100 Word Post : Dusky Dreamer

I sneak in, teased by the dusky tones of Chanel. I’m quite sure you’ve just left. The silver Victorian hand mirrors lay guarded on your dressing table, about to keep my secret. I gently pick one up and allow myself a seat. I tilt my head and raise my chin – pouting just a little - casting high ivory cheek bones swept with glittering bronze, your pearls wilting around my neck. My soft mousy wisps transform into deep chocolate curls and my lips become slicked with pink. I’m so ready for the man of my dreams; I’m now thirty, not thirteen.

I'm One Year Old Today

I don't like to say, 'it all came to me in a dream'. 

It kind of insinuates I'm sitting on the right hand side of some deity who funnels divine inspiration to me as I sleep. Now, that would be lovely, but I'm sure quite improbable. 

But the idea struck me out of nowhere, and I'm putting it down to that brilliant part of me that I don't get in touch with too often, that seems to know a hell of a lot more about who I am, and where I'm going, than I do; my subconscious. 

We moved to London on 27th September 2010. The decision hadn't been a very well thought out one. I woke up one morning and suddenly felt that London was something I should do and it was time to do it now. The problem was, I had had a love affair with Manchester from the moment I'd arrived, and it was very much my home. The people were warm, friendly and open. You could walk from one end of the city centre to the other in about half an hour. It had theatres, shopping centres, stadiums and was utterly cosmopolitan. It was where I'd first discovered Spiritualism, and had met like-minded, open people - who weren't complete nutters. It was where Liam and I had first met and fallen in love. The home of many a messy student night. It was just a bloody cool place.

I'd stolen seven banana boxes from Asda in Moss Side and crammed all my belongings into them. Just seven banana boxes, a suitcase or two full of my clothes and the cat. I felt I should have accumulated more from my five years at university. With Liam's things in there too, the white van we'd hired for the move packed out a little more, with the parental donations of a coffee table, a TV and a TV stand. Within a week, we'd taken the obligatory trip to IKEA Croydon and kitted out our little box flat with all sorts of wonderfully named Swedish cutlery trays and pillow cases. There was barely a colour scheme, but it was our home.

A week passed. I bought an Oyster card for the underground and must have been charged at least five times for not beeping through the gate correctly. I walked too slowly for Londoners- either my legs were too short (I doubted that) or Londoners walked life at a faster pace than I did. London smelt funny; dusty or sooty - I wasn't sure. 

Two weeks passed. I found myself exhausted at the end of each day, crashed out on my Solsta IKEA sofa bed. I dreaded the commute to work; wedged under a strange man's armpit, whilst he huffed morning breath down my neck on the District Line was just beyond terrible. My wallet was nearly always empty, because lunch in London for under five pounds was hard to find. 

No, me and London just weren't getting on.

"I'm fed up. It's too fast in this city. It's too dirty. Plus, everyone's so depressed!" I whinged at Liam. 

He told me to be patient, we were still adjusting and that I'd get used to it. He was right, of course. But at that time, I just could not see how I could possibly fit in. I liked open space, open people, open possibilities. 

Exactly a year ago, yesterday, I woke up suddenly - just a few minutes before my morning alarm. I’d had a very vivid dream, and immediately reached for the paper and pen I kept by my bedside table for these kind of mental emergencies, and scribbled down five words.

I'm sure you can guess what they were. 

In my dream I was standing in a very busy market street. People were trading goods with stall owners, children were skipping across the cobbles, a couple were kissing. They were all so busy that they didn't notice me. I had a hand bell in my right hand, and started ringing it to get their attention. Nothing changed. So I rang louder, and then louder still. I stood there in the cobbled streets, ringing my hand bell and laughing out loud for ages. Then suddenly a little girl turned and looked at me. And as she noticed me and began to laugh, so did her friend. It was infectious. One by one each person in the market woke up to the sound of the bell, and everyone was laughing. 

It made me think: It only takes one thought from one person for things to start happening. If that thought is a good one, people begin to notice. And before you know it, everyone's caught the thought, connecting like-minds and positive people. London might be a big smoky city, and I only one little light, but I was going to put my light out there, and see what happened.

A little something for Sunday : Create something

cited

It was a dream. One of those ones in colour, that you remember just after you wake up. One that I sat bolt upright in bed and searched for anything I could use to write down what had happened. Turns out I should definitely keep a notepad and a pen by my bed, as a kohl eyeliner on a magazine doesn't really work. In the end I used my phone, and furiously punched in the keys, composing a rather unusual text and hoping I didn't add a contact and press send in my sleepy state.

The situation in the dream hadn't been very clear; I was an inventor- or similar- and my fellow inventor had scoffed at my absolutely genius idea (cant quite remember what that was now...) but I'd cried and cried, running down a corridor and locking myself in the bathroom. Dreams are never quite as exciting when you re-tell them, are they? So I'll leave it at this: My dream ended when a man I didn't recognise came to comfort me, and knocking on the locked bathroom door, he gave me some advice, that made me feel at peace.

And his words are what I wrote:

It doesn't matter if what you create in life might be judged as not good enough or challenged by others, because you cared enough to create something in the first place, and your soul will be richer for it.

I thought they were beautiful.

Little green men in my dreams

I had the most out-of-this-world dream last night (literally).

Now, I know that listening to other people’s dreams is one of those seriously polite but unbelievable boring things you can do. But I promise I’ll be quick.

I dreamt that aliens (bear with me...) had been hiding inside of the moon and suddenly they decided it was time to descend upon us from a little trap door from the bottom of the moon. Really. (A lot more happened – but as I’m not into boring my readers senseless - I’ve cut out some of the more hazy details...)

It was one of those dreams where when you wake up, your not 100% sure if you really did get abducted by little green men, or not. I promise I hadn't watched E.T the day before, or even thought once about crop circles...


Throughout the day our minds process many pictures, feelings, sounds, emotions at such a rate, that we don't often get the opportunity to contemplate or understand what they might actually mean to us. Scenarios which take place during our day can take a while to process within our minds on how we really feel about them - without our passionate emotions clouding up our viewpoints.
I mentioned in my earlier post 'do not consider painful what is good for you' how we rarely get time in our busy modern-day lives to really take a good look at who we are. Dreams could be the way our minds can exercise and explore the hidden meanings in our lives which go unnoticed in the moment.


The purpose of dreaming, scientifically, has never been fully understood or agreed upon, but the reasons why we dream have been debated since the beginning of time. 


A really rather spiritual way of looking at dreaming has to be the most ancient opinion. Right from, well, thousands of years ago, dreamers have purported to have been given messages directly from God, or receive divine inspiration within their dreams. There are 121 mentions of dreaming in the Bible, and even Paul McCartney believed he first heard the tune for 'Yesterday' played in his dream, stating:

So we get guidance from dreams? I could well believe it - but who's dishing out my guidance?


Psychologists definitely do not generally believe that God is hot-lining you hints of genius... instead that dreaming is simply a state of instability within our minds. Kant went as far to say that "the lunatic is a wakeful dreamer" . However, Freud believed that dreams were a way of expressing our (sometimes a little bit odd and sinister in Freud's opinion) unconscious desires.


So I decided to analyse my own little lunatic dream - check and see if I received any divine inspiration on the way - and find out what my mind may be telling me. Go on then, I'll share it with you.


Looking on Tony Crisp (dream guru)'s website I found this analysis on the prospect of 'alien encounters' in a dream:

"I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it. I thought, 'No, I've never written anything like this before."

"This usually indicates urges or feelings you find difficult to identify with; feelings of being an outsider in a group or society."

OK - I'm a new Londoner, new home, shiny new job - all new starts everywhere. Not too much of a surprise.


Tony didn't, however, have a category called 'Aliens escaping through trap doors in moon'.


*ponders*


OK. So I've got feelings of being an outsider. Let's imagine that externally (to the world) I am the moon - I'm all shiny, all familiar and safe whilst brightening up my society - but really, I'm on the verge of whipping out my Stanley knife to cut a little trap door in my external image and let out all those little green men telling me: 'outsider! outsider!'...


Analysis: I'm a scaredy cat in a big city and have no friends.


I'm sure God's not telling me I'm a loner - (at least not in this dream). I'm pretty sure being a big loner isn't a suppressed desire (Freud). I'll stick by my guns - this dream was my way of letting myself know that I still haven't quite found my footing in London. That in the whirlwind of change, sometimes you gotta let go and flow with it, and not hang on for dear life pretending it's all going well - as I seem to have been doing these past few weeks. 'Cos sooner or later your own personal demons (or in my case, aliens) will creep out and get you.


But maybe there really are aliens in the moon, and God's just given me a heads up!


(To be honest, I'm just quite glad I didn't fit into Tony's second 'senario' of the 'Alien' dream category -'Devowered by aliens' ...)