little sarah Big World

Category: Dreams

November 17, 2012

The Truest Story of All

Random Thoughts Upon Waking from a Nap at 10pm:

-I don’t want to get up.

-But I can’t just keep sleeping. People are texting, and I’m supposed to want to see them. Supposed to feel social.

-I did feel social, but then I took a nap, and now I feel strange. Like napping did me wrong.

-Like the time when I talked about wanting to die and kill myself in my sleep and scared the shit out of Kevin, but I didn’t remember it when I woke up and didn’t feel that way.

-What if there are demons that try to attack my soul while I’m sleeping? That’s totally possible. I should probably tell Chad about it.

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July 16, 2012

The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

So we’re back to the present tense, more or less, or at least my present location (Salt Lake City), with a hazy, somewhat disconnected focus on a frame of time spanning about a month in either direction, with the possibility of South America reappearing for one last gasp at any moment.

And what can I say? Time and meaning have blurred in my life, coinciding intriguingly with my current novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife (by Audrey Niffenegger). I stretch my days out by doing less and less, reading in bed, dreaming of a daughter named Calliope, of a relationship breaking apart, and severed limbs, and prose.

I’ve often described myself as an “intensely chronological person,” yet recently I find that falling away, like snakeskin. There’s more chaos this way, more confusion, and yet somehow it’s simpler. More real.

Turns out time does not march steadily forward, like a tin soldier, but rather spreads out, like a release.

Like a long sigh.

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September 27, 2011

…with a little help from my friends

Went to Powellapalooza to take my mind off of Kevin being gone. Also because my band was playing. It looked like this:

On the road

Various wristbands allowing me access to various things (backstage, shuttle, etc.)

Riding the shuttle to the beach

Further shuttle riding, with hula-hoops, why not?

Backstage, babies!

We were all allowed a plus-one, and since my standard plus-one is across the world, I took my Eric friend. Because I had a dream where Eric and I were riding bikes and having fun, and I took that to mean that Eric and I would become better friends and have lots of fun, easy times together. I put a lot of stock in my dreams, what can I say?

Eric, with his friend Ricky

It turned out to be the right thing, and I knew when he said on the phone that we’d go (“Yeah, okay, let’s do it”) that he was doing it for me. Because I needed a friend. Because I needed to get out of town.

So then there was a long drive through small towns, and shots of whiskey, loud music, huge crowds, psychadelic pattern projections, an early morning run over sand and redrock–hopping barbed wire, marveling at smoke stacks–and trippers and rollers everywhere, and sand in everything, and hot, hot sun and endless snacking, and then home.

And when I got home, there was this:

A care package from Whitney

So the trip was worth it, and coming back home to an empty apartment was a softer landing than I’d expected, thanks to my friends.

Funny, because I almost didn’t go. I didn’t decide until the morning that we left. See, I’ve been waiting on my big sister to have her baby (my presence is required), and I was worried that she’d go into labor if I left town, and I wouldn’t be able to make it back in time. But she called me the night before we packed up and headed out and said “We don’t want you to put your life on hold for us. Go have fun, get out of town. It’ll be good for you. We’ll be fine.”

I’ve never felt so loved, so lucky, or so lonely. It’s a weird time in my life.

 

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August 27, 2011

By Any Other Name

I dreamed I had a name that was not my own. Of course, I don’t remember what it was. Something fitting, I remember, in fact so fitting that I’d forgotten for a while that I’d ever been called anything else.  But then I remembered, and I wanted to go back. I missed being Sarah with an H.

Kevin doesn’t put much stock in dreams, but I do. Things have been changing for me. I’ve given up on some old dreams, some old friends. And while I know it’s necessary, to shed this old skin so that I can move forward, it’s hard. Hard to say goodbye, to let go. And I do miss the Sarah I used to be, sometimes, naïve though she was.

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May 23, 2011

Anxiety Dreams

Lately:

dreams about having to play my jury again (in front of a panel of strangers, and being late, and not having enough rosin)

dreams in French where I can understand everything but can only speak in short, halting sentences

dreams about missing my flight, being late to the airport, not being able to find everything I need to pack, etc.

and then waking in the early morning with fears, anxieties, worries, thinking about love and life and if it’s okay to feel the way I feel and what are we going to do about this whole, messed-up situation

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January 3, 2011

Dream Catharsis

Dreamed early this morning that I tried talking to bring up what we were going to do about _____ at band practice, and I made my points, just like I’ve rehearsed, but to no avail. I got angrier and angrier, until I blew–quit the band and ran, just like that (real) day walking home with Kevin, the feeling of my legs growing more and more tired, heavy, but not wanting to stop.

In the dream, I was running past the palace and cathedral on the west side of Madrid, people everywhere, a sunny winter’s day. My friends chased after me, and when I fell to the ground, my face on the grass, exhausted, Chi brought his head down near mine and whispered kind words, kissing me gently.

I woke up confused.

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December 31, 2009

We were visiting Grandma and George’s graves

So…I’ve been really homesick lately, and last night I had a dream where I was crying. I mean to say that not only was I crying in the dream, but that it felt like crying. I remember the weight of it, the lump in my throat, and how my face felt hot and tight. It was like when you dream that you’re screaming and then wake up actually screaming, only I didn’t wake up right away. And then the next morning I felt a lot better.

I think I was crying in my sleep.

Of course, this gives a whole new meaning to the term “wet dream.”

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October 20, 2009

In Dreams

I’ve been having some disturbing and vivid nightmares since I got here.

I dreamt that I was camping near a lake with Whitney and some other family and friends. The dream was thick with an inquieting, auspicious and ominous feeling. There was a submarine resting on the lake, near the shore. We decided to take it down to the bottom, to explore. As we began to descend, water started seeping in under the door, then rushing. I wanted to turn back but my companions were anxious to see the lake floor. On the bottom, we found ourselves in an abandoned underwater suburbia. Everything was perfect and untouched, clean and tidy, with brightly painted houses, shining silver mailboxes and (of course) white picket fences. Everything was still, with seaweed floating silently in the front yards and paved roads that stretched out into nothing.

I guess creepy is an understatement. With my fervent pleading, we booked it out of there, back to the top. Then I woke up.

*   *   *

Then, in Potsdam, I had a dream that I returned home to Madrid to find my precious, white flowered nightlamp broken on the floor. I tried to pick it up and put it back together, but it was so brittle and crumbled in my hands.

This last one seems to me to represent my happiness here–so fragile, so tied up in tonterías (silly little things), like a nightlight, a little wooden mesilla, a fresh croissant.

But my happiness seems to have become a bit more durable of late. I always forget that I just have to hold on! Just wait a little bit. This too shall pass.

other beloved items include: a book from chad, sheets from laura, little alarm from Oviedo

The afore-mentioned nightlamp

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