A Literary Dream, Loosely Speaking

The other night I dreamt that I had come up with an idea for a brilliant, best-selling-novel. Here it is--aspiring writers, take note!

It was to be called Various Ways of Describing a Prince's Title.

(The title was an awkward nod to Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," which was in fact the inspiration for the title within the dream.)

It would be a collection of monologues. I was really inspired. I started writing one right away (still in the dream), then had to stop at one point to make some notes about the second one.

In the dream (just to be clear), I wrote the better part of one monologue. It was supposed to come from a churlish perspective, possibly that of a laborer ("churlish" and "laborer" were the words used within the dream). And it was in Middle English.

So yes, I was composing in Middle English in my sleep (likely much better than I could when awake!).

Shake it, baby

A propos of nothing:

Last night I had a dream that TM and I had formed a two-person improv troupe that would go to inner-city schools and perform in order to try to keep kids off drugs and out of jail. We had both done some time and apparently knew what we were talking about.

As a part of this program, I was repainting a gabled attic room with a large, rather ugly purple pine tree motif. While I painted, I practiced freestyle rapping, since that wasn't a skill that I had yet developed particularly well, but that was going to be an important component of our show. I was working on a song about walking around the city and going into different buildings; most of my lines were pretty weak. But I was delighted when I came up with the following little couplet:

You walk into the Y and put on your bathing suit-y;
It was in your backpack, now it's on your booty.

To emphasize the final word, I intended to point at my butt. And I distinctly recall the divine realization that adding a "y" to "suit" opened up startling new rhyming possibilities.

I woke up at about 3:30 this morning with the words still in my head. Of course I had to awaken TM to share them; what if I hadn't been able to remember them later? He would've missed out on so much!

Honestly, though, I'm kind of impressed. Not because this even approximates good hip-hop, but because the lines actually do scan, more or less.

Metamorphosis

After a night of disturbing dreams, jb awoke to find herself transformed into Henry VIII.

This morning is convocation, and I have to wear my regalia for the first time. How does that hood thing work, anyway?

My dreams were, in fact, disturbing, by the way. One convoluted weirdo dream after another. I can't remember much in the way of details (lucky readers!), but some of the highlights included a deranged old woman who killed her caretakers with a paring knife and the discovery of a dungeon in my parents' basement.

The best part, however, I do remember. Voldemort called me up and commanded me to cook a pound of spaghetti. I did so, despite my mother's protests, although I was so nervous that I couldn't decide whether to drain the pasta or just give it to him with the cooking water. Finally I did drain it and put it into a glass jar for transport. When the Dark Lord showed up to collect it, he was hungry, and commanded me to cook him some spiral pasta for supper (the spaghetti had another destiny, more sinister I'm sure). But, when it was still in the colander, I accidentally poured lobster sauce on it instead of olive oil. Voldemort was in a towering rage! I was afraid. But luckily I was able to remove the offending pieces of pasta, and recalled that I had some homemade pesto in the freezer. The Dark Lord was satisfied. So satisfied, in fact, that he condescended to make out with me a little bit. (Just a little bit. The dream was mercifully hazy on this point.)

I am amused. Which is a good way to start off the semester.