Dream: Naked Wounds

Tuesday night. We join the dream in progress...

I was at Arcosanti.  Usually, Arcosanti dreams involve odd road-trips or airport anxiety, but not this time.  No; this time I was changing into clothing and was worried that I was going to be walked in on in a state of undress.  I'm not recalling much about the room that I was in other than it was rectangular and had white stucco walls—I couldn't even tell you what part of Arcosanti I was in, only that I was there.  Somehow, I managed to get pants on before anyone could enter the room.

A guy, I can't recall if it was C.A. or D.R. came in.  "Whoa!" He pointed to my chest.  "That's some cut you've got there."  

I looked down.  Earlier in the dream (or at least in the dream's story line), I had cut my myself just below my left pectoral muscle with a very long kitchen (Chef's) knife.  I had a finger-length slice oozing blood.  "Uh, yeah," I said, looking at the red opening.  "I probably should have gotten it stitched shut."  The more I looked, the wider and deeper the cut became, until I was looking underneath a hunk of my crimson flesh.  It didn't hurt, but there was a sense that I had this big gaping wound that needed more than just a bandaid. 

And then the dream went on to other things.

I woke up with Sting's 1988 song, "Lazarus Heart" in my head (which I haven't heard in ages, and on those instances when I do recall it, I normally just recall the phrase, "lifts her eyes to the sky / like a flower to the rain").   I'm not quite sure what prompted this dream, although I have been reading books on the tarot and Kabbalah before going to sleep, so maybe I picked up wounded heart symbolism from Dion Fortune.

Dreams and Reading

The other night I had a very visual dream.  During one part, I watched a mechanical musical instrument, or possible a carousel, animate a flying pegasus cut out of sheet metal and suspended by brass rods.  This was part of a bank of fantastical creatures that sprang up as the mechanism turned.   

During another part, Mark and I visited a famous designer's museum/apartment.  They had five red metal canisters of decreasing size arranged on an art deco countertop.  As I looked at them, a picture frame appeared around them, and I found myself holding a history of art book opened to an article on the famous designer.  "Oh, Mark and I visited their apartment," I said.

Today (Saturday) has been sunny and warm, which is a nice change from the last ten or so days when the leaden skies have rained (and snowed) and dark days have required turning on as many lights as possible in order to stave off the overwhelming desire to hibernate.  As evening drschaws close, outside is cooling off, but just a few hours ago I was actually hot.

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy.

Today was a day for old idioms.  We wondered about the phrase, "have a cow," which Mark didn't hear very much of, but I recall was a stock utterance from 1975 elementary school and 1990's "Simpsons" episodes.  For an encore, we moved on to Frank Zappa's "Valley Girl."  

On the reading front, I finished "Good Omens," by Pratchett and Gaiman.  It was silly and fun, with twist ending that was thoughtful, but not too serious.  I've moved onto "Babel," by R.F. Kuang, which I'm enjoying for the most part—my minor quibbles with the book so far are 1) that the footnote asterisks in the text are very easy for me to miss, which disrupts the flow of my reading, and 2) the modern usage of the words "morph" and "ridiculous" (two of my danger words) by 1820's Oxford characters, which bumps me out of the story.  

On the writing front, things continue to go slowly. I am hopeful that the return of longer daylight hours will help.

Astronomy and Dreaming

On the astronomy front, Venus and Jupiter were conjunct last Wednesday, and the sky was clear enough that I was able to photograph them while they were fairly close to each other.  It seems like the sky clouds over on nights when there is going to be a conjunction, so I was pleased that the fall-back photos I'd taken a few days earlier were not needed.  I was able to capture a few views of Jupiter's moons, which was an extra bonus.

On the dream front, I'm coming to the conclusion that the amount of dreaming with interesting imagery that I can recall is positively correlated with how much fantasy and science fiction I read.  I suppose that building the (sometimes fantastical) visual images in my head keeps working as I sleep and comes out as cool dreams (as opposed to anxiety dreams).  If I really wanted to document the process, I'd keep a reading log and a dreaming log to see if there's a particular author or genre that is dream inducing.

On the writing front, there's (very) slow progress.  I suppose I should be grateful for any writing I manage to get myself to do.