welcome, readers & writers!
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writers, are you ready for a writing warm up? you can go my direction on today's photo prompt (and write about dreams that have been floating around in the night at your place) or you can go your own direction all together. poem, short story or creative non-fiction, share by clicking on comments below. readers, your comments are welcome, too. thanks to all for stopping by!
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After having a kind of strange and kind of wonderful dream last night, I took an unofficial poll this morning among my family members. Our various dreams were too vivid, scary, lovely or bizarre not to share.
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In my dream two dear but distant friends, Presbyterians (this seemed to matter for some odd reason) showed up. One wrote out a 'prescription for wellness' which included hand drawn pictures of apples and the presence of another child in our lives. The other friend stopped by and just so happened to leave a small child behind... a beautiful boy with dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes who took to us all immediately and, when I met him, wrapped his little arms around my neck for a big hug. We couldn't figure out who he was or how long he was staying. But I kinda loved him.
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My littlest son woke up crying this morning. Being that he's five and doesn't usually do that anymore (thanks be), I rushed to his room and found him sound asleep. I asked him if he was okay. He woke up and looked at me like I was crazy, "I'm fine, Mom." He didn't remember crying out, but a little while later he came to tell me that he had a dream in which red ants were biting his hands and feet, and when he tried to pick them off their legs got stuck inside of him :( I believe I'd cry about that, too.
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This prompted me to ask my husband if he'd had any dreams he could remember. He said he'd dreamt that he had to critique people's writing (ahem) as it came up on the display of a gas tank. He said the grammatical mistakes and errors kept coming and were endless. (This is not as antagonistic toward his wife as it might sound, as he is a professor and this is grading season). Still.
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Son number two said that his dream involved his brothers, an abandoned house, and chipmunks with wings and bird feet. Cool.
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My oldest couldn't remember any of his dreams from the night... So that's the news from our house in Austin, TX - where, to steal borrow Garrison Keillior's description of Lake Woebegone, "the men are good looking, the women are strong and all the children are above average."
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come write with me!
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Darian frowned at the eye pillow resting on the coverlet on the California King at the Bed and Breakfast. She hated to sleep. Hated to be pampered. Hated staying in a place with… what are those… baskets? Yes, baskets - with fruit in them - on the wallpaper.
ReplyDeleteThis was Lee’s idea. Lee and his stupid romantic getaway idea. Let’s go to the country. Let’s pick apples. Let’s see deer.
If Darian had her way, she would have chosen the CITY. And then SHOPPING . Followed by CLUBBING.
“Hmph,” she grumbled. Lee walked in behind her, dragging her luggage and his and then depositing it unceremoniously onto the carpeted floor. Correction: the mauve carpeted floor.
“Dare,” he said in that voice loaded with so much sugary sweetness she couldn’t bear to face him, “This will be fun, you’ll see.” Darian walked out onto the balcony and leaned over the railing, wishing that the rosebushes and white lattice below were forty stories of windows leading to gray sidewalk. Wishing that the soft perfumed breeze that lifted her hair from her shoulders was a frigid wind whipping it against her cheeks. Wishing the yellow tomcat that lounged in the sunshine and batted lazily at a passing bumblebee were a taxi veering in and out of traffic at dangerous speeds.
Lee’s arms encircled her waist and she grasped the balcony stiffly. They’d been dating eight months, she and this country boy who moved to New York. His southern charm used to be intoxicating, his slow drawl soothing, but now, in this godawful setting, she could see that it was over. She needed someone like-minded, someone driven, someone high class and Lee, was not that man.
She opened her mouth to tell him when a telltale blue box appeared in front of her on his outstretched hand. “Marry me,” Lee said into her ear. “I love you, Darian.”
Darian blinked at the box. Tiffany’s & Co. Then her hands, of her own accord, reached out and opened it, and there in its plush recesses lay a diamond that would have been the one she would have picked for herself had he asked her to. It was perfect. It was unique. It was… her.
“I know you want to say no,” Lee murmured, still behind her. “But I know you better than you do. You need me.”
Just then a deer, and then another appeared in the distance, poking their noses around an apple tree. One lifted up to grab the red orb in its mouth before languidly chewing on it. It was graceful. It was lithe, it was opportunistic. It was so like Darian.
Somehow the sight gave her hope. Maybe there was a chance for she and Lee. And if not, the least she could do was wear the exquisite piece of jewelry until she decided.
Dream
ReplyDeleteDuring last evening
Running on steam
Exegesis looming
Aspirant for God's team
May man and God consent
(seminary maybe catching up to me)
Just wanted to say I'm enjoying everyone's "dreams." What a talented bunch you are! :)
ReplyDeleteI am walking on a desert, the immense stretch of sand behind me dropping off into nothingness as I lift each heel. I have only just become aware that is happening. Apparently nothingness is creeping up on me so I begin to run. to escape from the nothingness creeping up on me, but as I run I wonder if perhaps it is not that nothingness is creeping up on me but perhaps that nothingness simply is created by my passing through now. I wonder if I have the courage to slow down and see what will happen, and with great exertion of will I do exactly that. The nothingness slows to accommodate my step lengths. That raises the question, what happens if I stop? Which somehow raises the question is this reality or dream? Can I know I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming? Are dreaming and being awake in reality a duad, or are there other possibilities? I recall being wakened from a dream kicking and punching at my girl friend from another state, in a motel many miles from her home, by her telling me I was kicking and punching her and asking why? I could not remember what I had been dreaming, but there seemed to be no hidden problems between us that would account for me being hostile to her. So, then I had to wonder if it was also possible for a dream to remember another dream, and whether the being awakened had happened in reality or was it a figment of the dream I might be in now. Did I dare to stop? I did. I stopped. Nothingness stopped moving right behind me. I tried to turn to examine nothingness but as I turned it turned with me and the desert continued to stretch out everywhere in front of me, the nothingness only ever directly behind me. I could see the line between the desert and nothing stretching off to sides, as if the desert were a single plane of sand without depth, without an earth to lay upon. I began to walk again, in zig zags, but the phenomenon remained constant. I slowed and walked straight ahead, not knowing what straight ahead even meant anymore.. Perhaps I am not in a dream but exist instead within a metaphor and when the metaphor's complete I will return to either reality or sleep. But, what's a metaphor?
ReplyDeleteOh, I want to take some time to read the dreams - I've been having some vivid ones lately - one last night woke me with a startle, but try as I may, I can't recall it - and as these sometimes are, it's as if I were to take away a message - well, dang!
ReplyDeleteA Safe Place (2009)
ReplyDeleteDark places surround me but how do I know when my eyes are closed? Do I feel the cold I know is there? I’m frightened by the shapes passing before me and I question whether they are real. I wish I could open my eyes to see them, but yet I do see them floating about me as if in a fish bowl waiting for the next moment to pass and the glass shatters. I can see the moon rippling beyond the liquid sky high above as though water was flowing across a sheet of glass. Naked and gnarled tree branches reach upward and grasp for the only source of light as my eyes drop to my feet sinking into black sand. There is a rustling from behind. I turn and through transparent lids I see hues of black and blue merge into shadow through which two glowing silver eyes are coming at me from the forest. I wrench my legs into slow motion and try to escape the terror closing in. Why can I not move any faster? I can feel it closer as I claw at the ground and try to scream but there is only sand in my throat. Its icy breath is on the back of my neck. I can feel it’s talons upon my back trying to gain purchase on my skin as I fight to escape. It almost has me when my eyes burst open. I’m soaking in a pool of ocean water trying to capture each breath escaping me. A drummer is beating a low but rapid beat about me and it sounds like the footsteps of the beast. It is still coming closer and I need to run for a safe place but I know it will get me. Panic overtakes me as the drummer grabs my hand and together we bolt into the darkness. Running with the thing right on my heels I see a door. We race for it and with outstretched arms I burst through and it slams behind me. With heaving chest I stare at the drummer still pounding his rapid beat, he is very frightened but hands me a golden harp and as I swallow it my voice returns in a whisper.
“I had a bad dream.”
Light begins to seep into my eyes. Black and blue morph and mold into different shades of red and green. The space about me expands and I can see piles of cozy blankets and puffy, lustrous pillows all around me. Opaque surfaces become transparent, very slowly, revealing a beautiful fairy tail land. Tall trees are all around with long slender trunks reaching high into the sky. Rays of yellow sunlight pierce through openings in the canopy of fluttering leaves and press my cheeks into a smile with warm, tingling finger tips. I choose a particularly fluffy blanket and whisk it up over my head twirling around on a carpet of thick fibers. They cover my toes as I slowly spin to a stop and the blanket flutters down about my legs. I can hear birds singing and I cast my eyes skyward again and notice them playing effortlessly in the air with dragonflies. A trumpet sounds and in the distance I see elephants and giraffes moving across the land. A flash of orange and a butterfly moves close and whispers in my ear to turn around. Upon doing so I see the drummer sitting crossed legged on a large pillow tapping his drum very slowly. He looks up at me smiling and waves and as I wave back he slowly begins to rise and dissipate into a cloud of glittering, golden dust that shines brightly in the evening rays of the sun. My eye lids begin to feel heavy as I watch the particles rise into the air and I am not sad to see him go. They expand and shift and move with the symphony of the wind and form a familiar loving face framed by flowing, golden, shimmering locks. I return the smile as the last of the glitter vanishes among the trees. Finding a hollow among the pillows I lay down and the warm blankets move closer about me. As my eyes close the image of the golden face comes to my minds eye and I drift into a pleasant dream.