Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Journal and Eclipse Dream

Writing:  weekend sickness threw a wrench into things.  So.  Let's see.  Last night I got a critique of a 5000 word story.  I can't believe some of the stupid clerical mistakes I made in the manuscript, but over all the story was well received.  This morning I remembered dreams, got up at 6AM, and wrote them down.   I've got a 1500 word story that is in Very Rough Draft form; I passed it to a beta reader who gave me some really good feedback.

Work-out:  My last work-out was seven days ago.  Sigh.  It was easier during the summer to go in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; but lately Friday's schedule has put a kabosh on that.  I guess I'm going to have to start going in the evenings instead of the afternoons.


DREAM:   

I'd say that the majority of this dreaming was sparked by the solar eclipse coming up tomorrow (Thursday), a brief conversation about skydiving post-Wordos, and a discussion about ski trips past and future.  


Eclipse Dream

The recall begins at my parent's house.  It's dark and we're waiting for a lunar eclipse to begin.  There's some worry that the eclipse wont be visible because of light clouds.  We're looking east over the Willamette Valley, and then the clouds shift and there's a really huge moon, almost silvery white.  

As we watch, a black circular shadow passes in front of the moon.  It's too quick and small to be the Earth's umbra.  We  leave the house (I don't recall who was with me).  After a short investigation we discover that what we thought was the moon is really some kind of balloon with a light-show projector slung beneath it.  The "eclipse" is really some sort of college game entertainment.

I think my sister appeared at the moment and says something like, "I didn't think this was the real eclipse." or "I didn't think we'd be able to see the eclipse from the house."   I looked north, and there I saw the real moon, thin and pretty far advanced in the eclipse.  White wispy clouds passed in front of it.  We could see it because we were east of my folks' house, but the people inside would have a nearly impossible time siting the moon.  (In waking life, I'm realizing that the moon was in a part of the sky in the dream that it would never be able to reach).  I remember pointing at the crescent moon.

There's a break in the narrative, and the eclipsing moon is over an ocean at the coast.  A front is moving in, and where the ocean meets the shore, a layer of white clouds forms.  

I can see all this because I'm in an airplane on some sort of special tour, with a bunch of middle-aged (60-something?) ladies (there might be some men).  Mark may have been there, and the pilot was a guy.  The pilot was talking about the eclipse and the clouds, and we started climbing.  

I don't recall exactly what happened next.  Either the plane when into a dive, or the engine stopped working, or else this was a skydive tour.  I'm thinking the latter because we were suddenly in jump suits.   

Insert falling scene here, I guess, because we were on the beach.  I had traveled with my portable Stonehenge, which in the dream had transformed from a circular object into a rectangular track that was somehow a cross between a cribbage board and a mancala board.  In the fall, most of the pegs were lost, only the black descending moon's node peg was still in place.  I remarked on this, and then found a $20 bill in one of the mancala holes.  There were some other small trinkets (not possible to be there on the real board) in the mancala holes... things like novelty coins or Renaissance Fair necklaces and beads.  

There's another break.  I think Smokey the cat woke me up here or something.

I was on a airport or train tram with Mark.  We had parked a white rental van in a large dark parking structure.   A track ran straight through a parking lot that was about a block wide on either side.  I want to say that we parked in lot 184A or something like that (at some point in the dream I wrote the number down on a white sock, which subsequently got washed and the numbers ran).

I've got the sequence of events jumbled.

At some point I fell asleep on the train and woke up with it having passed my stop.

At some point I was in a convoy with Mark and possibly our friends, the Husbands.  I think I was driving a white truck.  I think I took a wrong turn and went a considerable distance the wrong way before another off ramp appeared.  And at some point I was in the back seat and no one was driving the car, and I had to reach over the car seat and press the break pedal with my hand to stop the truck before it went through the intersection.  

vaguely recall a bunch of us were staying in a guest house or an A-frame chalet.  

I may have been driving the truck through a visitors' center or mall.  And the truck may have turned into me just walking.  

I was in a kind of rustic alpine building.  Lots of cobblestone and dark wood beams.  There was a Saturday Market feel, because every three yards or so, there was someone with a booth selling something (like scarves), or handing out brochures.  There may have been someone like Manfred Fischbeck leading dance hikes.  

Behind a tall counter sat a late 20-something guy with two Siamese cats crouching on either side of him with their eyes closed.  "Are your cats friendly?" I asked.

"Well, give them a try; but they don't like just anyone."

I held up my index finger and presented it to one of the cats, who opened an orange eye and started rubbing its whiskers on it.  The other cat came over and they were rubbing their faces all over my hands.

"Wow, they really like you," the guy said.  "You must have a powerful aura."  He stood up, suddenly tall, and his eyes focused just behind me.  I think he said, "You have a lot of yellow in your aura." I recall he said, "You are lord of fire."

"Fire, huh?" I said, "People usually say I'm air."

For some reason I woke up with the name JJ Keek in my head.  There may be such a person with that name, but I have no idea who they could be.

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