a dream of the sea and hidden passageways…

i’ve been sleeping so heavily lately. not falling asleep until 3am, finally getting out of bed at noon. i spend the hours between 4-8pm working on my nanowrimo novel. not doing any work on my backlog of photo editing because i’ve shifted so far into this verbal creative mode, i can’t see the colors properly on my screen and when i try to edit an image i feel dissatisfied. rather than put out something half-assed, i put out nothing instead. i’m just that way with my photography. thus why i stopped with the Mairead edits. the first few days after her shoot i was buzzed, and also my eyes were crisp with the vision of having just been out there with her, so i was able to excitedly burn through some samples from the shoot. there are so many more images of her yet to show you though. in due time, i hope. and this is the curse of all my shoots now. when i shoot 1,000-3,000 images of one model in an afternoon’s session there are so, so many that i never get to show anyone. i have a list of models to photograph in December, the month i said i’d go back to “work” after nanowrimo finished. with how committed i am to writing this story now, and my desires to not stop writing when November ends, i don’t know what i’ll do in December. there are 3 new shoots on the calendar in the first two weeks. maybe the weather gods will intervene and bring storms that will make me cancel the shoots. one can hope.

This Morning’s Dream

(I believe I dreamed this morning because I took a smaller dose of Ambien last night, hoping to not sleep as heavily.)

I was in a car driving to an open lot at the base of some cliffs near the ocean. It felt like I was here in the Bay Area, near San Francisco but it was not any place that I actually recognized from my physical reality. it was a dirt lot and it faced westward. The cliff rose up from the lot and was like a wall against the ocean. it was probably 300ft tall. there were some trails that meandered up the side of the cliffs and there were small groups of people gathered around. they were all young, hippie-folk and the atmosphere had the feeling of a music festival.

i knew where i wanted to go. to the top and i started to walk up the trails to the top. as i got closer to the top i started to notice that the “hill” was not just earth, but was a large building inside of the hill. like a ruin that had been covered by layers of sentiment over centuries of time. i finally reached the top and saw the most incredible sight.

the top of the building rose up out of the top of the hill, like the balustrade of a castle. i knew then that the outer wall of this building was a barrier in the sea. the “hill” was only on the backside, the earthen side. the face of the building, submerged, was the sea-side. okay, so on the floor lower, which i passed on my way to the top i had seen huge stereo speakers that were amplifying this music that came out of the ocean, but the music was also what made the ocean’s waves churn. and the ocean was raging.

but the word that stuck in my mind was that this was a “rave”, because over the edge of the wall, in the ocean were dozens of these hippie-folk floating on the waves. the waves were rising and falling to the beat of the music. it would flow out on a low note, and the hippies would sink out of site momentarily, then it would flow back in on a higher note, rising the hippies back up above the height of the wall’s edge.

it was kind of like a roller coaster ride, but it was also like they were body surfing, and man, they all were digging it! on first sight it looked scary as hell to me because we were 300ft high and the water went that deep straight down the face of the building into the sea, but no one was afraid. i just stood there and watched for awhile before moving into the next phase of the dream.

what i did next was turn to look around at the scenery from the top of this hill. what i recognized was that this was a dream-place that i had visited many, many times before but strangely, it did not seem to be a place that i ever remembered having dreams in after waking. by that i mean, the way i now remember this dream that i am telling you. i remember this vision after waking. what i saw and remembered in this dream was a memory of memories inside of dreams.

the two things in particular i remember were a route along this stretch of coastline that i’ve travelled a lot in my dreams. maybe just a 10 mile stretch on a remote looking region you’d see in San Mateo County (between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz). when this memory vision came to me, i suddenly remembered many little dreams i’ve travelled on this scene in.

the other specific thing i remembered was an even deeper layer of dream that i’d go into in this location. on the northern end of the 10 mile stretch there was a neighborhood that i’d enter (usually climbing up a cliff from a beach) and i’d go through a gate into someone’s backyard. entry though this gate took me on a different journey through this neighborhood every new time i dreamed here.   i was always sneaky, trying not to be seen (because i was going onto other people’s property). in some of the dreams in this neighborhood i’d actually enter some people’s homes. no one was ever home, or if there was someone home i was able to navigate through the rooms in their house without them seeing or hearing me. but it was always a linear pathway i’d be following. getting from the beginning of a path, to the end. going in one gate into a garden, entering the house by the back, going out the front door, then crossing the street and going in another back gate, into someone else’s home, exiting by the front door… etc, etc.

deep, long dreams. seeing many things in this usually quite fancy homes. on some occasions i remember finally getting to my own neighborhood, in San Leandro. dark, dingy, litter filled streets and would always feel so much more comfortable.

okay, that is all.