I thought I’d honor my starry dream in song. I selected one my recent favorites, ‘Counting Stars’, by One Republic, 2013. I like its juxtaposition with a religious meeting going on, with its revivalist overtones.
Dream on.
Starry Dream
It was a trip of dream, setting itself up and apart from all the other dreams. Not long, nor very detail.
My perspective was outside of myself, so I could see me. It was a younger me, in a tan Member’s Only jacket so popular in the 1980s.
I was in a place I first thought of it as a void but I believe that’s incorrect. It wasn’t a void. It was in space, though, but there was gravity and I had no problems breathing. I was standing on something but it defied my senses to know what I stood upon.
A little old man was present, opposite me, essentially a bearded, robed, bespectacled fellow of cream-in-coffee complexion. He had an aura of age with a sense of being timeless. He was moving stars around.
I watched. He would move stars and then look off. Down, to the right, toward the world, to my left. I realized he was moving the stars and showing me the impact. I was delighted. “He’s helping me cheat,” I said to myself. Then I realized he wanted me to do as he was doing.
So I reached for a star.
I had to spread my arms as wide as I could to envelop the star. Glowing with soft golden light and shaped like an old-fashioned star on a Christmas tree, it was comfortable to hold, and very light. I moved it and then stepped back to see my work in the constellations. I was pleased and amazed. He was nodding while smiling encouragement.
He pointed back down toward the planet. I looked down and saw the changes I made. I knew I was doing that but my perspective only allowed me to see my dream self looking down. I couldn’t see what he saw, but I was laughing.
I thought, “How cool is this? He’s helping me re-arrange the stars.” I construed it to mean I was changing my fortunes, and that really excited dream me and watching me.
I think it’s a good dream to begin a new year.
Today’s Theme Music
Sometimes the theme music is about trying to influence my mood, reflect a more general mood, or capture a sentiment. Today, pining for the end of 2016 and commencing the countdown to 2017, I turned to Bruce Hornsby and the Range and ‘The Way it Is’, 1986.
I selected it because he sings, “Some things will never change.” He alludes to judgments based on appearance, beggars and the unemployed, and people’s callousness. “That’s just the way it is.”
I’m one that doesn’t believe that’s just the way it is, and things will never change. I’m not a student of history but I enjoy reading history. I know of other times when matters were worse for many in almost every term we can think of to phrase it.
But that’s not how it stayed. People hunted medical solutions to reduce and eradicate disease, or sough technological advances to benefit our planet and civilization, economic improvements for all classes in all societies, or pushed for freedom and equality for all without regard to how they, as individuals, differ or conform with anyone else.
I am one that believes that if we c0ntinue developing and articulating visions of a better world, we will achieve such visions of better lives for everyone. I turn to Bruce and the Range because that’s what one stanza states:
That’s just the way it isI
Some things will never change
That’s just the way it is
But don’t you believe them
Yeah, I don’t believe them. Things will change.
For the better.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Today’s Dream Summaries
More intense dream sequences…more fierce writing: arc and story evolution, plot twists and character development.
The dreams…oh, boy. It seems like there were five or six of them last night. Some military elements were included, of course, because I always do dream of my military structures, jobs, situations and relationships, and some of the start-up world of my life was plugged in. Then, a strange blending of the two emerged. Records were confused from a start-up. People sought help and information. I was trying to look up information and striving to remember, what happened when, so I could provide them guidance.
I reached a pivot point. From nowhere, a very, very erotic dream that involved travel and business. My boss, a woman, and not someone real from my life, flirted with me. She was sharply drawn. I realized she wanted me. I wanted her. A game of seduction was launched. But business interrupted. Two other co-workers, male and female, showed up in the office and sat down. We needed to go on a trip now. As we raced to organize and leave, my cousin appeared. He was a BFF in my youth. Living not far away and in the same school and the same grade, he was my most ready adventure companion. I haven’t thought of him in years.
Yet, here he was, hastening to help us leave by getting in my car to drive it off and raising my ire because my stuff was still in it. Grrrr. So what does it mean? The eternal question for my dreams. Another friend from my military days, a man also not considered for years, also made his appearance, but in the start-up world…but in his flight suit. Odd. What does it mean?
Then a third military member sought me out, asking for my advice. After we found an empty room and closed the door, he told me of a problem with his son. I wasn’t certain what he needed in return.
But…writing is part of my thinking process. I write to understand. As I write about these dreams, I realize, ah-hah, I’ve been looking at this wrong. I am not being given secret messages or answers to problems or anything; I am exploring my inner lands. I’m trying to see what’s in there. Looking at it from that perspective unfolded new insights and realizations.
More thinking (and writing) is required. This realization is like a plot twist that springs up as rumination is done about what to do, what happens next? The realization feels right: this is where I need to go. Now I need to develop the connections between this epiphany and…well, everything else between here and there. But it is exciting.
And cool.
Let’s Start Here
Let’s start here.
I saw the movie ‘La La Land’ yesterday. As I watched it, I thought, this is the movie that writers should see.
‘La La Land’ is a song and dance musical staring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone about a jazz musician and a struggling actress, Seb and Mia. I thought I was going to be seeing ‘Manchester by the Sea’ but my wife called an audible. We met friends, went to the movies and had drinks and nibbles afterward.
Let’s start here.
I discovered the dream of writing when I was in my early twenties, and young and arrogant. By then, I’d served four years in the military, and had tried and failed as a restaurant owner. Needing an income, I returned to the military. I ended up retiring after serving twenty years on active duty.
Let’s start here.
It had been my dream and plan to use my military pension to fund my writing career. I was thirty-nine years old so there was plenty of time. But the SF Bay Area where we were stationed and where I retired is expensive. I wanted to move to somewhere affordable.
But…my wife convinced me she wanted to stay in the SF Bay Area and Silicon Valley to pursue her career. Her career with advertising had started just a few years before but now she thought it could go places. It was making her happy. I agreed to put my writing dreams ‘on hold’. Note that the writing dreams were never really ‘on hold’; I was always learning and writing, first short stories, having a few published, and then pursuing novels.
Meanwhile, that region was an expensive area and my wife worried about finances. I sought employment. By the time six years had passed, a chronic disease, the dot com implosion and advertising companies consolidating and merging had snuffed her dreams.
But I flourished. Starting with medical device start-up companies and moving to Internet security companies, I went from success to success before spending my final years with IBM and electing to bail on all that jazz when I turned sixty last year.
So let’s start here.
As any aspiring/struggling/dreaming writer can attest, keeping the balance between marital harmony, life and family requirements, while working and sustaining the energy needed to pursue your dreams is daunting. It’s a candle aflame on both ends and the middle. Support is required. We make compromises and choices and withstand challenges. Our energies are taxed to breaking. We endure fears, setbacks and doubts. Sometimes we break, and sometimes, we try hiding. We often struggle and suffer in solitude, misunderstood and underappreciated, striving to remain hopeful.
Which is essentially what ‘La La Land’ is about.
As Mia sings in an audition, and I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember the exact words, here’s to the dreamers and the messes we make, foolish as we often seem.
The other point in the movie that seems powerful to me is made by Seb’s friend, Keith. Seb is the jazz musician played by Ryan Gosling; Keith is played by John Legend.
So let’s start here.
Seb loves jazz music but he is enamored with the traditional musical styles. Jazz is dying, he laments. Yes, Keith agrees, and you’re killing it by playing those old styles. In order to keep jazz alive, it needs to change and adapt to attract new audiences.
It’s a telling point to me. To keep literature, reading and writing alive, change is required. We may love the literature that we read as we grew up but we need to face the new morning in the world. That’s what self-publishing and e-publishing is about.
Pursuing the dream, no matter what talent, skill or education is required, is about being strong and making the sacrifices required to achieve. Some of us are not strong enough to make them. We put others first.
Some of us are more foolish. We believe we can do it all, that we can sacrifice and compromise, and still achieve our dreams.
So let’s start here.
The Real
He awakes. Stillness is king.
Big snow storm was striking the area. They weren’t due snow in his zone. Snow was expected above five thousand feet. That gave them an almost three thousand foot buffer but weather is fickle.
He checks the time and temperature on his weather station. Three fifty-five. Thirty-five degrees. Three five. The numbers made him smile. Those were his lucky numbers as a kid.
Two cats investigate him. Deciding all was safe, they expect rewards. He feeds them and goes to the kitchen for water. Drinking it, he surveys the remnants of two dreams. Odd, of course. One involved his mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her husband, their car, and a white bi-plane. The other was military oriented, of course – structure and identity. The dreams remind him of wreckage after a hurricane.
Peeing was required. The business didn’t require much attention. His mind wandered to blogs and knowing people through blogs but not otherwise knowing them. He pondered the difference between aspiring writer and struggling writer and the choices the words reflected.
He went to bed and thought of a road trip movie. A writer. A series of events. A wife passed away. A writer road trip to meet bloggers that he’d never met. It reminded him of a movie more than a decade ago, perhaps two decades. A man retiring. He bought a recreational vehicle. His wife dies of a heart-attack while vacuuming. He can’t recall more. Details trickle in. Man discovers his wife was having an affair. De Niro? Murray? No.
Ah. Nicholson. ‘About Schmidt’. What year? That’s too much for dead AM.
A working title arrived for his movie: ‘The Real’. He smiles at that. He thinks of it as a dramedy.
He wonders how much of this he will remember in the morning. “Sleep,” he whispers to himself and lets his breathing seek its rhythm.
So much to write, he laments to himself, and sleeps.
Four Headlines
I dreamed last night that I read four headlines.
I was online on my laptop in my home office. The headlines were presented in online editions of major newspapers and websites. Each was on a different subject and included columns beneath them, with articles surrounding them, just like genuine articles. One article included a photograph. All the headlines carried good news.
I clicked on the articles to read more and began searching for greater information. But I realized that I was dreaming. These were from the future.
Then I awoke, completely befuddled about whether I had dreamed those headlines or that the stories had all taken place. I consumed time sorting the current date and the headlines and establishing that I’d dreamed all of that. With some amusement, I fell back onto the old idea, maybe those headlines were from the real world and this was the dream. That would have been great because they were pleasing headlines and stories.
Talk about your fake news. Now we have dream news. Maybe that’s how some fake news evolved; they started from nuggets of dream news.
I’m not revealing any of the headlines or their subjects. I don’t want to jinx them.
They were very good headlines.
Distinct Memories
I have distinct memories of three dreams last night. I’ll not torture the net with many details.
I do want to ask Hugh Laurie why he came into my dream.
There were five of us present. We were all in pale white hooded robes, doing some fantastic wizard stuff, when I made some cutting observation that it was all being staged. It was fake. Upon those statements, the action stopped. The lights went up and the robes fell away, revealing us as common, average humans in pants, shirts and shoes. And yes, we were on a sound stage. And yes, one of the other players was Hugh Laurie. He was in charge. Sneering at me after we were exposed, he said, “Thanks for ruining the magic.”
Revelations were the general themes of the three dreams. In one of the other dreams, I was being taught how others reacted to hypothetical situations and what they did to cheat and achieve better results. This was being done in a high school. Classes were going on but I was part of a select adult class being taught this particular subject. We were using the students’ results as study materials.
The students had written their homework and test answers on strange materials. One was written on a metal locker with a black marker. I had to bend down to read it. I sharply remember another was written on a box of Wheaties. (I was amused by that detail, as Wheaties was my go-to breakfast cereal when I was young.) They had neat writing. It was in blue ink, with a pen, cursive, down the side panel, around the ingredients and nutritional information.
They were writing about what they would do if they were given a speeding ticket. This person had written on the Wheaties, ‘I would eat the ticket!’ That made me laugh. Others and I discussed our findings, marveling and joking about how creative these young people were. I was beginning to think in new ways, I realized. Our instructor then appeared ‘off dream’. They announced that we were ready to begin our next stage of training using the knowledge acquired from this exercise when I awoke.
There is so much more but the prospect of remembering all those details exhausts me. Then I would probably fall asleep and dream more. It’s like my own version of Catch-22.
Not Always Quick
I’m not always a quick thinker. Otherwise, I would have answers today.
It’s about a dream. Yeah. I should have asked myself, why are you dreaming this? I don’t recall ever featuring pigs in a dream before.
I was feeding a pig. He was a shiny little pink porker. He came downstairs in my house, a very happy and excited little creature. I had company. Friends were visiting. I didn’t want the pig downstairs. So I called him and led him back upstairs.
It was messy upstairs. It seems like we were in a transition. My intention was to feed the pig some cornflakes. He found some on the floor and gobbled them up, but he wanted more. I thought he spotted more but they turned out to be scraps of paper. He didn’t want to eat those. As I searched for corn flakes to feed him, another pig, slightly larger but equally pink and shiny, emerged, along with a few cats. So I talked to them, telling them I was looking for food and was going to feed them, even as I couldn’t find the food that I expected. I headed downstairs to find some.
I had company, three former co-workers from a flying unit. Laying on sofas, they were watching television and playing games while they chatted to me and my wife. I was annoyed because they had disconnected the best television and were employing old cathode ray televisions on carts. I set about fixing that.
Meanwhile, another friend from the same unit showed up. I asked him what he thought of his new position. He replied, “This is what war sounds like.” Then, using a gallon paint can, he made a metallic rumbling noise that was loud and unpleasant. “All the time,” he said.
Others, less known but known, showed up. Setting up tables, they sat down to prepare food to feed me. I was embarrassed and grateful for their efforts, but I kept trying to tell them that it wasn’t necessary. They ignored me, continuing to cook.
Pigs…confusion…identity. It’s something to research and think about today, since I didn’t bother to ask myself for clarification when it was happening. I’ll need to think quicker next time.
Matryoshka Dreams
I dreamed within dreams last night. That began during the dream, after my dream self asked myself, “Why am I dreaming this?”
The dream featured multiple arcs but always centered around one main setting. I was in the Air Force again, newly assigned to this place and in charge. The setting featured an intact building where command and control was going on. It was off by itself on a green knoll, surrounded by green fields, with ‘the base’ in the background. Attached to the building was an end room. The end room, accessible from the rest through a door that I could open and close, was damaged. Its lights were always on and its roof was collapsing and sinking in. Water was running from faucets and burst pipes. Others thought nothing of that.
I walked around for some time studying it. I saw this water was causing damage. Although the water was draining away, I disliked the waste. So I turned the water off. I was surprised the water could be turned off, and I was surprised others hadn’t thought of that. I asked others who worked for me to make it part of their routines to check the water to ensure it was off before they left each day.
The POV changed from internal me to outside of me. Sometimes I would drift further out to watch myself in my dream environment. This would often happen in conjunction with me going out to survey the damaged area. The time of day shifted, sometimes being late morning (I knew this) while it was late afternoon or dusk at other times. I noted it becoming muddier around the damaged area. People’s belongings were mired in mud. Pets were struggling with change. I began talking to those who had lived there (they weren’t ‘me’), assessing the damages, directing clean up, and feeding animals. It was during one of those times when I asked myself the question.
In answer, I was treated to dreaming within the dream.
Awakening from the dream in the dream, I understood. As the other dream ended, I knew the dream was about identity, structure and success. This epiphany came as I salvaged cat food to feed a happy talking kitten and then made requests of people working for me to check on items to save water and electricity, and finally, a vantage shift to survey damages from a distance, where I could look down and see it all in its entirety.
The dream(s) inundated me with thinking points for my waking self. So many ask when you tell about your dreams, “How did you feel?” So I’ll tell: I felt introspective and thoughtful. I felt in charge and in control. I felt like the sun had burned away an enormous swath of Tule fog.
I felt like I’d been given a clear direction. Now I just need to follow that path.
Michael Seidel, writer 