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Yeah, I know I’ve been missing in action. Just kind of overwhelmed and depressed and busy and unable to blog for a while I guess. But the real reason I’m calling this blog post M.I.A. is that I was planning to go to the M.I.A. show last night, but I didn’t for the reasons listed above. Instead, I went for a walk with LCF in the rain, ate falafel at Mamouns, came home, passed out, and had one of my scary baby dreams, only this time, it was set in Sri Lanka, M.I.A.’s home turf.

In the dream I was living in Sri Lanka and I think I was a student in a group house with lots of other Americans. Among the women living in the house, two were pregnant and one had a baby, and suddenly out of nowhere, one day the baby died and the two pregnant women had miscarriages basically at the same time. It was definitely considered some kind of bad omen and very sad. But things got worse when I encountered the three women later that day in the dining hall, crying over three identical pot pies. That’s when I learned that it was local tradition that if a baby died or a woman miscarried, the child was immediately butchered and baked into a pie for the mother to eat. Clearly these American women did not want to eat their dead babies, so they were just trying to take tentative bites of the crust to appease their hosts, but I knew they wouldn’t be allowed to leave the dining room until they had all finished eating their baby pies, and I couldn’t watch, so I decided to grab a guide book and go on a day trip alone.

I found a listing for a hair salon inside a convent dedicated to St. Jude, so I hopped on a train that stopped right outside where I was staying and took it to the outskirts of the city to the convent. Inside, the convent looked more like a broken down junior high school from the ’70s than a place of worship, and the room where the salon was housed was big and dusty with a red and green linoleum checked floor. Two women were getting their hair done off to one side, while a dude kept coming in with toilets, and was installing them in the middle of the room. I watched this all silently from the back of the room, until the toilet guy announced that it was time to test out the new toilets. I didn’t want to stay and watch the ladies getting their hair done use the toilets in the middle of the room, so I made my hasty departure back to the train. When I got to the station, however, I realized I couldn’t remember what stop I was trying to get back to. On top of that, I couldn’t remember what town I was living in, what school I was attending, or where I had put the phone numbers of anyone from the program I was attending who could help me. I was alone, in the Sri Lankan countryside, and had no idea how to get back to anything resembling home. I asked a guy with a big afro at the train’s information desk how to get back to where I came from, and he sarcastically responded to my vague question saying, “Get on the next train, then turn left.” I got on the next train, then realized I had left my guidebook at the information desk. My last link to anything that could help me find my way was gone. I was in a blind panic. The people on the train were staring at me as I started crying while studying the incoherent train map. That’s when I woke up in a hot sweat.