Dream On

I keep a dream journal. There’s a Black n’ Red and a pen tucked down the side of my mattress and the first thing I do when I wake up is write down everything I remember. I have incredibly detailed and cinematic dreams, I have since I was a child and it wasn’t until I got older and started sharing them with others that I realized I wasn’t normal – that while I’m dreaming about evil music boxes that form a militia and I’m the only force keeping them from total world domination*, most people are dreaming about their grandma or (this kills me) don’t remember their dreams at all.

My dreams are always very complex. They have story arcs and act breaks and climaxes and cliffhangers. They are also closely tied to whatever is going on in my life: When I feel happy I might have a dream about me and my best friend strapping on vests with tiny hot air balloons attached and soaring around my neighborhood. When I feel stressed I might have a dream about my ex boyfriend and I being trapped in the unhinged car of a roller coaster that is suspended miles above the ocean and the only way to stop from careening off and plummeting to our deaths is to throw our weight around in a way that keeps it on the tracks. And when I have really acute anxiety about something, I have my recurring nightmare that someone is stalking me to kill me and we play cat and mouse until eventually the killer (always cloaked in black) corners me and I try to scream but can’t find my voice until just as he lunges to strangle or stab me (always one of those two); I’m finally able scream but it’s too late because I’m being brutally murdered. That’s a fun one for boyfriends because I wake up screaming in a cold sweat. Fortunately it’s rare and generally reserved for major life transitions, like when I’m contemplating changing jobs or moving or ending a relationship. I actually have a great appreciation for that dream because it’s a very clear knock on the head that I’m unhappy with my life and need to change things up. On a few occasions it has happened unexpectedly, which is fascinating-slash-alarming because then I have to go on a psychological witch-hunt to identify what’s bothering me so that the nightmares will stop. Good times!

Sometimes I dream in other languages. If I’ve been reminiscing about Peace Corps, I’ll dream in Arabic that night, which I love because I don’t really remember any Arabic so as soon as I wake up I jot down all the vocabulary I can recall. The other day I downloaded the Wunderlist app for my Iphone and just for kicks I decided to navigate all the settings and features in French. Right on schedule, that night I dreamed in French that I was the headmaster at a prestigious boarding school nestled among lavender fields and there was a visiting headmaster who wanted to observe the school to get ideas for his own up the road and I wanted to run him off because he was my competition but also I was secretly in love with him.

Like the French boarding school, most of my dreams are purely entertaining. Like the one I had a couple weeks ago where I was on a guided tour of Buckingham Palace and I got separated from the group and Prince William struck up a conversation with me and before I knew it we were having a clandestine affair but I was also staying at the palace as a guest of the Royal Family, playing tennis and acting like everything was normal. I felt so ashamed about it until Kate Middleton took me aside and told me she knew about the affair and that it was fine, that everyone in Europe has mistresses and that she was glad Prince William had chosen me because she really liked me and enjoyed my company. This dream is a little disappointing because I don’t find Prince William the slightest bit attractive but it’s nice to know that my brain is comfortable justifying extra-marital affairs.

In the words of my father, after I described a dream over the breakfast table in 8^th grade: “Jeepers. Even in sleep you have a flair for the dramatic.”

I go through phases logging my dreams. I haven’t done it for years but I started up again last January because I was experiencing a really damaging artistic block and I hoped that recording my dreams might harness the creative juices that were flowing while I slept. At the time I thought they could be the catalyst for a screenplay or a character study or some short stories but after 10 months of steady tracking they have established themselves as nothing more than deeply bizarre snapshots of my psyche so now I mostly record them so that if I die suddenly in a car crash, my friends and family, entrenched in a grief that only wants to remember me as vibrant and beautiful, will have something tangible to remind them what a loon I was.

And now you can, too! I’ve decided to open up my dream journal to you so you can enjoy the inner workings of my cracked-out subconscious. Instead of revisiting dreams I’ve already had, we’ll start fresh together and I’ll report the most interesting ones to you as I digest them. So none to talk about yet, since the clock starts with this post but I’m sure there will be some doozies as the holidays draw near. Sweet dreams!

*All the dreams I mention are real. This one occurred in high school the night before my AP English exam.

Frankenstorm

Frankenstorm is scheduled to hit the Northeast today and in talking to family and friends out there I find my inner Rhode Islander feeling nostalgic for natural disasters. Not to minimize the fact that peoples’ safety is at stake but I do sometimes miss epic weather events. There’s something so electric about the way a great storm shifts our thinking; we always bow to Nature. This doesn’t exist in California, does it? There's a constant threat of earthquakes, I guess, but their unpredictability deprives us of my favorite part of the experience: The preparation. I love the Colonial America-ness of boarding up the house, securing the animals, collecting candles and preserved food. As my mother happily chimed over the phone yesterday, "I bought three gallons of ice cream so that when we lose power we have to eat it all!" This is the compass she's passed down to me. One of joy and abandon - enjoy the rhythm of the storm, wear pajamas all day long, huddle under pillow-y comforters and play board games by flashlight. Create festivity in the face of fear. Storms are a celebration of resilience. 

Certainly I wish for a mild storm and minimal damage. My closest loved ones are all on the East Coast and I would love nothing more than for this to blow out to sea... I also recognize that yesterday, as my parents were cleaning the gutters and filling the bathtub with water, I got sunburn while browsing fresh honey at the Farmer’s Market. I have nothing to complain about. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t once in a while wish for the occasion to join my mother in bundling up in an oversized sweatshirt, drinking hot chocolate and taping the windows :) 

The Book of Questions

I was rummaging through some holiday decorations over the weekend and found The Book of Questions by Gregory Stock, PH.D. I remember buying this years ago on a whim, thinking it would be fun at parties but I guess I don’t have parties (or my parties are so fun they don’t need help from a book?) because this thing has never been cracked. Until now! 

Okay, maybe my expectations are way off base but aren't these books usually pretty innocuous? Don't they generally only exist to make you contemplate "What would you do if you found one million dollars in an abandoned shopping cart?" while your friend takes too long in the Barnes and Noble restroom? Not this creepy, hairy mole of a book. It's unclear what Dr. Gregory’s credentials are but based on the first twenty pages, I’m guessing he falls just right of the questionable pediatrician I went to during junior high whose answer to any ailment was to have me take my shirt off so he could “listen to” my braless chest and just left of the maniacal abortion doctors showcased at fundamentalist Hell Houses. Take Question #11, for example: 

“You’re given the power to kill people, simply by thinking of their deaths and twice repeating the words 'good-bye'. People would die a natural death and no one would suspect you. Are there any situations in which you would use this power?” 

What the WHAT?! I’ve read this a couple times now and I think the detailed procedure he created is the most disturbing. For the average person, a healthy curiosity (and a couple of Sazeracs) might make you wonder out loud, “Hey, can you imagine having the power to kill someone with your mind? Ethically, that would be bananas!” Not Dr. Gregory. He has fleshed this out and planted a neat little script for us so that now I can’t stop thinking of people in my life and saying “good-bye” over and over. I may very well have just eliminated my entire immediate family, two of my friends and Rueben, the smiley cleaning guy at my office who is (used to be??) helping me with my Spanish. It is of no comfort that they died of natural causes, by the way. Drowning is technically a natural death. Also, I feel like he’s trying to mask the crazy by using subtle wording in that final question, “Are there any situations in which you would use this power?” Um, you’re asking me if I would kill people. Don’t get coy with me, Dr. Gregory. You want me to tell you all my killing fantasies and you want to tape them and dance to them the dank, leaky basement where you keep your severed head collection. 

That said, I would totally use it. I would use it for the guy in rush hour traffic who doesn’t let me merge in front of him and then later cuts me off when he needs to get over at the last minute. I would also use it for anyone who talks during movies and bicyclists who bike on the sidewalk. 

Good-bye, good-bye!

Progress Report

It has officially been six weeks since my debut entry about Labor Day resolutions so I thought I ought to provide a progress report. I should tell you that I intended to complete a progress report after one month but I was performing so dismally that I procrastinated for two weeks in the hopes that I might scrape up something better to tell you. I haven’t. 

So far I have flossed my teeth 11 times. One of those times was because I had spinach in my teeth after dinner in Vegas and three of those times were because I had cilantro in my teeth after eating Chipotle burrito bowls for lunch at work. The circumstances, and the fact that I didn’t give attention to every tooth, should not minimize the fact that I flossed, though. If I were a smoker who didn’t smoke 11 cigarettes, you’d be really happy for me. Also, I’m aware that I need to be flossing, even if I’m not actually doing it and, having served as a teacher in our confused school system I can tell you that ambiguous nonsense like “awareness” counts when grading, and I should be held to the same standards as our school children, right?  I give myself a C .

I have read more books! You should be really proud of me on this one because it required the supplementary effort of showing my face at the library and paying a $50 fine for forgetting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in the drawer of my coffee table for a year and a half. Turns out that that when a book is missing that long they label it “stolen” (ouch, Library) and remove it from the inventory, so that my simple return became the chaos number in a Broadway show: Perky library personnel scratching their heads and furrowing their brows as they peer at each other’s computers and pass the book around, check the stacks and call the main librarian on her CELL PHONE (I wish I was kidding), all the while with me in the middle at the circulation desk, spinning and repeating the refrain, “I’m so sorry, is there anything I can do to make this easier? I’m so sorry, just tell me what to pay and I’ll get out of your hair!” 

They figured it out, though (special thanks to the kind staff at Silver Lake Library) and I immediately borrowed five books, not realizing that they are only loaned out for two weeks at a time. I thought you got them for, like, a month? Anyhew, I read three of them, so that’s huge progress! Especially here in LA, where you’re regarded a scholar if you read anything other than a script. I give myself an A+!

I have not called someone I haven’t talked to in 6 months or more. Putting that in writing makes me feel like a really bad person. I will make that top priority, right after I take a walk and eat a snack. Classic F.

I also have not explored someplace new. I considered falling back on eating at a restaurant I’d never been to or stopping into a new boutique but those are technically instances of checking out someplace new, whereas I intended “exploring someplace new” to mean that I would spend the day in a part of town I wasn’t familiar with or take a road trip somewhere… basically, even though I haven’t completed this resolution, I should get pops for not cutting corners (reference details of corrupt grading justification in Paragraph 2). I give myself a D. 

That means that my overall Back-to-School/ Labor Day Resolution Grade is a C-. This gives my over-achieving-self mild arrhythmia. I’ve only gotten one C in my whole life and it was in high school Honors Chemistry. I was not good at Math or Science and had no business being in that class but my ego wanted the Honors credit and my Guidance Counselor approved it because Guidance Counselors at all-girls Catholic prep-schools know better than to mess with the ego of a hyper-competitive 16 year old, so I spent the entire year in a state of tortured confusion and only maintained a C because my teacher (I will not use her real name even though Itotallyrememberhernameit’sMrs.Danforth) told me during one of our tutoring sessions that she didn’t know how to help me and I cried and for the rest of the year she propped up my grade to account for her own failing, which was fine by me. The point is, no one can cook the books this time so sh*t just got REAL. I will update you of further progress this time next month! And by that I mean, in six weeks…

An Audience with Her Madgesty

Tonight is Madonna at the Staples Center and I could not be more excited. Nearly 30 years of listening to her (not an exaggeration - horrors. Someone please pass the sunscreen and a tequila chaser, stat) and I've never seen her live!

Some may say her cryogenic state does not count as "live". Save it, haters. Your crafty cynicism means nothing to my 9-year old self, who is bursting with anticipation because all I wanted in the whole world was True Blue on cassette but I wasn't allowed to listen to Madonna because her music was "inappropriate" and everyone owned it but me and it was agony that anyonewhowasanyone got to rock out to it in their bedrooms WHENEVER THEY WANTED while I had to huddle cunningly over my boombox and listen to American Top 40 on the lowest volume possible, record the forbidden hits on a blank tape and then hide the tape under my bed, to be listened to only when my parents went out for the night. This deception was exhausting (but necessary, because who can live in a world without Papa Don't Preach?) and it went on for months until finally, almost a year after True Blue's release, I arranged for Liz Peloso to give it to me for my birthday, fully confident that good Christian values would prevent my parents from refusing a gift. And I was right! They didn't say anything and for the remaining 30 minutes of my birthday party I held my prize and even got to unseal the plastic and breath it in (remember how fantastic new cassettes smelled?) and expand the paper insert to marvel at the pictures and dedications. I had won! A coup for Manipulation! I squirmed impatiently as my friends said their goodbyes. Leave, you ninnies! Can't you see I have a victory to celebrate? As soon as the last of my friends was picked up, I slipped out of the kitchen to bolt up to my bedroom but was promptly intercepted at the bottom of the stairs. With a stern look from my father that set my cheeks on fire - I knew he knew I'd wagered their good graces - I handed the cassette over. True Blue was confiscated. 

I eventually found it in my parents' room and held on to it, careful not to advertise that I was listening to it but keeping a well-rehearsed argument on the tip of my tongue should they ever confront me about taking it back. They never did. When I was younger, I assumed this was because they had seen the error of their ways; that somehow my reasoning had penetrated and they realized the music was harmless after all but didn't want to admit that I'd been right all along. As an adult, I'm pretty sure they just forgot :) 

But none of it matters tonight, my loves! Tonight this Material Girl is gonna Get Into the Groove and oh forget it, this wordplay is way too much trouble. I have drinking to do!

On Saying "Yes"

There are Wednesday nights when you don't feel well so you get into your pajamas at 6pm, make yourself some tomato bisque, watch the Presidential Debate, read two chapters of a book about child abuse in the world of gymnastics and then fall asleep with your Chihuahua on your neck. 

There are other Wednesday nights when you don't feel well so you get into your pajamas at 6pm, make yourself some tomato bisque, watch the Presidential Debate, read two chapters of a book about child abuse in the world of gymnastics and then fall asleep with your Chihuahua on your neck BUT are then woken up at 11pm by your best friend asking if you can be ready in 20 minutes to party at the Rainbow Room.

On those nights, you must say "Yes." 

Not because you care about getting liquored up and sharing laughs with rockers you can name-drop later on Facebook but because life is fragile and what are we here for if not action? Inertia serves nothing, and although it's only drinks at the Rainbow Room you can't shake the awareness that it's more than that; that turning on the lights and doing your makeup at midnight and heading out knowing it will be agony waking up for work at 6:30am - those spontaneous moments, especially when shared with a great friend, cultivate a joyful and curious life. And you do believe that life must be cultivated. Love, humor, discovery, compassion - you believe those things are practiced. You want to practice them.  And so you say "Yes". 

To the outside observer, our night was not much of an adventure. After the bar we ended up at a diner, just the two of us, totally sober, laughing about the night and sharing onion rings. It was something we'd done a million times but it was a moment all its own and one we'll enjoy recounting and one that would never exist if we hadn't stopped to embrace it.

As we drove home I marveled at the stillness of the Sunset Strip - a calm I would never witness on a weekend. It was such an intimate moment with this city I love. I wondered if this was what it felt like to watch Marilyn Monroe sleep. I was drowsy and sentimental. How many purely blissful occasions like this one had I missed out on because I was tired or couldn't be bothered dressing up or didn't want to deal with parking? 

Next time I'll think twice before I dismiss an invitation. 

Next time I'll remember how alive I felt saying "Yes". 

Stuff and Nonsense

Holy Moly! It's been nearly a month since I've written! I'm so sorry to neglect you, things have been crazy. I was sick, and then in Vegas, and then sick again, and then work was bonkers and meanwhile the NFL season started and the Yankees' division status is shaky and I lost an earring and my car was hit two days in a row.

The wonderful thing about all this drama, though, is that it provides me with lots to write about so I have all kinds of amusing musings in the works and I promise that I will wrap them up this weekend so that there's fun stuff for you to minimize at the bottom of your screen Monday morning while you pretend that you're working in your freezing cold cubicle. Until then, tonight I plan to sit in my pajamas and eat ice cream for dinner and listen to the Yankees/ Red Sox game while watching the presidential debate and then read a chapter from this crazy disturbing book called Little Girls in Pretty Boxes - which is riveting and which my friend Chanel, who competed as an ice skater until she was 18 years old swore to me over cocktails on Monday night is totally true OMG - and then fall asleep on my little dog by 9PM because my throat hurts. 

Hugs to you! Only don't get too close 'cause I don't wanna get you sick.