sample my delicious baked alaska
What's your favorite dream you've ever had? (If you can remember.)
I don't remember my dreams often, but the ones I can recall are almost invariably entertaining. I keep a (very, very sporadic) dream journal-- well, I suppose it's more accurate to say that I often write down those occasional dreams that I remember, because it isn't like I have a specific book or notepad set aside for the purpose-- so I can read my own morning-after accounts of dreams I had months or years ago. In 2007 and in the spring of 2010, for example, I seem to have had either an unusual number of vivid dreams or an unusually good memory of them. Here are two of the shorter, more interesting "journal" entries that I was able to find:
April 29, 2010
This man and woman, a couple, both in their mid-twenties, were driving slowly around a giant parking garage at night, in search of an exit. They were nervous, especially the man, and felt as though they were being watched. There was a noise behind the car, and suddenly Oscar Wilde leaped through the driver's side window and wrested the steering wheel away from the woman. He was carjacking them! Laughing maniacally, Oscar tried to leadfoot it, but the car couldn't go all that fast-- I know nothing about cars, but it was clear that this one was a rickety piece of crap. This frustrated Oscar enough that he just parked the car and griped to the couple about the car's crappiness for a while.
May 10, 2010
I rode on the back of a huge creature, an owl with yellow eyes as big as dishes and the wings of a flying fox. We flew above the rooftops of a city in the middle of the desert. To the west were mountains where priests and bandits alike flayed children, then stitched them inside sacks made of their own skin, topped by paper masks: a sacrifice to the gods who withheld the rain and kept the world red sand. We were going to stop them. My creature and I were going to find the rain and rescue all of the still-living children. I didn't know how we were going to manage it, but I was sure we wouldn't fail.
It's hard to decide on criteria when choosing a favorite dream, though. Sometimes I appreciate horrible nightmares more than beautiful dreams because when you wake up from a nightmare, the world seems like a relief. Just a relief. For once, something bad happened and it was just your imagination and there is no such thing as _______ in the waking world, silly girl. Something bad happened and you were granted this enormous mercy of opening your eyes again in your own bed, standing up unscathed, and discovering that the disaster is all gone and erased and the details are already fading, but you'll go through the day and even very ordinary stuff will seem special, miraculous, returned from where it had been lost, you thought it had been lost, forever. Even mundane, boring, dreary aspects of school and work and so on are welcome compared to where you were. They're not so bad after all. Not in the slightest.
If you could step into the life of a character from a film, who would it be?
Maybe Sophie, from Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle? Or Howl! And for all her problems, I wouldn't mind being Margot Tenenbaum (The Royal Tenenbaums). If I may pick characters from an absurdly terrible film that I enjoy in spite of myself, Tank Girl or Jet Girl (Tank Girl). Perhaps. I don't know! I spend a fair amount of time fantasizing about being able to do the things that fictional people get to do and so on, or being as effortlessly smart, attractive, fascinating, etc. as they are, or about having my own soundtrack, but most characters in films don't live really enviable lives. That wouldn't make for good stories. Then again, I would rather have my life be a good story than entirely, or even largely, happy and comfortable. At least, I think I think that. It's not what we're supposed to want, and I suspect my preference springs from a deep well of immaturity somewhere in my psyche, but hey...
While digging around my room in search of dreams I'd written down in old notebooks, I found a letter of encouragement from an old elementary school teacher (...of extracurricular theater classes, but still). I don't have any memory of this person! It's a very sweet, albeit blunt, note. I think some of the other kids don't quite know just what to make of you or how to relate to you and they get confused and probably scared sometimes, he wrote to ten-year-old me. Ten-year-old me was imaginative, physically expressive, and funny, according to this guy, but she was hypersensitive to everything and hadn't yet learned to channel that in any constructive way. I am always surprised that anyone liked me the way I was then; I'm surprised enough that people like me now.
I also found a manila folder I'd stuffed with papers I found in an abandoned-but-cluttered, water-damaged house in Swannanoa a couple years ago. Most of them are typewritten pages from what seems to be a novel-in-progress. Here's a paragraph from the bottom of page 50. (I have pages labeled as 49 through 62, plus page 92 for variety.) All errors are [sic]:
Soon the baked Alaska's were done, and Adam set them on the table. Adam was very pleased to see them eating the food he had prepared. Everyone was enjoying it so much, that they ate every bite that was on their plate. He smiled asking if anyone wanted a second helping. When no one answered, Adam laughed-- then said, "Case Dismissed!" Now if the two of you will go back into the living room-- I'll clear everything out of the way." Adelle helped Brent back into the living room, just as a movie was coming on the T.V...Telling Brent that she was going back into the kitchen to talk with Adam, she first made him comfortable in the big easy chair. When she entered the kitchen-- Adam was putting the last pan in place. Adelle walked over to pour her-self a half cup of coffee. "My, you are certainly handy to have around the house! You would make some woman an excellent chef and dishwasher!" Adam just laughed at her remarks. "Don't get any ideas, just because you are sick, and have me at a slight disadvantage. When we are married, I am going to be the head of the house-hold, and demand that you wait on me hand and foot." Adelle returning his witty mood remarked, "well we'll see who's going to be boss when that day comes!"
It's all more or less like that.