Last night I dreamt...

I am coming back to this several weeks after I the night when I dreamt this: I dreamt that I was at a bakery and someone (my mom?) had said that I should apply for a job there, because I needed a job.

But this bakery was very far from my home. Over an hour.

But I was there, right? I was there because I had given someone a ride. To a funeral, I think.

So I decided to apply for the job. I could always decline, if offered, right?

So I came in and I announced to one of the teen-aged staff, I am here to interview for the job.

And the teenager acted deaf. She didn't want me to get the job.

So when I saw the manager-looking person go by, I announced, very loudly, I AM HERE TO INTERVIEW FOR THE JOB.

(this is where I am coming back to this so I am not sure of these details) I think I might not have been married?

The manager wanted me to work one day a week ten hours.

There were dead bodies with braille IDs on them.

the why

One of my favorite bloggers recently wrote of the persistent stress dream that has plagued so many of us for so long. You know the one, where I've signed up for a class and forgotten to attend and forgotten to drop it and now it is finals and I'm going to FAIL....



I added my variations (one includes a school bus driving into my house to get me), but commented that meditations on WHY might be too long for a comment.



So this my meditation on why:



Those of us who are driven to be overachievers (yeah, you know I'm talking about you) often have secret (0r not-so-secret) fears that really we are inadequate. As the stress dreams reveal, we are deeply afraid that we really don't know, we aren't prepared, we will be found out.



I think, in my case at least, the truth is that although I have been told all my life that I am "smart, I have been rewarded academically throughout my long educational process for being "smart", I don't feel "smart".



I just feel regular. Like me. Nothing out of the ordinary. And on occasion, I in fact have felt pretty stupid or foolish.



Add to this the fact that in certain eras of my life I felt deeply that this "smart" thing, myth or not, was all I had going for me, the idea that others might find out the truth of my interior ordinary-ness was/is terrifying.



So, that is my meditation on why.

gator dreams

I dreamed last night that I and a few others were riding inside an alligator. This was after we had been kicked out of the gym where we had been trying to rehearse, after having been kicked out of the rehearsal rooms where we had been trying to rehearse. After being kicked out twice and traveling in the alligator, we finally found a restaurant with an upstairs room where we went up and ordered biscuits and tea as an excuse to be there and moved the furniture around so that we could rehearse in the restaurant. My friend August was somehow the restaurateur, and was quite cheerful about having a crowd that only ordered biscuits and tea.

This is too much like real life.

All except the alligator part. In my dream, the alligator was black and smooth skinned. I kept thinking it was a Cyclops alligator, but truly it did have two eyes. And it moved pretty fast for having a theater troupe inside it.

I am always confused about the difference between alligators and crocodiles.

I asked my dad about it. He said they are different species. WELL DUH. Thanks, not so helpful.

(Oh, by the way, since "I am always confused..." we are back in real life... which makes sense, in a way).

So, for my own edification, here is the difference. Alligators and crocodiles are both members of the family Crocodylidae.

What I *didn't* know is that there are two more species: the caimans and the gharial.

This is the American alligator. It has a rounded snout.

The crocodile tends to have a pointier snout and it has lower jaw teeth that are visible even when its mouth is closed.

This is a Black Caiman, an endangered species.

This is a gharial. If you are on the Ganges River in India, and a log opens its mouth to reveal teeth, it is probably a gharial.

torture movie

I had a terrible, terrible dream last night. And I think it was inspired at least in part by the movie Funny Games, which I have not seen, and do not intend to see.


Funny Games is a movie that is about torture and that purports to torture the audience with "the fear and violence that, according to [director Michael Haneke], flow like poison behind the fake facades of bourgeois life."

I saw Naomi Watts interviewed on Jay Leno's Tonight Show about this movie and her role in it. Just the description and the brief clip shown on the show was enough to set my stomach churning and give me nightmares.

A whole stable of them.

Why are there such violent, sadistic movies made? Naomi Watts suggested that it was the director's intent to torture the audience for being an audience of such violence, for having a taste, creating a market for violent, horrific movies.

Really.

It seems like this movie is just more pornography of violence. Perhaps artistic, perhaps well constructed.

But the worst kind of pornography, in my book: that of violence.

I don't go to any of the movies which have violence as their raison d'etre.

And I won't see this one.

Yuck.

But I hope I sleep better tonight.