Adventures in the dream world

REM cycles rarely grant me the privilege of dreams. Usually I lay in bed and feel myself drifting into oblivion, and next think I know, it's morning (be it three, or seven-thirty). I may dream, but nothing rises past consciousness. Creativity doesn't always come to me during the sunlit hours, but my sleeping brain can sure whip up a doozy or two when conditions are right.

Sometime this morning I was back at my parents' house, down in the living room, looking out the bay windows at a tumultuous grey sky. A storm was brewing, and there was news of a tornado warning in the air. My father and I watched a funnel form and snake down from the sky, reaching for land. Next thing we knew, the vortex was sucking at the house. Somehow the timber and plaster kept their hold on the foundation while the dream fell silent. Actually, this is where the silence made itself known. I can't remember a single sound before the ceiling began to rearrange itself. That's the only way I can explain how I watched the tornado move over our home. Its almost like the ceiling refused to be devoured by the sky. The plaster knew it had to hold, or else the entire structure would sail up into oblivion, falling a few hundred yards, or a few miles away, impaling steel and skin. Mist poured in through the fluxing hole, coating the ceiling. The tornado tried to slip in through the temporary cracks and yank the top of the house up like an arm. We worried about my mother asleep upstairs. Was the struggle with the ceiling a sign that it had succeeded in decapitating out home?

It was one of those minutes that lasted for hours. The house (at least the first floor's ceiling) beat back the vortex, and it subsided. The mist dissipated. We went to check on my mother. My dreams never have an ending.

------------
Second Dream was longer, more involved, and thus I am left with more holes. If the first was a vignette or a sketch, this was an hour long episode. Only an hour on a network though. It would probably need some ads to bring it up to length. It was a good short story.

I remember coming down metal stairs, situated in the middle of a stone platform, from somewhere, maybe nowhere. It seems now like something from a video game. I cleared the last couple of flights in a daring fashion, and a kid asked if I should really be doing that. There were people all around. Something important was happening. Maybe the president was going to be there, wherever it was. I walked to the edge, leaned on the railing, and was immediately greeted by a drooling dog lunging and barking at me. I jumped away. People stared. I waited to be taken in for questioning. Co-operating was better than yelling about my innocence.

In a barracks, a commander questioned me. I'm sure he could see I was no threat to whatever was happening. I think I took off my blazer to show him I was hiding nothing. I think I told him the story of the tornado. He took pity on me and let me go.

Flashback (I think) to the only incident was was worried about the commander discovering. I was walking down a wide, tree-line dirt lane, the one where Forrest Gump broke his leg braces and learned to run (RUN!), with some friends. We scored some pot. We made our way to town on the side of the road. We were just carrying our little baggies around like jackasses when a plainclothes cop (in rural Alabama?) came and busted us. He managed to grab my friends, but I booked it. Not nearly as fast or noble as my retarded predecessor (and by now it wasn't even his town anymore just any old ruralburb would do), but enough to elude my captor and toss my bag for someone else to find and smoke. I kept running, then walking, until the road turned into a grass lane lined with small houses. I had no idea where I was headed, and I felt like everyone in those homes was watching my walk of shame. Eventually I could see the dead looking end, and a girl came and struck up some banal conversation. She showed me the highway, a beautiful black lined with soft green about twenty yards away from the end of the lane. She offered me a ride.

There was another video like this circulating around a couple years ago and my only reaction was a well earned, "Wow!" Now I see another person's hands dashing across the screen, leaving behind a trail of fleeing Polish women, and I realize that intuition alone could not have guided her through her story. Those movements were gained through practice. Talent like that doesn't happen accidentally. People earn it by forcing themselves to keep endlessly improving.

This is the reason I have consistently found myself achieving nothing but mediocrity. If something didn't come easily, I dismissed it as an act of futility and gave up. I've known this is a problem for a while now, and I have been trying to correct my past transgressions of laziness through my photographic efforts, which have tapered off after graduation. However, the new Kodak film grant calls my name (well, I pine for it at least).

Home Alone

I have lived in a new apartment with the woman I love and a very good friend of ours for two weeks now, and tonight is the first time I have come home to an empty apartment. Home, for once, is being treated like an actual home, not just a place to sleep and relax while accomplishing (or ignoring) other things. For the past two years I have lived an increasingly transient lifestyle, spending more and more time away from my bed, and engrossed in either work or companionship, never quite feeling at home where all my things lived. Although it is slightly uncomfortable to be alone and witness a neutered tomcat grab a maladjusted, malnourished feminine feline still in possession of her reproductive system by the scruff of her neck and have his way with her. The Nature Channel plays right in my hallway. The only other thing I would change about having cats are the fur tumbleweeds.

Now they prowl around like nothing ever happened. The one in the tuxedo watches the traffic while the little girl - easily frightened- disappears for a few hours.

Alec Soth, or how I wish I could take pictures,

I was going to write about "Passing by the Abercrombie and Fitch store the other day, I found a gathering of non-ironic plaid shirts," and how "this disturbed me for a moment until my neurons made the right connections... then it just disappointed me," but I'm sitting in the living room of my new apartment and can't sleep. Our shy cat Tsuki keeps jumping up onto the table by the window to watch the orange street, and I am excited about a new show of photography that opened at MassArt today.



Alec Soth's "Dog Days Bogota" has been one of my favorite photo books ever since I first laid eyes on it. He pictures are always wonderful documents made with elegant composition and full of soft colors. Wikipedia says, "His photography has a cinematic feel with elements of folklore that hint at a story behind the image." In a way, I suppose this is correct. Soth weaves between people presenting something strange and unique to the camera, and the environment they find themselves in, with all its ridiculous beauty. His photos exude compassion and respect. The change from large to medium formats for this book leaves less room for his usual rigid (yet natural) compositions, but only a little, leaving room for more heart in the photos, and a little less brain.

I envy the way he succeeds in treating both people and landscape in different and similar ways, letting circumstances dictate what happens. Mostly I envy the courage it takes to undertake photographic projects in such a manner.