I think get this. It’s about letting go of yourself, releasing your ego and doubts, and permitting what is to come to make its way without ‘you’ hindering it.
Just Remembered
I’m often visited by earworms. It’s a chronic thing. Songs from across my lifetime drop by in the part of my head where music memories reside, the mental music stream. This often happens in the morning, giving that realm the name, morning mental music stream.
These songs don’t just drop in and depart. They’re normally on a tour that lasts several days. Well, I recently shared a song as my day’s theme music, “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode. After dressing, heading out the door for the coffee shop this morning, I was singing it aloud as it played in the MMMS when I suddenly remembered Mom singing it to me once during a visit home, Mom, with her Doris Day voice.
Oh, that made me laugh. The song came out in 1989. I lived in Germany then, so I think it was when I came back to America in 1991 and visited her that the singing took place. I don’t know how she knew the song, but suspected it was through her daughters or grandchildren.
What a memory.
Pasflooferine
Pasflooferine (floofinition) – Animals, including birds, who enjoy singing. Although some species are specifically known for their singing abilities, pflooferine isn’t defined as a species or genus, but as a individual characteristic.
In use: “Jade was a pasflooferine of the first order, singing just before dawn so others would get up and feed her, singing to be freed from the house at midnight and then singing again outside the bedroom window to be let back in, even singing a sad lament when she found her litter box not up to her standards.”
A Vindication Dream
Had another night of uplifting and validating dreams. One stood out for me.
I was in Germany. To begin, I was racing down to get somewhere in my old white BMW 2002, but was forced to slow down abruptly, which I did. A divided road in a modern business area, it seemed strikingly familiar. After parking, I went in and found a friend, Jim. We were there to take classes. Not many people were in class, both men and women, of my age. Held outside, it was being taught in English. I don’t know the subject. Sessions flashed by, and then it was time for lunch. Jim and I walked down to a place together, following a general stream of people going as we did, just chatting along the way. Reaching a place we thought a restaurant, we entered and ascended different levels. At first, I searched for food. Then I needed a water closet. I thought I found one on the top floor, but when I opened it and entered, I found three children occupying it.
Backing out and away, I discovered that I didn’t know where Jim was, so I headed back to the class location. Few were around, but I encountered a pieced of masonry falling off a wall. As I tried to put it back, others told me, no, they want that removed because they’re replacing it. I didn’t think that would work because the wall beneath it was crumbling, but I figured the workmen and masons would know what they were doing.
Having time to kill, I found a place to nap on a heavy brown blanket in a low shelter where others were sitting. When I awoke, I discovered a man and a girl pantomiming around me. I guessed that I was on their blanket. The girl was upset that I was in her space, but the man was gesturing, ‘what could I do?’ Getting the message, I moved away.
Class was re-commencing anyway. We were directed to stand in a squad ranked by our height. I didn’t hear the directions being given but others helped me. A woman to my right called for our attention. We were to sing and harmonize. She spoke some words. A woman to my right in class sang them in a clear, high voice. I chose to counter it with a flat bass. We repeated that twice, and then the female director told us all to step. She had the woman and I repeat what we’d done. We did. The director announced, “Perfect. That’s exactly what we’re looking for. Stay right there.” Then she went off.
I felt flattered and vindicated, but also embarrassed as everyone started talking to me about what I was doing. I replied, I just did what I felt was right.
The dream ended.
Entangled Writing Dreams
I don’t know how to describe last night’s dreams. Many and layered, I would awake from them, think about them, and drift back into the dream, or begin a new one.
I dreamed mostly about writing. I would dream I was writing. I dreamed I saw my books on shelves in stores. I dreamed I was signing autographs. I dreamed I was holding one of my books. Of course, I was pleased, proud and delighted to experience these dreams, even as I knew they were dreams.
Then I would dream I was writing again. Some of the dreams were staples of my blog posts of catfinitions. Other times, I dreamed about novels being conceived and pondered, and the novel in progress. I wrote scenes in my dreams, awoke and thought about the scenes, and returned to dreaming and writing. At one point, I awakened from a dream with an insight into something I’d thought of before, regarding ‘the cards’, and the sequencing of them. I hadn’t been comfortable with my execution of this as originally conceived, but here it was, explained in full in my dream. “I’ll need to think about this tomorrow,” I promised myself, because I didn’t want to awaken myself by thinking.
Then, in a break from dream writing, I dreamed I was singing in Spanish. A crowd of people were gathered to hear me. I don’t know what the song was, and was surprised in the dream when I realized it was me singing Spanish, because I don’t speak nor understand Spanish. I didn’t resemble myself in the dream so much as Fernando Alonso, the twice Formula 1 World Driving Champion from Spain. He and I look nothing alike but I knew in my dream that it was me.
In the morning, feeding cats, looking out windows and mentally perusing my dreams, I saw some of it as helpful for the novel in progress and other writing being contemplated. More, though, was wishful, optimism crystallized in dreams.
***
After writing the post and thinking more, I became curious about singing in a language I didn’t know in a dream, and so I did a search. This article was found, to add another twist to the dream.
After reading the article and watching the video, a connection to what I was writing in my novel leaped into my understanding. In it, with all of its entanglements, was the entanglement of a brain coping with something irrational and attempting to apply a veneer of logical explanation. This is done by appropriating others’ memories of the history they’d learned to apply an intelligent setting, from their perspective. In the way that it all works in my novel’s setting, something that works well for one person is borrowed and applied by others as being true, and becomes the basis for the reality of ‘now’ shared to create our impression of our lives.
Fun stuff, and a h/t to my dream brain and Psychology Today for boasting my insights into my writing.
Michael Seidel, writer 