Dreams and Scribblings
At the pub the other evening, I told Fin about a couple of the dreams I’ve been having. The most recent, at the time, involved a large grizzly bear sleeping on the stairwell outside of a bathroom I was using. Inevitably, the bear had woken up and chased me around, and assuredly, I would have been attacked by the bear if I hadn’t woken up at just the right moment. When I looked up the symbolism of being chased by a bear, naturally, I learned that I feel burdened, like there is some horrible problem bearing (no pun intended) down on me right now. I suspect that things may be getting better, however, because the next night, I dreamed that I was taken hostage by a gangster. I realize that doesn’t sound a whole lot better than being attacked by a bear, yet it was. I was in the process of befriending the gangster, and he and I were going to team up against his boss to get me out of there and get him to safety. I was in more control than I was with the bear. Oddly enough, I was also in the subway system in New York. I didn’t think to wonder what that could mean, but inevitably, it leads me to believe that the burdens do have to do with Ink and how I can’t go out to Middle Earth to see her this summer for the big ceremony.
Goodness.
When I told Fin about my dream, though, I also clued him into another dream I experienced about a month ago. It involved swimming down streets instead of driving, pausing for dinner at a small cafe, and eating a dessert of fresh blueberries. The blueberries, when investigated, turned out to symbolize something rather important.
“You think in images a great deal, don’t you?” asked Fin.
“I actually don’t think that I do,” I said, after a long pause.
“I’ve never thought of myself as a very imagistic person.”
“I’ll bet you could write screenplays.”
I scrunched up my face at this. Fin and I had just been discussing my writing and how I’ve been trying to get some things down. I had failed to write anything that day due to a piercing headache. I had never thought of writing a screenplay and told Fin so. I am a prose writer, and a songwriter, but if we’re talking about the stuff people read, rather than the stuff people sing, well, prose is my friend. I’m not a screenwriter, and don’t really aspire to such heights.
However, the conversation did get me thinking. After all, if the way I see and describe my dreams is a little different from the way others see images, perhaps it is my duty to present rich imagery. In fact, it started to hit me when I came up with Fin’s codename (which is Fin, obviously). It has to do with water, through a convoluted train of thought that originally begins with Fin’s actual name.
I thought of a man swimming who could breathe underwater without aid of any man-made tools. I pictured a merman, pallid and green-tinged, once fish, now flailing disconcertingly with his hominid appendages. Yet still he can breathe. He is just completely out of his element.
The only answer for him is to surface and walk among humans, where he can also breathe just as well as underwater, but he doesn’t want to. He is afraid.
None of that really has to do with Fin. it just has to do with how my mind works. When I came up with an underwater-related name, I also came up with that little snippet.
And the blueberries…Well, I want to think more about the blueberries as an image. I could easily take a scene with a character and make the blueberries she eats have great importance.
I’m working on a character right now who is a changeling. She learns it late in life. A fairy child placed in the human world for her own safety. She was never supposed to learn of her true nature, but there was a glitch in the spellwork (perhaps an intentional glitch of which the rest of the spellworkers known nothing) that causes her eyes to change color at key moments. She cannot control it at first, but when she gains control, she also starts to notice other powers.
There is another from her world sent to look out for her, though that character doesn’t know what she is doing there.
I don’t know. It’s just for fun right now.
We’ll see.
Speaking of which, it might be good to go work on that.
Just a last word on the dreams, though.
I didn’t have any that I remembered last night.
I wonder if the burdens that have been chasing me are better under control.
I certainly hope so.
I’m still suffering from piercing headaches, though. It’s possible that the headaches are displacing all psychological trauma and once that physical pain fades, I will revisit the other.
