"Hime did what cats generally do when things are cold and not very pleasant; she slept nearly all the time, even sometimes in her saddle."--p. 110

"There is no now, or if there is, it is drawn with too fine a brush to see. There is what was, and there is what might (or what ought to) be. The line between them, which is now, is too small to see, and even as you reach it, it is past."--Hareume, p. 114

"I knew war must be like any child's game. You could play without interference if the adults were busy elsewhere and you were not too noisy about it. But if for some reason the adults noticed you, they would stop you."--Hareume, p. 132

"I look back on my life and I see a series of decisions, each of which made perfect sense at the time, most of which led to nothing in particular."--Hareume, p. 159

"I have noticed this before, that there are people who simply do not care for cats, and many of these people are men."--Hareume, p. 178

"I have been telling everyone that I look forward to serving Buddha for the rest of my life. It is the proper thing to say, like: I will love you forever, and I care about poetry.--Hareume, p. 182

"The war books I read so long ago were full of elaborate strategies with names that sound like sexual positions from a Chinese handbook."--Hareume, p. 192

"Certain things can be said only in darkness, true darkness, where one cannot see fear or horror or disgust in one's auditor."--Hareume, p. 200

"We already knew that we would die by childbirth and disease and old age. Fire, or drowning, or freezing to death would all be exciting deaths, so much more glamorous than the circumscribed borders of our lives."--Hareume, p. 203

"Men and women are full of contradictions. Even as they believe every funny nose is a harbringer to the kaze-cold that will kill them, they convince themselves that the man idling alongside the road fingering his sword is no threat, and when they are too close to escape they are shocked to find his intentions are hostile."--Hareume, p. 209

"It is a temptation to kill everyone who gets in your way, but people try not to do this too often."--Takase, p. 219

"Unpleasant truths are there whether you look at them or not. I did not realize this yet. Death is like this, and I find I face it better than I ever did my marriage."--Hareume, p. 226

"We are all dying. We just forget when nothing is trying to kill us."--Domei, p. 233

"Battle may start with great goals, but I think it must always end up being a fight to survive, each man doing whatever he must to stay alive."--p. 238

"Really, a cat in season makes even a woman at court look chaste."--p. 251

"Even starvation seemed preferable to that; though I learned soon enough that starvation only seems an acceptable alternative to something else until you get really hungry."--Hareume, p. 260

"No one likes having things thrown at them, especially if one cannot retaliate."--p. 271

"She might well live another decade; the women in her family are notorious for living well past any realistic age."--Hareume, p. 284