I love those Google pics. I think they chose just the right artist to design them--she or he keeps the images simple, like Google's great interface, while still making them imaginative and fun. That's not such a bad way to approach writing either. Many of the classic writers have said that it's hard to "write simple" and yet write well and I believe they are right. Righting simple and writing simple-minded are not the same thing. Choosing your words so the message is instantly clear is appropriate for many styles of writing.

Oh, hey, I just breezed by Amazon's site and noticed the Illywhacker by Peter Carey was the recommended book. I'm happy to see that because Carey is an excellent writer and deserves more widespread attention. I've read almost everything he's written even though I found it very hard to locate his books in local bookstores. It took six months to find a copy of Bliss and another four months to find a copy of Illywhacker. Carey's writing is all over the map, genre-wise, but some of his work is outstanding.

Dream Time. Oh, I almost didn't mention this, because I had momentarily forgotten, but I had a strange dream last night. It was very realistic--it was like being there. There was no flying, no monsters, no strange dream stuff that doesn't happen in real life. The same laws of physics as I experience in my waking life seemed to apply to this particular dream (or at least to the first part).
I was making a trip into the city (a bigger city) to drop something off at a corporation. In the process, I ran into a friend of mine, someone who recently started dating a new girlfriend. In my dream, they were working in the same building. In real life they work for different companies. Anyway, I caught a brief glimpse of him through the busy corridors and the lunchtime crowd. It was very crowded. He was somewhere in a tall multi-story building. At lunch the employees all ended up in the corridors at the same time.

This is where it gets strange. Unlike real life in which you can predict most of your daily interactions, dreams can go in any direction.
I lost sight of my friend. I wanted to say hi, but he disappeared into a crowded stairwell. I worked my way through the crowd, intending to go to the spot where I had last seen him, but I was blocked by several people.
"You can't go now," they said.
"Why not?" I replied. "I'm going to miss my friend if he leaves the building before I catch up to him."
"Look at the light," they said.

I looked up in the ceiling to see a miniature version of a traffic light, green on two sides and white on the other two sides. Everyone was waiting for the light to change.
"You've got to be kidding me," I said. "That's ridiculous. It's not that crowded and people have always managed fine in school halls and other buildings without traffic lights." Then I started to press through, concerned about finding my friend who had now disappeared.
But the crowd was not happy. They blocked my way and said, "You can't go now. You have to wait." The whole thing had an Orwellian feel to it.

I said, "You can't seriously think this is a good thing?"
They looked at me as though to say, What are you talking about? Boy are you weird.
I said, "You're acting like a bunch of machines. It's as though you're letting the technology use you instead of you using the technology."
They gave me a look as if to say I was some kind of heretical nutcase, as though they were sizing me up because my view was different from theirs and theirs was obviously right because they all believed it.
Well, I've seen that look before. It made me nervous. Fortunately, the light changed and I was able to move forward without further incidence, but my friend was now nowhere to be seen. I started asking people, "Have you seen ___? Do you know where he went?"

A few people half-heartedly pointed down and across to another building. I wasn't sure whether to trust them and continue searching or to give up and go home. I decided to keep looking.
Well, the building was quite tall and I was only halfway to the ground level where a lot of people apparently ate lunch in a big company cafeteria. I assumed that's where my friend would be and that he was probably going to meet his girlfriend. She's a nice person--likes books and I thought it would be neat to see her too.

Now, here's the part where dreams can be, well interesting. In real life, I'm happily attached and my friend is just a friend. In my dream suddenly there was an attraction to my friend and I felt jealous about him spending lunch with his girlfriend. Part of me wanted to see them together and talk to both of them and part of me wanted to head off my friend before he met his girlfriend. So, finding him first suddenly seemed, in my dream, a top priority.

Unfortunately, I started getting lost in the corridors and offices on my way down. I guess there weren't any elevators, just these gaping stairwells full of people.

A Change of Scenery. At some point, I stumbled into an office (still several stories up) that unexpectedly opened out into a ground level neighborhood and I found myself standing in front of a well-built Victorian-style house that was apparently owned by one of the employees. So much for the laws of "real life" physics. In my dream I didn't question the fact that I was now in a treed neighborhood rather than a corporate office and that I had landed there just by walking through a door.
Then I was transported into the house, into a group of middle-aged women who were talking about how one of the women was planning to sell the house.

It was a beautiful house. Very solid, (she said she had owned it for thirty years--she had obviously kept it well) and it was a nice neighborhood. I asked how much she wanted to sell it for and she named a price above my price range. Then she leaned over and told me she should give me a facial, would I like a facial? She was running a beauty shop in her house and the other women were there getting various facials, manicures, etc.

I said, "No thanks," and reluctantly left (not because I didn't get a facial but because I couldn't afford the house) and stood for quite some time looking at the outside of the house, wishing it were possible to buy it. It had dormers, and thick beams, and a fresh coat of white enamel.

Scene Three. Then I turned and found myself back in the corporation, in an office where a guy in his mid-twenties, in ratty clothes was smoking a joint. I looked around, surprised. How could he get away with that in an office where people were so programmed they stopped for traffic lights in the hall? Was there some kind of double standard at work here? Soon I began to realize why people tolerated this strange guy who could potentially have gotten them all fired. He was very entertaining--a story teller. He would get into all kinds of scrapes and then regale his coworkers with his tales of getting shaken down by the police or the border patrol. Then he noticed me and asked me who I was. I told him I didn't work here, that I was a writer.

As soon as he found out I was a writer, he pulled out a visual notebook, a cross between a writer's journal and a sketchbook and explained how he was trying to record his crazy escapades but couldn't figure out how to turn them into a screenplay and could I help him?

In my dream, I was enthralled with his ideas. They were fresh, exciting, and original. I said I'd like to look at his notes and think about it. He gave me his notes and then I found myself outside his office again looking for my friend. I had the notebook in my hand and I still felt very excited about the possibility of collaborating with this guy.

Now it seemed more urgent than ever to find _____. I thought, with this great project in hand, that I had a great conversation starter, something that would grab his attention. The only problem was finding him before he found his girlfriend.

What's interesting about this dream so far is that in real life, I'm not a devious and manipulative person but this dream definitely went in that direction. In real life, I'm very respectful of people's relationships and I've never had any designs on anyone else's boyfriend. I see it happen a lot, though, with other people, and apparently my subconscious has thoughts about it that I've never consciously entertained.

It makes me wonder how much of our dreams is about suppressed desires and how much is observations of other people's interpersonal relationships and machinations. As a writer, I'm endlessly fascinated with the strange things people do with and to each other. It was hard to tell, when I woke up, if I was simply putting myself in a common scenario I have witnessed or playing out some suppressed hidden desire. I suppose if you have hidden desires, a dream is a good way to experience them since it essentially does no harm.

But to get back to the story. When I reached ground level, I spotted my friend. I also spotted his girlfriend, but they hadn't seen each other yet. I waved at my friend's girlfriend and then wiggled behind a post and headed toward my friend. When I reached him, I showed him the notebook and started to tell him about the possibility of a collaboration. He seemed interested, but he was also looking around (presumably for his girlfriend). Then I touched him on the sleeve to draw his attention back to the notebook and when I did so, my inner thoughts communicated themselves through my arm, into his arm and up into his brain and then he knew my attentions weren't exactly unselfish. He started pulling away, looking to find his girlfriend, trying to get away from me. I had this dream sense that he liked me but that he had only just started dating this new person and he was afraid that any suggestions of intimacy between he and I might jeopardize his chances with her.

Real Life and Unreal Dreams. Now realistic dreams and moralistic dreams like this one can be kind of dull. Real life is like that. You have to have priorities. You have to make choices. You have to be careful of people's feelings. But this was a dream. Heck, in a dream you should be able to do anything you want! It's just a dream, isn't it? Or is there some wider, broader communication in dreams that reaches beyond the self. Some people believe that and some people don't. Frankly, I don't know. But I do know, in the next instance, my friend in the dream gave me a look as if to say, "Sorry, I'm actually interested in you but I'm worried about losing my chance with this new woman in my life." To give him credit (in real life he's a good person and a good friend), I acknowledged that and let him be. When he caught up to his girlfriend, they disappeared into the crowd before I could talk to both of them together.

The next thing that happened was interesting. Now that my friend was gone and the possibility of any more intimate encounter also gone (or at least on the back burner), I had time to more closely scrutinize the notebook in my hand. It turned out that it wasn't as organized or as exciting as I had first thought. Apparently the storyteller's verbal magic had transcended the quality of the actual material and I was stuck with a bunch of disjointed notes and the possibility of a collaboration with someone unreliable and unpredictable. It occurred to me that I was a sucker and that I'd better reassess the situation and return the notebook and tell him I wouldn't be able to work on the project. And that was when I woke up.

As with so many dreams, it left me with a bunch of questions. It was provocative without having any resolution. It was more representative of life's ups and downs than a dream's potential to transcend life. But it was just one dream (or two dreams somewhat interspliced) and there were some interesting aspects, like walking into an office and finding myself in a residential neighborhood and being able to impart my thoughts to another person just by touching him on the sleeve. --- Mya

There's another reason why I'm behind in my blog. Besides the loss of privacy, which niggles at me, I admit, I'm not completely comfortable with the self-indulgent aspect of blogs. A blog is usually mostly about the writer and the writer's life. Why would I want to write about me? There are so many interesting things to write about and a narcissistic blog just somehow isn't at the top of my priorities. But some people say they like reading it, so I'll continue, but I think I'll try to think of some ways to inject something of interest that isn't all about me. I think I'll be happier, and hopefully readers will enjoy it if I can come up with some good ideas. --- Mya