Portrait With Pig; Singing In Public; The Skeleton Game

12/27/09

I was reading a book and it was coming apart at the spine but I saw it as a movie. A Bruce Willis character is saving a child or a small animal. Lots of dull, snowy landscape.

I was researching the early life of a mysterious woman. There was a book on her famous escape, and the book had black and white pictures of the important people in her life, posed in tableaux with elaborate costumes and hair styles. In one of them, a tall elderly woman with long white hair in braids stands on a stone terrace. At her feet is a large pig.

P and I are talking about our writing projects. He's off to work with his brother. We're all standing on a subway platform that's across from a big suburban supermarket. He offers me something from a big bag that I think is a potato chip but it turns out to be a kind of crisp chocolate chip cookie called a "Ladybug". We get onto the train which is arranged in tiers like the seats of an outdoor stadium and we arrange all of our crap around--backbacks and cookies and bottles. We go to an outdoor restaurant where someone invites a slender black woman with platinum blond hair and a long cigarette holder to step out of her black and white picture and sing. I feel awkward. I haven't practiced and I'm worried about horning in, but everyone is singing. I join in briefly but I don't even know the words. I stand next to a tall girl who is singing the harmony part and I think glumly that I don't even know what notes I would sing.

There's a preview for a new video game based on those plastic hanging monkeys that link together. It has two clayamation boys, one black and one white, playing basketball in the clay tropics. One of them lies down on the court and peels off his own skin, revealing his clay skeleton. The other boy does the same and the skeletons get up and link together through rib cages and jaws. Suddenly it's a pile of tiny, real bones and I'm working with someone to sort them out. It's very frustrating. The bones are blobby rectangles, except for the skull bones, which snap together along the jaws.

I'm rubbing lotion onto my hands. They're very dry and covered with veins of white cracks. I can't feel the lotion but I watch it erase the dry flaking white streaks.

I climb into the bed in the basement in VA. Other people keep coming in and interrupting me as I try to nap.

This was a very visually beautiful dream. The elements probably come from the last couple of days in Virginia. I made chocolate chip cookies with some special chips my step-father had, which were extra large and on the cookies that came out symmetrical they looked like ladybugs.

We also saw Sherlock Holmes yesterday which had a scene with pigs in a slaughterhouse and of course ladies with elaborate hair. I only realized at the end of the movie that it was directed by Guy Ritchie, which would explain the pigs, the bareknuckle boxing, and the jump cuts that made me want to hurl. But it was a pretty entertaining movie.

The thing that impressed me most about this dream was that I could pick out both the melody and the harmony of the chorus that was singing. It's strange that I wasn't able to sing along. Where did the words come from? I can't remember if it was a real song that I recognized. Was it Blue Skies?

Reluctant Students; Stacking Saints; Book Show

12/18/09
Troubled by a possible problem at work, I had a lousy night's sleep.

I was trying to teach writing to some indifferent teenagers. I got a very nice edition of a book and gave it to an especially recalcitrant student. It had a beautiful photograph on the cover and gilt edges. She was skeptical and I later found she and another student were planning to sell their books.

I was in a church-like space, and there was a building block type puzzle made of little figurines of a Saint. They stacked like Legos or Linkin Logs, with fitting parts. They were made of dark wood and were very beautiful. They could be built into a tiny cathedral. One monk was sick or possessed and he broke the glass in a dusty diorama of saints eating. He flailed, breaking a fragile wooden bench, and I threw a blanket over him to subdue him.

I was having a book talk on television with M about a YA novel I'm working on at work. The show's house band is a bunch of surly women with lots of heavy make-up. I recognize 3's old band.

I'm beginning to notice that I dream a lot about spaces with dark wood, and especially pieces of fragile furniture made of dark wood. My own room is furnished with light wood and while the pieces are small they're pretty solid. The theme of books is also strong. Especially when I dream of M, who is a woman I would like to befriend.

This was a very visually beautiful dream but I spent most of it quite anxious, maybe reflecting my actual mood. The snafu at work was actually worked out without a wrinkle.