More viewer reactions to Pilgrimage #richardarmitage

Here’s part two of Chris Naylor on LAMDA ’98 #richardarmitage

Check it out.

The resumption of Richard Armitage dreams?

I used to blog whenever I dreamed about Richard Armitage, and then I quite consciously stopped publishing those posts. My reasons have changed, and I need to recapture the openness about my fan experiences that this blog had in the beginning.

Last night, I finally pushed through the longest writer’s block of my post-Armitage period (two months), with a six thousand word post that was more logorrhea than anything else. So in a way, it’s not surprising that I would have had an Armitage dream, as that clog loosened itself, my subconscious attention drifted to “the next thing,” and in general I’ve tended to connect him with the vagaries of my creativity.

To understand this dream, you need to know that I have an unaddressed health issue that’s been on my mind lately. It’s nothing serious — it won’t even come close to killing me or harming my health — but it’s something that other people have no problem with. My inexplicable failure to deal with has created a self-esteem-related emotional obstacle in my life.

In the dream, I’ve decided to see the appropriate doctor to deal with the issue. His office turns out to be the same office where my dad went for his eye surgery this week (probably reflects remaining tension over that matter). The doctor turns out to be Richard Armitage — bearded, thin but not as thin as he is currently, but not beefy, either, wearing a white lab coat. I go into the exam room, which has a window that looks out onto the Vera-Brittain-Ufer in central Berlin, because I can see the cafes and the Spree. Armitage examines the problem area of my body. He has a doctor colleague, a thin woman in blue scrubs with silver-blond hair and old-fashioned pearl earrings and greyish eyes, who is sitting on a chair in the room.

How long has it been since you addressed this? he asks. Twenty years, I answer.

How could you wait so long? he asks.

I don’t have an answer. I get sleepy, and so I start stripping off my clothes. The colleague leaves the room, and as I am disrobing, I also leave it and go to a room in the same office that has no windows. It has a more traditional exam area with a bench with paper on it, and I lie down on my side on the paper and sob a little.

Eventually, I pull myself together and go back into the first room, which is now empty, and start to put my clothes on. As I sit down to tie my shoes, I look out the window toward the street and I can see that Armitage is sitting on the other side the window, with his back to my wide, in a cafe chair — bearded, jeans, blue cloth bomber jacket, sunglasses. He’s not looking at me at all.

I finish tying my shoes and when I stand up, he’s gone.

[at this point there was a loud noise upstairs that woke me up]

***

The health issue has been on my mind lately. But I think in combination with the writer’s block issue and the way that resolved itself last night, it’s a “you’d better look at your self-esteem issues” dream.

Do you have extra YA literature or favorite books to share?

We didn’t do a Dr. Seuss SpReAd the Love challenge this year, but there are still people who need books. At the moment, it’s a former student of mine, who teaches in a Title I high school. She’s also a new teacher (high school English) and trying to build up her resources for fulfilling the curriculum and for her classroom library. Many US teachers in this situation use their own money to stock their classrooms, but this particular student is in educational debt and currently working two additional jobs (at Sbux and Uber) to meet her financial obligations. And her school district actually has pay reductions for teachers on the table for the coming year in hopes of balancing its budget.

If you can help with a donation, here’s her GoFundMe. Here’s her amazon wish list. If you have books in your possession that would be appropriate for fourteen- to eighteen-year-olds that you won’t miss and can afford to send to her (they do not need to be literary classics, or in perfect condition), let me know via the contact link at right, and I will be happy to share her mailing address. Spanish-language books are welcome, too.

Thanks for reading and considering this.

If you want to go to ballet with Richard Armitage …

well, you probably can’t. Bummer! But there are some excerpts from the production here.

Looks like they saw Sleeping Beauty

Forbes said “evening,” but last night it was opera (Verdi). This afternoon’s show was Tchaikowsky’s Sleeping Beauty. Perhaps they went out for dinner afterwards.

Richard Armitage and Michelle Forbes at ballet

[and you don’t have to understand German to enjoy it]

Thank you for a beautiful night at the ballet @RCArmitage! ♥️♥️♥️#DeutcheOperBerlin #Berlin pic.twitter.com/6wul7hjOsz

— Michelle Forbes (@MishkaForbes) June 25, 2017

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