TBTT#17 Peace ~ October 22, 2012

I've been thinking a lot of a dream I had a few weeks ago that filled me with a sense of peace. My father was alive, and so was Popo. I was out at the farm, and Popo and I were going out to check the cattle, like he always did. So we got in a little aluminum row boat, and started paddling up the creek. Against the rippling slate-gray water under a pewter sky, with the autumn grass waving tawny golden in the breeze, we paddled around bends and turns.

We passed a farm perched on a small mesa of rich red earth on one bend, then traveled along the road a while. We met an Italian foreign exchange student leaning on an old wooden fence weathered to smooth ash and silver. His old black Model T had broken down, so we gave him a ride as far as the mill pond where we turned around to head back. The black cows were all munching sedately up and down the banks. There was no sound but the sound of running water.

Popo let me off at the thirty story glass-walled sky scraper that stood alone in the last field before his land. It was a community college building with a cosmetology and massage school, so I was going to the spa on the first floor for a manicure/pedicure. Then I walked back through the wind-swept fields, the pinkish gravel of the road crunching beneath my feet, and the rustle of wind through the dark live-oak leaves filling my ears.

For all the bizarre non-sequitur and nonexistent landmarks that my sleeping mind populated that familiar space with, it was an incredibly peaceful, comforting dream. I felt at home, and I felt so loved.

Writing Science Fiction in My Sleep ~ 3/4/2016

I dreamed I was writing a science fiction story about a girl who was doing her grocery shopping. She picked up this truffle sort of thing that looked like a Brazil nut and smelled it. It smelled musty and sharp, and she didn't like it. As she put it back down, with the scent still in her nostrils, she began to hear and feel a strange buzzing in her head. No one else seemed to notice anything.

As she continued her shopping, it got worse, and the scene around her began to flicker. She could see a sort of flexible grid shining in darkness, and had the feeling she could follow it to alternate dimensions. This really scared her, but just as she was about to panic, she found a small, pine cone shaped spice that smelled like mint and cinnamon. The aroma cleared her head of all but the briefest glimpses of the grid, and made the buzzing stop.

She bought the spice, in case the visions and buzzing came back. She began to work out a formula using the spice and whiskey for a soothing drink that would clear away completely the effects of the strange truffle. The perfect equation turned out to be y = 3x + 17. She made her drink, and sat down in her armchair to enjoy it. But, plot twist! The drink actually transported her to the grid, leaving her to seek the world where the truffle and spice came from to find out how to get back. Of course she found it in peril and had to save it before she could gain the knowledge she needed to get back home.

I was getting ready to publish my work, and the director of the Rice MOB suggested that I adapt my story as a MOB show, and the band would perform it to garner me some publicity. I agreed to try, and started working on it. The biggest difficulty was that MOB shows are humorous, and my book, though it had its lighter moments, really wasn't. Also, the director wanted to use the formula as a clever Louie Louie count off, instead of the usual, "Five, six, seven, eight!"

But I just couldn't make that work, and we were really struggling with the whole concept when I woke up.