dreams are part of my night

Perhaps I have mentioned before that I write once a month for a writer's blog, Smart Girls Read Romance. There are fifteen writers, posting every two days. I was invited into their group this year. In some ways coming up with a topic for that blog is harder than for this one because I am trying to fit into a group that I didn't form. I don't want to disappoint the founding members. Adding to it, the group is aimed at readers as much or maybe more than writers.

So I came up with a topic for May, [dream power], wrote the blog, had fun with it, and then had a vivid dream that almost made me totally redo it. Instead, I decided to leave there what I had written and bring the new addition to dreams here--

I was invited to be part of an online discussion on dreams. The two women who were also part of it are celebrities, actresses, and well known. It seemed in the dream I was not me but was inside someone else. She was not much younger than the two women but was less famous. So the idea was we would discuss our dreams, maybe write about them and analyze their meanings. I was having a problem with my end of it, as although usually I dreamed interesting dreams, as soon as I was supposed to dream an interesting dream to discuss, I was remembering none of the dreams.

The most vivid sequence was me in the car with one of the women, sitting in the front seat beside the driver when the second famous woman came up and I quickly offered and moved to the backseat. So dreams were being discussed and I was looking at what they had written about theirs and feeling mine was not nearly so interesting when I had a good dream also.

The rest of the dream is lost to the vagaries of the mind. The gist of it though was about the very subject I had written about. Waking to consider it, made me think about why we get the dreams we do and even more so why are the ones in it who are? I didn't used to do this but lately sometimes celebrities are my characters. Yes, they are celebrities I've read about but often not my favorite or those I might be thinking about.

In some ways, I understood why these two women would have been in this dream. They are much in the news right now although I have yet see the series they filmed together. The reason I didn't use their names is one of them is not only famous but in some circles-- infamous. Wherever her name is mentioned some old white guy (they almost always are old white guys) is going to say something about her that is mean, ignorant (he knows only the truth he's been fed), and angry. Until that age of men die off, and she probably will go with them, this won't change. What I don't like about mentioning her name here isn't that I mind people saying something angry to me, but rather how easily I know readers can be distracted from the topic that I had in mind. Whenever I write one of these blogs, I have something I want to be its topic and why I wrote it. Any distraction to something that had little to do with it will lose that point.

Our dreams seem to me to be the mind playing with us. Sometimes what has seemed perfectly logical in a dream almost has me laughing when I wake and it made no sense at all. What appears in a dream can be whatever we have seen or read somewhere and juxtapositioned with something from years back. The whole thing is thrown into the pot that is the mind and brought back together in ways that can mystify me when I am awake. From where on earth did that come is a not uncommon thought as I wake.

Only on very rare occasions have I had a dream that answered a question I had during the day. (Part I of [Diablo Canyon] is one of those exceptions.) Usually my dreams seem to come from out of nowhere, and although I always look to see if there is meaning to them. Once in awhile there is. Because I like writing books with a kind of mystical element, a dream can help it be.

Dreams for me are generally relaxing and fun times (but not always). My dreams can be so vivid, I guard what I put into my mind during the day. I cannot even imagine watching something like the popular series Game of Thrones. Just reading about what goes on there is taking it as far as I want.

Mostly, I don't think I am in control of my dreams, which is a nice break for my brain where it's going all day long. I have done some lucid dreaming, but it's not the average. Lucid dreaming is where you realize you are dreaming and it's going somewhere you don't like or where you prefer a different direction and you take it over-- knowing you did it.

Sometimes I do a digital painting from a dream. The above image was one of those from some years back. I could not remotely tell you what that dream was but the little sketch looked like fun and it kind of says a lot about the kinds of dreams I often have-- full of images and who knows from where they have come.

To see if I had anything about that one, I went back through the journal I was keeping at that time-- not a dream journal but just general-- this is how I'm feeling and what I did. I came across some amazing dreams, which I had long since forgotten but didn't find that one.

Since in the background is a rustic cabin but the subject is a goldfish in a bowl, looking toward the open sea with waves crashing, I wonder if perhaps it was about feeling limited in my own options by what seemed like security. If so, it's no longer true of my life. It does illustrate one feature of all my dreams-- I dream in full Technicolor. The dream dictionary link has a place to explain what those colors might mean...