First order of business: winner of the “guess my writing time” comments on the last post.
speedracer wins the prize for humour, but Kara wins the prize for accuracy. Actual writing time may have been something like 5-10 minutes, but given that I was simultaneously watching a movie on TV and playing chess online, the entry was posted something like an hour and a half after initiation.
I’m a big fan of dreams. They come in such variety and are expressed so uniquely by so many people. What one person considers absurdly strange dreams another might consider normal. What one considers normal another might consider mundane. They can be streamlined or all over the place, structured are extremely fluid, ecstatic or severely frightening. The combination of elements can give insights into a person’s thoughts, personality, values, or the bad sushi before bed. The possibilities are endless.
A few weeks ago I had a fantastic but slightly vague dream in which my high school drama teacher directed a fully orchestrated theatrical production of Sherlock Holmes. It’s unclear whether it was actually a musical with numbers and songs and choreographed dancing, or whether the orchestration was simply to provide a soundtrack for the affair. It starred a friend and I as Moriarty and Holmes. (Sidenote: junior year in high-school I held the co-lead in an 18th century English comedy. He played a large role as my character’s best friend; we were two 18th century English chaps in their twenties blahblahblah. Perhaps not entirely unrelated to the idea of Sherlock Holmes.) In the climactic scene, the giant stage was dimly lit with dark blue and a misted, foggy floor. It was at night, and Moriarty and I were locked in a duel to the death, fencing back and forth across the stage as the orchestra played the theme to the Godfather. We danced around a gigantic circular fountain in the middle of the stage, actually running, and the water splashed noiselessly as the audience eagerly tracked our movements. Neither man could gain the upper hand, and both dodged several fatal lunges.
Copyright 2009.
Moral of the story? I miss fencing on a truly epic scale.
A couple nights ago I had a rather vivid dream. Unfortunately much of it has escaped me by this point, but only a couple big details stuck out upon waking. It was perhaps influenced by watching “Dracula: Prince of Darkness” the night before, but only to the extent that our small company of maybe ten had decided to spend the night in the castle at the top of the hill. There was nothing remotely sinister about the dream; indeed most of the dream consisted of walking up the long forested hill (reminiscent of the Old Man of Storr — see future blog post) in the sunshine with good company, laughter, and light hearts. Probably the prime source of the prevalent joy was little Charlie. He was such a beautiful wee chap, all energetic and happy, little enough to carry and big enough to walk some of the distance on his own. Every few minutes he would run to a new partner and hold their hand as we walked along up the wide path towards the top. Truly we were all jealous for his attention, but just as pleased to see him getting along with someone else. After a little while he seemed to favour me exclusively, walking with me or bobbing around, and letting me carry him in my arms or on my back when he got tired. The tyke didn’t weigh a thing. Charlie and I played and laughed and entertained each other, and it just might be the finest uphill walk to a castle I’ve never had.
On a sidenote, the end of the dream was some sort of flashback to Charlie’s birth, when we all — the same group that made the walk up the hill — were deciding what to name him. We wanted something distinguished, something cool, and yet something that would have an easy playful nickname and not need to be taken too seriously. We decided on Charles Barkley.
Disturbing anecdote: the next morning when I woke up I was groggier than usual. I opened the door to the fridge and saw two circular objects on a little plate I had left there overnight. What are those? I thought. Creme-filled doughnuts! I haven’t had doughnuts in so long! I was pretty excited. Then: Wait, I don’t remember getting donuts. When did I get donuts? How did those get in my fridge? Quite suddenly I realised that those were NOT in fact do(ugh)nuts, but two thick lamb burgers that I had let thaw overnight. Initially repulsed, I quickly recovered and forcefully reminded myself that two thick, juicy lamb burgers were just as exciting and appetising, albeit not immediately upon waking.
Moral of the story? Try not to confuse donuts and burgers. It’s a rather jarring mental sensation.
Comment! with one of your favourite, most vivid, or most recent dreams. If you’d rather post something besides a dream, tell me about that hilarious time when you confused two rather dissimilar items. Like earlier when I confused the Tesco baked beans for the Branson baked beans. Boy was that a hoot.
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Oh man, there are several weird dreams that I’ve had lately, and over the years in general. My subconscious goes crazy on me, combining the most random thoughts into one absurd dream. I suppose I’ll share 2 of my most vivid childhood dreams:
Dream 1) I was being stalked by an evil horse with red eyes and chicken feet. That’s right- it had the ugliest chicken feet ever, and I saw it write me evil, threatening letters with those feet! I woke up terrified, especially since I was sleeping over at a friend’s house. ::shudder::
Dream 2) I was on the Titanic the night it sank and I was placed on a lifeboat…only somehow this was a super-powered modern motor boat that didn’t quite exist in the early 1900s…and we were headed straight for this giant wall but before we’d hit it, the dream would blackout…and this would repeat itself several times.
Last summer I decided that I was missing out on a huge part of life by having never made pasta from scratch. So I went to my favorite store, where I buy things in bulk, and along with my other shopping needs I picked up semolina flour for pasta making.
The next evening I began to roll out pasta for ravioli. I noticed that the dough was a little weird. But I persevered and made my ravioli. Upon finishing it and tasting it I was disappointed to find that it had the texture of polenta.
It was then that it struck me that I had also bought cornmeal the day before. Upon further investigation it turned out that I had mixed up the semolina flour and corn meal! *facepalm*
(Tried the ravioli with semolina flour the next day and it was delicious.)
This is one I had last semester, and it’s a real doozy. I’m not joking, it’s pretty ridiculous. You’ll see.
I occasionally have really vivid dreams that I recollect really well, aside from the normal muddle that I remember half way. This was one of the former. It starts like this:
I’m in an X-Files episode, one with Agent Dogget, Reyes, and Mulder are tracking this lizard monster who turns out to be a bio-geneticist (if that’s a real word) who did experiements on himself.
so in the dream, it picks up with me and someone else running in the basement tunnels trying to escape from lizard-man. I jump through a window, and suddenly I’m in this large open outdoor space on the side of a cliff, with a forest and river below me and far away. So I’m on this granite cliff thing, and the lizard-man chases after me on it, spitting it’s poison (which blinds you and eventually liquifies you) at me, which I counteract by throwing handfulls of snow/sand into the air to mix with it befoe it hits me.
We do this for a while before I decide to jump off the cliff while holding onto a balloon-like bladder under one arm that keeps me airborn. Kind of wobbly, though, and I always seem to sink quickly. But even though I’ve now escaped from the lizard-man, a Dragon appears! And I know the lizard-man was only the Dragon’s minion, and now the Dragon is mad at me for escaping.
I clutch my bladder-balloon tightly and head for the river, but the Dragon follows closely. I try to steer for patches of sunlight, because the dragon is evil and sunlight hurts it–he tries to stay in the shade. But when I reach the river he dives beneath it and follows underneath me.
Very afraid, I head for this tower/castle I see. I manage to get inside it before the dragon reaches me, but while I’m running around inside looking for a safe place, there’s this other part of me that knows that this is the dragon’s castle, and no matter which room I end up in, that’s the room the dragon will kill me in, because that’s just how it works. Well, I end up on the top of this tower with a dog and an iguana like creature. The Dragon is blowing fire at us over the ramparts, and I decide the only option is to climb down. So I wrap the iguana up in my sweater and tie it to my waist, and I put the dog around my neck. By this point, the tower is only two stories high, so the climb down isn’t too bad. I head for a nearby stream, but while I’m trying to swim away, the Dragon finds me!
I quickly lie and say that I’m an evil mercenary looking for employment, and the Dragon hires me to work in his kitchen. so I go back to the tower and begin cooking the food I find. It’s a sort of outdoor kitchen with a counter built into the side of the tower. On the counter is a few bowls filled with ground beef and egg and milk, ground chicken, and pastry pieces. There’s also an onion and a tiny hand sized grater. So I start cooking. I mix the ground beef mixture with the ground chicken and the pastry squares all up, then I have to grate the medium sized onion with the small grater, and I know that dreams don’t really have a time, but I promise you, grating that onion took forever. then I hear that the Dragon has some guests inside.
I go inside, and Mel Gibson is one of the guests, and he asks me if I have any Fuzzy Noodle Pie. Now, I have no idea what Fuzzy Noodle Pie is, but I know I don’t have it, I only have the weird ground meat mixture. So I tell him sorry, and I go back to cooking.
Tell me that is not one of the weirdest dreams ever. I dare you. I further dare you to come up with a recipe for Fuzzy Noodle pie. I’ve tried to look for one, and it doesn’t exist. I don’t know what it is, but Mel Gibson wants one.
Wow. I don’t know if I can top Tai, but here’s what I’ve got. It’s from 2 nights ago.
This is what it entails: Jack Black in a music video, a swimming pool, someone else who never left the pool and was mostly a head bobbing in the water (someone from Narnia, I think…one of the humans but I don’t know outside of the dream who it was) who eventually morphed into Adam Sandler and then disappeared, and camera movement ONLY to the right. When it had panned all the way to the other end of the pool (very very long pool – not a circular movement to the right, but rather linear movement) it just stopped moving and that was the view for the rest of the dream.
Now it must be mentioned that there were no cameras to film it – it was like I was inside the finished video, but it was “really” happening.
Here we go; the dream begins:
We start with a fade in to Jack standing in front of the left edge of a pool. He starts singing and stepping backward toward the left end of the pool. You cannot see the whole pool. He takes about 3 steps backward, then lifts his leg back over the water (never looking behind him) and hops into the pool. No big splash, and his head stays below so long you are truly worried about his life. The music you didn’t notice until now crescendos and when it feels like it’s time for someone to start the next verse, Jack’s head comes above water at the exact moment and begins singing the next verse. He starts swimming/floating to the right, while still singing. This goes on for at least 5 minutes or so. During this time you notice that something small (a scrap of paper? you don’t know) is floating about an arm’s length diagonally in front of him (to the right).
Suddenly, around the bridge (of the song) he has to stop moving because there is a silver chain link fence prohibiting his movement. He goes underwater (you are still above) but you can see him hand something (a paperclip – that’s what it is! – that he grabbed from floating on the water by him) and hands it through the fence to a hand on the other side.
When he comes back up, you are on the other side of the fence. Jack waves and now you follow someone with longish hair(Narnia man?) who continues Jack’s path to the right. This person is not singing. You still hear Jack’s voice. This person suddenly dips below the water as he swirls around in circles (bobbing head) and when he comes back up he is Adam Sandler. Then almost immedieately the singing stops, and Adam is gone.
You continue watching the pool drift past you, you are moving to the right. Now you come to the farthest right side of the pool. I figure it has been about 1/2 and hour or so that you’ve been following the pool (what it feels like – the pool is really huge), but really how long are music videos? This thought actually crossed my mind in my dream. Now someone else comes up out of the pool. (Narnia man again? someone totally different? don’t know, but you do know the person – in the dream.) He comes walking out of the pool and goes into a room (a half-door has appeared in the wall by the end of the pool, to the right, of course) and when he comes back out a regular sized door (to the right, but not at the edge of the pool), he is in a white robe. Not sure why, maybe he was cold.
He comes over, gives you a bottle of water, and you sit down to talk together. Jack wanders back into the shot for a minute (from the left side of the “screen”) and does some crazy Jack-Black-style vocalizing (which lasted about 5 minutes itself), finishing out the song with a beautiful, well-held-out tenor note.
Fade to black.