Friday, September 12, 2008

Dreams

As some of you may be (painfully) aware, I have rather fantastic(in the traditional sense of the word) dreams. I have frequently been tempted to start a dream journal, but it would just be too complicated. What really makes my dreams are the image, for instance what really made my dream the other night was that while following someone though a garden in front of the library in my home town I saw these fantastic piture plants. They were giant and bright green like lily pads with a diameter of almost a foot, they looked like up-side-down bells but half full of water. Really I'd want to paint that to explain it. Or another part of that dream was the sensation of walking across a muddy shore (I find the closer to waking up I am, the harder it is to move in dreams, it's like my body realizes that it can't move in real life and translates that into my dream)

Last night, or this morning, I had a swashbuckling dream. Maiden falls in love with hero, but hero is a bit of an anti-hero. She loves him, and even has some ill advised moments with him behind a dresser, but is taken away from him by her fiercely ethnic family (Greek? Italian? Jewish? who knows!) Some shenanigans later she is going up an elevator, that is slightly reminiscent of the rickety elevator in National Treasure, so read a period elevator for the setting of the dream, which is....swashbuckling times. Her beloved rigs the elevator such that instead of dropping her off at the party she's going to it takes her to the top floor of the building, which is built around a court yard type open place in the middle (sort of like the open places in the Marshall Fields). The hero leaps and swings across knocking her in. She grabs at the edge and I pull her out (thought I was her didn't you!) she tries to make up with the hero but he is taken away, by pirates? (my brain was convinced that this was the plot of the Pirates of Penzance, so he was Frederic and she was Mabel)

cut to bread being spread with a thick goo, a bit like really soft lard, and one small part on top being covered in rhubarb jam. Camera zooms out. The "bread" is giant and our hero lies down on it like a bed. It is in a green house. Maiden, who I am now perceiving in first person, comes to the outside of the green house. She is equally confused as the reader is with the situation, until she realizes that this is the hero's punishment, he is being poisoned to death with this substance, which she now realizes is lye. She goes to the glass and begs him why! why did he put her in such peril. He confesses that he thought that she did not love him, which is now seen to be a great misunderstanding. They kiss through the glass, he lies down on his bed of lye, and she leaves weeping.

my thought waking up, sometimes the Pirates of Penzance can't end happily.

What I can't give you here, and why I usually don't write down my dreams, are the images. I have very visually complex dreams. There are dreamscapes that I never forget, and there are dream scapes that I sometimes return to in other dreams. That is always weird because I usually realize it at some point in the dream.

So I wish I was a painter, because I have no lack of places to paint. Or perhaps just a better story teller. That would do.

3 comments:

Alex said...

this seems like one of those posts that Mia spoke of, where pretending you are in the room, speaking it out loud makes everything come together. It's a heck of an epic story.

My dreams usually leave me with one or two strong images (which might be plain, or very "dreamlike"), while the rest o fthe dream fades too quickly to remember. sometimes they repeat, and there are certain reams that I remember from the time I was in first grade, so they certainly have staying power.

My favorites dreams are former nightmares thatI remember, realize I am in a dream, and change the outcome as the night progresses. My least favorite are nightmares where I realize I am dreaming, and cannot do anything to stop the plodding doom I see before my characters.

Lisy said...

Do you really dream those things? Really? Or did you just make them up when you were awake to make dreaming-you seem more creative? I'm convinced that all people dream about is laundry and grocery shopping because they're just too tired to dream up anything else...

Embly said...

yes, I do really dream those things. I certainly couldn't come up with them while awake. Ask anyone who's ever had the pleasure of waking up near me.