The Furious Spinner

The other morning I fell back to sleep and I dreamed I was standing in this room, my room, where I write and meditate, and my mom was here. She was younger, with her hair still black, and she was swearing a blue sweater. I said, "Look, Dad, Mom is back!" I was so happy. I put my arms around her, and I could feel her! I could smell her! It was the most wonderful experience. In dreams, I usually can't feel other people—or things, really. And here I was hugging my mother.

In real life, I didn't hug my mother much. She wasn't a physically demonstrative woman. We had to kiss her on the top of her head (germs, I think), and she just wasn't a huggy person. My other sisters are much more physically demonstrative with our parents than I am. I remember being quite young and my mother wrote me a note about something. I remember thinking, "Too little, too late." I was so young to be so unforgiving. Eight or nine? What a harsh judgement for me to have made. And I think I felt like that as I was growing up. I felt like my parents—especially my mother—were always failing me. I don't know why. I had a good home, and they cared for me and about me. But I was an angry little girl, and I grew up into an angry young woman.

Sometimes I think it's the Orson Welles syndrome. Everyone told him he was a genius from the moment he was born and when his life didn't pan out quite the way he thought it should—when he was not crowned king of the world—he wasn't able to rise to the occasion. I haven't been crowned the queen of the world, so I pout?

It really doesn't matter.

The Mom dream slipped into another dream where I was driving home in the dark and my car stopped working. A group of immigrants (it was a dream; what can I say) piled out of a van and pushed my car to get it going. It slipped and slid on the road and then I was driving again, going down a narrow road. I realized I was going in the wrong direction so I turned around and was then walking inside an office building. There was sand in the hallway with animal prints in it. I said, "Oh, this is a dream because real buildings wouldn't have this. If I follow the tracks of the animal, I'll find an animal that'll help me." I walked into an office. There was a red rock on the desk. I said to myself, "If I can feel this rock, then it's not a dream." So I put my hand on the rock and I could very distinctly feel the rock under my fingers. More happened, but the funny part was that I asked a woman why there was sand in the hallway, and she laughed and said it was to cover up a fly and a dead moose.

Sometimes dreams are so bizarre and amazing.

That was one of my very few almost lucid dreams.

Now I'm off to work on The Blue Tail which I am just loving, although it is difficult to write sometimes. Serena Blue is in the thrall of a boy. I always want to save my characters and make it all right for them. (This is a freaking thang with me—in real and imagined life.) But she has to take her journey, just like the rest of us, so even though I could write her out of it, I have to wait and see what she wants to do.

Maybe I can delay work, and go up and take a bath in my relentless search for comfort. I called my father to see what he thought of Edwards dropping out. Then I told him about the dream, and we both cried. I hate making my dad cry. I know it's good for him—I guess—but I know he misses my mother so much. He has to walk through it, too. Wish I could make it better.

(This reminds me: when I was in high school, I said something to my father—some smart ass teenage remark—and he started crying. He said he was trying so hard to be a good father. I hugged him then. And I cried. Then I went to the bathroom and grabbed a bottle of aspirin and I went into the back room and started eating aspirin. I felt so bad that I had made him cry that I decided to kill myself. Luckily, I figured out that killing myself would probably really make my father cry. I also thought that eating a bottle of aspirin probably would just make me sick. I put an end to that suicide attempt. I was a sensitive troubled girl. I'd go back and give her lots of hugs if I could.)

A ton of snow just fell off the roof and scared the bejesus out of me. Guess it's a sign that I should go to work.

Or take a bath.

Or maybe it just means it's getting warm out.

Ah science.

(The photograph was taken a few hours after the above dreams. The (crow?) prints were at the bottom of our steps.)

Labels: dreams, grief

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All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.