Saturday dreaming

Saturday, February 4th, 2017 09:39 am
rolanni: (Coffee with Rolanni)

So, last night, or early this morning, I dreamed that the Master Harper had died, and in fulfillment of his last duty to the Hall and the Craft, his spirit had spanned the world, looking for the one who would come after.  He found her soul in Dreamland, and revealed himself. When he was certain that she had seen, he turned, for the last time, toward the Hall, showing her the way.

The spirit of the new Master Harper turned into a hart -- by which we learn that she is a traditionalist -- and followed.

A nice story, really, and about then I realized that I was one of several persons auditing this event, and my companions were Not Best Pleased.

"A motorcycle!" said one.  "One does not Seek Through Dreamland on a motorcycle!"

"Why not?" I asked.  "The steed we ride in Dreamland is that which is chosen by our soul."

"It's not traditional!" said another one.

"Well, he wasn't traditional, was he?" said a third.  "That's not exactly a surprise, after all these years, is it?  Gods know, we all came against his Ideas, down the years."

"You want traditional?" I said, turning back to the screen, or the window, in time to see the hart leap from Dreamland into the cluttered room at the top of the tower, skidding slightly on the old pages underfoot.

The shape went misty for a moment, reforming into a ragged young woman, her hair tangled with brambles, her face dirty, clutching a leather bag to her meager chest.  She gazed around the room, face dawning awe and then delight as she discovered each instrument beneath its piles of books, scribbled notes, and gee-gaws.

"It looks like you've got traditional," I said, waving my comrades over to watch the new Master Harper start her tentative tour of the tower.

In the distance, a motorcycle roared, wound out, and faded. . .

rolanni: (weather)

Well. . .nuts.

It snowed on the overnight -- wet, gloppy snow, which then changed to driving sleet-and-rain, the so-beloved Wintery Mix.  We woke up, early, because Tai Chi class on Wednesday, to a driving rain.  The surface of the driveway was a kind of mud slurry, iced with brittle snow, and when the town plow went by, the blade was pushing a wave that would have been credible off of The Big Island.

Since I don't believe in winter road surfing, I decided to give Tai Chi a miss and practice my small dance here at home.

However, today is also Hospital Day, so, after breakfast, when the rain stopped, I again surveyed the situation.

Long story short, the car is presently stuck in the mud.  This situation will rectify itself overnight, when it's supposed to get cold again, but for right now...the writer is in.

The cats have declared a Snow Day and are lobbying hard for everybody to go back to bed.  Steve is currently under assault from Belle and Scrabble, who are practicing the deadly Synchronized Snoring.

Speaking of Belle, last night's dream (she was sleeping on my stomach for a while), concerned a Big Jumble of people and furniture; if I had to guess, I'd say that we were living in shared housing of some kind, and our apartment/rooms were going to be painted, so we had to move all our stuff to a holding area.  In the process of doing that, and relocating our four cats, I discovered in our space, a plush white cat with grey cloud markings, black tips on her ears, and a little grey mustache perfectly placed under her pink nose.  She was very friendly, and obviously "knew" me.  I was confused, and texted Steve, "Do we have FIVE cats?"  Very vivid, especially the feeling that the cat knew me.

Well.

Here's the quality of help I currently have to call on in my office:

Sprite on the job Mar 2 2016

Sleeping with cats

Tuesday, March 1st, 2016 09:26 am
rolanni: (blueyes)

So, Belle is our Champion Napper here at the Cat Farm.  She really enjoys her naps, and often does two at once.  She seems to prefer company, but will happily nap alone, if that's how the dice roll.

I don't even have a rating as a Napper -- it's a tough field -- but I do like company in my poor efforts, and Belle has taken to tutoring me in the fine points.

I've noticed a couple of things, napping with Belle, that I don't notice when napping with the other cats -- or, in fact, when I go solo.

First is that her purr is incredibly soothing.  I'll lie down with my head awhirl -- the normal state of the inside of my head is a kind of barely controlled thought-twist, which, like the ringing in my ears, can't ever be said to go away entirely; the range of action is something like:  Kind of Loud, Loud, Awfully Loud, Way too Loud, and Batten the Hatches.

But, Belle's purrs cut through all that noise.  It takes a few minutes, but she's also a champion purr-er, and has real staying power.  And she manages to achieve silence inside my head, a state I've noticed now several times in the millisecond before the purr does its final work and puts me to sleep.

The other thing I've noticed when napping with cats is the quality of dreams.  Despite my whirlwind head, I very rarely dream, or -- for those who insist that everyone Does Too dream -- remember my dreams.  If I've had cat assistance, I do dream, and often remember my dreams, and I wake up a shade more relaxed than I would do, sleeping alone.

Belle-induced dreams though, are -- a little different.

They are almost all in the genre of Saving the Kittens.  I have, in recent dreams, rescued kittens who were stuck behind a large appliance; stood between kittens and a large, noisy machine; and moved a number of kittens to a place of safety after one was grabbed by a Bad Person and thrown.

These are not restful dreams, though they are infused with a sense of purpose and determination.  I wake up a little more alert, it seems, and attentive to possible threats -- to the kittens.  It's an odd feeling, though not necessarily unpleasant.

. . .and I wonder if these are shared dreams -- that is, if Belle, having been a Mom Cat in what I know to be a very safe place for cats, still reviews these themes in order to keep her edge, if, yanno, kittens fall into her way again.

On the other hand, it could just be my subconscious having some fun with association.

Either way, it's striking and notable, and I have, therefore, noted it.

Belle as shmoo Jan 8 2016

(no subject)

Monday, April 21st, 2014 09:51 am
rolanni: (blackcatmoon)

So, we let the cats sleep in bed with us, if they want to.  Scrabble, as a rule, does not want to, though sometimes she'll sleep on the chest at the bottom of the bed.  Back in her youth, she used to overnight pretty often on top of the bookcase by the bed, but the bookcase has gotten much higher since we first planted it there, and now Sprite spends part of the night aloft.

For the last decade or so, Mozart has been our steady date.  His preferred position is tucked between me and Steve, or on my shoulder with his nose under my chin (and his whiskers in my face, but I try to bear it with the fortitude appropriate to my station).  The addition of two new, and active, younger cats has changed the nighttime geography somewhat.  Mozart is usually in on the action from the time we turn out the light.  Trooper comes in sometime during the night, and will sleep on Steve's ankle or knee, or shoulder, whatever's available, after expressing his undying devotion to myself.  Sprite will be in the cat nest, overlooking all, though later in the night, she'll descend to sleep on Trooper's rump, or his head, or across his belly.

Now, according to Household Mythology, the cats who sleep with us provide the night's dreams.  Dreaming is the profession of cats, and this is also why so many writers have cats; proximity helps us in the waking dream of writing.

So, last night, I had two dreams.  I'm not sure who to blame them on, but I don't remember my dreams often, and these were vivid.

The first dream -- or the first half of a very long dream, I'm not sure which -- involved Kat Kimbriel, who had, as writers do ask other writers in Real Life, asked me to look over a letter her publisher wanted her to send out with advance copies of her new book, and also to critique the Tandoori Rice that she would be serving at her book launch (so, OK, we don't usually do the Tandoori Rice). She mailed both to me, in Maine, from Texas.

I went over the letter, made some suggestions, tasted the Tandoori Rice with the help of a friend, noted down my comments, packed the whole package up again and mailed it to Texas.

Then, I went to Boskone.

Only to discover that Kat had come to Boskone, too.

"Oh, no!" I said.  "I mailed the letter and the rice back to Texas!"

"Oh," she said, frowning.  "Did you wrap the rice in tin foil and put a freezer block in the package?  It should be OK, if you did."

"Well, I didn't," I confessed.  "I'll buy you some more, fresh.  You don't want to poison your guests."

And I left the con to go order Tandoori Rice so that I could mail it to Texas properly.

Now, somewhere between the con and the closest Indian restaurant, I lost my shirt.  It didn't seem to bother me, and I explained to the guy at the restaurant what I needed and why.  He listened intently, gave me a shirt, and took me back to the kitchen, where he tore off a piece of brown paper, asked me questions about how many guests, drew a bunch of squares on the paper, and filled in each with a kind of food.

"OK," he said.  "You need this much.  Seventy-five dollars."

"That's great," I said, "but you need to pack it so that I can mail it to Texas."

He sighed. "I'll mail to Texas.  You give me address."

Ends here Part One.

Part Two begins with the realization that Daav and Er Thom are also at Boskone, which is perhaps terrifying only to myself.  I met them in the lobby on my return, and the three of us left the con to walk out.  It seems that, since Daav was stuck in Boston, he was working on his Master Gardener's certifications.  We walked down to a long, narrow slope of land that ended at a stream.  The thing was covered in gravel, and Daav talked about the native plants he was going to reintroduce, and about holding the soil and purifying the stream.  And he talked a little about his other projects, including a recovered vineyard (in Boston, so I assumed in the dream, and out), which had just produced its first wines.

He then pulled a bottle of red wine and a glass out of ...his hat, I guess, poured and offered me a taste.

It was terrible, and I said so.

Whereupon, he threw away the red wine, leaving a coating of red on the inside of the glass; produced a bottle of white wine and poured it into the same glass.  And I thought, this is a test, right?

Nonetheless, I sipped, expecting it to be doubly awful.

"This is good!" I exclaimed.  "It tastes like oranges."

"Does it?"  He took the glass and had a sip.  Eyebrows went up.  "This is quite pleasant.  Here, brother," he says to Er Thom, offering the glass.  "Try."

Er Thom gives him a look that says, I cannot BELIEVE you're asking me to do this, but he takes the glass and has a sip, and his eyebrows go up.

"It is good," he said.

And here the dream ended, because the cats, who giveth the dreams and taketh them away -- specifically Mozart and Trooper -- were having a discussion about who got to sleep with me now, and woke me up in the process.

Trooper was sitting by my knee, apparently thinking he was going to settle down against my stomach, but he hesitated too long, and Mozart marched in front of him, plopped down on my shoulder, stuck his nose under my chin and commenced into purring.  Loudly.  Trooper sat there, then he began to purr, too, and curled up next to my knees.

The combined purring put me to sleep, but if I dreamed any more during the remainder of the night, I don't remember.

. . .and how did you sleep last night?

rolanni: (what it's like)

Today is catching-up-with-paperwork day.  I’ve got things to mail, forms to fill, more forms to fill, and emails to answer.  The first session has been completed, and I’m taking a coffee-and-blog break before I dive in again.

In the realm of Real Work, I’ve finished reading Dragon Ship and feel that I have a good grasp on the story.  Necessity’s Child (the book formerly known as George), to the extent that it exists, is loaded on Paladin the Nook, awaiting my reading pleasure.  And! I woke up this morning with a title for the story commissioned for the Baen website and the beginning of an idea of How It Might Go.

I also woke up this morning on the edge of a dream where I was a guest of President and Mrs. Obama in their summer house next door to the Bangor Public Library.  I wasn’t the only guest; there were quite a few, because the BPL, which had many years ago been given custody of Stephen King’s computer, which. . .stopped functioning in some way that precluded him from recovering the stories on the hard drive had! finally! broken those stories free!  and six new Stephen King novels were about to be unleashed onto an unsuspecting world.  Quite naturally, they were throwing a party, though not at the Obama’s house, which would be too small to hold the crowd, but across the river in Orono, at the Event Center.

Stephen arrived and we all got on buses, finding piles of party clothes in the foyer of the Event Center.  I found a shirt I quite liked, put it on and went in to party, but was stopped by a young man who offered me my choice of several different outfits.  “Well, but I kind of like this,” I said.  “Yes, ma’am,” he said softly, “but that’s Steve’s shirt.”

…and on that note –

Back to the paperwork!




Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

rolanni: (Dr. Teeth)
Last night, third in a continuing series of Weird Dreams.

First, I dreamed that I received a revision letter for Duainfey -- OK; not so weird. But the letter indicated that Chapter Nine seemed more like the outline for whole 'nother trilogy and would I please bring it more into line with the theme of the current book.

Um, sure...

We then segued into a Star Trek/Narbonic/Girl Genius pastiche, in which AgathaHelen invented a coffee brewer that plugs into the cigarette lighter in your car (yes, I'm aware that such things exist even as I type). A man who I can only assume was Dave Davenport picked up a hitchhiker who introduced himself as "Jim Kirk". Dave proceeds to start the car and brew coffee for the two of them, whereupon "Jim Kirk" decides that this device is Far Too Precious to remain in the hands of Mere Civilians, and connives to steal Dave's car in order to deliver the coffeemaker to Star Fleet Command. He is fortunate that Dave's car has hyperspatial capability, though he does have a minor collision on take-off with an airborne tractor-trailer, but he manages to mollify the driver by brewing him a fresh cup of coffee.

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1 234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags