Saturday, October 20, 2007

Do you wanna be?

Between a lot of tossing and turning due to my migraines and my cats waking me up constantly I had this (for me) fascinating dream:

Paris. I had to go some place, some starting point? To find it I looked on some map where the existing stores showed in small blue squares with a letter inside, I was excited to see how easy it was to find. It is vague how I got there, clicked on it and was taken to it? Or something ordinary like the subway? It was north-west of the center of Paris.

Walking through these typical roads under trees and tight houses. Getting dark (I think). Looking into one of the many lit shops, but it is not really a shop, it is a dressmaking place, or a couturier. It is nice and warm outside so the windows are open, I feel my yearning, remembering my own times back when. Somebody comes to the window and asks me if I would like to work as a model, as an inspiration? I love the beauty and love and care that surrounds this place and I can use money. And yes, if you do not think that I am too old for it now. So I am let in.

Awkward, not knowing where to go nor what exactly is expected from me I am trying to not get into anybody’s way. Follow me, follow me. I am ushered to the upper room where the lady of the house has her domain. A big room, made out of dreams. A room filled with niches and half-shadow, warmed with light puddles here and there, an old fashioned, red and gold laced sofa. A simple table to work.

She sets me down opposite of her. She needs help. Suddenly it is not about clothes and inspiration but code and HTML. It is a difficult problem for me. It hurts my head, trying to find a solution. I give it my best. I don’t think I find a perfect solution. She calls in more help, a coding guru and together we figure it out. I think in the end it is some QuickTime solution embedded into something, I remember reading the code behind it and going ‘aha’ and it makes sense, but else this part has pulled itself already too far back into the shadows of a fleeting dream.

I am back home. Now I want to get Bear to go there, I want to show him the place, it’s beauty, calmness, understanding, heart warmth and uniqueness. And I want to go and collect the money what had been promised.

He asks how I got there and I show him how simple it was. When we arrive at this beautiful place, the lady thinks that I should get $100 for my work. She is referring to the coding work I did for her, says that is its worth and not more because I also have learned and gleamed something from it and she hands me over the code and I stare at the numbers and the formula which stand there all by themselves in their un-personality.

But, but… I did not come here for this, that was just an added thing. I came to help for a dream and I was called upon to be inspiration and a model - was that nothing worth?

Bear comes to my aid and makes his point that this should be at least $450; it surely is 4.5x more worth than the numbers and the math. In that moment I feel anticipation and fear of no response or disapproval, bringing into being the melancholy of lost hope and the emptiness of not having been worth what I wanted to give, my efforts not acknowledged. At the same time wondering to myself how much worth I myself think it to be and not being able to put a number onto it but feeling it way beyond what the man to my defense had suggested. How DO you pay inspiration, how dare you put numbers on it? Who could ever put a number onto Michelangelo for his inspiration he gave with his frescos in the Sistine Chapel to millions? With the realizing of it not being possible the motion of, “even if not truly payable, SOME payment, some acknowledgement is in place and will put the balance back to the center”.

As dreams go, after that the story evaporated. I do not know if the lady of the house compensated or not, if I was worth anything as inspiration or not and the future still needs to be seen.

After that my migraine and the cat, cuddling close into me, were pushing and pulling me out of this warm place back into the world of solids and into the reality of another morning.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Unusual sleep.

Usually I sleep right around 7 hours.

Mostly I’m too eager to get the day going to sleep longer or I once again manage to get to bed so late that my schedule does not allow me the full amount.

Why this magic number 7?

I do actually quite good if I reach 6 3/4 hours but miserable when it’s below 6 1/2 hours. If I reach the full 7, then I’m all set for the day.

With awe do I remember the days when I easily would sleep 8 1/2 hours each day. Nowadays I have to force myself to make it to 7 1/2.

There are several reasons it has changed this much. It is NOT that I have a hard time falling a sleep - I’m usually gone within a minute or two, once the whole going to bed routine with Tricky (cat) coming to cuddle in my arm is over and he leaves and then settles in on his current sleeping spot.

It is the other end which is a challenge at times.

Number ONE being the fact that the amount of water I drink does not want to remain longer than 6 hours in my body. Even though I manage to somewhat sleepwalk to the bathroom, by the time I’m done, I am awake. Too little sleep or not.

Number TWO is Tricky, the cat. Sometimes he just wants to smooch in the morning, sometimes he thinks it is time for me to get up for whatever reason (play, feed him, just get up) and he has such an insisting manner of coming up to cuddle, settle for a second, move, cuddle (push his head into my hand or my elbow), settle for a second, wash-rinse-and-repeat… until I am awake.

Number THREE is the alarm from my dearest hubby who not only carries the nickname but IS a bear when it comes to sleep. He can easily sleep until noon, 10 hours or more, no problem. AND he loves the buzzer of his alarm going off just to wake up, turn it off, turn around and carry on sleeping - doing this easily 5 times and enjoying the fact of waking up and then knowing he can go back to sleep. Thus, having him setting the alarm to 8 AM means that he will get up at 9:30 AM… probably. Usually this does not pose a problem as I’m anyhow the one getting up earlier - but on weekends, this IS a problem, because me - 180 degrees different of him - I wake up a split second before the alarm goes off. No kidding. I usually wake up, reach over and turn the alarm off before it rings. If I do not do that, I can hear the click of the alarm activating only a moment later. Thus I know, my body goes into full “ready to challenge” mode just this split moment before. Once I HEAR an alarm clock, well, damage done. Body does not want to go back to sleep.

This past night, none of the above points went into effect - with Tricky and Xena still sleeping next to my bed I groggily woke up 9 1/2 - NINE AND A HALF - hours later because Bear had gotten up and was trying to move quietly to the bathroom. 2 hours later I am still trying to get out of this grogginess.

More than unusual. Noteworthy is also the fact that I was in the middle of a dream when I woke up, a dream about trying to figure out the best software to use as a writer because in my dream I was thinking that maybe I am a better writer than painter and I was considering pursuing the writing in more earnest and thus was testing different pieces of software to find what I liked using.

This blasphemous thought has been lingering on since. I guess I will need to work harder as a painter to meet my own standards. But maybe, well, maybe it would be worth pursuing this other thought - not switching, but extending deliberately.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Cycle complete.

Yesterday I woke up from a dream and felt that it had been an interesting dream as such but the main thing I liked about it was the feeling of completeness I had while waking from it which carried on into the morning: mission accomplished, end-of-cycle.

I only remember the last few drops, a minute or less of the dream itself :

Walking in the hallway towards the bathroom. Armed with a HUGE bazooka, like, a real BIG weapon, intending to shoot Ralph (yes, my Ex since 10 years). So I enter the bathroom and to my surprise Ralph is hiding in the bathtub, in the water, submerged, trying to make himself as small as possible and not threatening at all. So I don’t shoot, but I talk with him - and he readily ends his attacks on me and he gives it all up, especially what he had kept back to keep the link between us alive : a CD/DVD of us and our time.

I am surprised by it all. First, I can not even recall to what he is referring when he talks about the CD/DVD and that he had been hanging on to it, but then when he hands me the disc, I look at the cover and then I remember seeing it in the past in an other (dream) instance with him (in THAT dream I had paid him a visit) - it shows mainly our last apartment in its beauty of light and wood and me being part of it.

The dream ends with me walking out of that bathroom with the CD/DVD in my hands, glad that I hadn’t needed the huge bazooka and feeling free and somehow relieved but mainly just relaxed and free and ready to move on into the future.

Only a few hours later I got my new job.




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