A Reprise

Last night I dreamed that I chanced upon a beautiful garden and cemetery. Everything was covered in verdure and blooms, and I was seized with the desire to take every possible photograph. I didn't know why I had never noticed that place before. I hurried home to find my camera, but I became distracted by a dozen things, and I never returned to that beautiful place. This morning, I felt heartsick that it has been so long since I have spent time in a place of beauty photographing it. I decided to take some time the next few days to reconnect with photography. As I entered this pavilion the way the light fell reminded me of a dream. I wish I could find a place like the place in my dream.

I have come more to believe that all write a letter to the world. Our own individual letter. Maybe not everyone is driven by the need for personal expression, and the need to perfect that expression, but many are. In the quiet snowed-in days I have experienced I have been alone with my own need often. Given these days, and my mind's rested state allowing me to work through my need, I have been able to think through my expressions and where I am. I have a need to create. It is as strong as it ever has been, but because I have not had a specific vision, I have not created anything. I have been waiting and listening, every hour of every day, for a clue to my inner self. Since I reconnected with that self a year ago, I have written very little. I am growing to realize more recently that this is because previously I was writing from my surface. I was writing reactively. My characters and stories were rising like dreamscape parades of the trials and torments of daily life, and of m...

Last night I dreamed I found a great deal of postcards that were written by my aunt in an antique shop. I thought that they must be there because there had been an estate sale after my grandparents had sold their home years ago. I guessed that they had been written to them from my aunt. I purchased the post cards, feeling I must have them, and felt anxious to go back to the antique shop, because there must be some more of my grandmother's things there.

I am wanted and hounded. To be sighted by another human is to be pursued. I am walking down a sunny and deserted road, when without warning, I see a bus in the distance. I start running as fast as I can, knowing that as I can see the bus, the inhabitants therein, and there must be many, can see me also. I run sluggishly; when I need my strength I have none. I struggle against fences and barriers. I look back to see the bus has stopped. A man is running from the bus toward me at formidable speed. I turn to run, but I feel I shouldn't bother. I will be caught. He takes me to a house alone, and I know that he intends to kill me, but I am still thinking about my escape, and I don't feel quite afraid. He talks to me about killing me, and the others he has killed before me. He tells me that he has made their bodies into ornaments for his home. I have an idea that I should see what he has made; that it will give me a clue for my escape, or it will fill me with horror so that I can run...

Last night I dreamed so many things! I just remembered another one. I dreamed I made a life-size doll of cloth and stuffing using Venus Dodge's methods, articulating the fingers, and dressing her in Victorian/Southern belle clothing. It was so amazing I almost want to do it, especially if I could make a costume on a grand scale. Maybe I would do 2 or 3 feet tall instead of 5 or 6.

Tonight I did a little more than I thought I could. I always think that if I could just get organized I would be able to sit myself right down after a day's work, pick up some sewing work and go after it, but maybe that's a perfect world. I planned meals for the weekend, bought groceries and set my sauerbraten to marinate. It will have to marinate two days since the recipe specified at least 24 hours and I will not be home until late evening tomorrow. I wish I had written out my Black Dahlia dream earlier. I could remember it better then. I woke at about midnight with my blood running cold. I got up and checked all the locks and even looked out the window. I don't really understand what scared me so much, because I wasn't in danger in the dream. Some murder details follow. In my dream we lived in a dorm, one of those with covered walkways between buildings, and the exterior walls that look like they've been laid in glue, then laid in some rocks. The areas on...

I have no writing challenge for today. At least, not for this morning. I need to be in my own head for a while, because it seems like my mind has been disembodied lately. I have been doing a lot of paperwork lately, which puts me in a trance state, and when I come home I resist journaling or Alexandra Stoddard-ing and go stick my head in something where I don't have to think creatively or express. This has led to me feeling really depressed when I reconcile with my writing goals. Last night I had a dream that scared me so deeply. It was basically surrounding the murder of the Black Dahlia. There was an article in my last Gothic Beauty of a Black Dahlia movie which had stuck in my mind as being of poor quality. I was particularly struck by the fact that it never explained much about the Black Dahlia, though perhaps she's a gothic staple. Since I gave up on submitting a resume to Gothic Beauty I think the article stuck in my mind for whatever reason, and I did end up having a dre...

Last night I had a series of dreams that revolved around disease. The first dream was the most distinct. A maiden, like Rapunzel, waited in a tower for her knight to return to her. She waited for him for many years of her life. When he came to her, she was consumed with bittersweet joy. He was now hers, but his mind was eaten with a sickness that did not allow them to communicate. He could not understand her, nor could she understand him. It was as though he was a madman. Their time together would be very short before his life ended. She took him to bed and cared for him, consumed with sorrow that they would never truly be together. The second dream was about my grandfather. The others were more vague. The last dream contained pieces of all of the other dreams, and named the sickness that tied them all together. I woke feeling that I understood everything perfectly, but when I thought about it for a moment, I understood nothing, but the dreams filled me with deep sorrow.

I have just found an old journal where I recorded a few of my dreams six and four years ago. Here are some fragments. I lost my shoes in the mud, then they floated out into the water. I kept fearing that they would sink, but the other person reassured me they'd float. There were lots of lost shoes: sandals and flip flops, floating over the pond. I had to climb onto a raft to retrieve mine. His car was pulling a trailer, and it was going out of control. I was really mad at him. Both of us were in the trailer. No one was in the cab. I was running toward a clear plain in a canyon, and I realized the side jutted up really high, so I started running back toward the other side, because I was afraid this huge wall would fall down on me. The other side of the plain was rocky, muddy and difficult to run through. This was like the old land in New Waverly. A glass steepe with all of these pretty shoes, but all I wanted were shoes that would fit my feet. I said I usually got them at Wal-mart. ...