The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of . . .
Is some pretty weird shit, apparently.
As if in vengeance for all the nights I’ve missed, last night I dreamed in spades, waking up fitfully in between so that I remember them all.
Knowing that other people’s dreams are nearly the most boring thing on Earth, falling only slightly behind other people’s children, I still insist that you have the option of reading about them - ‘cause, hey, one of them had s-e-x in it.
First dream, a generic anxiety-type dream (as myself - I must clarify that I am often/usually someone else in my dreams).
I am completely alone. I don’t know where anyone is, my husband, my friends, nobody. I am lost, wandering aimlessly about the streets. I have no phone, noplace is open, I cannot call for help. I see no familiar cars. I go into the place where I used to take guitar lessons about twelve years ago. The same clerks are there, but when I go over to them they do not recognize me. They won’t let me use the phone unless I buy something. I have no money. I hear laughing from the back room. It is my guitar teacher. I used to have a life-threatening crush on him, seriously wanted to run away with him. I go over to him. He looks different, older, fatter, unshaven. In short, like Hell. He also does not recognize me. I have lost too much weight, and the clothes I am wearing are too different (for those who don’t know, I’ve lost 70 pounds over the past couple years). I try to tell him who I am, that I’ve missed him and hey, what’s been going on, how’s the wife, kid, etc., but he doesn’t understand my words. I am apparently speaking Portuguese or something. At last, sobbing with frustration, I summon up all my force of dream-will and I make myself fat again.
Whereupon everyone recognizes me, and Dart, the store owner, says “Well then. Okay. I’ll call your mother.” And proceeds to do just that. I am still fat at the end of my dream.
This is obviously partly due to the fact that, indeed, my ancient friend S did not recognize me for precisely those reasons when I went to see her a couple weeks ago. And also partly due to the fact that my lifestyle of late has caused me serious fallout in a lot of relationships. I’m too busy to keep up because for once in my life I am taking care of myself. There’s other stuff going on, but frankly, I don’t want to examine it too closely.
After getting back to sleep despite the mockingbird screaming outside my window like a goddamn wind-up toy, I slipped effortlessly into the following dream about one of my characters, Argent. He is very in love with -
Symphony pulls me into the little kitchen. We’re not in the family hall, I think it’s the summer house near Dover. Outside it’s late afternoon, the light is all goldy. The chopping-block is overhung with wine-bottles and glasses in cabinets of dark wood. Her hands are on me as I try to manage the makings of a stew, and Symphony, darling, this isn’t the place for it, but she doesn’t care to hear, and I can’t really cook anyway so I gladly abandon the project in favor of her coaxing touch, slow, apparent hours of her mouth lingering on mine, then lower, as I watch her take me down to the last inch, her clever fingers deftly plucking me apart, never needing to be told there and there and, oh, there, turning me, teasing me, fingers and shameless tongue insinuating themselves in the most private places of my body, and I lulled to such torpor by the pleasure she offers that I do nothing more than offer myself to her in turn until I am weak with want, and fall to the cracked red tile floor with her and am lost there in a dream of amber-scented skin and tight wetnesses, musk and salt spread on my skin, and my own taste, heady on her breath.
I sleep there, and as I sleep, I dream (adreamwithinadream) of the old Academy, of John, who seems unsurprised to see me there. I know it is a dream-place, but he seems real, in all ways my old friend, not the enemy he has become. He hasn’t changed a day, in poor light could still be my twin, with his shimmering fall of black silk hair (oh, I was always so jealous), his eyes that cold (murderous) blue, blue as skies above winter wastes. Skin paler even than mine. “What do you want?” he asks, tonelessly. I have invaded his dream. He waits with a hand upon his writing desk for me to answer.
I stammer. “I had to tell you,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
“And I still don’t, so get on with it, or get out. This is my place.” This is not before the bad times, I remember. This is a dream, and we are the worst of enemies. Wizards both, and I wonder if we could kill each other like this, in our sleep. But I step over to him, and he doesn’t resist when I kiss him. All the nights I lay awake, thinking that it was all I wanted, and I have it now, and it isn’t. It is just a dream, and when I take him in my arms, I have just enough time to feel his solidity, his weight, so much bigger than a girl, and yet still slight. I always did outweigh him. And then it begins to unravel, like ribbon unspooling loosely, and I can’t hold the ends of it. One of us is waking. He vanishes, I follow, into grey, drowsy slumber, until I really do wake up.
Which left me more confused than ever - a dream within a dream is rare, especially one that is so completely from the point of view of the character that my own agency was undetectable.
The last dream was one of those flashes I have - something trying to get out. A new idea, a new character. A witch-hunter in colonial America, Jerusalem Black. Very cool. Wasn’t much there except shooting stuff and things exploding, and lots of rearing, plunging horses. And guys with cool scars.
There were also dreams about spaceships (see Legion of Space!, yesterday, for the likely cause) and kittens (no doubt due to the cuteness of same yesterday at M & J’s - they have two new additions to the family). Also - dying parrots, glittery fishtanks, and a giant crab.
Stop me before I kill again.
(Anyway . . . the Argent dream would have had more detail, but honestly, he’s chary about you people - you’re my friends, not his -- and insists that he won’t use foul language in front of you, or go into too much pornographic detail, until he knows that it won’t bother you. Uncharacteristically prissy, but, then, he was dreaming about Symphony, who is the only known human being to bring the prig out of that little slut.)
Do you see what I mean? I must be going crazy.
I’m off to exercise. Maybe more updates later.
link
As if in vengeance for all the nights I’ve missed, last night I dreamed in spades, waking up fitfully in between so that I remember them all.
Knowing that other people’s dreams are nearly the most boring thing on Earth, falling only slightly behind other people’s children, I still insist that you have the option of reading about them - ‘cause, hey, one of them had s-e-x in it.
First dream, a generic anxiety-type dream (as myself - I must clarify that I am often/usually someone else in my dreams).
I am completely alone. I don’t know where anyone is, my husband, my friends, nobody. I am lost, wandering aimlessly about the streets. I have no phone, noplace is open, I cannot call for help. I see no familiar cars. I go into the place where I used to take guitar lessons about twelve years ago. The same clerks are there, but when I go over to them they do not recognize me. They won’t let me use the phone unless I buy something. I have no money. I hear laughing from the back room. It is my guitar teacher. I used to have a life-threatening crush on him, seriously wanted to run away with him. I go over to him. He looks different, older, fatter, unshaven. In short, like Hell. He also does not recognize me. I have lost too much weight, and the clothes I am wearing are too different (for those who don’t know, I’ve lost 70 pounds over the past couple years). I try to tell him who I am, that I’ve missed him and hey, what’s been going on, how’s the wife, kid, etc., but he doesn’t understand my words. I am apparently speaking Portuguese or something. At last, sobbing with frustration, I summon up all my force of dream-will and I make myself fat again.
Whereupon everyone recognizes me, and Dart, the store owner, says “Well then. Okay. I’ll call your mother.” And proceeds to do just that. I am still fat at the end of my dream.
This is obviously partly due to the fact that, indeed, my ancient friend S did not recognize me for precisely those reasons when I went to see her a couple weeks ago. And also partly due to the fact that my lifestyle of late has caused me serious fallout in a lot of relationships. I’m too busy to keep up because for once in my life I am taking care of myself. There’s other stuff going on, but frankly, I don’t want to examine it too closely.
After getting back to sleep despite the mockingbird screaming outside my window like a goddamn wind-up toy, I slipped effortlessly into the following dream about one of my characters, Argent. He is very in love with -
Symphony pulls me into the little kitchen. We’re not in the family hall, I think it’s the summer house near Dover. Outside it’s late afternoon, the light is all goldy. The chopping-block is overhung with wine-bottles and glasses in cabinets of dark wood. Her hands are on me as I try to manage the makings of a stew, and Symphony, darling, this isn’t the place for it, but she doesn’t care to hear, and I can’t really cook anyway so I gladly abandon the project in favor of her coaxing touch, slow, apparent hours of her mouth lingering on mine, then lower, as I watch her take me down to the last inch, her clever fingers deftly plucking me apart, never needing to be told there and there and, oh, there, turning me, teasing me, fingers and shameless tongue insinuating themselves in the most private places of my body, and I lulled to such torpor by the pleasure she offers that I do nothing more than offer myself to her in turn until I am weak with want, and fall to the cracked red tile floor with her and am lost there in a dream of amber-scented skin and tight wetnesses, musk and salt spread on my skin, and my own taste, heady on her breath.
I sleep there, and as I sleep, I dream (adreamwithinadream) of the old Academy, of John, who seems unsurprised to see me there. I know it is a dream-place, but he seems real, in all ways my old friend, not the enemy he has become. He hasn’t changed a day, in poor light could still be my twin, with his shimmering fall of black silk hair (oh, I was always so jealous), his eyes that cold (murderous) blue, blue as skies above winter wastes. Skin paler even than mine. “What do you want?” he asks, tonelessly. I have invaded his dream. He waits with a hand upon his writing desk for me to answer.
I stammer. “I had to tell you,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
“And I still don’t, so get on with it, or get out. This is my place.” This is not before the bad times, I remember. This is a dream, and we are the worst of enemies. Wizards both, and I wonder if we could kill each other like this, in our sleep. But I step over to him, and he doesn’t resist when I kiss him. All the nights I lay awake, thinking that it was all I wanted, and I have it now, and it isn’t. It is just a dream, and when I take him in my arms, I have just enough time to feel his solidity, his weight, so much bigger than a girl, and yet still slight. I always did outweigh him. And then it begins to unravel, like ribbon unspooling loosely, and I can’t hold the ends of it. One of us is waking. He vanishes, I follow, into grey, drowsy slumber, until I really do wake up.
Which left me more confused than ever - a dream within a dream is rare, especially one that is so completely from the point of view of the character that my own agency was undetectable.
The last dream was one of those flashes I have - something trying to get out. A new idea, a new character. A witch-hunter in colonial America, Jerusalem Black. Very cool. Wasn’t much there except shooting stuff and things exploding, and lots of rearing, plunging horses. And guys with cool scars.
There were also dreams about spaceships (see Legion of Space!, yesterday, for the likely cause) and kittens (no doubt due to the cuteness of same yesterday at M & J’s - they have two new additions to the family). Also - dying parrots, glittery fishtanks, and a giant crab.
Stop me before I kill again.
(Anyway . . . the Argent dream would have had more detail, but honestly, he’s chary about you people - you’re my friends, not his -- and insists that he won’t use foul language in front of you, or go into too much pornographic detail, until he knows that it won’t bother you. Uncharacteristically prissy, but, then, he was dreaming about Symphony, who is the only known human being to bring the prig out of that little slut.)
Do you see what I mean? I must be going crazy.
I’m off to exercise. Maybe more updates later.
link