I just heard a new track from Alicia Keys last night called “Dreaming” and it’s already on heavy rotation here the house.  The song has a sexy, more stripped down sound than what I’m used to hearing from A. Keys and, I must say it is a welcomed change.  The vibe actually reminds me of Chante Moore’s “Love’s Taken Over (Quiet Storm Remix).” “Dreaming” borrows a sample from Roy Ayers’ “Everybody Loves the Sunshine”.  Check it out below.  The new album, “THE ELEMENT OF FREEDOM” drops 12/15/09.

i think the craziest dream I’ve had so far is one in which I watched myself die, and felt it too.  in it, we were in some weird building, it was dark, lit only by candle light, at some points, i was with lots of other people and we were trying to find a way out, then it’d flip to a scene where i’m with my daughter, and some guy is trying to help us figure a way out of all this, whatever this was.  and the last scene in this dream, which is what caused me to wake up, i was locked in a room, with two other girls, whom I don’t think I’ve ever met and we were freaking out because we knew we were going to be killed, by the “kiss of death” no less.  these three nuns come in and lay us down on the floor, we’re sitting already.  i know what’s going to happen, and i’m freaking out but i don’t do anything to defend myself, which is what i find odd. it’s like i have no control over my body and am powerless to stop them in any way.  they lay us down and talk about the poison- the kiss of death- and they kiss us on the lips.  it’s a hot sensation on my lips at first, then all of a sudden, i feel my feet and legs starting to go numb, and it slowly spreads up my body, as i feel my body dying, my mind is going crazy, freaking out cause i’m dying, and then nothing…and that’s when i woke up……good times…

Dreams are rarely peaceful.

Or maybe it’s that we usually remember the unsettling ones.

Adrenline helps in creating memories, so perhaps there’s something to that idea.

In any case, I welcomed the quiet, peaceful dream below:

I’m all alone, tending to a large place out in the country.

I enter a dark shed and go to an opening in the back wall.  I can see a shaded grassy field just beyond a short metal barrier.  The grass at the edge of the field is an strange shade of green—bright and highly saturated.

I’ve been to the field before.  I know that I have to walk out and around to get there.  I want to return.  I will return.

So, it’s a perfect setting, right?  But there’s that odd shade of green.  For that matter, I should be able to jump right over that barrier, instead of going the long way to reach that field.

Does this peaceful dream actually contain a problem, a conflict?

As I thought about the dream, I realized that though the grass looked strange, it did not appear artificial.

And I understood, somehow, that taking the long route to that field was the right thing to do.  It didn’t seem to make much sense, yet it still felt right.

I think there are times to jump the barrier, to climb the wall, to force my way through.  But usually, progress is made step by step—by going the long way around.

In the dream, I can see where I want to go, where I need to go, where I will go.  But that doesn’t mean I get to take any shortcuts.  It’s not a punishment—I would lose so much if I didn’t take the long, convoluted route.

© 2009, Michael R. Patton
sky rope (subterranean rappel): http://skyrope.wordpress.com
taking new steps: http://mythsteps.wordpress.com

I’ve never considered myself a gambling kind of woman.

Well, there was that ONE time in Windsor this past summer, when I went to a casino in Windsor for the first time and made $70 on a slot machine … but that was an exception to the rule.

However, on recent subway rides around town, there’s this one lottery ad that’s been catching my eye.

Called “It’s A Wonderful Life” (yes, just like the movie), it boasts – along with a stylized depiction of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Bailey in a loving embrace – a winning pot of … wait for it … $75,000.

Which isn’t a lot.

But lately, it sure seems like a fortune.

And who hasn’t thought about the idea of scratching one’s way to a potential Christmas miracle?

I mean, it happened a couple of weeks ago to that couple in Manitoba, who were down to their last $10 before hitting the big one …

But still. I’m constantly talking myself out of it.

The fact is, I never regularly play lottery tickets, because I never win a red cent. Last Christmas, my brother bought me a whole gift pack of lottery scratch tickets; I didn’t even win a free card.

And yet, the other day, I found myself thinking about what I would do if I won – how I would divide up the sum - after taxes, of course.

Silly? Yes.

But it’s gotten me thinking about other things lately.

While I do believe that everyone and every thing has a purpose, that everything happens for a reason …

Sometimes I wonder …

Aren’t there some things in life that just one big cosmic roll of the dice?

Or maybe because we take that risk and make certain decisions that put things into play?

Ah, perhaps I should just shut up … and re-consider buying that lottery ticket.

I was with Chris in our local shopping centre. We were meeting up with his mom because we had said we’d look after his little brother for the day. He seemed really happy to see us but Chris’ mom didn’t look well. She looked like she was quite ill. We brought Chris’ little brother into a big department store where everyone liked to hang out.

Chris had to go to the toilet so it was just me and his little brother. But then he said he needed to go to the toilet too. He ran off to the bathrooms and I realised I shouldn’t just wait for him to come back, I should wait outside the toilets. I legged it up to the toilets like it was an emergency or something and I was out of breath when I got there.

I met a girl who I used to go to school with but we’d had a fight and hadn’t spoken in years. She was wearing our uniform from work so I asked her had she gotten a job in the cinema. She started going on and on about it and how much she loved it and how great it was that we’d be working together and so on. I couldn’t get away from her but when I finally did, both Chris’ brother was back from the toilet and hadn’t noticed me standing outside.

This is where it gets kind of disturbing. I went to join Chris’ brother back in the main part of the shop. He was sitting on the ground with his arms around his knees looking really really scared. It was clear something had happened but I didn’t know what. I ran up to him and when I reached him I found out that these guys who were sitting behind him had poured something on him, like oil but I’m not sure what exactly it was. I picked him up and held him in my arms while absolutely screaming at the guys. Chris came up at this point and told me to leave them as cleaning up his brother was the priority. I knew he was right so we took him back to the bathrooms.

The dream skips a bit then because the next bit has me meeting Chris on his break from work. It looked more like McDonald’s than a cinema though. I had bought chocolate nuggets (and spent ages picking them out) to share with him on his break. Our manager and another worker were standing beside us though so I offered some chocolate to them. Chris made a face at me as if to say I was sucking up to the manager so I stuck my tongue out at him. Our manager took some chocolate but the other woman said she had gone off chocolate ever since she had gotten a bad box of it one Christmas. I think that was the end of it.

I was so frightened for Chris’ brother, I woke up feeling horrible. I guess even though it was just a dream I felt responsible for it.

Dreamer xxx

…when I know there’s a large-ish spider running around my room?

I spied him twice, (On my bed!) but couldn’t get to him fast enough to scoop him up and take him outdoors, where he belongs. Which means that instead of dreaming and slumbering, I’ll be imagining that every breeze or hair wisp is that arachnid climbing around on my face.

At least I can tell it isn’t poisonous. Its cream colored with beige spots. If it weren’t in my room, I’d probably think it pretty.

I was flying, in my body, over an ancient landscape.  I came across ruins with unknown inscriptions and tight narrow and eroded reddish walls.  I flew in and turned a corner into a narrow roofless hallway.  As I flew in I approached a small Buddha statue that was at the end of the ancient hallway.  As I flew closer I began to cry with joy because it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  Before I knew what was happening the walls collapsed around me and buried me.  In the next scene I was opening the folder, as someone else, of the personal details of a deceased man.  The dead man had a name that was both American and Asian.  I was that man.  He/I had died when the walls of the hallway leading to the ancient Buddha collapsed upon him.  This was my dream last night.

Some have used lucid dreaming to ascend to the heights of spiritual ecstasy…

Whereas in a recent lucid dream, I merely watch myself sweep.

In the dream…

I’m sweeping the dark concrete floor of a small room.  I have enough light, but it’s not bright.

I carefully sweep the debris into a small pile in the middle of the floor.  I realize I’m dreaming, though the scene looks completely realistic.

When I become lucid, I could have chosen to alter this mundane dream.  But why should it?  Obviously, the floor needed to be swept.

I find it significant that I sweep the debris into the center of the room.  This cleaning work, occurring on an inner level, is a type of centering—a way of focusing.  A meditation.

The debris is like an offering—I’m offering up that which I no longer need in my life.  I’m acknowledging the spiritual purpose of all this old dust.

Though this dream didn’t bring me to the heights of spiritual ecstasy, I can think of no more positive dream.

© 2009, Michael R. Patton
sky rope (subterranean rappel): http://skyrope.wordpress.com
taking new steps: http://mythsteps.wordpress.com

One of my favorite writing’s by Edgar Allan Poe is the Tell-Tale Heart. I love this story because it has a character that I can never forget. When I am doing character building for a story I think of the man with the vulture eye and then ask myself if my characters will leave a lasting impression or will they be forgotten about in no time.  There are so many things that can make a character interesting, whether it is a specific trait, an unforgettable name or a specific article of clothing. I am the type of person that will remember the story only if I remember the characters in the story.

I’d like to hear your opinions. Who are some of your favorite characters? What did you love about them? What do you remember most about them?

My thoughts drift off to far off fantastical  places – an island in the middle of the black star strewn sky, a forest underground, a plane flying me to a familiar middle of nowhere – then I am back home to reality.
I glance at the clock behind me, it is late. How long have I been dreaming? How much time has been pushed aside like garbage without a second thought? Do I even care?
My mind is in the kitchen now. In the chocolate cake that is yet to be created. It will be dark moist and melt in my mouth. It will make me wish I could eat as much as I wanted.

It is time to sleep now, wondering what to eat before fajr salah, for tomorrow is the day of Arafah… A day of fasting to have our sins of the past year and the coming year forgiven. I now know what I want forgiven the most – all those times I spent displeasing my Lord and all the times I could have uttered a tasbeeh to tip the scale of deeds in my favor rather than saying nothing and thinking useless or sinful thoughts.

Wind,

Our rooms

Letting in the bending

And leaning trees,

Leaves,

And

All

Fall.

When

Through all

Our arms your pillowed

Self moves and soft

Self rooms,

Our

Warming

Thoughts

Pause.

Then

Needing and

Heavy hearts thaw

Our sudden

And

Gathered

Hall.

I made this photo for coverpage of Team Academy Magazine. It´s name is Entrepreneurs dream and it illustrates how sometimes our minds are somewhere else, far, far away, in a place where the sun shines and merengue plays.

Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,

und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;

und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm

oder ein großer Gesang.

[…]

Doch wie ich mich auch in mich selber neige:

mein Gott ist dunkel und wie ein Gewebe

von hundert Wurzeln, welche schweigsam trinken.

Nur, dass ich mich aus seiner Wärme hebe,

mehr weiß ich nicht, weil alle meine Zweige

tief unten ruhn und nur im Winde winken.

The only poetry book I took to Romania this autumn was Rilke’s Stundenbuch. I love the following:  ‘yet no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence’. I cannot say how much.

I rage a lot, I push and thrust and burn and break down. I seek to understand with all my powers. but I cannot grasp what is beyond the little logic I stumble with. Love in the dark. What if it is so.

What if it is so that That Which Sustains Life must remain within the glorious haze, within the earthen scented soil, within the tissues of our hearts that may never truly understand. What if it is so that That Which Sustains Life adores riding me through shuddering waves of regret and valleys of emotional rage and through the still deserts of my crumbling sanity. What if it so that his is Her cruel though dead effective way of making me cross thresholds that I would not cross in my fear and lowliness. Transformation is no longer as threatening looked at this way. I embrace uncertainty, I make you the only still centre in the universe. The one miraculous spot where the pendulum hovers and shivers.

I accept. I accept the storms and the darkness and the sweetness of the contraries they promise.

I am leaving tomorrow. Taking the long way to America.

I had the strangest dream the other night.  In it, I was standing on this pier.  I’d taken a cab or something to get there.  When I arrived, I stood waiting on a dock.  There was a lady, touristy type, standing next to me and she said with a friendly smile, “Oh, I believe that’s your ship dear.”  Then I saw the ship.  The biggest ship I’d ever seen.  It was ginormous.  One of those huge cruise ship things.  It was white, and had a wide sky blue band running along the side.  On the band, in big white block letters was the name of the ship.  It said, “Economic Recovery.” 

Most people just use the term figuratively, their ship came in.  I have to be teased and dream about a literal ship coming in.  *sigh*

~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of dreams, mine have gotten kind of weird lately.  With few exceptions – like the ship one, and one I dreamed of about my childhood house, I’ve been dreaming in what I have come to call “Medium mode.”  Yep, my dreams now look like episodes of Medium, complete with me being played by Patricia Arquette, and Darc being played by Jake Weber.  It’s doggone annoying, I can tell you that.  Nothing against Jake Weber – he’s got his good points.  But Darc is way better looking.

~~~~~~~~~~

The childhood house dream, you ask?  Would you believe, I didn’t even go in it?  All the years I’ve dreamt about that house, I’ve never not gone in it.  This time I went into a neighbor’s house, and watched mine from across the street.  Watched my family, 1970s version, living in the house.  How bizarre is that?  The kid who lived there, I had a little crush on him when I was like 7, and he used to chase me on his bike.  He and his family lived in the house across the street from my house for years and years, long after I moved away.  But in the dream the kid was in his 20’s or so, much as he was the last time I saw him.  In real life he was 2 or 3 years older than me. 

~~~~~~~~~~

At least I can say my dreams are interesting and entertaining, right? 

I have to remind myself, from time to time…

…that it’s not enough to understand a dream on an intellectual level…

…I need to act on the message.

Author and Jungian therapist Robert A. Johnson gives an excellent example of this need in Living Your Unlived Life:

“I recall a marvelous man, a Benedictine monk, who was in analysis.  He hadn’t been aware of his body for thirty years.

“His dreams seemed to be trying to round him out, presenting parts of his life that he had neglected.  He was doing his best to ignore both his dreams and my suggestions that he needed to pay attention to his physical nature.

“One day I lost my temper with him and told him it was not enough to have intellectual discussions about the content of his dreams; he needed to get out and do something with them.

” ‘What would I do?’ he asked with a blank look.

“Exasperated, I blurted out, ‘Well, if you can’t think of anything else, then go look at the bark on ten trees!’

“He silently stood up, cleared his throat, gathered his things and walked out. I felt I had offended the poor man, lost my composure and pushed him too far.

“Then, a few hours later, there was a knock on my door.  He had returned.  ‘You have no idea how interesting the bark on trees is,’ he said.  ‘Some of it is rough, some smooth, some brown, some gray; it’s different on the north than on the south side; insects live in some of it.  You know, different trees have different smells,’ he said.

“As he awakened to the realm of the senses and his own physicality, his healing began.  He started to be able to shift out of the abstract, intellectual realm in which he had lived for decades.  Now whenever I see him I ask how his trees are doing, and we both laugh.”

© 2009, Michael R. Patton
sky rope (subterranean rappel): http://skyrope.wordpress.com
taking new steps: http://mythsteps.wordpress.com

Dreams can be a beautiful thing to experience. They give a vision of hope, a vision to follow for future endeavors.

Dreams can be stretches of the truth, recalling prior experiences to the best of ones memory.

Dreams can be delusions of grandeur, creating an unrealistic goal in ones mind that becomes an obsession, a hindrance to themselves and those around them.

Dreams can be odd, an imagination on crack.

Dreams can, in its own way, tell the story of your current life.

Dreams, in my case, have been strange, and causing me to wake up at 4am on consecutive mornings.

Monday’s dream was one I have not had since summer time. When I had them before, they stayed around for a couple weeks. All the dreams involved me losing my teeth in some form; dissolving from grinding, cracking, falling out.

I have since researched what this could mean. From DreamMoods.com, a person who dreams about teeth falling out could have the following on their mind:

• A fear of how others perceive me
• A fear of sexual impotence or other consequences of getting old
• A fear of being embarrassed or making a fool of myself in a specific situation
• Lacking power in a current situation
• Malnutrition
• Lack of confidence in some situation or relationship
• A family member or close friend is sick or near death
• According to the Chinese, a saying states: ‘your teeth will fall out if you’re telling lies’

Well, I’m glad we cleared things up! This is what happens when you over-analyze. Not all of the above CAN apply, but what does will begin to drive me insane. That dream woke me up at 4am Monday morning; I was in a full body sweat, and I almost fell out of bed. As I said above, this was not my first round with these dreams. Now what is going on now that was back then? That is the million dollar question.

What are some of your dreams that you have remembered; good or bad? I want to know, and want to know what they meant. Were you able to relate them to your life? Inquiring minds (me) want to know.

~Jason Douglas

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It turns out that the Admiral’s brandy has a mind of it’s own. It wants to give him strange dreams. He better finish drinking it before it causes too much trouble! Either that or remember to leave the stopper in.

I realize that by writing this post, I might set myself up to look stupid, but for the sake of my sanity I need to see if anyone out there can help me.

I use microsoft word when writing. I have discovered that when I try to copy and paste my queries and ms pages to my e-mail everything transmits crazily. My paragraphs are off, my sentences are broken and nothing looks pretty. I have adjusted everything I could see and then attempted to send it to myself. Errors still show up and I am ready to pull my hair out.

Does anyone in the blogosphere have any good advice for me. My husband works with some technical geniuses, they were willing to try and fix it for me but had no advice on how I can fix this myself. Any writer’s out there run into this problem?

“I dreamed I went to J’s house, and you were there, and I taked a pillow and blankie and put them on the couch to cuddle, and J taked one away, and I taked it back, and he taked it away again, and so then I fighted him and fighted him and fighted him, and finally I taked it back and he didn’t take it away anymore.”

On paper, I’m not a risk taker.

On paper, I’m the girl who lived in the rural town for 20 years, who spent her childhood building  treehouses, leaning against the warm expanse of a old gelding’s round stomach, laying on  pinewood floors reading piles of library books.

On paper, I’m the teenager who went to the same school as all the other girls. Who did the homework, who showed up, who laughed at the same in jokes as you.

On paper, I graduated from high school. I went to uni, made friends with people who would change my life. I partied. I danced. I kissed the right boys (most of the time). I did what I was supposed to. What was expected of me. And I liked it.

On paper, I’m about to do something that so many others have done. I am travelling a path well travelled by others. On paper, my impending adventure  may seem generic. But to me, everything I have ever done has been leading to this. It explains the hot cold rush I feel whenever I gaze at a plane in the morning sky. It’s the edge of the unknown.

It feels like a risk. But not doing it feels like a bigger one.