The Wayfaring Wordhack

This is the week to be dreaming about my flist, I guess.

Last night, I dreamed that we were visiting frigg in Denmark.*

We met by a little lake that had a "fjord" on one side, lovely steep, rippled mountain** flank plunging into the water, and a small village on the other. frigg was getting ready to swim and her husband and one of their friends were fishing. She told us we could go on without them or stay, whichever we liked. We boated across the lake alone, and then suddenly frigg was there, too. We walked through the village, then a shop selling antiques and secondhand things, into a back yard. The little shop was just crawling with teen girls, which must have been in my dream because of a convo frigg and I had about her teaching art to kids of that age.

Turns out the yard was connected to others--yards on each side, separated by tall plank fences with chain link for the back, giving on to prairie land hemmed by forest--and frigg's house was the next one over. She had planned a big picnic, complete with all her Danish friends and acquaintances, for our arrival. I didn't get to visit much with her because she was so busy--not cooking but being social! Not really like my sickpea at all--so I spent time counting dark-haired, dark-eyed Danes to see if there were more brunettes than blonds, this bit also coming from a convo about frigg's book starring a blond Danish boy. 

The Sprout and I started coloring and soon we had a bunch of Danish children doing art with us: painting, building sculptures of sundry materials like wood and paper, creating dye-baths (reading a book about dyeing right now).  One little girl, who looked a lot like  Quvenzhané Wallis in this photo from Beasts of the Southern Wild, told us there was a treasure in a murky pool at the foot of a gnarled, hollowed tree stump. We all gathered round, but the dark deep waters were not inviting. No one dared go in search of the treasure...

Speaking of the dream realm, I don't think I'll be shape-shifting any time soon--unless asakiyume can teach me how to do it in Wakingland--and I highly doubt our visit with frigg will resemble what my brain threw at me last night, but there is another dream I had back in 2006 that may "happen."

I referenced it in a post--locked, sorry--but this is what I said: Back in Sancerre, I had another "daughter" dream where our girl, only 2-3 yrs old and riding on her daddy's shoulders, was dressed*** the same way. Same tan skin, same light blond, slightly curled hair.

What I didn't specify but still clearly remember was that we were walking in a desert, rolling dunes around us, but where we were the ground was flat from so much foot traffic, hard-packed sand with sharp pebbles.  We weren't in a maze, but there where sheets hanging all around, making it look somewhat like one.  In fact, it looked like a market or encampment...maybe something along the lines of what we will see in Egypt, when S is exactly the age from my dream. 

A dream tied to an art idea, all the way from 2007, has been on my mind of late, now that I'm back into art journaling every day...
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* We ARE going to visit frigg in Denmark, in just two more weeks. :D
**Very funny considering how flat it is where you live, non, frigg? :P
*** wearing only a pair of white undies. Don't know why she would be dressed like that under the punishing Egypt sun, though. Maybe after a dip in the Rea Sea?

I wanted to do sketches for these dreams, but if I wait until I have the time to get the sketches right, I'll never post. So:

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed that the Sprout was a shapeshifter. She first shifted into a purple, gerbil type critter, then into a strange thing I have no name for. It looked eerily like an elongated trilobite, but it/she was about 6 inches long and covered in beige and brown mottled fur with two furry appendages that she could curl up over her back like a scorpion's tail, but the appendages were a bit more mobile.  While in her critter forms, I followed her closely because she was just a baby shifter and might have problems changing back on her own.  She ignored me completely, her mind seemingly totally animal-like. No conversation, no human mannerisms.

 She was darting and scrabbling all over the sidewalk by an Egyptian cemetery--no, no pyramids in sight--so I sat on the steps leading into the graveyard to rest; she was as active as a critter as she is in baby form. I remember there was a strange smell, both intoxicating and repulsive, but now I can't recall what odors I thought of in the dream.  

I needn't have worried about her changing. She did a backflip, and POOF, was my toddler again. :P

We wandered down to the beach to find J. He was studying one of the pillar-like gravestones planted in the sand. Not in Egypt any more, though, judging from the names, which, naturally, I can't remember now. They made me think of a mix of Nordic and French is all I can recall.

With the waves pooling around the headstones, I wondered who would want to be buried in such a place, and my thoughts went to war veterans for some reason. I tried to memorize one of the names so I could look it up on the Internet, but I didn't write it down when I woke. :(

Then the next night, I dreamed the Sprout and I were riding double along a lane that passed between meadows and woods. It was one of those drowsy days where the sunlight is a golden presence in the air; and insects, their wings aglow in the syrupy light, hover above grass with nodding seedheads; and the smell of warm earth and cool tree shadow form an intoxicating perfume that makes you drowsy and revives you by turns.

Our horse was ambling along, head down, almost as if sleepwalking, following a flatbed wagon, whose heavy iron wheels squeaked with every turn. S and I were talking about plants, where we would camp that night, etc. when asakiyume rode up behind us and commented what a lucky girl S was, getting to learn so much and see so much beauty. (This dream must have been in relation to the comment you left on a recent post, asakiyume.)  I started to reply when suddenly, over asakiyume's shoulder, I saw a stone colonnade, somewhat like this, appear in the woods, its slender gray columns green twined and flower draped, its worn flagstones dappled with emerald and white light. 

"How beautiful!" I exclaimed.
asakiyume followed my gaze and nodded. "It is." Judging by her tone, she had seen it before.
As I stared, a portal formed in the archway in the distance. It opened onto Paris, the Eiffel tower framed in its center. And suddenly my sense of wonder vanished. "What a bore!" I thought. "Why not an exotic location?" 

Last night, I dreamed I was feeling a bit ill with the beginnings of the flu.  I was scheduled to take a flight for Japan and knew I needed to get some meds first or else the trip was going to be a nightmare.  So, I went to city hall, of course. Isn't that where you go when you need meds in a hurry?  I told a clerk my symptoms, and he came back with a pair of support stockings. Color me skeptical, but I took them and asked where the restroom was so I could put them on.  

"Got back outside and take the little stairwell just to the left stairs coming up here."

I did what he said and ended up in an underground library that scream perfect library ambience: floor to ceiling books bound in leather with gilt lettering, shining brass lamps with green glass shades, reading tables polished to a high shine, and deep, comfy club chairs. The first floor was dedicated to fantasy novels. A man and a woman were reading there and greeted me like an old friend when I entered.

The librarian guided me to the bathroom, which was on the other side of a walkway, overlooking the floors below.  "The books on the next floor down deal with fluid science; below that social history; and on the last floor are the convex books."

Sadly I didn't get to see the convex books. 

Despite going to bed last night with To Be Undone firmly in my thoughts, my dreams instead turned to a meeting with an Assyriologist who wanted me to visit the Louvre* and study the Assyrian artifacts there.  She did not have a very good opinion, I deduced from her expression, of Jean Bottéro,** which seemed odd given that he was a renowned expert in the field. This dream deals directly with my ms The Bitter River, which I am keen to get wrapped up as well, but the research, the research, it is monstrous!

Then, in my waking-dozing state this morning, my thoughts were filled with Witherwilds and things I needed to remember to incorporate or things my sleepy brain found to be genius. My waking mind is not so sure.

This morning, however, I did something stupid that brought TBU back to the forebrain. I scooped a drowning wasp out of a pot of dishwater with my bare finger. I got a sting in form of thanks, and that ouchie reminded me that Phayn, the MC of TBU, is handy with a blowgun. I need to make sure she uses it a bit more in the opening chapters.


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* This is a good idea actually, and a trip to Paris for research purposes is in order.

** I'm currently reading one of Bottéro's books, The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia,  by Jean Bottéro and Teresa Lavender Fagan.

 StPM is probably a pipe dream.

Julien called the StPM office, and the colleague he spoke to told him there is one position open for sure. Maybe two.  One!

Who knows how many hundreds of applications they'll get. For possibly two posts.
Yet we continue to dream. Julien is off work for the next week, but he is at the office now, applying. 

Should know the answer in a few weeks to a month.

 I had a waitressing nightmare last night.

I haven't waited tables in...oh, almost 10 years. But I still have nightmares of too many tables to wait, not getting the drinks soon enough, forgetting to turn in orders, customers pissed at me.

These dreams are a sure sign I'm stressed and feeling that things are out of my control.  I'm just hoping that now that the majority of the comparison shopping for the trip is over, I can relax.

I haven't even been able to write this weekend.

I killed off a character, and the writing that was going suddenly became a lot harder. I don't think it was sadness at seeing the character go so much as having too much on my plate to deal with.

At least I hope. I'm going to see if I can get some words now...

Last night, I had an extremely flist-oriented set of dreams.

I knew I should have posted about it immediately because now some of the details have escaped me. There was something in there about magicnoireand her mother who were going on an artist's getaway with me to London. magicnoirehad four 1.5 x 1.5ft canvasses hanging on the wall of the room where I take African and bellydance classes, and she had painted the first with spraycans (standing at a distance of fifteen feet from the canvas no less) in a sunset landscape as seen through a rainy windowpane. She offered to let me paint one, but I couldn't find any inspiration.

And friggtold me that she was a fan of McDonalds and liked to "contribute to the vertical mass of their empire" whenever she could and that was why she felt compelled to collect the entire set of twenty of some crappy product they had put on the market.

Then I went to the grocery store saw a DVD called Thomas, a Drew Barrymore film with the singer Mika starring opposite her. I bought it and left, but looking at the back copy, I realized I'd already seen. I took it straight back to the store and a very nervous cashier gave me a refund and asked me to return it to the shelves before he fled the store. I did as he asked and discovered the store was under attack by werewolves. Never fear, a civet, which looked strangely raccoon-like, put on one of those gel-packed masks to relieve tired eyes and kicked their butts.

Then there was the matter of someone who looked kind of like me, but wasn't, who tried to poison the king. She seemed to think it served him right because he preferred drinking beer and eating sausages out of a traveling foodstand to running his country.

Last night, I dreamed of the Antichrist. This could have something to do with finishing Good Omens, the Pratchett/Gaiman novel, last week because the Antichrist of my dreams was no more than five or six and seemed a reasonable kid (not like Damien).  I won't give you all the gory details, tell you of the raids, explosions, and random death, only that he was born one of quintuplets (why not sextuplets? I have no idea), and he killed and skinned his siblings when they were about 2 or 3 (no, please don't ask me how) and kept them under shrink wrap to eat whenever the mood struck him.

He wanted to invite Julien and me to a celebratory feast to his great victory, and I, um, tried to decline graciously.

I woke up several times and told God above and the world at large that I did not wish to be dreaming about the Antichrist, so please, change my nightmares. No such luck. Every time I woke up and fell back asleep (at least 3 times), I fell right back into the same horror.  I wasn't particularly frightened in the dreams, just distraught. Ugh. Here's to hoping tonight's sleep is more relaxing and filled with, I don't know, fluffy bunnies or something.