I, Precarious (2)

The dreams I've been having have gotten weirder and more vivid (vivider? or even vividerer?) over the last few days, it's almost like there's a real clearing out going on up there - or a kind of stocktaking at least.

In one, I was having a cup of tea (told you it was weird), sat at a table with someone I knew, and my brother was hovering around nearby. The atmosphere and the conversation at the table were fine and the whole setting seemed relaxed enough in itself. I remember looking at the table with the various cups and plates on it, it was a table like those used for outside seating at cafes, with a shiny surface which seemed at once plastic and metallic.

We were indeed sat outside, and there was a little bit of a breeze. We seemed quite high up too. The nearby skyscrapers - well it was interesting to be able to look down on to the top of them, though I don't think my brain's dream-engine conjured up any imagery so obvious as a a bunch of execs playing rooftop golf on specially fitted turf or anything like that. No, they were just the tops of skyscrapers.

Hang on - if we could see down onto the tops of skyscrapers, then we were indeed high up - very high up (notice that for a change I haven't used an expletive for an intensifier, I could have easily said "we were very fucking high up" but I didn't). I suddenly became aware that our chairs and table weren't like normal chairs and tables. Their legs were rather long - we were taller than the skyscrapers, but the chairs and table reached right down to ground level.

My movements, which up until this point had been relaxed and, well, normal, were suddenly tense and frozen, I was in a state of rapidly increasing uneasiness - how on earth was I going to get down? Hugely aware of my own precariousness, and utterly vertiginous. And how did we get up here in the first place? I gripped onto the edge of the table for dear life, the same table that up until now I had been casually leaning on and drinking tea from.

Every movement felt like a trial - one wrong move, it seemed...I clung on and contemplated the terrifying prospect of shinning down the chair legs to get to the ground.

At this point, predictably enough, I woke up, and thought thank shitting crikey for that.

Please note the accompanying diagram, which is merely a guide rather than an accurate representation - I didn't draw it when I was asleep either, just in case you were wondering.

Hitch

I dreamed that me and a mate were driving to the south coast somewhere, and saw some hitch hikers, so we gave them a lift.

Oddly, my mate - the driver - decided to let one of the hitch hikers drive.

Even more oddly, the other one - who sat in the front passenger seat - turned round and handed breadknives to us, which was their way of reassuring us that they were trustworthy.

Somewhere along the journey, my mate managed to accidentally stab me in the leg. It wasn't a serious wound, but there was blood everywhere.

Unfair cop

A diversion back to dream blogging. Here's last night's:

The morning after a night out drinking with a mate, we were sat having breakfast and coffee, idly recounting what we could remember of the night before. Suddenly, a quiet but nagging thought at the back of my mind made itself known: had we been in trouble with the police last night?

Yes my mate exclaimed, we were detained for being drunk and disorderly!

We discussed this with much amusement - clearly we were still pissed - but couldn't even remember whether we had spent the night in a police cell, or been released and found ourselves back at my flat.

Later, we had a further visit from the police, who took us down the station (though it was lit more like a quiet country bar) to run through the events of the night before. They made us wait for a long while, and then came in and started telling us things and asking us questions: their manner was overly jovial and matey, but with more than a hint of a sinister edge. They showed us CCTV images of us, clearly the worse for wear but appearing to have a good time, as they reeled off a litany of moral judgments on the vagaries of being drunk and disorderly.

I don't think they charged us: maybe a caution, then we were released. We were discussing the whole scenario, then suddenly it struck me: sure, we had been drunk, but nothing they had presented us with showed us to have been disorderly, not by any stretch of the imagination. So we had been cautioned for something we hadn't done, but had allowed ourselves to have been sufficiently daunted by the police to not even think of questioning what they were saying. We went and got drunk to commiserate.

Basically what my brain is telling me is, as far as I can see, that I question authority (of whatever kind) far less often than I should in situations where it counts. As a result, every so often I find myself having to dig myself out of a scenario which I've allowed myself to get into but which I could have avoided had I stood my ground.

Frustrating as that is (i.e. very, since it relates to something recent and specific), I was glad to realise once I regained consciousness this morning that I hadn't actually been detained last night, so vivid was the sequence of events in the dream.

What do you make of this one then?

I woke up in the early hours of Friday morning having had yet another vivid dream, and I recall thinking: this is brilliant, I must blog it. Come Friday daytime, and could I remember it? No.

Still, at the risk of this becoming a dream blog, I'll share the one with you that I can remember from last night. It centred around a rabbit, and we (whoever "we" were) had managed to attach a webcam to its collar - probably a reference to this - so that we could monitor its activities for some purpose that now escapes me. What we hadn't banked on however was that the rabbit somehow ended up in New York, so after what apparently was a long journey by boat, we kept receiving images of the skyline and the harbour.

Even more bizarrely, the rabbit managed to somehow lodge itself in front of the windscreen of a taxi cab, so we received lots of images of a by turns bemused/amused New York taxi driver: firstly through the windscreen, but also close-up as he seemed to try to remove the rabbit from his car bonnet. The rabbit was obviously steadfast in its determination to stay right where it was though since we continued to get images of the driver through the windscreen.

Back in the control room, we were perplexed as to how the rabbit had ended up in New York, but we decided we'd make the best of it and follow its progress anyway until we could find some way of bringing it back.

Funny old place, the subconscious.

Tidying up

I think it's probably not surprising that in the aftermath of the events described in the previous post, I've been having a lot of vivid dreams: some intriguing, some disturbing. The main part of one of last night's dreams that I recall was walking past a building which turned out to be a university for teaching people how to accost someone with a gun. I found out because as I walked past there was a gap through which I heard a noise and when I looked, I glimpsed all these people in what looked like a gym. They were rehearsing moves for knocking someone to the floor and then pointing the gun at their head.

Don't ask, because I don't know: and that's but one of many scenarios that have been generated in the depths of my subconscious mind this week. I think it must be part of the process of my brain unwinding after all the hopes, anxieties and excitement leading up to last Friday.

Mind you, I think it's also because my sleeping mind has actually had some space in which to project all this imagery, so quelled was it by voluminous quantities of post-gig alcohol over the weekend. Not that I got trashed, it was just that there was plenty of time in which drinking could be done at a steady pace.

Well I'm having an easy, quiet week. I feel in a way like I've finished reading a novel - here's a pause while I let it all sink in, and also while I notice the absence of the activity of reading it day in, day out. But it should soon be time to pick another one up and to start anew. More than one person commented on the infectious energy in my last post: it would be self-defeating of me not to make sure that this kind of thing remains prominent amongst my activities again from now on.

It should be achievable: there was, for a while, a disruptive, negative force in my life. Amongst other things I allowed it to divert me from what creativity I possess, and I remained for a long time feeling unable to get back into such habits. As I've noted before, thematic to an extent in this blog has been the effort to change this: and since that disruptive force is no longer there, except for the residual memories, then it's up to me to make sure I don't forget how last Friday (and the process leading up to it) made me feel.

Dream

This was my dream on Monday night, i.e. after a day spent at an Art Therapy workshop-event-taster-type of thing:

I was being tormented by someone who was bullying me: it was causing me much pain, fear and resentment. It was also greatly inconvenient (not that you hear many victims of bullying coming out with such a complaint I'm sure...."Stop Bullying Now! It's Inconvenient!") because it was the day before a wedding, and I was to be Best Man. I was trying to out the finishing touches to the speech I'd prepared, and I'd also been asked to do an extra piece because someone was unable to make it to the wedding.

I was happy to do this (despite my fear of public speaking). However when I tried to work on the text of the speech, my tormentor would suddenly appear and start dragging me away and beating the crap out of me. I was scared, he seemed to have power over me, yet somehow - though it wasn't clear in the dream, the implication was that it was through sheer persistence - I managed to get the speeches sufficiently prepared.

It seems the bully didn't want me to be at the wedding. He made threats that there would be more torment if I was there and if I made these speeches. These threats made me feel weak, but I knew I couldn't miss the wedding.

On the day of the wedding, the bully was there, glowering at me, his eyes communicating yet more implicit threats should I dare to speak. I was painfully aware of this and yet enjoying the throng and the sense of occasion, and speak I did.

The speech seemed to give me power: my tormentor hadn't stopped me, despite his threats.

Soon after, he came over and started to cause more trouble with me, hissing words of pure malevolence and threatening more pain. I took a step back and told him loudly to stop: lots of the other wedding guests were all around and they noticed this. In front of them all I confronted him and let everyone know all the efforts he had been making to cause me pain. He began to deny it and shrink away, but I persisted, categorically running through all the things he had done to make life difficult for me. He seemed to be visibly weakening, and I continued to denounce him. It carried on for minutes: by the finish he had no power to reply.

I even got a round of applause from all the other guests.


Funny what an Art Therapy taster-session-workshop-event-type thing can cause your subconscious to tell you, loud and clear, innit?

Awake

I had an amazing day yesterday. It's not very often I say that about Mondays, especially working Mondays. It wasn't a normal working Monday for me though: I was at an event focusing on Art Therapy. It was a hands-on, participatory event aimed at interested parties such as practitioners in the arts, caring professions, social workers and so on.

I've been to similar events before but not for a long time. I was accompanied by a very very senior person from our organisation who had approached me about it thinking it was likely I would be interested. Oddly, when I first thought about it some weeks ago I wasn't sure. My previous involvement in anything linking the arts to my daytime job had always been with an emphasis on using it as a recreational activity: therapeutic, undeniably, but not Therapy. I'd never considered this as being something that I might be interested in pursuing (not least because it would involve lots more study and expense).

I got a hell of a lot out of this event yesterday though, primarily due to being able to take part in the sessions: which meant being able to draw and to express a number of things as a result. I felt in my element, reconnected to something essential but all-too-often-neglected.

There were a number of other potential positives arising from the day. I'm not going to spell them out here because it would feel incautious, and at the moment any grounds for optimism in this context have to be tempered with a very liberal sprinkling of caution. All the same, it gave me a bit of a boost.

Last night, following on from all this, I had a very telling dream: I'm debating whether I should write and post it, though it won't be this evening.

Cake dream

Dreams are brilliant. I had a dream last night. You know how weird and funny they can be.

In this one, I was in some old, walled Italian city. Beautiful place, all narrow streets, squares and porticos (whatever they are - it sounds Italian so I'll leave it in). Actually I don't know why it was Italian, it just was.

The thing about it was, the place was under siege. By whom, I don't know. But there was chaos, panic and unrest throughout, as old stone blocks fell from the sides of buildings and fire seemed to reign down from the sky (the impression I got was that the fire was a bombardment of missiles of some sort - but it was aflame anyway).

Amidst all this, I was in a place which seemed like some kind of hostel or commune or something. There was a huge communal kitchen with a few side rooms almost like dorms and offices (the implication seemed to be that I worked in this kitchen along with someone else). The tension in here was palpable too.

There was a sense of day and night passing and things getting more intense, everyone in motion, hurrying around as things appeared to be getting more desperate outside.

Then, in this hostel/commune kitchen area, someone took me to one side. A mysterious hooded figure, ill-defined, but like an odd cross between the sandman and a sinister bond villain. He told me I had one sure-fire way of getting out. He told me to be very careful, and not to let anyone else in on this, except one other person who already knew, and who would be escaping with me.

I had to lean forward as he whispered to me my instructions. It was important I didn't miss a detail, I thought. His voice sounded ancient and full of gravitas (or gravel).

"You will be aware....that there are two trays full of cakes in the cupboard down there."

Yes?

"You will take these cakes with you - but do not let anyone else see them. These are your key to escape."

The cakes? THE CAKES? CAKES ARE MY WAY OUT?

"SsssssSSSSHHHHHHHHHH! Look! Everyone else is looking for them! If you tell anyone, your chance is lost!"

I lowered my voice.

So, I was to just take the cakes and go?

"Yes. With her -" he pointed to the woman who worked alongside me in the kitchen " - but don't let anyone see you with the cakes!"

Guess what? He was right. I didn't know how, but they really were our escape ticket. We got the cakes, all two trays of them. We sidled our way through the chaos both within and without the building, and out of the increasingly hellish spectacle of the walled city, taking strength and courage from each other (and the cakes, presumably) as we went.

Brilliant!

My lazy attempts at analysis so far make me think that the city and the pandemonium within it, represent the often dispiriting chaos that is my work. Perhaps the woman I escape with, represents the fact that I need some help from someone to effectively change my situation. Maybe the sandman/Bond villain represents my subconscious, or conscience (oh dear, is that what it looks like?), trying to guide me along. Maybe, maybe not, but that all makes some kind of sense so far.

But the cake? Any ideas?