I like them odds.
I like them odds.
I don't write about dreams very often, because most of the ones I get tend to be of the "Aaron Burr and a bag of sugar" genre, but the one I just woke up from was noteworthy on so many levels that it's worth a look:
Some people have "walking around naked and everybody's looking" dreams; I get "wandering around naked and nobody cares" dreams. This one was unusually coherent, though. It had mutated out of a fairly typical surrealist landscape of childhood locations and the beach to become my city, present day, and I'm walking in the dark, wearing only a white drape of some sort, northwards on south Michigan avenue, along a well-worn path in the decorative flowerboxes. This is not arrestable behavior in this version of dreamworld. In fact, no one has even noticed me, except a few creepy guys, one of whom follows me halfheartedly and for what is apparently the wrong reason, until I tell him that what I am doing is a religious practice, and, that failing, threaten to stab him in the eye with a sharpened pencil.
But the encounter has rattled me, or the fact that no one else has noticed but him, and I go to obtain the opinion of a couple of other creepy guys about my breasts. Timidly, several acknowledge that they're not bad. They're frightened, and this frustrates me.
A few blocks on, I run into another naked wanderer outside of a gas station -- "You like walking around naked at night? I like walking around naked at night!" She's younger and fitter than I am, made up in white powder. We've begun to exchange tips when a waking-world acquaintance comes along with another mutual friend. In Dreamworld I have been trying to attract his attention for some time, but he immediately hits it off with the other naked woman. Offended, I start going on at some length that this is the third or fourth time in the last few months that this has happened to me, that a stranger has stolen away the attention of the ones I've been trying to get to see me, without any seeming effort at all. Why am I not allowed to make my own intentions known, or have them heard?
I run off, and the other mutual friend follows me to talk me down -- I'm headed for the river and she's worried, I suppose, although I'm only going towards my apartment on the other bank. The dream breaks up as waking-world Brain gets interested in the storyline and tries to intrude.
I've been mulling this over since it woke me, and there's quite a lot going on here. On the one level, that's exactly how my personal life and general lack thereof goes: too shy ever to speak up, so the prize always goes to a newcomer to the scene who can come out and fill the silences with the things guys are cued to respond to. And on another level...
Writing isn't unlike running around naked in public. On the one hand, there's the fear of what will happen when people do see you -- and on the other, the dread that nobody's even looking. See me the right way, or I will stab you with my pencil, my words. See me, instead of the flashy young surface who's a better talker. And what do you think of these, are they all right? Be honest...
I need an agent, dammit.
Some people have "walking around naked and everybody's looking" dreams; I get "wandering around naked and nobody cares" dreams. This one was unusually coherent, though. It had mutated out of a fairly typical surrealist landscape of childhood locations and the beach to become my city, present day, and I'm walking in the dark, wearing only a white drape of some sort, northwards on south Michigan avenue, along a well-worn path in the decorative flowerboxes. This is not arrestable behavior in this version of dreamworld. In fact, no one has even noticed me, except a few creepy guys, one of whom follows me halfheartedly and for what is apparently the wrong reason, until I tell him that what I am doing is a religious practice, and, that failing, threaten to stab him in the eye with a sharpened pencil.
But the encounter has rattled me, or the fact that no one else has noticed but him, and I go to obtain the opinion of a couple of other creepy guys about my breasts. Timidly, several acknowledge that they're not bad. They're frightened, and this frustrates me.
A few blocks on, I run into another naked wanderer outside of a gas station -- "You like walking around naked at night? I like walking around naked at night!" She's younger and fitter than I am, made up in white powder. We've begun to exchange tips when a waking-world acquaintance comes along with another mutual friend. In Dreamworld I have been trying to attract his attention for some time, but he immediately hits it off with the other naked woman. Offended, I start going on at some length that this is the third or fourth time in the last few months that this has happened to me, that a stranger has stolen away the attention of the ones I've been trying to get to see me, without any seeming effort at all. Why am I not allowed to make my own intentions known, or have them heard?
I run off, and the other mutual friend follows me to talk me down -- I'm headed for the river and she's worried, I suppose, although I'm only going towards my apartment on the other bank. The dream breaks up as waking-world Brain gets interested in the storyline and tries to intrude.
I've been mulling this over since it woke me, and there's quite a lot going on here. On the one level, that's exactly how my personal life and general lack thereof goes: too shy ever to speak up, so the prize always goes to a newcomer to the scene who can come out and fill the silences with the things guys are cued to respond to. And on another level...
Writing isn't unlike running around naked in public. On the one hand, there's the fear of what will happen when people do see you -- and on the other, the dread that nobody's even looking. See me the right way, or I will stab you with my pencil, my words. See me, instead of the flashy young surface who's a better talker. And what do you think of these, are they all right? Be honest...
I need an agent, dammit.
.