[dreams] Inching closer to death, except the inches are going by faster and faster

I have been dreaming more of loss of friends and my shrinking life. Ah, cancer.

Two nights ago, it was a long, involved narrative about danjite selling all his stuff and driving away in an old Dodge Charger, never to be seen again.

Last night in my dream I was out of work, and trying to get a new job. This involved speculative selling of a custom print solution for office documentation and Advo flyers. (Trust me, that actually means something in real life.) I wound up at a small party with a new author, possibly Max Gladstone. In my dream, he'd just signed with Night Shade. (Though in real life, Max is a Tor author.) As part of Max's contract payment, Jeremy Lassen had given him a bottle of some liquor. The bottle had been cast (or carved) into a very accurate sculpture of a man's athletic shoe, about a size 30. The neck of the bottle was the opening at the top of the shoe, and the cap was a quarter scale lifelike rendering of the head of Lee Arenberg in his makeup as Pintel in Pirates of the Caribbean [ imdb ].

Ok, brain. What? I mean, I understand the feeling of being eclipsed by other writers as I slide slowly and all-too-silently toward death. (I haven't written a word of fiction since June, and quite possibly never will again.) I can handle the symbolism of being out of work and celebrating/being envious of others' publishing contracts. But Lee Arenberg? Shoe liquor? What?

Sometimes I baffle myself.