For my second dream, I would like to share with you the longest and most diverse of my dream journals. The placeholder "FZZZZZ" indicates that that part of the dream was lost or forgotten before I wrote it down. The length indicates how much I think is missing there.
I'm actually going to split this dream into two posts because it is so long and the two halves are almost completely unrelated. The first part is entitled "My Funeral" and the second is entitled "Dragon Riding" which you'll have to wait a while to read! Ha! That's sure to make my three readers come back!
My Funeral
FZZZZZZZZZZ
In something like a bank maybe? Plastic chairs all around like the old ones in the Commons at Mechuwana. Layout of the room is unknown. I have been showing two potentially evil people (I didn't know they were evil until later) my casting photos for Margaret in The Hazards of Love on my laptop. For some reason it wasn't working. the wrong photos were coming up; they were just landscapes.
I don't know if that's what made these two angry or if it was someone or something else. But there's a brief period of FZZZZ and then I'm running from someone in this bank. I know they want to kill me. But if they can't find me they can't kill me. So I run and hide underneath and behind two stacks of chairs. Someone is sitting in one chair and I peer out from behind their legs at the now-chaotic crowd, hoping not to see my attacker. My laptop is on another chair above me. The person sitting in the chair is either already dead or entirely unconcerned with the chaos.
Flash of white.
FZZZZZ
I'm wandering around in a large spacious building which is filled with friends and relatives. The building is on an ocean cove (similar to Swan's Island).
I soon discover that this is my funeral (of a sort), as people are lamenting my death.
I shift in the dream and am standing on a flat field of layered ashes surrounded by stones. It is set into a hill and has an entrance that is still standing in the hill. I figure out that this was the bank; it seems the flash of light was an explosion. There are people moving around, working. Clearing debris and fixing up the border rock foundation. They are building something. I ask what, to nobody in particular. Patrick Raph replies that they are building a memorial to the dead. He wasn't replying to me, but to the air or someone else. I'm dead after all. It was weird.
(This next bit felt very separate from the rest of the dream) I think I wandered down the hill to some British girl and talked with her for a while. I cannot remember about what. I also tried to speak more with my friends and relatives until I realized for certain I was dead.
But I still have the feeling that I'm not dead. So I walk over to where I think the corner was where the chairs were that I'd hid under. I either drop through the ground or off the edge of a short cliff so that I'm looking at a cross section of ashes. I realize I must be alive in there somewhere. I start clawing at the soft ash more and more urgently. At one point I hear a faint noise. The ash in front of me starts to move more than what I'm clawing away. I touch a hand as it pokes out. I am now the one clawing out. A strong hand grabs mine and hauls me out of the ashes. People are astonished.
Some woman immediately grabs me and in a flurry of speed teleports me back to a spacious room. I am suddenly an infant in her arms.
People are amazed that I am alive. At some point I determine that my laptop may have been found by someone who may have grabbed it to preserve what they could, or to steal it and leave me to die. So I find my laptop.
But I'm still an infant. This half of the dream ends here. I couldn't help but notice that I was born again out of ashes in this dream. I might've spent the day following this dream thinking about phoenixes if it weren't for the rest of my dreaming that night. Stay tuned for my next post as I ride a dragon.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Saturday, September 22, 2012
100th less 4 - Dream Journal #1
So I thought that today I would put up my 100th blog post. Turns out this is only my 96th blog post because the number I had been going by included 4 unpublished drafts of posts I'd never finished. Whoops.
These included my long-awaited "Why I can't stand Tarantino" rant, a post about why you shouldn't always be a consumer of ideas, but a producer of them, and two unfinished dream journal posts. I didn't realize that these drafts were contributing to the total post number till just now.
So, in order to reach that 100th post I will be giving you regular updates for a while! Woooo! And I'm not lying about it either. By the time this post is published I'll have three more written and automatically scheduled to go up.
As kind of a lead-up to my 100th post, these next three updates will be dream journal posts and the 99th will be the "consumer of ideas" draft fleshed out. The 100th post isn't about dreams specifically, but dreams are a part of it.
Read more after the break...
These included my long-awaited "Why I can't stand Tarantino" rant, a post about why you shouldn't always be a consumer of ideas, but a producer of them, and two unfinished dream journal posts. I didn't realize that these drafts were contributing to the total post number till just now.
So, in order to reach that 100th post I will be giving you regular updates for a while! Woooo! And I'm not lying about it either. By the time this post is published I'll have three more written and automatically scheduled to go up.
As kind of a lead-up to my 100th post, these next three updates will be dream journal posts and the 99th will be the "consumer of ideas" draft fleshed out. The 100th post isn't about dreams specifically, but dreams are a part of it.
Read more after the break...
Monday, May 28, 2012
The Speed of Life
Facebook is all well and good for staying in touch with people and posting little blips about my life but I still really like the blogger platform for getting into detail about what's up. So here's whats up!
I've finished off my second year of college at NESCom. Completely weird being halfway done college. If life continues to accelerate at this rate I'll be 80 when I think I should be 34. I've always found it depressing that each summer will seem shorter and shorter because they occupy a smaller and smaller percentage of my total life. It's strange to think that as I age and the acceleration increases the pace of individual moments will slow in my old age. I don't know if those two factors will balance each other out or not. There's got to be some weird quantum psychological physics going on there. I know I shouldn't have any thoughts on this topic at all seeing as I'm only 20 years old and still getting started with this whole life business, but I visited my grandfather's graveyard twice within the past two days and it got me all thoughtful and philosophical.
I'm in Vermont right now with my grandmother for Memorial Day weekend. We go up to the graveyard at least once every time we are in the area. His grave sits in a small graveyard situated at the top of a little hill surrounded by trees. A break in the trees provides a view of Mount Mansfield, the rock around which my grandparents' lives revolved. My grandfather was a skier, and worked on the mountain for a time. He met my grandmother on the slopes.
I'd been to the graveyard many times before, but this time was different. The air was cool but not chilly and there was a stillness in the air. I'd never really looked around much when I came, just beelined to the grave and then soon left. Near the entrance, sitting between two rows of headstones, is a tree stump. I saw it and initially thought the stump should be removed, as it was in the way and disrupting the walk to my grandfather's grave. On closer inspection I saw the stump was quite old and was slowly decomposing into dirt. Small flowers and plants covered the stump and were growing strong from the nourishment. It's not an original observation but the slow death of that stump was the perfect compliment to the slow decay of the graveyard itself. When the tree was still alive it likely provided shade to those visiting the graveyard. The tree didn't think about the speed of life; it grew each spring and stopped each fall. Every year was just about the same. As it stood there people accelerated into the graves around it till finally someone decided to cut it down lest it topple and disrupt the flow of humanity into the ground.
As I entered the graveyard this time and looked around, I saw the usual myriad of headstones in their many styles, shapes, and stages of decay. From uneven rock markers worn by wind and rain to the point where any inscription that may have existed is long gone to the dark, gleaming marble monoliths which ignore the forces of nature altogether. Some stones lay flat, keeled over either by a heartless kick or their crumbling bases, obscuring the names and dates beneath 300 pounds of rock. One stone I saw was criss-crossed with seams of moss in so many directions I was unsure how it had not split apart and crumbled like so many others. I saw a small, simple stone in memorial to a woman who "passed away in her 90th year of age" while nearby a large slab paid tribute to a girl of only two. Their lives were lived at exponentially different speeds but both came to a final stop on that same little hill.
I wandered amidst the stones for a while as my grandmother sat on the engraved bench monument placed there for her and her husband. I stood in the middle of the graveyard and imagined the dead laid out in neat rows, six feet down, resting lightly beneath their thousand pound nametags.
As I stood there I recalled my grandmother's new favorite saying: "I'm headed from slow to stop," a phrase she says her mother used frequently in her later years. My grandmother has had diabetes for over 60 years, and while she must constantly deal with the complications and hurdles presented by type I diabetes, she continues to live vivaciously. I thought about the speed of life, how it both hurtles along faster and faster and comes to a stop from a slow and steady pace. I don't think there's any metaphor I could use to accurately mirror the way life works and I don't think at age 20 I should even try. I do think that my grandmother's life is headed from fast to stop, and knowing her, on this particular road she'll have half the police force after her and be five counties away before she has to pay her speeding ticket.
I've finished off my second year of college at NESCom. Completely weird being halfway done college. If life continues to accelerate at this rate I'll be 80 when I think I should be 34. I've always found it depressing that each summer will seem shorter and shorter because they occupy a smaller and smaller percentage of my total life. It's strange to think that as I age and the acceleration increases the pace of individual moments will slow in my old age. I don't know if those two factors will balance each other out or not. There's got to be some weird quantum psychological physics going on there. I know I shouldn't have any thoughts on this topic at all seeing as I'm only 20 years old and still getting started with this whole life business, but I visited my grandfather's graveyard twice within the past two days and it got me all thoughtful and philosophical.
I'm in Vermont right now with my grandmother for Memorial Day weekend. We go up to the graveyard at least once every time we are in the area. His grave sits in a small graveyard situated at the top of a little hill surrounded by trees. A break in the trees provides a view of Mount Mansfield, the rock around which my grandparents' lives revolved. My grandfather was a skier, and worked on the mountain for a time. He met my grandmother on the slopes.
I'd been to the graveyard many times before, but this time was different. The air was cool but not chilly and there was a stillness in the air. I'd never really looked around much when I came, just beelined to the grave and then soon left. Near the entrance, sitting between two rows of headstones, is a tree stump. I saw it and initially thought the stump should be removed, as it was in the way and disrupting the walk to my grandfather's grave. On closer inspection I saw the stump was quite old and was slowly decomposing into dirt. Small flowers and plants covered the stump and were growing strong from the nourishment. It's not an original observation but the slow death of that stump was the perfect compliment to the slow decay of the graveyard itself. When the tree was still alive it likely provided shade to those visiting the graveyard. The tree didn't think about the speed of life; it grew each spring and stopped each fall. Every year was just about the same. As it stood there people accelerated into the graves around it till finally someone decided to cut it down lest it topple and disrupt the flow of humanity into the ground.
As I entered the graveyard this time and looked around, I saw the usual myriad of headstones in their many styles, shapes, and stages of decay. From uneven rock markers worn by wind and rain to the point where any inscription that may have existed is long gone to the dark, gleaming marble monoliths which ignore the forces of nature altogether. Some stones lay flat, keeled over either by a heartless kick or their crumbling bases, obscuring the names and dates beneath 300 pounds of rock. One stone I saw was criss-crossed with seams of moss in so many directions I was unsure how it had not split apart and crumbled like so many others. I saw a small, simple stone in memorial to a woman who "passed away in her 90th year of age" while nearby a large slab paid tribute to a girl of only two. Their lives were lived at exponentially different speeds but both came to a final stop on that same little hill.
I wandered amidst the stones for a while as my grandmother sat on the engraved bench monument placed there for her and her husband. I stood in the middle of the graveyard and imagined the dead laid out in neat rows, six feet down, resting lightly beneath their thousand pound nametags.
As I stood there I recalled my grandmother's new favorite saying: "I'm headed from slow to stop," a phrase she says her mother used frequently in her later years. My grandmother has had diabetes for over 60 years, and while she must constantly deal with the complications and hurdles presented by type I diabetes, she continues to live vivaciously. I thought about the speed of life, how it both hurtles along faster and faster and comes to a stop from a slow and steady pace. I don't think there's any metaphor I could use to accurately mirror the way life works and I don't think at age 20 I should even try. I do think that my grandmother's life is headed from fast to stop, and knowing her, on this particular road she'll have half the police force after her and be five counties away before she has to pay her speeding ticket.
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