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When Dreams are Themed

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.

I admit I was a bit quiet there for the last week or two.  I was taking care of my first two exams, both of which were take-home essays.  The prompts come out on Monday morning, and you have until early Friday afternoon to write your 3,000 words with primary and secondary sources.  Fun, and I totally dig the idea of a take-home essay for an exam.  (Less do I dig the fact that the essay exam is 75% of your grade.  Why not just make it 100%?)  University of Edinburgh ftw.  But that means my weeks were spent writing essay, not blog.

I still have one exam, but it’s a seated exam, i.e. I’ll be going to a building somewhere and sitting down to take a two-hour test.  It also happens to be purely in essay form, but it’s lots of little essays instead of one big nasty.

But after four years of studying literature and philosophy in college with creative writing thrown in the mix, 3,000 words just doesn’t feel very big anymore.  If overconfidence is a virtue, I’m just the cherry on the plum pudding of the world’s cocky currants.

The problem is that, previous awkward analogy notwithstanding, I’m generally comfortable with production of the written word.  As long as I know what I want to write, and know to some extent how I want to say it, I can write pretty quickly.  Particularly in an essay where it can be pretty straightforward.   By the end, this post will total a little more than 300 words.  Leave a comment and guess how long it took me to write, and I’ll announce the winner in my next post.  And with those couple essays a thing of the past, you’ll get a better chance to see me crank out words here instead of on some silly cultural comparison between 1984 and Silas Marner.  I think that’s what I wrote on.  I don’t really remember.  Which means great things for my chances of passing.

More Morse Code

Did you learn Morse code yet?

If you go to the Google homepage today you will see that they have.
The google image changes almost every day to match something unique in history or the current holiday or whatever their image guy thinks is fun.  Today the multigajillion dollar company has taken from the example of this humble blog and written out “google” in Morse code.

It should be read as a sort of snake, not across as two lines:  –.  —  —  –.  .-..  .

Semester in Review

More literature on the slate this semester.  The upside of being told to read good books for homework is that, well, you get to read good books.  The downside is they always make you do at least one per week.  For each class.  And if you’re at the University of Edinburgh, add on some articles, essays, and excerpts from other studies and/or the author’s own secondary work.  Yum.  Unless you can’t speed-read very well.  Then: ouch.

I’ve had some great courses this semester, though.   Metaphysics and Melancholy, which was interesting material (though a poorly organised and instructed class, imho) as well as Celtic Literature.

Celt lit has been a tad too historical for my tastes.  Not because I don’t want the history — I love getting the history — but because I want more of the literature.  On the other hand, it’s hard to get more of the literature because it’s all in Gaelic that somebody has to translate into English so those of us who don’t speak Gaelic fluently can study it.   It’s heavy on the poetry side of things, because for much of the periods we’ve studied that was the major medium.  No newspapers, no novels, just poets bringing the news back home or writing about politics and current events.  Even once things like printing presses and newspapers found their way around and the poets’ role changed somewhat (I swear this isn’t going to be a class essay),  the poetry was as much a tool for communication of information or point of view as other forms of media.  Tennyson, Wordsworth, Elliot; not their kind of stuff.  In large part, celtic poetry has always revolved in one way or another around the identity of Gaelic peoples.  As such Gaelic poetry within Gaelic communities has had perhaps somewhat of a unique place in the world of western poetry. (Perhaps I will use on the exam after all.)  Today, at least or especially in America, poets have lost a lot of status.  They’re seen as members of a somewhat exclusive or even self-involved community.  Their works are at times viewed as aesthetic novelty rather than crucial explorations of the society and world in which they live.  I think many good poets maintain that poetic tradition, but there’s so much white noise in mass media these days that poetry gets drowned out, maybe.  Only a few heroes can shine through.  And I think many of the best-known poets come from places or communities where that sense of protecting identity is still integral to their work; where it’s not only a part of their project but the real force of their drive.  Case in point: Seamus Heaney.

Black American Fiction has also been a joy this semester.  Great class, awesome material, really good classmates who are always prepared for sterling discussion, top-notch ALG with really fun and capable people and just a general [joy joy joy].  It was interesting and kind of fun, honestly, to be the only American in the class for the first couple weeks.  Apart from one girl who’s a fourth-year American Studies major, it’s a lot of folks studying literature, history, or sociology of some sort.  The professor, Keith Hughes, a Scot, has been doing pretty much exactly this his whole life, so he’s fully aware of American history and many nuances of the literature.   The lass who’s been studying the stuff in Uni also has a surprisingly good grasp of things and even of several interesting and crucial historical facts that I’ve not known. (Did you know the first black to have poetry published in America was a woman from Boston?  Her master saw the material and asked if he could try to get it published for her.  The publishers formed a panel to cross-examine her on the poetry since they didn’t believe a negroe could produce poetry of such excellent quality.  She satisfied them, and it was published.  Bravo, Phillis Wheatley.  Even Voltaire himself praised you.)

But even with those two, I sort of felt like I had a leg up on the class.  I had not only a better general grasp of American history, but an easier understanding of how that history might have influenced the mindsets of our authors, or the context in which they were writing, or interpretations of poetic illusions, or insight into cultural threads that was more experiential than academic.  In any case, the advantage disappeared after a few weeks as many of the bright students in the class quickly picked up a good sense of many relevant pieces to the puzzle, but it’s been a very fun class to be a part of and some great reading material.  It’s pretty nice, too, to get a bit of an outside perspective on the stuff — to see how intelligent and thoughtful ‘foreigners’ might see the literature, the culture, the history.  That’s one of the reasons I took the class in the first place, and it’s really worked out.

Exams have hit now and last for basically a month with various essays and tests peppering the period, but it’s been a good semester of learning and it’s the kind of stuff that I’ll want to come back to in the future for sure, to re-read and even to study as well.  I feel the same way about Fiction in the Age of the Machine, one of my classes from fall semester.  There’s just so much ground covered at a book (plus) per week and it’s such great material, there’s no way to give it all the attention it really deserves in one semester — particularly at the undergraduate level.  So I’ll spend some more weeks on each book and area that catches my fancy in the future, spending months on certain groupings.  I suppose I could lead a book-group at the library or something, or form a club if there’s local interest.  They can all buy me dinner since I’ll be a penniless writer who spent his education reading books.

But hey, it’s worth it.

The After-dinner Menu

Quick note: I’ve started up accounts on Flickr (photos) and Twitter (statii, for lack of a better description).  If you’re not on Twitter, my regular 140-character updates should be viewable from the ‘sidebar’ at the bottom of the blog page.  (Looking into potential page designs that have the sidebar as an actual sidebar so you can see my “tweets” from my blog more easily.)  Elsewise you can view the updates directly at twitter.com/sthorwall  and you can check in on photo updates at flickr.com/sthorwall.  Don’t bother going yet, I’m in the process of uploading spring break photos, which I will talk about in my blog before too long.

It was 18 degrees today.  18 means burningly warm.  The UK, like most of America, goes from the chillier months of winter to a gradual warming with a couple tauntingly sunny days here and there before growing shockingly cold again — usually with a suddenness that gives everyone a springtime cold.  After that comes the true warmth and a day or two that are borderline summerlike.  That was today.

We’ve had a lot of sunny days lately and during this winter even, so I never trust simply looking out my window and thinking, “oh look, sun and no snow.  Must be warm!” because we pretty much never see snow in Edinburgh.  A couple flurries and one or two falls of just enough white-fluffy to make you wish you had boots.  And a general constant greyness.  But that said, I’ve been rather surprised at the number of really sunny days we have had here even in the winter.  Ocean breeze whips the clouds away, maybe.

In any case, I look out the window and I see the sunny.  A while later I open the window to let in some fresh air and immediately begin to curse exams for not letting me spend the next week living outside.  At the park maybe, or in a tree.  It’s got that spring smell to it, and you suddenly realise you haven’t been truly breathing for the last several months.  Not like this.  This just tastes good.   Breathing during the winter is an involuntary process whose purpose is to supply the body’s blood cells and organs with the oxygen necessary to function regularly.  Breathing when spring hits is Mother Nature’s dessert, a culinary delight, gifted to us who have too long been enduring the cold porridge of the bleak midwinter.

Breathe deep and relax.
And if you’re still eating the porridge right now, don’t worry.  The pudding’s in the oven and almost ready.