Mobiledreams

I fell asleep in mid-conversation on the phone twice tonight. And, each time I had a dream. I fell asleep for just a split second, yet was still able to dream...Is this normal? Well, who really cares about being normal anyway? So, the first one was of me being in a Dallas airport, and the other had a wizard in it...but I can't remember much else. Anywho, just a quirky little tid-bit.

An Ancient Remedy

In this dream I was, yet again, myself. This has become a frequent motif in my dreams of late. I wonder how long it will last? Enjoy.

It was nighttime when I climbed into the helicopter. It had already begun to rain, but the multitude of city lights burned through the slick haze. We lifted off from a small eroded landing pad of faded white markings, pulling higher and higher into the sky. I could see the Mayan pyramid off in the distance, a great hulking mass of trees and crumbling stone. I had been working several years on the excavation of this pyramid, and it looked like an old friend greeting me in the gloom of the stormy night. The pilot swooped up the side of the pyramid giving me a glimpse of the encroaching jungle scaling up the stone sides. I still had so much more work to do. Far off in the distance I could see the city buzzing, oblivious, or perhaps inconsiderate, of the greatness of the structure that stood right outside its limits. The pilot lowered me down onto the top of the pyramid using a rope ladder. I clung to the slippery rungs as the ground floated up to meet me. I jumped down onto the roof and ran across to a trap-door like opening. I climbed down yet another rope ladder into a cold stone hallway. It was dark and damp inside the pyramid, but I could hear voices and a flickering light was coming from the end of a long stone corridor. I followed the voices around a left corner and I walked out into a large cavernous space. There was a small group of people clustered about each other, standing along the edge of a very deep stone shaft that extended all the way down through the center of the pyramid. The shaft was part of the design of the pyramid; it was square and about eight feet across and eight feet wide. Above the shaft, mounted on the walls to the left and right, were two large, metal, cone-shaped coils pointing towards each other. On the opposite ledge from where I was standing was an old desk with a large machine sitting on top of it. The machine contained a large panel of knobs and buttons, and meters with jumping needles inside them. Kiko sat at the desk and was fiddling with the knobs and buttons on the machine. That was when I noticed that Kiko’s husband was standing in front of me, but he looked about thirty years younger. His hair was dark and his shoulders were straighter.  I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him, "What’s going on? I was called out here, but the message didn’t give any details. Did they figure out the wiring problem?” He said to me, “Just wait and see. It’s about to begin.”  Then suddenly, I could feel every hair on my arms standing on end, and there was a deafening crack as the coils sizzled to life with lavender electricity. Arms of light arched out across the gaping shaft towards one another and met in the air above the hole with another whip-like sizzle. A large crackling orb of blue formed where the two arms had met. An old radio on a table behind me jumped to life and began to frantically flip through radio stations, producing a garbled cacophony of background music to accompany the crackling power of the electricity. And then I felt it. A golden, molten warmth seeping and spreading through my body. Every cell in my being began to hum and fizz with life. I felt so alive. Such an effervescent feeling! I felt more alive than I had ever felt in my entire life. A hysterical bubble of laughter escaped through my lips as I flexed my hands, feeling strong and vibrant. Kiko’s husband looked at me and smiled. He looked even younger now than he had a few minutes ago. Kiko turned some knobs on the machine and the electricity popped out of existence, leaving the room cold and blindingly dark. I could still feel the new energy pulsing underneath my skin. Part of me was in shock. I just couldn’t absorb the magnitude of our discovery…we had found the fountain of youth.

A Very Merry Unbirthday/ これは日本の書店ですか。

Last night was very strange…for most of it I was caught somewhere between sleep and waking. My mind just kept pacing around the rim of sleep, like a panther stalking its prey. Pacing, pacing, pacing, tasting the edge, then back to pacing. When my mind finally plunged into the inky depths of sleep towards dawn, I had two dreams. I only remember a part of the first dream, and the second one was very short. In both dreams I was myself, which is a rarity indeed.

A Very Merry Unbirthday

There was a house in a dying wood. All of the trees had lost all of their leaves and the ground was cracked and dry and disintegrating into a fine white powder that the wind would suck up from the ground and fling across your nose and mouth.  The house was oddly shaped, like the entirety had been built at different times, room by room. It was longer than it was wide, and each room would end abruptly where the next began without a separating wall. I walked through the house from the front door to the back yard. In each room there were different people doing different things; in one room there was an old couple watching a T.V. program on an old out-dated television set. The furniture was old, the upholstery worn and filled with holes which were covered by crocheted throw blankets in a multitude of colors. A white screen door led out onto the backyard where a very long table was set out beneath the over-arching branches of the white parched trees. Faded paper flags had been strung between the skeletal branches of the trees, and they fluttered in the dust-strewn wind. The table had been painted white at one point, but the paint was now peeling and had been worn off with age. Teapots and teacups littered a white lace runner that ran the length of the table and white plates were laden with cakes and sandwiches. Dean entered the backyard carrying stacks of paper in muted colors. He said that we needed to make more paper flowers and birds for decorations. Apparently, we were preparing for my birthday party…and then…the dream ended and another one began.

Despite (or more likely because of) the faded colors, the peeling paint, and the bare trees, I have to note that the whole scene was quite unusually beautiful. And for some reason, the presence of paper was incredibly important.

これは日本の書店ですか。/ Is this a Japanese Bookstore?

I found myself in a maze of folding tables, all filled to the brim with old books. Heaven. There were other things for sell in this haphazard store other than books, like metal teapots, and antique lamps, but I wasn’t interested in anything but the treasure-trove of books that lay in wait for my discovery. Though I say this was a store, the whole place was open-air with a large canopy draped on poles for shade. I was on an outer edge of the store which was pressed up against the outside of a building where the walls were all made of panels of glass. I then realized that I had not put on any make-up, so I decided to use the glass as a mirror. I quickly slapped on some concealer and blush before anyone could witness me in the midst of a beauty routine. I finished putting on my make-up and continued browsing. Behind me I heard two women talking in Japanese. I turned to glance at them. There were two women and one girl all conversing in Japanese; a mother, an aunt, and a daughter. The mother and aunt both had long black hair tied back into a low pony-tail, but the girl’s hair was cut short and neat right to her chin. The mother was going to go into a shop next door and she wanted to know if they wanted anything to eat from there. They both said no.

The aunt was wearing a draped shirt in various shades of pale green and a pair of cropped blue-jeans; she had a very round face and a very serious “no nonsense” demeanor.  I approached the booth and asked the aunt,  「すみませんが、あなたは日本人ですか。」(Excuse me but, are you Japanese?). And she said, “I’m sorry, but no.”, in English. I was confused as to why she would want to conceal the fact that she was Japanese, and why she would answer me in English, which clearly indicated that she understood me. I just shrugged my shoulders and decided to peruse through the books she had for sale anyway. I picked up a thick, heavy, paperback book titled Her Sorrow. It had been slouching up against a brusselsprout colored hard-cover book in a dark corner in the bookcase. As I picked up the book, the aunt came gliding over, all smiles, wanting to know if I needed any help and mentioning that this was a very rare book. Judging form the way it was placed on the shelf like a reject, I highly doubted that.  Her Sorrow was a large compilation of dark fairy-tales written by various famous authors, one being my favorite author, Tanith Lee. The cover was all dark grey, white, and black; there were two beautiful blonde women, one dressed in black and the other in white, and a large black swan. The woman in black was on the left half of the cover. She had her left hand draped across the swan’s neck and she stood strong and tall looking out to the horizon to the left. The woman in white was on the right half of the cover and she was kneeling with her whole body draped across the back of the swan and her right hand curving up across the swan’s chest. Her eyes were down-cast and tears trickled down her face onto the black feathers of the swan.  Out of the corner of my eye, behind the rather large rear-end of the gliding aunt, I spotted another interesting book. What had caught my attention was the art on the cover. I could tell that it was the work of one of my favorite artists, Kinuko Y. Craft. I didn’t read the title, instead I looked straight to the author, hoping that it was one of Juliet Marrilier’s books. The author’s name was written backwards and upside-down in gold calligraphy. I made out that the first name started with a “V” and that the last name was Kiles.  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to afford both, and so I prepared to haggle with the aunt. I began to inquire as to the price of the books and…I woke up.