Romantic Hallucinations, Electric Dreams

The first day after my AstraZeneca shot showed no significant side effects. The second night however I was hit all the strong 'flu-like symptoms of headaches, stiffness, sweating, all proof that the antibodies were ramping up. This all happened as I was falling asleep. Then the hallucinations started, which I must mention is especially intense if you have borderline hyperphantasia, with completely realistic tactile, visual, and auditory elements. A book appeared in my hands, brittle and old. True to my nature, the story was a romantic mash-up between the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Pandora's box (it was a pithos, but let that be), one of my favourite tales since childhood. As the story tells, the theme is a commitment to "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou". As I was reading a black splodge of ink made its way from the margins onto the text and started chasing my readings as it grew. Desperately wanting to finish the story (oh, but for the lesson of Pandora!), I tried to rush through the pages, I turned one all too quickly and it tore with a sickening rip, the sound shocking me so greatly that I literally fainted to sleep. Stick on your psychoanalyst's hat on that one, although to be fair, it's not too complex at all, right?

To follow along a theme, a friend broadly suggested that I investigate the world on online dating. After seventeen years of a stable relationship with minimal growth following by an all-too-brief engagement that was as devastating as it was wonderful, I had some doubts, with a certain lack of immediate experience. Still, as Durkheim pointed out long ago we are moving from mechanical to organic solidarity. No longer are we necessarily connected by those with whom we have a direct and proximal connection, but rather we have more interdependent networks. So I've trusted the compatibility algorithm and, within a week, I have ended up with three dates (two virtual, due to geography, one physical with proximity), which I will define as a real-time meeting with some romantic interest. I will try to ignore the coincidence of the dentist with the same age and ethnic heritage as my ex-ex, although I will express some amusement of a first meeting including checking the damage to my posterior mandible. Everyone has their kinks, right? But I must confess, I feel very uneasy about my participation in all this, even if it is a bit of a mental circuit breaker. I know I can be ridiculously romantic for its own sake (and by Cupid's bow, it does have its own justification), but I am really not sure that my heart is in the right place for this. Whilst I will force myself to continue onwards with my forward-looking life-goals, I am still very hurt by recent past memories of the future tense.