Dreams, Opera

Space, and opera

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Last night’s dream —

I’m part of a family of four in a small space station we made ourselves. Not my real life family. My role alternates between father and sibling.

The fifth person in our group goes mad, damages the top of our space station that keeps us aloft by tearing a giant seam in the hull. I spot the tear, grip it closed enough with my hands while radioing the other people in the space station that we’ve been sabotaged, who did it, and that we’re slowly descending back to earth.

We land in a desolate area in California. I’m with one family member and we get picked up and transported to San Francisco. The other family/crew members disappear at this point. I’m not sure which family member I’m traveling with.

We check into an elaborate, fancy hotel in San Francisco. Like all fancy hotels, it is adjoined to a fancy shopping mall via an outdoor escalator to the mezzanine level. How fancy is this shopping mall? Why, one of its anchor stores is the San Francisco Metropolitan Opera House!

We go inside the San Francisco Met and attend a massive variety show staged on three sides about a floor above where the audience sits on couches and chaise longues, looking up. Large pageantry, pastel costumes.

I find a remote underneath my seat, press a button, the lights flicker and the whole audience and the performers are all “WTF?” then I hit the button again. Lights return to normal and the performance resumes.

Intermittently I’m trying to text a friend who lives in San Francisco: “Hey, I’m in San Francisco! Let’s hang!” but there’s a problem with sending a text – a breach of protocol in the opera, for one, although I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Unable to text, I’m trying to check in via Facebook Places to catch the friend’s notice and coming to realize that there may not even BE a San Francisco Metropolitan Opera. Frustration sets in. Dream ends.

[UPDATE: San Francisco has city opera, but it is not named the Met]

Activity

I like to ride my bicycle, I like to ride my bike

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Saturday I went on an hour and a half bike ride – 22 miles. From my home to the airport and back (okay, at the other end there was frozen yogurt involved (double okay – frozen yogurt is basically a fruit & candy delivery vehicle)). I love the move through space, the sustained dumb exertion, thinking snide things about passersby, singing quietly during solitary stretches until slightly winded.

Weather was great. There’s only a 40 block stretch shared with vehicles. While on guard, it’s always heartening to think of the number of people who COULD mow me over and choose not to. Strain and adverse conditions usually make me laugh.

A bit of daydreaming, a lot of reflection, but never, ever any particular big-picture resolve.

Dreams

Action-packed dreams, with tasty eating!

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Long periods go by where I wake up and don’t recall any dreams. This morning, I recall four. All simple, all influenced by the night before.

Zombie infestation!
The dream took place in an elaborate, delapidated apartment complex. Heavy doors with lever handles. Great for slamming closed JUST IN TIME while looking through the porthole window at the thwarted zombies (they rarely snap their fingers and say “Drat!”) or seeing something really terrible happen to someone who might’ve been me. Can’t recall if anyone I know was involved. If you were, sorry. And yes, I will shoot you in the head if you’ve turned, and expect you’d do the same for me. Okay, 2-3 of you I would strap to a a stretcher and drag around now matter how much you bitched or went “AAARGGHH BRAAAINSS!” in case a scientist somewhere came up with a cure. IF you made that cut and IF you were cured EXPECT you would owe me the biggest goddamned favor of all time. At a minimum, do NOT bitch about how the straps left little crenulations across your chest, arms, and legs.

Woke up a little agitated, heart racing, concerned. Then realized I had a ZOMBIE ADVENTURE dream, affected by watching about 5 minutes of the Dawn of the Dead remake last night, and thought “Ah! Cool.” *KONK* Zzzz…

Hanging with a friend.
Sitting down having a mild chat with a distant friend. Don’t even recall the topics (I usually don’t – will assume My Dinner with André-level scintillating conversation) just the fond relief that at that moment, the geography gap is closed and it seems time and space are within control and easily bent to suit our whims. Am assuming this was triggered by Facebook or Twitter interactions/viewings. This online stuff can be QUITE the neuron-stirrer.

Mediterranean/Lebanese food.
Watched Batman Begins with the kids last night. In it a portly corrupt cop eats a falafel sandwich from a food cart, steals money from the proprietor’s tip can, gets hoisted several stories up and above an alleyway and interrogated by gravelly-voiced Batman. First time the kids have seen the movie. Was pleased as it meant a new audience for my impression of Christian Bale’s gargle-growl – and I’m getting exact about WHAT in Bale’s American accent bugs. L spotted mid-way through the movie that Bale keeps his mouth open – a lot. Not an unfair American characterization by Bale, but still weird-lookin’.

Anyway – watching the fat oily man drop his falafel sammich when yanked upward by his ankle to GROUCHY Batman on the rooftops above I thought: “I want to get Lebanese food tomorrow.” In a dream, I did just that. And, using super-powers gained from intensive study of The Secret – I may have visualized this goal enough to have it manifest today!

Disney park.
History/obsession/study of Disney parks merits an entry/confession/plea-for-help here at some point. I have a shelf of books of the history of Walt Disney the man, the corporation, testimonials by employees, but especially about the parks. I have an outline and some text written up for a novel that takes place at Walt Disney World that I may resume after this current writing project is done.

I take charge in a Disney park. The amount of time spent studying the geography and history is extensive. I was in the Magic Kingdom as recently as early April (for half a day – but fun was MAXIMIZED!) as part of a business trip. We’re finishing up plans for my spouse’s annual conference for her hobby to be extended to a family trip to Disneyland.

The BEST guidebook for the Disney parks is the “Unofficial Guide”. Pragmatic detail of each attraction, logistics, dishy, even-handed and well-timed “Do these things in this order” plans of attack, with variations depending on the group you’re with, that are awesome and minimize waits in line. I was reading the 2011 edition for Disneyland before falling asleep. In the dream, navigating around Disneyland (solo? with family? with friends? – can’t recall in the way Rain Man might not be top-of-mind cognizant of the people he’s with) and having fun.

In general, my dreams tend to be simple, with easy-to-identify sources of inspiration. That’s good, right?

Poetry

“My Makeup” by Rochelle Kraut

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This sits in the malaise that sighs in the between-beat parts of Pink’s “Get This Party Started” or Ke$ha “choose debauchery” anthems.

My Makeup
by Rochelle Kraut

on my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers

on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage

for lipstick
I wear my lips

Religion

“Church Going” by Philip Larkin

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Grateful to have grown up in a home (okay, homes) free of superstition. Superstition is to our collective shame now and guarantees future generations will laugh at us (would we grow solemn if people attributed the latest quake/tsunami to Poseidon?). Photos in this post are ones I took in Vatican City. If it looks like gold in the image, it is gold.

Church Going
by Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Uncategorized

Hoarding – digital & real life

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Yes to hoarding books — up ’til 2007, when we unloaded 14 cases of books before moving to our current home. Even so on our shelves to this day – THREE different copies of ‘Middlemarch’, THREE of ‘Lolita’, and 5 or so Collected Works of Shakespeare that I can still rationalize with quasi-scholarishness.

Yes to hoarding magazines – SPY, Q, Rolling Stone from when I subscribed from ’87-’91. Also ditched in 2007 upon realizing society was not going to rely on MY collection to reconstitute pop culture. Though I sustained a hope the kids would come across this trove and be impressed by their hip dad who would let them tear into all this stuff for their authentic/ironic study/collage projects.

Yes(ish) to hoarding DVDs and CDs. Sometimes go months between getting new movies or music, though. Not feeling sheepish here.

Yes to hoarding VHS tapes of tv miscellany. Got halfway through digitizing them this past year. Lots of phenomenal morsels, but my eye and mind when appraising the crate full of them is getting cooler and more severe.

Yes(ish) to hoarding email from the early 90s onward. Haven’t read them in decades, actually, since they were current. Oh, when email was new! “Whoah, I can type words on the Mac Plus, and this telephone wire in the back running along this janky carpet will send these words to my friend in Texas? GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE. WITCH! WIIIITCCH!”

No to hoarding cats, though our dog looks at the two cats and disagrees.

No to hoarding old letters – in a very modest box is a collection of damning and charming letters from the 80s and 90s to serve as a reality check when my own spawn roil in dating intrigues and frustrations of COSMIC IMPORTANCE.

Poetry

“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold

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A zillion years ago in a Victorian Lit class in college, the professor required that students memorize “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold. We were reading several of Arnold’s essays, esp. “Culture and Anarchy” so reading some of the poems in the same book was CONVENIENT, but the face-making at having to ABSORB something and recite it before the class was HUGE. How DARE this professor at a middling state university require his students memorize & recite a poem like we were in elementary school! And the professor, at the time the head of the department, RELISHED the pained looks we were giving out. “It’s important that you have at least one poem in your life you can recite,” he admonished. The more time passes, the more I respect that.

The last five lines are the only ones that spill into conscious thought. So, not a poetry share from the core, but as a show of respect for the professor who insisted a room full of 20-something ponces LEARN something. National Poetry Month has only a few days left, so expect the posts to get cruder come May.

Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; — on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Parenting

Bookended moments

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This morning —

Dropped off J at school, who is almost 11. In the parking lot he made me roll down the car window and gave me a kiss goodbye. When we walk together, he still sometimes reaches out for my hand. Those times are diminishing, but I’m still grateful for them.

Tonight —

Setting L down to sleep, giving her a dream about (done nightly – I suggest an amusing dream) I made a joke about not being useful. She said “Papa, you are very useful. I could talk about the reasons why for 28 hours.”

Gush.

Poetry

“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks

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Gwendolyn Brooks is from Topeka, Kansas. As a fellow Kansan, I love that.

We Real Cool
by Gwendolyn Brooks

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Writing

Writing is grouchy-making (sometimes)

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During the last serious writing jag 10-12 years ago I wrote a rough novel (167,000 words) about a lot of things, among them the anxiety of impeding parenthood (a meticulously planned process – we were following a choose-your-baby’s-gender book and recording daily temperatures and environmental descriptors on a spreadsheet. Really.). First child on the way providing fuel to finish off an outline I’d been dragging around for 3-4 years.

Went through a LOT of giggling to myself, writing during lunch breaks at my corporate job. Then typing late into the night, or on weekends, back to the world. Highs of enjoying what I was doing, or at least making something, good or bad, that would last to the next day. Better than marking time by passively consuming media.

What I did NOT like was the attendant touchiness. Not about the work itself, but a higher susceptibility to perceiving slights (real or imagined) and crankiness. I had less patience for not-writing moments.

Life has been very even-keeled for me, and I didn’t have the wisdom to think “Aah, this is a biochemical phase as a come-down from peak creative moments.” and ride the wave out. I didn’t have a coping mechanism. I could WATCH myself shorter-tempered around the house “Ugh, you mean I have to go to the STORE? Oh, the impertinence of it all!” and generally behaving above the baseline for assholery, but hadn’t sorted out where that came from.

Spouse tolerated it all, didn’t even remark on my change in behavior. [Note to self: Maybe I only felt assholy INSIDE, while externally I projected the same … uh … Oh, shit. I may be an asshole alla time.]

The start of 2010 marked another writing jag pushing now into 2011, and I find I’m monitoring exercise, diet, and dosing myself with copious amounts of dark chocolate. 119,000 words on the current project, and over halfway done. My guess is that editing will cut the final version by at least 1/3. But I’m enjoying creating something that lasts to the next day, even if crappy. And this project FEELS different. Instead of writing up a LOT of inside jokes for only myself, while in the zone of inspiration I find I’m embedding jokes for 1-2 other people. That’s growth, write?