Sunday, December 30, 2007

Self-Promotion

What I know about lucid dreams -- they are usually pleasurable. And if they're not, then you can will them to be that way, pleasurable to some degree.

I began analyzing my dreams in my early 20s, when I was staying up very late at night and waking up very later in the day, with nothing to do except write until 1:30, when I had to get ready to drive cross town to "workshop." On Tuesdays. I had some other classes, too, Philosophy of Modern Thought type of classes, "thinking and reading" classes. As if your life depended on it more than a little bit. And maybe it did.

I had some seriously fantastic dreams back in those days, dreams where I realized I was dreaming within them and so could "control" or will the action within them to accord to my desires. Lucid dreams are powerful dreams, potentially life-changing dreams. One has to take the time to honor them, these professors, our dreams.

Tools to become a lucid dreamer:
1) A notebook, in which you can write, upon waking up, without opening your eyes.
2) Some deep-seated/seeded conflict developing in your soul.
3) A trusty pen.
4) The discipline to record your dreams no matter how tired, how hung over, how depressed you are.
5) A Dictionary of Symbols.
6) A Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion.
7) The time to make the connections between the symbols in your dreams and the archetypes you learn about while doing research on your dreams. Figuring yourself out a little more.

That'll be $500,000,000. for that lesson in lucid dreaming. Contact me for my agent information.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Ubiquitazzi

I am sitting in a cafe called Agora in Houston.  It's across the street from the new Brasil, which is a more spacious version of the old Brasil.  There are characters sitting all around me -- writers, artists, math geeks, high school flirts and scammers, architects and contractors haranguing home builders (young couple) for wanting a water tank while having cut down a tree on their lot. The contractors are Middle Eastern.  The home builders are White: Some combination of generations of Americans.  

I pull out my computer and log onto Blogger, feeling conspicuous in this cafe in the glow of my pod area, but then I realize that the couple sitting at the table behind me is logged into Blogger as well, and the music on the jukebox is Lucinda Williams, and the French bartendress is probably a blogger, too, or at least a lover of Lucinda Williams.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Grief

We all deal with it differently. My brother, one of them, has been breaking down hysterically everyday since my father died this past June (May he rest in peace). He calls me every other day to update his insomnia log.

"Are you having trouble sleeping?" he asks me.

"No," I say. I have two toddlers, a stressful job, a loving husband (thank god), household responsibilities and existential angst. I have no trouble sleeping. I do however have a problem dreaming these days. I get up too early, startled out of sleep by a toddler crying out MOMMY! from the bedroom next door.

I'm not sad; I'm angry. And anger is one of the stages of grief, maybe 2 or 3 out of 7 or 5. I don't remember, but a woman wrote about them, the stages of grief -- On Death and Dying, by Elizabeth Kuhbler-Ross. My grief looks like a lack of focus, and in that way, perhaps it's lacked focus.

"What are you thinking about?" I ask my insomniac brother, "when you can't sleep?"

"That I can't sleep."

How boring, I think. "What a bummer," I say.

Monday, December 03, 2007

The Superior Green

We eat a lot of greens around here, specifically kale and lettuce (preferably Baby Romaine). There's a campaign on right now to regulate the pasteurization of all greens. Visit Miah and Raj's site, Green Parenting, to find out more about why it's important to take action regarding these things.

The right to eat raw food is an ironic right. Isn't it? Amazing.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Facetaker


As a result of having newly acquired a Facebook page, I feel like there are all sorts of people inside my brain now, people I do not know personally (I don't mean my friends; they're the reason I'm there at all), and I can't stand the crowd; it makes me uncomfortable. I've never been a fan of them, crowds.

However, I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have other people in my brain with me at the same time, I'm saying it conflicts me with myself.

We are always in each other's brains anyway; our brains are not our own, really, they're just splinters off of the One. Or roads. Or rivers. Depends on the metaphor one chooses to indicate the One. (For me, it's a huge net, like a spider's web. That is my projection, or understanding, of the Divine. Some people disavow any type of divinity; that is their choice, their projection. Whichever way you spin it, we choose our beliefs in order to help manage our thoughts and emotions. Atheism, Pantheism, World Wide Webism.)

The first few days I tried to log in to my brand new Facebook account, I kept typing in www.facetaker.com. Had I been even more mistaken and more correct, I would have typed in www.braintaker.org.