Friday Journal

Wiritng:  Woke up several times in the night -- I'm blaming the cat.  And then The Child.  Got up at 5:30 (The Child had already arisen because this is not a school day).  Tried to write, but was yawning my head off.  The short story I'm working on has stalled, so I started looking and thinking about the mechanics of the plot.  I realized that while the story is working on dialog and main problem, it needed a prohibition for the main character to break and a then have to work through.  I wrote about 200 words in about fortyfive minutes, then stumbled back to bed.  I'm thinking I should have arisen at 3:30 or whenever the cat woke me the first time...

In other news I'm working on an essay to submit to the Men's Story Project.  On the first hand, it's not really writing; they want men to tell their stories in a performance.   On the other hand, writing essay is a nice change from writing fiction.  Back on the first hand, what they really want is memoir... and this looks like it's going to turn into Heart Circle on Stage, which means Group Therapy on Stage.  Jumping over to the second hand, gathering up and summarizing personal stories that illustrate my take on "What It Means To Be A Man," makes me excited and angry -- so passion is informing my writing... but the cynicism and snark levels are high.   Maybe I'll just do a naked interpretive dance.

Dreams:  Wednesday night I dreamed I was trying to save (The Child's?) large koi.  There were two in two medium sized, very clear fishbowls, but something was wrong with the water, and first one and then the second started to swim sideways, then they were both belly up and gasping in the water.  They didn't have sand or castles or bubblers or anything.  Maybe there was chlorine in the water or it was the wrong temperatures.

Thursday night I dreamed I was fallowing Mark and LGL through a very involved building. We walked through a black-and-white tiled cafe, and I got held up swing dancing with the five or so waitresses there.  Mark and LGL kept going, and I followed them down a spiral staircase.  When I got to the bottom, it ended in a floor, with nowhere else to go. After a moment's thought, I rotated the staircase on it's axis and as the bottom stair turned back, it revealed an opening in the floor through which the stairway continued.  There was some kind of glowing, magical world at the bottom, and the dream continued...