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March 28th, 2008

09:18 am - I had (another, weird) dream. Someone should decode my dreams. There was a car I couldn't quite control and I couldn't get where I was going until I got off and started walking. Said car kept trying to move on even when I got out and took the keys out of the ignition, like a restless horse pulling on its reins (I was trying to hold on to its open window). There were other people's children who kept taking my things, and I managed to get them back without upsetting anyone and even while entertaining said children, and pleasing their parents... But at the back of my mind, I knew they were making me waste my time when I was supposed to be getting to my own children who were waiting (patiently) for me. There were giant dogs (bear-hounds) that looked like super-oversized huskie puppies, threatening but not dangerous, held in check by their owners, but ready to wreak havoc on a dense crowd. And all that was happening at night, in a European-ish city (maybe Paris, but not quite -- dream-Paris, I suppose). The streets were rain-wet and shiny, but it wasn't raining. Then the encounter with the children was in some kind of building, either a school or a clinic, or maybe the atrium of a large apartment building. Some of the parents looked like people from real life, others were real-looking, but not anyone I knew. Do you think I'm feeling out of control? Nah, can't be that simple. Anyway, weird, complex dreams in color usually mean good writing ahead. Because if I can see dreams this vivid, I can watch the movie of my story. And if I can watch the movie of my story, I can write it down. Current Mood: perplexed Tags: creativity, dreams, writing

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March 5th, 2008

06:14 am - Toothpaste Dreams Some dreams are odd. Some are inscrutable. And then there are the moments when you wonder whether you were dreaming at all. I woke up thinking of toothpaste. No, it wasn't because it was morning, and, well, you know. I woke up thinking that the toothpaste my husband got wasn't the wrong brand after all, and that I had grumbled for no reason last night, so I should check it out and tell him. So I did. He didn't pick the wrong brand. The one I really hate. So I told him. I must have been dreaming of toothpaste just before I woke up. Or maybe the bathroom. Or maybe the store. But before that, I had a dream within a dream. Yes, I had a dream that I was dreaming. In that dream, I woke up and realized I had been dreaming. Usually, this will make me open my eyes and wake up almost all the way, and reconnect with the waking world. But last night, I stayed comfortably asleep and thought about my dream while still dreaming... and then I woke up. My life isn't confusing enough. My dreams have to be confusing. I don't mind weird, odd, and mixed-up dreams, because a morning after a good night's dreaming is a creative morning. But confusing dreams? That's just funny. And I'm not a comedian. Current Location: home Current Mood: confused Tags: creativity, dreams, life

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October 24th, 2007

06:25 am - Twilight Zone You're in Super Target. Yes, the store.  Somewhere in household goods. You're headed towards the grocery section. Suddenly, the ad announcement reminds you that for those shoppers observing Eastern Orthodox Lent, fish and dark rye bread and schmaltz herring are still available at the deli counter. And the announcement was made in Russian. No, it's not Moscow, and it's not Brighton Beach. It was yet another weird dream. Doubly weird: I don't normally remember languages explicitly (I suppose I have too many knocking around in my head). And why Lent? I usually dream in images. I don't dream religious concepts. Going to church, OK. It's a visual. But being reminded of Lent (it's still months away) in a Target? In my dream? Oh, whatever. My mom thought it was funny. My husband focused on the Lent part and tried to analyze the deep psychological underpinnings (gotta love academics). I still just think it was one of those weird dreams. Oh, and by the way, the moon is full. Current Location: home Current Mood: utterly confused Current Music: sweet silence Tags: creativity, dreams

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October 21st, 2007

08:24 am - Dreaming Maybe it's Halloween, and maybe it's something else. The next full moon is only 4 days away, after all. I've been having the strangest and most vivid dreams. For the most part, they've been postapocalyptic landscapes with fragments of sci-fi movies and images of places I've been as a child. Europe -- after World War The Ultimate. And I've had visits from dead relatives, and not the beyond-the-grave messages you'd expect, but relatives behaving as they did while alive. Well, symbolically, at least. Creating the same situations as in their lifetime, and stirring up the same emotions. I don't mind these dreams. They're not nightmares. They leave a tingle of aroused creativity in their wake. With a little luck, it doesn't go dormant that day and I can write at the drop of a hat (is that enough mixed metaphors?). But they can get pretty absurd, too. We had an exchange about bookstores and merchandising on one forum last week, namely how non-book products are displacing the actual books, and how sad that is for a BOOKstore. Last night, I had a dream about that store. It was so weird and vivid that when I woke up, I actually checked to see if I hadn't come down with a bug. But no. Anyway, in my dream, the whole top floor of the bookstore had been converted into a series of restaurants. The lower floor had calendars and journals, and hardly any books. I couldn't find ANY decent non-fiction, or even the usual selection of genre fiction. And I got lost on the top floor. It felt like an airport rather than a nice suite of restaurants. I talked to the managers of the store, who were quite nice, and encouraged me to write to corporate, and pretty much told me that it probably wouldn't help, although they hated the way their store was going, too. No explosions, no postapocalyptic visions, no monsters. As my daughters would say, "What up with dat?" Where did the action go? It's much more fun. Current Location: Home Current Mood: perplexed Current Music: Blessed Morning Silence Tags: creativity, dreams

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September 1st, 2007

08:32 am - Not a Freudian dream It is a sad day when dreaming of a chocolate cake is just... well, dreaming of chocolate cake. It could be so much more. It could be a glance into some deep recesses of the subconscious. It could be a metaphor for something completely different from chocolate cake (make up your own interpretation here). It could be angst, or guild, or misplaced something... It could be interesting. Or it could be just plain old craving for rich, sweet, sugary chocolate cake with creamy frosting and delicious cream, and red sprinkles all over. Oh yeah. Life without sugar can be hard, especially when it invades your dreams. I did worry that my blood sugar had spiked because of the fries I had last night with my healthy chicken salad (BTW, yes, you can still have McDonald's and control your diabetes, but only once in a great while). But I did good. My count was good. So it wasn't even a subconscious warning my body was sending me. No, it was a plain, old, boring craving for chocolate cake with red sprinkles. I guess I'll have to investigate sugar-free desserts and see what lactose free milk does to the recipe, and how white flour affects me. Isn't life fun these days? Current Location: home Current Mood: wistful Tags: diabetes, dreams, life

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May 3rd, 2007

08:22 am - One chicken, no head. That's how it felt yesterday. Which oddly enough, was not as distressing as you might think, because the headless chicken effect is not so much about losing your head, as about running around like crazy doing a hundred little things. And the hundred little things happened to be fun, like designing a small ad with PhotoShop on a Mac computer in the college graphics lab, and going up and down the stairs from my office to the said lab. Instead of sitting on my... sit-upon all day at my old computer doing charts. But I had misplaced my head. Rather than really lost it. And then I had this really weird dream. Not that my dreams are ever not weird. In my dream, I was driving some kind of vehicle that was morphing from a compact car into construction equipment by way of a hummer, and back again. And I was wearing wooden clogs, and I couldn’t find the brakes. Which didn’t work anyway. And the city I was driving through was a mixture of American suburbia, Paris, and French small towns. I sill managed not to run over anyone. Later, when I thought about it, and I realized that was the missing link to really turn my dream into a video game. Not enough violence. There was the action, the twisty streets, the color, the odd vehicles, the angry crowd... But no actual violence. That’s when reality hit and I found my head. I'm still too grounded in reality. Maybe I need to lose it a little more, and then I'll get published. Uh? Uh? No? My kids probably think I'm weird enough as it is. I talk to the computer after all. Current Mood: confused Tags: creativity, dreams, life

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February 8th, 2006

04:38 pm - Blah The blah is going around. I don't know who passed it to me, but I have it. No writing. No energy. Mind turning on itself and sending weird dreams. The kind you get when you have a fever. Pity you can't remember them well enough: they'd make nifty surrealistic stories. Like having grandma buy us (one of my daughters and me) some French baguette bread so that we could play with dough for lunch. Where was my second daughter in the meantime? Or was "the" daugher a composite of my two? And how does one "play with dough for lunch"? Even in my dream I knew I wasn't coherent. And then I woke up and realized my mother (the other grandma) had actually baked some real (and tasty) bread. But I still don't know how one "plays with dough for lunch". At least today I have the strength to post. It's better than yesterday when I sat and stared at everybody and moaned. Maybe tomorrow my brain will engage. That would be nice. Current Mood: ill Tags: dreams, illness

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