Things to Ponder...

I am conscious of the fact that we are drawing ever-closer to our rehearsal period and therefore I think it would be a good idea if we utilised our blog to do some pre-rehearsal preparation.  What I would like you to do is have a look over your own dreams and see if you can seek out connections or similar themes that may or may not be running through them.  Post any findings on the blog and we can discuss them when we meet up in Feb.

All sorts

I dreamt I was pregnant again and I was hanging out with a group of people outdoors, possibly some sort of commune.  I could fly but not very far off the ground.  I remember being obsessed with finding out whether my baby was a boy or girl and I kept asking people their opinion by showing them my belly and seeing what they thought.  Then my dream changed so no longer pregnant but now living in a flat with some others, we were getting new windows which was causing great excitement because they were designed by a famous artist.  I also remember being in a classroom at one point and learning about this artist and how amazing he was.  I also remember dreaming of sky skrapers and apartment buildings at one point during this dream.  I'm also noticing that now I have been recording my dreams for a while i'm starting to remember them in their non-linear format and my brain has stopped trying to piece them together into one story.  I can also remember specifics more rather than just a brief outline.I'm thinking that maybe you have to train your brain in order to remember your dreams properly, what do you guys think?

Cockroaches

Last night Kate Schrader slept in my room on a mattress on the floor and I dreamt that this was exactly the case except the room we were sleeping in wasn't actually my room, except it was (you know how it goes) and when we woke up she lifted up her mattress and there were hundreds of cockroaches under it, some as big as my hand. Then I realized I was covered in them and lifted up my sheets and they were ALL over me. We brushed them off and went out to the kitchen and I yelled at my mum to clean them up (odd since we were in Australia), I never saw my mum in the dream and never went back into the bedroom but I know she cleaned them up.
We saw Louise in the kitchen and she told us she had come in while we were asleep and slept there too, waking up before we did she noticed the cockroaches and left. She did not wake us to tell us about the bugs, for this I was very angry at her.

Wars and manicures

Last night i was a member of some sort of guerilla army that was attacking the enemy in some kind of desserted mansion.  We fought them for ages and the more we injured them the more they stopped looking like humans and started looking like robotic machines (kind of like the terminators when you blast their skin off.)  Eventually there were only three of us left and we were trying to call for a helicoptor to come and pick us up, unfortunately the robot/humans could pick up cellular waves and were coming after us but the helicoptor swooped down in the nick of time and carried us to safety.  This dream morphed into another one where i was working in some kind of ultra girly mall type thing that had clothes shops and hairdressers and also a manicure place.  My job was to push peoples cuticles back using this purple goopy stuff and an ice block stick.  The funny thing was that while i was doing people's nails i was thinking about the war kind of like it happened in my dream self's past life.

Last night I dreamt i was put in charge of looking after these three dolphins, they belonged to my Standard 4 Primary School teacher Mrs Kilpatrick. She came back to check on the dolphins because she was really worried they wouldn't like me, or the disruption to their care, but this was not the case. The dolphins and I got on really well and they loved having me as their carer.

Bunny

I've just woken up.  My alarm was set for 7:30am but i turned it off and ended up drifting back to sleep for about 10 minutes.  Had this weird dream that i was cleaning out our rabbit when i decided to pick it up and hold it like a baby.  When i looked down there was a cute little baby in my arms instead of a rabbit.  It was wearing a pink and red jumpsuit and i was on my way over to put it in a high chair.  

p.s. I have a couple of dreams from when i was on holiday that i will post as soon as i get a chance.

Jen 14/01/09

Ok, so, I have been umm-ing and ah-ing about whether to Blog this one, but I decided to do so because it is a great example of how convincing dreams can be and how powerfully they can alter your feelings and comprehension of the 'real' world.
This dream requires a small amount of background story about my life... Well my best friend, Anna, drowned when I was 17, after just returning to the country from a year in Brazil, it is almost the 3 year anniversary of her death.
Dream: I dreamt I was walking somewhere, with Ben Blakely (who doesn't fit at all in the time of this dream because I didn't know him when any of the people or places in the dream were in my life, yet, i digress...) I was walking away from the house I grew up in (which my mum sold recently), walking down the street and around the corner. I saw, on the other side of the road, walking up the hill dragging a big suitcase, a girl who looked a lot like Anna, but knew it couldn't be her because it was soon to be the 1 year anniversary of her death.
The girl looked at me and started running across the street to me, when she got to me it turned out it was in fact Anna! She had a very elaborate story about how she met someone at Auckland airport on her return flight from Brazil, and this person encouraged her to become an undercover, highly secret cop in Guatamala for a year to try and uncover a massive illegal crime ring (or whatever you call them).
She said the NZ Government foiled her death because it was that important to the national safety of the country. To prove her story she showed me her secret ID in which was her sitting on a Vespa totally dressed in pink, this was, by far, enough proof for me, because I was so happy to have my Anna back.
The whole time this was happening Ben was standing beside me watching.
In the dream I was filled the most amazing happiness and a feeling that I was floating, I felt so lucky and just so unbelievably stoked to have Anna back.
Then I woke up: Now here's the most interesting part, I have had maybe 3 dreams like this since she died and on waking I am always completely heartbroken that I only dreamt she was back with me and I know instantly that it isn't true and I am filled with the constant feeling of missing her that is always present.
However in this case, I knew in my brain that I had only dreamt these events, but in my heart I was still convinced that she was back, waiting for me in NZ. I knew that at some point in the day my heart would catch up with my brain and the longer that took to happen the harder it would be. But blissfully, completely unaware my heart continued to fill me with happiness and peace all day long, until approximately 9pm that night the happiness faded away, and once again I realised she was definately not here, she wasn't waiting for me and I truely would never see her again.
Now I'm sure you can see why I pondered so long over whether to blog this or not, and I Hope I made the right decision.

Kitty: Friday 9nd of January.

No dreams last night: I was up till four in the morning because I had made the most unfortunate mistake of downing a large cup of coffee around 10.30pm and when I did finally drift off the exhaustion was enough to block out any night-time thoughts.

The night before the night before last though: I am in this sweet house - almost treehouse-esque. Lots of tucked away staircases and shelves snaking up walls. And somebody's getting married. And it's Aaron Hawkins. I think. Or possibly Louis. And his groom-to-be is a lovely young man who I can't place. We're carrying things around trying to set-up for the reception. Pretty much all I can remember.

The night after that: I'm at art school, first year by the look of things. The class has been assigned to create pieces which follow specific lines; you choose an animal and then a number which to you is affiliated with it. Repeat this with, I think, a body part and then another object which I can't now figure out. I've been ill or on holiday or something and I haven't completed mine, which is fine the lecturer has told me, but everyone else has already hung theirs in an exhibition. One girl has clearly paid a lot of money to have her pictures printed onto heavy duty cardboard which has cerated folds and all sorts of tricksy things and I get super mad because I think it's a cop out and that you shouldn't be allowed to spend that much because it gives you an unfair advantage. For some reason I have a sleeping bag and I curl up on the floor in the gallery space in a sort of protest sit-in. The dream sums itself up with the girl maybe having got her father to get her art printed for free because he works at a printery and me coming up with an idea for my piece which is actually going to cost a bit. Hypocrite. The idea is to tell a story with little objects along the lines of those activity book riddles, e.g.: a car then a picture of a dog then a fire = carpet burn. These will be displayed on a glass topped wooden box with lighting in it so that everything is illuminated.

two dreams

first dream:

was at my dad and my stepmum's. they'd bought me an old four square dairy which was damn cool, but they were also wanting to sell their house and needed me to do stuff to it, like rearrange the furniture and replace the tiles in the bathroom which had become super sodden and felt like sponges. I however, have no idea of how to tile, and was also on my way to go and do other things, and i got mad at them, because I knew I'd asked previously if they wanted my help with the house and they'd said no so I had committed to other things, and now there was no way I could put them at my number one priority and I felt furious that they'd try and make me help out and in doing so, let down other people I'd agreed to help.

I yelled at dad and realised my little sister was in the room and looked frightened of me so I told her it was all right, I was just angry at dad, turned to him and finished my rant then went to find a bathroom to cool myself down in. Came out of the bathroom, and saw sacha standing in the doorway (was also her room) she saw me and looked terrified and screamed and ran away - I felt really guilty and ashamed for yelling at dad in front of her and making her scared of me.

dream two:

i'd been in korea with the intention of teaching english, somehow i'd lost my passport, but still had a drivers license and a passport photo in my wallet which seemed to be doing me all right. Came back to New Zealand, I think it was meant to be for christmas or some crap. Found myself walking up george street holding a mannequin with my clothes on it. Thought, this is bollocks, stopped in a second hand store to take my shite off the dummy and then give the dummy to the store. Turned out Vicki worked there and she insisted I come to Leilana's mum's house for Lei's birthday party.

Lei's mum's house is out where cherry farm used to be, and it is massive. In the dream, it was really opulent for the most part - paintings on all the walls and stupidly thick carpet. Lei showed me her room which was like a huge old hotel suite with a courtyard garden growing in the room.

We went into another room where a whole lot of guests were. they had cigarettes in cigarette holders only half of them were smoking joints instead of tobacco. we were in a circle and the smoke was passed around. i kept taking drags, one time I smoked the whole lot in one inhale and felt embarrassed for being greedy, but it hadn't felt like much. A couple of times I'd be talking and not realise I had one in my hands. Once, I had my eyes closed and opened them, seeing that I had a joint and puffed quickly before passing on. I was struggling to stay awake, feeling jet lagged and seedy. The house had gotten dark and I struggled to see things from this point onwards.

I went into the bathroom to freshen up, splash some water on my face. I tried to turn on the lights but they were all out. It was a bathroom with a number of stalls in it, and I managed to turn on a light in one of those. The bathroom was disgusting when it was illuminated - broken toilets seats, flooded stalls, toilet paper everywhere and mildew up the walls. I'd put my bag down and I could now see that it was directly under a broken pipe and had filled my bag with water.

I left the bathroom and went to empty my bag out in leilana's courtyard bedroom.

jump in memory... there were a whole lot of other rooms at the back of the house that were being used to store stuff. It was like being in a department store, only nothing had price tags on it, there was no staff, and no security. People started to steal stuff. I saw one girl snatch a bag and confronted her about it, she sneered and tried to get past me, I smacked her in the face with my sodden bag and then dragged her by her hair towards the party. I was really mad because Lei and her family are awesome, and stealing from a person is never right, especially when they've let you into their house in a spirit of trust and friendship. Being envious of possessions doesn't give you the right to take them.

The stealing intensified and I found myself chasing mobs and gangs of theives instead of individuals. mostly they were masked. I caught up to one group as they were taking their masks off and saw maria and raff and got really upset and explained to them why what they were doing was so shit. they agreed and put back all the stuff they'd nicked, looking very contrite, and helped me round up the other thieves.

Kitty: Friday 2nd of January.

Ok, I've been out of internet connection and not actually dreaming that much so I don't have a lot to report (although there are some scraps of paper with scrawled dream notes floating around my different New Zealand bedrooms so I'll have to do some retrospective posting when I get home).
Last night I won so much money on scratchies. I'm pretty sure that my mother had given them to each of us for Christmas. Big A4 sheets with six different games on them. I won TWICE! It was so exciting. Well, actually I was more like: "oh, oh ok, aw yeah, that's cool, oh yeah that's really cool, um, yeah, no ok. So what happens here? Oh. Good." I was scratching away in this beautiful little bookshop which my brother co-owned (somewhere on George street between the Octagon and Moray place). This is actually about all I can remember but I had this funny hungover-esque feeling - probably an extension of my whole new year's day.

A few details from a dream a couple of night's ago: we were breaking into a house, something about revenge a little. We cut the house in half with a very sharp knife and entered through the clean-cut slit. Our clothes had also been slit down the front and a person on the street yelled at us for being whorish.