The Teams Dream
I was a young man — again — for this dream, in my late teens or early twenties. I was with a woman at the beginning, in a suburban setting of houses, streets, and parks. About my age, she seemed like a relative stranger. We were just being informed by a tall pale woman that we’d been selected for a team. That pleased us both. We were selected for different teams, which made us laugh. Each team had a uniform and marker. My uniform was black and yellow like a bee. Her uniform was something like pink and black. Others were white and black, and light blue and black.
We readily grasped the rules although it’s nothing that I can recount. Each morning, we showed up and raced to procure a specific object, like spoons or fish, or to recruit people by tagging them with your marker, according to instructions provided by the tall, ball woman. My marker was black and fuzzy. I could throw it at people and make it stick, sometimes throwing curve balls to make this happen, or from extreme distances, astonishing myself and others. Each day became a fun, constant race to get this done, and then get back to our homes. My friend and I taunted one another in a good-natured way throughout the event, along the lines, “I’m going to win today,” and “See you at the finish line, loser.”
We found ourselves in small single-winged prop planes. I began trying to drop my marker onto people below, but the marker was turning into fish as it hit them. I’d tell them, as they picked up the fish and looked up at me in the plane, “That’s supposed to be a marker.” They didn’t understand that any better than a fish hitting them.
We ended up at the ocean, in waves. I ran out through the surf and then turned and entered a cove. At that point, I realized, I’d gone the wrong way. That put me way behind.
I’ve lost, I realized, then decided, I need to start again.
The Appliances Dream
My wife and I were once again young and were living in a home with an enormous kitchen. Filled with hyper-modern stainless-steel appliances, it had blonde wood cabinets and a dark, brick red tile floor. I didn’t think that combo worked in the dream but shrugged it off. Besides those aspects and the appliances, I don’t think the room had any windows, but it did have two sinks, which impressed me although I wondered if two sinks were necessary, and a huge work island with a redwood top.
I actually spent the first dream segment admiring where I was, the newness of the appliances, the size of the kitchen, how modern everything was. The refrigerator especially impressed me. About eight feet tall, the combo refrigerator-freezer unit featured an interesting, complex set of controls on the side to control different interior sections to store different foods at different temperatures. Beyond that, I drifted to looking at the range and stove, microwave, and dish washer. Looking at the microwave led me to exclaim, “Look at all the things it can do,” but in the immediate aftermath of that, my wife said, “The refrigerator isn’t working.”
She said that with angry intensity and stormed around the kitchen, complaining about it, talking about shutting it off, calling repair people, etc. I returned, “Hold on, it has this complex control. There’s probably a self-diagnosis aspect to this.” As I began thumbing through the electronic menus, she then announced, “Now the microwave is broken.”
Going to her, I asked, “How is the microwave broken?” Instead of answering me, she began furiously cleaning the floor with a mop and rag. I tried talking with her, but she brooded and focused on cleaning. She surprised me by sliding the large island to one side to clean the floor beneath it. As the island had covered the floor, it looked spotless, which I pointed out. Answering, “It still needs cleaned,” she stormed away to get more cleaning supplies. Figuring that I wasn’t going to dissuade her from cleaning, I cleaned that floor section, and then moved the island again and cleaned the floor there.
Dream end.
Finished
Finished editing and revising The Constant. Final results: 391 pages, 106,291 words. Speculative science fiction mash up. I’ve worked on it throughout the coronavirus pandemic, beginning it around the time in March of 2020 when wearing masks, social distancing, isolation, and watching the daily case numbers became the new norms of the age. I’d been forced into a change of my writing practices. I liked walking to get into the writing rhythm, writing in my head as I did, then settling into a coffee shop, comforted and buffeted by the business activities around me, lowering my head and writing for a few hours. That was all forced aside under COVID-19 rules. Staying at home, shifting into the writing rhythm without the associated rituals was an exhausting, frustrating shift.
Satisfying feeling to finish the novel. I often think of James Caan as author Paul Sheldon in the movie version of the Stephen King version, Misery, when I finish a novel. He had a ritual for when he finished his. He writes ‘The End’ on the final page in pencil. Stacks and tidies the manuscript. Puts it into an attaché. Pours a glass of champagne. Regards a cigarette. Puts it in his mouth, lights the match and then the cigarette. Takes a drag. We learn later, when he’s under Annie Wilke’s care (the nurse and fan played by Kathy Bates) that this was his ritual created when he finished his first successful novel. It’s an engaging film. Was released in 1990. Wow, thirty-two years ago. You should watch it if you haven’t seen it. Also a good book to read. Misery, by Stephen King.
I don’t have any rituals. As others noted after I posted about wrestling with a chapter called Thelma & Louise, it feels good to finish a challenging task. Writing a novel is a challenging task. Finishing it is rewarding. Too, I feel the loss of being done, something felt when I changed duty stations in the military or advanced from one grade to another in school as a child. You’ve done something, and you’re moving forward; yet, to do that, some things must be left behind. What is left behind is part of my fabric of daily activities and focus. Finishing the writing of a novel is about change that I’ve forced on myself.
It’s a change I accept. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. The process and finishing are a comforting buffer against the war videos emerging coming out of Europe as Russia attacks Ukraine.
The Powers Dream
The dream began with me as a young man again — a common element in my recent bout of dreams — with friends and family members. My wife wasn’t present in the dream, though.
With friends and family, a large house was being emptied and cleaned. In fact, we’d finished doing that and were now walking through on a final inspection. Everything was immaculate. Thick, China blue carpeting was underfoot. White, unmarked paint on walls. Windows which were clear and clean. Bright sunshine lighting landscaping outside them. I went from room to room, looking in, satisfied, speaking to a female friend accompanying me, explaining to her that I’m moving.
But then, I entered a room where my little sisters were supposed to have cleaned. Something in their giggling demeanors provoked suspicions about what they’d done so I questioned them. As I did, I inspected more closely and found that they’d not cleared away a large cache of papers, as they should have done, but had tried hiding it under a remaining piece of furniture.
I berated them about taking shortcuts and deceiving me. They were abashed and apologetic. Taking the large pile of papers to hand, we began discussing how to get rid of them when I found that I could breathe on them and set them aflame.
The discovery delighted me. More impressive, only the paper burned. Amazed and astonished by this, I walked around showing off this new skill. Then I somehow learned that I could even burn paper with my breath while underwater. That seemed ridiculous because, how can I breathe and set the paper on fire and hold my breath while underwater? It all seemed incompatible. I learned that I wasn’t underwater but under the surface of reality. Well, how cool was that? Refining my knowledge, I clarified that under reality was very like being underwater and that I could ignite the paper with my breath underwater because I didn’t need to hold my breath. As I went through this process, I discovered that I could stay underwater indefinitely and that being underwater was no different from being in the air on the surface. I moved the same, weighed the same, etc.
After showing everyone how I could go below the surface, I tried teaching them how to do this as well. None of them could. But during my efforts, I found that I could also fly. I was like, wow, I can go through the air, flying, like a fish goes through the water while swimming.
After testing and demonstrating this new skill, realizing that I could fly as far and high as I wanted, I wondered what had changed that allowed me to suddenly gain these new powers?
Dream end.
A Load of Relief
I’ve been editing the novel in progress, The Constant. It’s the first go-through of the initial complete manuscript. Naturally, there are issues. Things were removed, facts and timelines confirmed — like descriptions and locations — and sections were worked over to make them punchier and tighter. All was going well. I was averaging twenty-five to fifty pages a day, comfortable progress. Then, on page three hundred twenty-seven, I began reading the chapter, Thelma & Louise. I knew within paragraphs that it didn’t work and began the struggle to fix it.
I initially approached it as a wordsmithing problem. Nope; wasn’t it. It was deeper. I wrestled for several days about why this chapter bothered me. The issue was a constant 24/7 thorn for more than a week. I tried working on around it, buy my mind was fused to the issue. I eventually decided it was too much of an information dump and would break it up into more digestible bites. Growing comfortable with that idea, evolving it by establishing where I’d cut it up, I began working on that.
That choice caused another problem, though. No answer arrived to it. Additionally, I found I was adding more material than I wanted to this story aspect. As I wrote, I liked what I wrote, but not that I was adding it.
Around day fourteen, three days ago, two answers came almost concurrently about what to do and how to do it. They arrived after I’d gotten up to let Papi out of the house and fed sick cat because he yelled in the middle of the night. After writing it in my head for a while before returning to sleep, I immediately began working on the revisions when I got up that morning. It was intense.
I finished it today, a satisfying moment. Whether the result will hold up to further reading and revising is another matter. When I wrote the original chapter, in two settings, the results pleased me. But this is all part of the exploratory and creative process for finding story and writing a novel for me.
Cheers
The Red Shot Dream
This was such a persistently powerful dream last night. I awoke from it twice in befuddlement, sure that I’d forgotten to do something that had to do with my shots. When was I supposed to take them? There was a sequence. But wait —
In the dream, only women were originally receiving the shots. They were happy about it. We were all walking around outside, following neat sidewalks in sunshine. The shots were self-injected. A red powder in a miniature Erlenmeyer flask, I don’t know what it combatted. The injections needed to be given in a specific time sequence that was established by people’s DNA, age, and where they lived. As the women went about, happily self-injecting, I joined a hue: “Why aren’t men being injected?” The problem, whatever it was, affected everyone. It didn’t make sense for half of the population to get it and not the other half.
The powers agreed and decreed everyone should receive the shots. I was given my flasks of powder and told my injection schedule.
That’s when I awoke. Sitting up, I peered about for my flasks and tried remembering my schedule. When was I supposed to give myself the next injection? In three hours? What time would that be?
As I realized all that was a dream, I calmed and thought of the dream, then went back to sleep. And — boom — shortly thereafter, I was awake and thinking, what was I supposed to do? Where are my injections?
Another DIY Success
We have a single handle Moen faucet. We bought the house new back in 2006. This week, the handle began going wonky on us. It was growing stiffer to turn and then added a squeaking noise. A little net sleuthing and I identified our model, homed in on the problem, found a step-by-step video, and ordered the “Moen 93980 Replacement Handle Mechanism Kit for One-Handle Kitchen Faucet Repairs” kit from Amazon for just less than $23. It was supposed to arrive Monday but came today.
I’m not a DIYer by nature. Poor mechanical skills, you know? Other than fixing cars and computers (and painting the house rooms), I have little to no DIY experience except what I’ve gleaned from learning how do to things in this house. That includes installing a new central vac unit to replace the dead unit a decade ago, swapping out control modules on the air conditioner about four years ago, replacing the garbage disposal a few years ago, fixing the microwave a few months ago, and then replacing the master sink drain stem in December. I don’t think I could have done any of these things except for the first two without the net. For the air conditioner repair, the repair guy showed me how he fixed it a few years before. I took notes so that when the time came, because he warned me that it would fail, and it was a common, recurring failure, I knew what to do. For the central vac unit, it was straightforward as replacing a car battery. So I watched the Moen repair video again, sucked in a deep breath, and went at it.
Success! I’ll drink to that. The question is, coffee, beer, or wine?
Michael Seidel, writer 