Dream: Sexy Reed Flood

This is a dream from mid-October, that I'm just now getting around to posting.

I dreamed I was at a Reed College event -- sort of a cross between Renn Faire, Reed Reunion, and a Eugene-style, boat-show, gay-pride, pagan-pride festival.  In real life the cats must have been making noise, because Mark and I ended up in a vet booth.  Which might have been a science booth.

Through a series of (ahem) events, I ended up with a hunky guy's cell phone.  (He was the dream son of a real Reed professor--oh dear, I've just noticed the obvious Freudian pun on the last name) , and earlier in the dream, I told him the real-life story of how his father had taken a friend of mine to a fancy restaurant and (over the protestations of his wife) taught him how to turn a drinking straw into a primitive reed instrument.  (In real life I had told this story to The Child the previous day, so it must have been on my mind).  

The phone was an Apple iPhone, but it was square and had a clamshell cover.  None of the buttons worked quite the way I thought they would.  I tried to use the phone to tell someone that I'd found the phone (and possibly they had mine)  Despite the earlier (ahem) events, I had wondered in the back of my mind if Dream Guy was gay -- then the contacts' avatars and text messages I saw before I became hopelessly confused by the phone's OS convinced me that he was.  

Mark and I wandered around, and were near Elliot Hall when a flood hit.  The Reed Canyon somehow had the Willamette River in it, and a sudden downpour had it flooding its banks and the tall pines along the banks were being pushed back and falling over.  The water rose toward Elliot Hall and inundated the basement (in the dream somebody said something about the Psych Department, but they moved out of the basement in something like 1995).  

The water hit an underground relay station, or something, and there was an explosion like lightning.  People were yelling and running away.  More water was coming up out of ?Eliot Circle? or the field in front of Elliot Hall:  a large mound pushed itself up and water flowed out of it in several small streams.  There was a little bit more, but I don't recall it.

What strikes me in waking life is that three dream motifs:  The Reed Campus, a river, and flooding, came together in a combination that's new to me.   This dream almost counts as a dream-knot dream, but it's missing a holistic element to it that the others have.

November Thursday

A November Thursday: the clouds scud across the sky, now revealing the waning half-moon and Orion, now driving leaves before them, now dumping a second deluge.  The trees wear yellow leaves like ragged mittens over skelital fingers.  And the green has returned to the Vally:  green lawns, green moss, green algea growing on cars, green lichens sprouting up tree trunks.  But it's a dark green -- the sun, low in along its winter path, is flitered out by the clouds, giving everything a muted cast: red bricks are brown, lighter bricks are like wet agate; the wet pavement is matt grey;  white cars are the color of old bones; and the only bright cerylians and yellows are on pedestrians' raincoats.

This morning I steamed some eggs for breakfast.   I like steamed eggs for breakfast, and there are some mornings when just holding hot eggs in my hands feels wonderful.   On an impulse, as they were cooling, I took one and ran it over a knot I have running over my right shoulder.  Between the egg's shape and the heat of it, I managed to iron out the almost solid bump on top of my shoulder muscles.  I'm hoping that this will be a more long-term fix; previosly when I've kneaded that part of my shoulder, I've only manged to sort of losen things up without smothing out the knot.  I'll have to get some soapstone to use more regularly, since it's likely the family won't appreciating me using their steamed eggs as massage tools.  

About an hour or so of writing, mostly fleshing out scenes in a longish story about a baker.  It's hard to get a word count... and I think there's a way to have Scrivener track word count (not sure how helpful that is when you're editing out words, but...).

Bad Monday, Heros, and the Gym

Monday (11/6) -- I woke up kind of sore all over.  I'm not sure why:  I guess it's a combination of colder weather, and age.  But man, having sore toes and fingers and arms and back and shoulders puts a damper on morning productivity.  Eventually, I took a hot half-bath, which helped quite a bit.   I probably need to visit my doctor to see what's up with my right shoulder, as it doesn't seem to be improving (or at least seems good one day and then sore the next).

Monday also started out with some marketing, during which I got another rejection.  There's this one (well, OK, there's more than one) market that I'd really like to break into, but so far I haven't had any luck with them.  The difficulty is that they respond with a form letter that essentially says, "guess why we rejected your story."  I wish they'd just say, "We're sorry, but we will not be buying your story," because the offered reasons why make me want to pull my hair out trying to figure out which reason is the one.  It gets even more annoying when I look at what they do publish, and it seems as if they do publish stories that are close to what I'm sending them....

I'm thankful that the other story I sent out to another market on the same day did not get rejected, because double-rejections feel like a slap in the face.

I started to read "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," partially for writing research, partially because it's one of those books one is supposed to read.  It's feeling pretty White Baby-Boomer Guy to me:  every man is the hero/divinity of his own story working on being the star of his own personal film.   It's also striking me as Fraizieran in its approach to world culture and folklore.   ...And I'm pretty sure one of of stopping points along the Hero's Journey is the hieros gamos or sacred wedding with the Earth Goddess.

Anyway, the Hero's Journey keeps coming up as a story template.  Often writers' guides will feature Star Wars or Harry Potter or The Hobbit worked into the Hero's Journey and urge writers to think of their own manuscripts in a similar fashion.  I figured that I should go to the source material if I wanted to understand the form, but Campbell's style is fairly ramblely ... and because it's comparative folklore from the 40's, it's more a psychoanalytic way to explain the universality of various folktales, myths and legends than a writer's tool.

Went to the gym Monday (11/6).  35minutes on the elliptical for 340 calories.  Spoke with one of the folks there, and decided that I should either knock off any type of upper shoulder machines or only do them at about 10 lbs...

Went to the gym Saturday (11/5): 35 or 40  minutes on the elliptical for at least 330 calories.  3x12 Roman Chair curl ups.  3x12x20lbs triceps curls.  3x12x10?lbs preacher-bench biceps curls. 

Went to the gym Thursday (11/3):  30  minutes on the eliptical for at 300 calories.  3x12 Roman Chair curl ups.  3x12x20lbs tricepcs curls.  

Halloween Musings

The Child and I want to take Halloween in different directions.  For him, it's still about getting tons of candy from the neighborhood and filling the house with zombies, skeletons, and bloody blades.  For me it's more about how masquerades change our perceptions.  Mark's not really into Halloween; he's more into Thanksgiving and Christmas.  

Some folks say during Halloween, the veil between the worlds is thin and the inhabitants therein can visit between the worlds -- when the Grey Folk and the Dead and the Ancestors and the Numinous Ones visit.  For one of my friends, it's about looking into the shadow parts of oneself in order to deal with them more effectively.  For me Halloween is a time to be someone you're not.  To find surprises that jog you into a new awareness or understanding of yourself.  

Like Christmas, Halloween has gotten commercialized and the focus has shifted from the True Meaning of Halloween to Getting Loot.  The aspect of trick-or-treating that has been lost is that it is a gifting custom from the days of mumming.  Essentially the trick-or-treaters are gifting houses with the effort they put into their outfits.  They're essentially saying, "I am an embodiment of your fears, your anxieties, your wishes; I am the reaper, I am the forces of conflict unresolved, I am the dead you need closure with, I am the hero or heroine of your personal story."  Starhawk used to write, "Where there's fear, there's power," and the ritual of trick-or-treating is exchanging the gift of power of addressing inner fears with the gift of food... well, OK, candy.

This is going to be the first Halloween where I don't have RollerBlades, so I wont be able to glide along the streets underneath bare tree branchs and moonlight.  I still haven't replaced my old RollerBlades since they fatigued apart after the encouner with the giant leaf pile.  Mmmm. Gliding in the moonlight, trailing leaves behind, a silent shadow in the street.

This year I carved a Janus-faced pumpkin.  The pumpkin had a flat side, probably where it had grown against the ground.  That side had a divot, which made a great place for a nose.  I gave it a frowning grimcace and crescent eyes.   The other side of the face was more rounded; I give it a toothy smile and triangular eyes.   Mark is away at an East Coast Wedding, and The Child was disinclined to carve anything, so it was just me and the cats.  The afternoon was clear, and carving in the sunlight on the deck felt like a late Summer job rather than an Autumnal one.  Later I carved the mini-pumpkins with the intent of hanging them from some kind of tree.  But between one thing and another, I ended up suspending them from a stick between two rods.  They were still spooky.