The day before yesterday, I spent much of my free time catching up on Somewhere on the Masthead. Magazine Man’s posts are nice and long and I usually want to give them my full attention (because they rule), and due to how busy/disconnected I’ve been lately I ended up reading about 12 posts at once.
Because I was lodged firmly in Magazine Man World, he ended up in my dream that night. I dreamed that he found out about our apartment fire, and, to make me feel better, altered his subscriptions to some architectural magazines so that they would come to me instead of him. The thing was, the magazines still had his full name and address printed on them. (For some reason, in my dream he lived in Boston, when all evidence I’ve seen points to him living somewhere near NYC.)
This was monumental to me. Magazine Man is a mystery, as faithful readers know. He’s an editor for a huge national magazine, but he won’t tell us (straight out) who he is. At first this was for dooce reasons, but as time has gone on he’s dropped more and more clues, enough that two people have figured out who he is. At this point I don’t think he cares if people know, but he’s maintaining the mystery for fun.
At any rate, to me, in the dream, his revealing his identity to me was the supreme act of kindness. Sure, the architecture magazines were cool, but it was the fact that he didn’t worry about his secret identity when he decided to help me that really made it special. It was like he was letting me in on his secret.
Of course, I guess there’s something like pity in an action like that, but you know what? I want to be pitied. This is just like when I was recovering from cancer and I went around telling everyone about it. It’s apparently how I deal with trauma.
Don’t worry, I’ll get over it.
In the meantime, if it’s getting too depressing for you all over here, check out Somewhere on the Masthead. It’s always good for either a laugh or happy tears (or both).