Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
saturday morning cartoons
The other day I found a great site while searching for the correct wording of a Popeye quote. Before you say anything, I want to go on record as believing there is, quite likely, a Popeye the Sailor Man quote for nearly any occasion. (This is also true for Rocky and Bullwinkle, a rich subject for another day).
My longtime friend Bill, a screenwriter, uses the phrase "Popeye point" to describe that critical point in a story where the protagonist "has all [he] can stands, and [he] can't stands no more." I acks you, what better way to describe it?
The Popeye canon is rich with uncommon wisdom. But don't take my word for it. Here is a link to a site that has culled some Popeye quotes from the 1980 feature film and a few very early cartoons. This is the site I used, but there are actually several:
Quotes site- Popeye
And a couple of quotes to get you started:
_____
Popeye: That's just one of them invisible garages that you can't see on the desert.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves 1937
_____
Popeye: Wrong is wrong, even when it helps ya.
Popeye 1980
_____
[After pulling off Abu Hassan's long johns]
Popeye: Abu Hassan got 'em anymore!
Abu Hassan: You want to make fool from me?
Popeye: Aah, nature beat me to it.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves 1937
_____
Here's a link to the IMDb entry for the 1980 film starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, directed by Robert Altman, written by Jules Feiffer. I don't remember many details about that film, but I do recall thinking it was an eerily perfect cast.
Popeye, 1980
But as many of you know, Popeye the cartoon character goes way back to Max Fleischer, a man of exceptional talent, vision, and accomplishment. Few people, at least outside of the film industry, realize the father of Popeye was also the inventor of the rotoscope.
More about Mr. Fleischer soon.
Where's the entrance to the exit? - Popeye the Sailor Man
* * *
My longtime friend Bill, a screenwriter, uses the phrase "Popeye point" to describe that critical point in a story where the protagonist "has all [he] can stands, and [he] can't stands no more." I acks you, what better way to describe it?
The Popeye canon is rich with uncommon wisdom. But don't take my word for it. Here is a link to a site that has culled some Popeye quotes from the 1980 feature film and a few very early cartoons. This is the site I used, but there are actually several:
Quotes site- Popeye
And a couple of quotes to get you started:
_____
Popeye: That's just one of them invisible garages that you can't see on the desert.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves 1937
_____
Popeye: Wrong is wrong, even when it helps ya.
Popeye 1980
_____
[After pulling off Abu Hassan's long johns]
Popeye: Abu Hassan got 'em anymore!
Abu Hassan: You want to make fool from me?
Popeye: Aah, nature beat me to it.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves 1937
_____
Here's a link to the IMDb entry for the 1980 film starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, directed by Robert Altman, written by Jules Feiffer. I don't remember many details about that film, but I do recall thinking it was an eerily perfect cast.
Popeye, 1980
But as many of you know, Popeye the cartoon character goes way back to Max Fleischer, a man of exceptional talent, vision, and accomplishment. Few people, at least outside of the film industry, realize the father of Popeye was also the inventor of the rotoscope.
More about Mr. Fleischer soon.
Where's the entrance to the exit? - Popeye the Sailor Man
* * *
Thursday, June 24, 2010
passage to india
For a so-called movie person, I still have some surprising gaps. One major film I never saw when it came out was Passage to India, released in 1984. It would be director David Lean's last film (Lean was the director of Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, and The Bridge on the River Kwai).
The story opens in 1928, first in England, and before long, we're in colonial India.
First, I'll get a few negative comments out of the way. Plot-wise in the latter part of the story it has some perplexing missteps which I can't completely ignore. And while most people reviewing the film carry on about how great the Jarre score was, I personally found it variously jarring, thin, inappropriate, and lacking (to put it mildly). But there's plenty of good news because the film's other cinematic attributes will probably make up for any oddities. Location footage is lush, gorgeous, and atmospheric in that epic style mastered by David Lean, populated with rich characters in an absorbing situation.
The copy I viewed was a recent DVD release, borrowed from my local library. I understand there is a BluRay version, which would probably be a worthwhile upgrade.
Awards and nominations don't always indicate greatness, but it should be noted that this film won two Oscars, eighteen other awards, and twenty-four other nominations.
Before commenting further, I want to see the film again, but this time on the big screen. My viewing was on my computer monitor... not as bad of a way to see a film as it might seem, but among other things, I want to hear the sound fully and properly.
* * *
Final notes: Curiously enough, I liked the film even less upon second viewing. It failed, for me personally, in ways involving plot and character believability that seemed hard to excuse. It still looked great, with some memorable-- even haunting-- moments, but the plot problems (especially in the last reels) were nearly enough to deflate the whole endeavor. And while I'm usually a fan of Judy Davis, she did nothing for me in this role beyond her promising opening scenes. My suspicion is that this shortfall was a directing problem, not an acting one. Being mysterious and open-ended or ambiguous is one thing, but this piece of filmmaking fell short of that. And the final scene of Ms. Davis lands with a dull thud. (The rest of the characters were quite good throughout, especially 'Mrs. Moore'). I generally am not openly critical of a work of art, and it pains me to take to task someone like the late, esteemed Mr. Lean, but I won't worry too much as there seems no shortage of fans. Some even call the film Lean's masterwork. Hmm.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
on books: first draft essay, 3 feb. 1998
This is a previously unpublished essay from 1998, presented as-is. / b
Morning Pages, Tuesday Feb. 3, 1998
In the Form of a Rough Draft for an Essay
The column I'd like to respond to, one that ran in my local newspaper recently, was about collecting rare books. Unfortunately I no longer have a copy of it. But I'll try to explain it as I go.
There was nothing particularly striking about the article, at first quick glance, that made me want to read it; it was merely a short frontpiece of a weekend insert on books with the format of the New York Times Book Review.
The author of that article was also the review's editor. What sent me away puzzled, after I read the article, was the contradiction between his disparagement of rare book collecting (“It’s the words that count, not the book!”) and his unequivocal distaste for the lack of warmth of such online behemoths as Amazon. How, I wondered, could someone almost in the same haughty breath dismiss book collectors as missing the point, and then extol the moral supremacy of walking into a store full of books while shuddering in distaste at the cyberworld option of ordering them by mail? Not only did these views present an apparent contradiction, but more significantly, each view in itself was simplistic and incomplete.
The author made some interesting assumptions. The first assumption was that anyone interested in rare books, book collecting, first editions, and the like is not interested in the content, the psychic depth, the romance, the literary quality, the life-enrichment, the “words”, if you will, of books. Although I am sure there are book collectors who deal in books as mere objects, it seems more than likely that a book collector enters that world motivated by the love and respect for those very qualities I mentioned. Perhaps the book collectors of that author’s acquaintance are illiterate hucksters looking for fast cash, but I doubt it.
Words are the thing, then, according to that author. So does it make a difference which edition of a book I buy? Not long ago I picked up a fragile copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, not because it was cheap (it wasn’t), and not because it isn’t available in a perfectly decent paperback (it is), but because I am a descendant of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the book’s author. First published in 1852, this edition I found was copyright 1894. The intervening forty two years were sufficient to give the editors enough historical perspective to include a fascinating introduction. But even if this introduction was included in a paperback edition, I would still have been delighted to take this small green and silver volume home with me because it was not only beautiful in and of itself, but a piece of history. There are thousands of stories like mine, thousands of diverse yet valid reasons why someone would want this book or that book, and go to some trouble or expense to make it happen.
There is nothing empty and superficial about the love of the object. All around the world, our greatest museums give impressive testimony to this love. Books as objects are part of this cultural achievement; even so, they are more.
My own words fail when I attempt to describe the impact of standing inches away from the handwritten volume given from Professor Dodgsen to Alice Lydell, lying open in a glass case in the British Museum. Chicago Art Institute: little books with notes and scribbles by Jean Cocteau. Handwritten journals of Romanov family members, San Diego Art Museum from the touring Russian exhibit. Books, blank but full of promise, made by hand by artisans, lovingly covered in rough-hewn papers and luxurious velvets. A large coffee-table book with beautiful photographs of New Zealand, presented to us by visiting friends from that country who stayed in our home here in California. The unmistakable aroma of the small storage house, built by my Dutch grandpa, at the end of a gravel walkway; the little building filled to capacity with old books. This Book Nook, as neat lettering on its door proclaimed, during my childhood had an old book scent so distinctive, so alluring, I can remember it to this day.
Medieval monks expressed their love and devotion of the meaning of the words they transcribed when they spent lifetimes taking pen to parchment.
Books can be appreciated trivially and deeply; seriously and with a chuckle; for themselves as lovely, multisensual objects in our world, and for their worlds contained within them.
First draft, to be revised. It is raining, hard. Thunder and lightening this morning.
Notes: I am writing this on a computer, delighted as always that on it I can write nearly as fast as I can think. Later today I may send a notecard of handmade paper, sealed with embossed wax. Last week I ordered a book online by credit card and it arrived, gift-wrapped and with my message, to a faraway friend just a few days later. Tomorrow I may sit in a bookstore cafe sipping an overpriced cappuccino, surrounded by books and the people who love them. I will do this willingly and with great pleasure, in the silent company of people who likely feel the same way I do. This multifaceted appreciation for writing and for books, for form as well as content, marks us as civilized humans who have come a long, long way.
That illogical grump who looked down on book collectors needs to learn a thing or two.
* * *
Morning Pages, Tuesday Feb. 3, 1998
In the Form of a Rough Draft for an Essay
The column I'd like to respond to, one that ran in my local newspaper recently, was about collecting rare books. Unfortunately I no longer have a copy of it. But I'll try to explain it as I go.
There was nothing particularly striking about the article, at first quick glance, that made me want to read it; it was merely a short frontpiece of a weekend insert on books with the format of the New York Times Book Review.
The author of that article was also the review's editor. What sent me away puzzled, after I read the article, was the contradiction between his disparagement of rare book collecting (“It’s the words that count, not the book!”) and his unequivocal distaste for the lack of warmth of such online behemoths as Amazon. How, I wondered, could someone almost in the same haughty breath dismiss book collectors as missing the point, and then extol the moral supremacy of walking into a store full of books while shuddering in distaste at the cyberworld option of ordering them by mail? Not only did these views present an apparent contradiction, but more significantly, each view in itself was simplistic and incomplete.
The author made some interesting assumptions. The first assumption was that anyone interested in rare books, book collecting, first editions, and the like is not interested in the content, the psychic depth, the romance, the literary quality, the life-enrichment, the “words”, if you will, of books. Although I am sure there are book collectors who deal in books as mere objects, it seems more than likely that a book collector enters that world motivated by the love and respect for those very qualities I mentioned. Perhaps the book collectors of that author’s acquaintance are illiterate hucksters looking for fast cash, but I doubt it.
Words are the thing, then, according to that author. So does it make a difference which edition of a book I buy? Not long ago I picked up a fragile copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, not because it was cheap (it wasn’t), and not because it isn’t available in a perfectly decent paperback (it is), but because I am a descendant of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the book’s author. First published in 1852, this edition I found was copyright 1894. The intervening forty two years were sufficient to give the editors enough historical perspective to include a fascinating introduction. But even if this introduction was included in a paperback edition, I would still have been delighted to take this small green and silver volume home with me because it was not only beautiful in and of itself, but a piece of history. There are thousands of stories like mine, thousands of diverse yet valid reasons why someone would want this book or that book, and go to some trouble or expense to make it happen.
There is nothing empty and superficial about the love of the object. All around the world, our greatest museums give impressive testimony to this love. Books as objects are part of this cultural achievement; even so, they are more.
My own words fail when I attempt to describe the impact of standing inches away from the handwritten volume given from Professor Dodgsen to Alice Lydell, lying open in a glass case in the British Museum. Chicago Art Institute: little books with notes and scribbles by Jean Cocteau. Handwritten journals of Romanov family members, San Diego Art Museum from the touring Russian exhibit. Books, blank but full of promise, made by hand by artisans, lovingly covered in rough-hewn papers and luxurious velvets. A large coffee-table book with beautiful photographs of New Zealand, presented to us by visiting friends from that country who stayed in our home here in California. The unmistakable aroma of the small storage house, built by my Dutch grandpa, at the end of a gravel walkway; the little building filled to capacity with old books. This Book Nook, as neat lettering on its door proclaimed, during my childhood had an old book scent so distinctive, so alluring, I can remember it to this day.
Medieval monks expressed their love and devotion of the meaning of the words they transcribed when they spent lifetimes taking pen to parchment.
Books can be appreciated trivially and deeply; seriously and with a chuckle; for themselves as lovely, multisensual objects in our world, and for their worlds contained within them.
First draft, to be revised. It is raining, hard. Thunder and lightening this morning.
Notes: I am writing this on a computer, delighted as always that on it I can write nearly as fast as I can think. Later today I may send a notecard of handmade paper, sealed with embossed wax. Last week I ordered a book online by credit card and it arrived, gift-wrapped and with my message, to a faraway friend just a few days later. Tomorrow I may sit in a bookstore cafe sipping an overpriced cappuccino, surrounded by books and the people who love them. I will do this willingly and with great pleasure, in the silent company of people who likely feel the same way I do. This multifaceted appreciation for writing and for books, for form as well as content, marks us as civilized humans who have come a long, long way.
That illogical grump who looked down on book collectors needs to learn a thing or two.
* * *
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
more dreaming
Dream AccountMarch 7, 2002
I just woke up, 5:30 AM. I had gone to sleep at about 10 PM last night, after taking Prempro and ½ mg sublingual melatonin.
Deadly Television Show
There was a kind of reality television show where people in the audience were at risk of having their heads chopped off! It was in a big arena, and some kind of event was going on, where the contestants have swords. [This may have come from a book I re-read recently where the hero has a katana sword]. Anyway, I was discussing this with, of all people, my [real life] ex-husband. We were wondering why anyone would sit anywhere near where they might get their heads chopped off, and I figured they were probably taking that chance because they wanted to see the show better. Still, it didn’t seem like a good idea to me. We figured that everybody in the audience there probably had to sign elaborate release forms, and that when people got killed during the shows, their families would get 20,000 dollars to help offset funerals and so forth. Ewwww!
Festa Party in Surreal-designed Basement
My friends T. and J. are having some kind of event in honor of the Portuguese Festa [which they were actually involved with last year in real life. T’s daughter was in the event, and I designed and made the dresses. During this time, I made 3 dolls for the girls, which got me started on the fashion doll makeover hobby. Although there was no Festa this year, either in the dream or reality, they were still doing some kind of acknowledgement of it with a church ceremony and a private party in their home].
At first this dream was taking place in my dad’s neighborhood, but then it shifted to what was apparently my friends' new house [they recently did move, and I’ve not seen their new house yet]. There is much of this part of the dream that I’ve forgotten, including what I now feel were some rather surreal elements, but what I do remember is this: There were paper clothing patterns--regular illustrated pattern envelopes with patterns in them-- all over the floor in some big basement or another where part of the event was being held. This was meant to be a kind of fun décor. There were seats, like bleachers, in this basement. These seats ramped up higher and higher like in an arena, and while several of us were walking up the rows to find seats, I was picking up a few patterns that interested me, with the intention of asking T. later if I could take them. Presumably they were not going to be used afterwards anyway. These were appealing patterns with great artwork on the covers, the details of which I could see very clearly in the dream.
In another part of this basement area, there was an elaborate substructure that had been done in glossy tiles in an art deco design of pink and black, something like the floral design of our home theater carpeting but with fewer colors, and simpler. This tile covered several pillars, the floor, and the ceiling of one part of the room. I wondered why they had done this part of the room that way. I thought how great this basement room would have been if turned into an actual home theater like ours, but I knew they hadn’t done that. Still, they had adopted a rather theatrical motif for the décor, anyway. I could see the tiles clearly in the dream. The pink was really a kind of rose color, and the tiles were maybe eight inches across and very glossy. The dream, with all of its appealing design details, was very pleasant and artistically inspiring.
* * *
Monday, June 21, 2010
midnight again and again
The Insomnia Archives: notes from an old dream journal
These are offered here for those who want to get a feel for the role of lucidity in dreaming, and also for anyone who finds dream accounts inexplicably interesting. /b
* * *
Lucid and Non-lucid Dreams-- Intense, high resolution night and morning dreams
August 12, 2001
Notes made the following afternoon (Monday)
Includes extensive personal notes
It’s been an emotionally exhausting but fascinating week. Saturday night we had our 30-year High School Reunion. Sunday we had a reunion picnic. Last night I went to sleep around 1 AM. I had a lucid dream right away, sitting up in bed with the light still on. My sleep schedule had been severely different than normal and there was definite REM rebound effect. This was a fabulous combination... I really think the affect of emotions on dreams is considerable. Recent stimulation of having old memory banks dusted off and opened up, metaphorically speaking, has helped my dream life considerably.
Dangerous Man in My Room
I was in some sort of a room that I understood to be my room. It was like a hotel room or small apartment, and was unfamiliar to me-- I don’t remember dreaming about that room before, and it wasn’t like anything in my real life. It was simply furnished, and I think the door was open. This was in some kind of urban setting.
I was in the room, and a man came in. He looked at me and smiled but it was really ominous. He was average and ordinary-looking, middle-aged, white, dressed in some kind of sportcoat and slacks, medium build, and I think his hands were in his pockets. He was sort of wandering around the room like someone would do if he was in a store, looking at items. I became very afraid. I slipped out the door and went to a nearby place, another room close by. I asked someone there if I could use the phone because I wanted to call 911 for help because the man was dangerous and in my place. I tried several phones but could not get a dial tone on any of them. I should have then realized it was a dream, or at least did a reality check. One was an old bakelite phone, another was a pay phone on a wall, and then I think there was some other phone I at least looked at. In the dream I actually picked up receivers on the first two phones. I was also speaking to others there about my situation. I don’t remember who was there or what they looked like or what they did. I don’t remember how the dream resolved, either. It probably changed to another situation. The most striking thing about the dream was the sudden fear that I felt, and the need to immediately do something about it.
Sleep Onset Lucid Dream
Close to Him, but Not Alone
Scary Tide Pool: Too Deep
Sitting with X [from very long ago]; he was seated behind me in a kind of snuggling embrace. I could feel his legs and arms somehow close in around me, and he was being endearing in a way that was slightly out of character. Then he began reciting something, like he was quoting from literature. What I felt most about this situation was the physical proximity, and the voice proximity. I was aware I was hearing prose, real words coming out in fairly rapid delivery, and I was becoming lucid enough to realize I wouldn’t be able to remember what was being said, which was frustrating. My thinking was still sort of limited at this point. I was immersed in the feeling of that situation, and it seemed to distract me from full appreciation of my options. In a moment, I heard another voice coming from off to the right; [female]. She unexpectedly was completing the recitation of prose. This puzzled me in the dream; I realized having her there too was not what I wanted to happen. I had been having a kind of reverie during the dream, a kind of fantasy about what we could do, but this fantasy ended with my hearing the voice on my right. I realized if she was part of the dream, it would kill the eroticism of the original fantasy; this was almost an idle thought, a brief dream-within-the-dream.
The unusual, poetic formatting in the account below was an accident that happened during the original dream entry in my notebook computer. I decided it was interesting, and left it that way(!)
Dangerous Waters
At this point the dream shifted. I was with X in a pool of water that was immense, like an indoor ocean.
We were along the left edge, near a kind of corner. We were holding onto each other in the water, and the
dream somehow alternated between feeling like I was experiencing this with him, from a realistic-feeling point of
view, to a kind of wide shot where I saw the ocean pool more from a distance (although without seeing
myself and him in this view). The feeling was somewhat poignant and hauntingly romantic, somehow,
with an indefinable sense of meaningfulness. The striking thing about this ocean pool was that there was
a tide [I read about a pool in Japan that is like this, and saw a photo, about a month ago. Also, with X
there had at one time been such a conversation in real life]. The water was lapping up almost in
slow motion. The tide was what scared me, and also the fact that I knew the water became suddenly deep,
quickly. We held onto each other and I could feel the pull of the water around me. It was somewhat
frightening but still had a romantic feel. I knew we had to hang on and not be pulled by the deep water.
In case anyone besides me ever reads this account, I do not really know how to swim in real life.
Water has been appearing in my dreams lately as, apparently, a metaphor with several layers. I have been in a retrospective mode lately, with my 30-yr. reunion. Because I felt isolated for so long while I was growing up, this is still a charged emotional realm for me...
Vertical Platforms, Levels of Education
Following the semi-lucid dreams, I became completely lucid. I began to fly upward, but instead of being either in my typical indoor environment or my outdoor one, I was flying upward quite quickly along a series of vertical platforms.
As I was doing this, I was wishing I could slow down the flying, as I do enjoy looking at my environment in a dream. But I seemed unable to control the speed of my flying. I looked down for a bit, to see my arms and legs. They were fairly convincing. I wished, as I have lately, that I could have been wearing my Red Dress. [Fictitious garment worn in romantic dreams; it was a feature of many dreams I’ve had as an adult; I always enjoyed the idea of wearing it].
I seemed to have been wearing slacks. I looked as best as I could at the platforms, and I realized somehow that the dream was a visual metaphor for levels of education. I was pleased that I was able to grasp some significance of the dream while I was dreaming it. Eventually I ended up landing somewhere, and was reading some notices on a wall...
I had a fascinating series of dreams after this, and what I wrote above was just what I was able to remember the next day after only putting down the most rudimentary bedside notes. I woke up at 6:30, knowing I still wanted to sleep some more. I had a glass of sugared iced tea, and returned to sleep. I had the following lucid dream, followed by a non-lucid one.
Clever Dream-Character Surprises Me
I was, I think, in my backyard of my father’s house near the back door. There is a lot of stuff stacked around. A man is there [from real life], someone who resembles a guy whose name came up at the reunion picnic but was not actually there. [He was someone I hardly knew at all].
I understood completely that it was a dream, and I wanted to try an experiment with the dream. I asked him if he had any consciousness, and he answered immediately, “Not around here, I don’t.” This struck me as extremely interesting, even funny. I enjoyed how, even though I knew it was a dream, his answer surprised me, and as a dream event the remark came as a surprise and was out of any conscious control. I further understood it to mean that he couldn’t be conscious in my dream because it was my dream, not his. I was the one who was conscious, or even, I was the one who was real. This raised some humorous what-is-what issues for me in the dream, which I enjoyed thinking about while the dream was happening.
He was going to look for something for me, and I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if you could get a dream-character to do tasks for you, to use them as a convenient method for extracting information from your own brain. What he was looking for was a box that had something of interest for me, but the dream changed before I could look in the box.
* * *
These are offered here for those who want to get a feel for the role of lucidity in dreaming, and also for anyone who finds dream accounts inexplicably interesting. /b
* * *
Lucid and Non-lucid Dreams-- Intense, high resolution night and morning dreams
August 12, 2001
Notes made the following afternoon (Monday)
Includes extensive personal notes
It’s been an emotionally exhausting but fascinating week. Saturday night we had our 30-year High School Reunion. Sunday we had a reunion picnic. Last night I went to sleep around 1 AM. I had a lucid dream right away, sitting up in bed with the light still on. My sleep schedule had been severely different than normal and there was definite REM rebound effect. This was a fabulous combination... I really think the affect of emotions on dreams is considerable. Recent stimulation of having old memory banks dusted off and opened up, metaphorically speaking, has helped my dream life considerably.
Dangerous Man in My Room
I was in some sort of a room that I understood to be my room. It was like a hotel room or small apartment, and was unfamiliar to me-- I don’t remember dreaming about that room before, and it wasn’t like anything in my real life. It was simply furnished, and I think the door was open. This was in some kind of urban setting.
I was in the room, and a man came in. He looked at me and smiled but it was really ominous. He was average and ordinary-looking, middle-aged, white, dressed in some kind of sportcoat and slacks, medium build, and I think his hands were in his pockets. He was sort of wandering around the room like someone would do if he was in a store, looking at items. I became very afraid. I slipped out the door and went to a nearby place, another room close by. I asked someone there if I could use the phone because I wanted to call 911 for help because the man was dangerous and in my place. I tried several phones but could not get a dial tone on any of them. I should have then realized it was a dream, or at least did a reality check. One was an old bakelite phone, another was a pay phone on a wall, and then I think there was some other phone I at least looked at. In the dream I actually picked up receivers on the first two phones. I was also speaking to others there about my situation. I don’t remember who was there or what they looked like or what they did. I don’t remember how the dream resolved, either. It probably changed to another situation. The most striking thing about the dream was the sudden fear that I felt, and the need to immediately do something about it.
Sleep Onset Lucid Dream
Close to Him, but Not Alone
Scary Tide Pool: Too Deep
Sitting with X [from very long ago]; he was seated behind me in a kind of snuggling embrace. I could feel his legs and arms somehow close in around me, and he was being endearing in a way that was slightly out of character. Then he began reciting something, like he was quoting from literature. What I felt most about this situation was the physical proximity, and the voice proximity. I was aware I was hearing prose, real words coming out in fairly rapid delivery, and I was becoming lucid enough to realize I wouldn’t be able to remember what was being said, which was frustrating. My thinking was still sort of limited at this point. I was immersed in the feeling of that situation, and it seemed to distract me from full appreciation of my options. In a moment, I heard another voice coming from off to the right; [female]. She unexpectedly was completing the recitation of prose. This puzzled me in the dream; I realized having her there too was not what I wanted to happen. I had been having a kind of reverie during the dream, a kind of fantasy about what we could do, but this fantasy ended with my hearing the voice on my right. I realized if she was part of the dream, it would kill the eroticism of the original fantasy; this was almost an idle thought, a brief dream-within-the-dream.
The unusual, poetic formatting in the account below was an accident that happened during the original dream entry in my notebook computer. I decided it was interesting, and left it that way(!)
Dangerous Waters
At this point the dream shifted. I was with X in a pool of water that was immense, like an indoor ocean.
We were along the left edge, near a kind of corner. We were holding onto each other in the water, and the
dream somehow alternated between feeling like I was experiencing this with him, from a realistic-feeling point of
view, to a kind of wide shot where I saw the ocean pool more from a distance (although without seeing
myself and him in this view). The feeling was somewhat poignant and hauntingly romantic, somehow,
with an indefinable sense of meaningfulness. The striking thing about this ocean pool was that there was
a tide [I read about a pool in Japan that is like this, and saw a photo, about a month ago. Also, with X
there had at one time been such a conversation in real life]. The water was lapping up almost in
slow motion. The tide was what scared me, and also the fact that I knew the water became suddenly deep,
quickly. We held onto each other and I could feel the pull of the water around me. It was somewhat
frightening but still had a romantic feel. I knew we had to hang on and not be pulled by the deep water.
In case anyone besides me ever reads this account, I do not really know how to swim in real life.
Water has been appearing in my dreams lately as, apparently, a metaphor with several layers. I have been in a retrospective mode lately, with my 30-yr. reunion. Because I felt isolated for so long while I was growing up, this is still a charged emotional realm for me...
Vertical Platforms, Levels of Education
Following the semi-lucid dreams, I became completely lucid. I began to fly upward, but instead of being either in my typical indoor environment or my outdoor one, I was flying upward quite quickly along a series of vertical platforms.
As I was doing this, I was wishing I could slow down the flying, as I do enjoy looking at my environment in a dream. But I seemed unable to control the speed of my flying. I looked down for a bit, to see my arms and legs. They were fairly convincing. I wished, as I have lately, that I could have been wearing my Red Dress. [Fictitious garment worn in romantic dreams; it was a feature of many dreams I’ve had as an adult; I always enjoyed the idea of wearing it].
I seemed to have been wearing slacks. I looked as best as I could at the platforms, and I realized somehow that the dream was a visual metaphor for levels of education. I was pleased that I was able to grasp some significance of the dream while I was dreaming it. Eventually I ended up landing somewhere, and was reading some notices on a wall...
I had a fascinating series of dreams after this, and what I wrote above was just what I was able to remember the next day after only putting down the most rudimentary bedside notes. I woke up at 6:30, knowing I still wanted to sleep some more. I had a glass of sugared iced tea, and returned to sleep. I had the following lucid dream, followed by a non-lucid one.
Clever Dream-Character Surprises Me
I was, I think, in my backyard of my father’s house near the back door. There is a lot of stuff stacked around. A man is there [from real life], someone who resembles a guy whose name came up at the reunion picnic but was not actually there. [He was someone I hardly knew at all].
I understood completely that it was a dream, and I wanted to try an experiment with the dream. I asked him if he had any consciousness, and he answered immediately, “Not around here, I don’t.” This struck me as extremely interesting, even funny. I enjoyed how, even though I knew it was a dream, his answer surprised me, and as a dream event the remark came as a surprise and was out of any conscious control. I further understood it to mean that he couldn’t be conscious in my dream because it was my dream, not his. I was the one who was conscious, or even, I was the one who was real. This raised some humorous what-is-what issues for me in the dream, which I enjoyed thinking about while the dream was happening.
He was going to look for something for me, and I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if you could get a dream-character to do tasks for you, to use them as a convenient method for extracting information from your own brain. What he was looking for was a box that had something of interest for me, but the dream changed before I could look in the box.
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