This past Saturday, I attended a community market. In fact, I was a vendor at the market, if I may be so bold as to adopt the title. I was offering massages--"Heavenly massages from the lovely and talented Joanna"--for money or barter. Here is a list of my payments:

-A hair tie with a hand-knit flower
-$2 in cash
-A big hug
-Lots of tater tots
-About $1.50 in old Metro cards
-A song
-A lollipop and a shiny St Patrick's Day plastic coin

I also got a free dream interpretation, but the interpreter didn't want a massage. I've been thinking about that interpretation ever since. The dream itself was complicated, confusing, and should have terrified and upset me, if I felt emotions like that in my dreams. Essentially, I was in a group of hostages. (In fact, I was a group of hostages. I take several perspectives when I'm in a group in dreams.) They were beating one of us/me, and eventually cut his/my head off with a chainsaw. I know, gruesome. Immediately, I switched perspective to being a single person in the group of hostages, and I distinctly remember looking at my hands, which were covered in the splashes of his blood, and deciding that it would be a bad idea to ask if I could wash them.

Emma, the interpreter, remarked that it seemed as if I were simultaneously the victim and the perpetrator. I was killed, but the blood was on my hands. This, of course, set me speculating about systems that I simultaneously suffer from and perpetuate, and that's where my brain has been since then.