4.12.2002

my life is more fun when i'm sleeping

i had a lucid dream about a week ago; i really had no choice. at first i watched this woman get killed by her crazy fundamentalist husband in a really gruesome way because she'd been raped. (i think he shoved a screwdriver in her ear and made her cook dinner while she bled to death into her own lap)

needless to say, that level of violence and misogyny would never do so i went back to sleep and dreamed it again, becoming this vigilante character who helped her escape through all these trials and obstacles while her husband was outside in the back yard, obliviously planning her death.

i took her through an apartment building where all the floors were slanted uphill and at every floor there was a cosmetics counter giving out free samples of moisturizer and signature scents and blocking the elevator bank. then through a very flossy garden party that looked like something out of a wedding planning catalog. we manouvered graciously, nervously around bodyguards and people holding champaigne flutes and finally, i had to call her a cab on a cel phone i found among some rose bushes in the front yard.

it was a grand adventure, and quite a lot of fun.


and then, last night in my dream i had an assignment to write a ten-minute play and i had all these ideas and never wrote it. weeks passed in the dream with me thinking about this play i was going to write and talking ideas over with my husband and being all excited and not writing shit.

eventually it was two hours till due and i was not only scrambling to finish the writing, i was also acting out all the parts as i figured it out, videotaping myself, and simultaneously editing it into a short film because i hadn't had time to teach it to any actors and have them rehearse. so i went to this playwriting class/theatre festival with a half-finished short film and in the middle of it i had to jump up on stage and act out a missing chunk and then let the tape continue.

afterwards, people thought i was all avant-garde and fabulous and asked where they could buy the tape and see me perform and could i come speak at their school. i spent the rest of the dream meticulously writing down people's email addresses.

i have such a fascinating [to me] subconscious life. i need to go back to sleep so i can speak new theatre techniques to my adoring public.