Movies, Art, Fashion, and a Machine Gun

Last night's dream started as a movie...
I was John Cusack and I was with a young Dan Aykroyd in a two-seater plane. We were laughing and talking about girls and sex.
The view changed and I was out of the movie and sitting in the theater with my husband. We got up to leave and I mentioned to him that I had forgotten to go see Laurelin's show. (A friend of mine just had her first solo art show up at a gallery, and I did forget to go "opening" night.) So I walked over with him to a gymnasium where the show was. (It was the gym from my HS.) Her art was everywhere. It was like a life time of art; hundreds of pieces. I started on the wall to my right where there was a nautical theme going on. Perfect paintings of boats and wharfs (not her "norm"). I was commenting on one when her fiance David told me there was another wing that held her crafts. (She is a knitter and crafter as well... when the mood strikes.) So I walked over to that wing and looked behind glass at dolls and jewelry and buttons and other crafty things she had made (again, not her "norm".)
Then the scene changed and I was going to visit my friend Ramin in New York. I got to his apartment and started working on patterns on his floor. I was waiting for him to get home, but in the mean time I had taken at least 8 articles of clothing and was tracing them on to dotted pattern paper. They were all ugly clothes, very matronly. The idea was that I was going to try to get a job back at the St. John's design house(where Ramin and I worked after we graduated college). He came home and asked what I was doing. He looked over the clothes and my work and told me I was doing it all wrong. He said the clothes were hideous, and that my pattern tracing skills were terrible. "Don't you remember anything from school?" he asked. He then stormed off. The scene changed again and I was in the bed of a truck with all of the pattern making equipment and my luggage. Ramin was walking away from me down the NY street. I jumped out of the truck and went to him begging him to help me. We stood by a car and talked for a brief minute and then I saw a man jump in the truck bed and start to load up my stuff. I ran back to stop him, but he had a machine gun and pointed it at my face. I still yelled at him, saying, "That's my stuff, how dare you take it!" Ramin yelled my name, "Are you crazy?" he asked. Then I grabbed the machine gun that was at my face and turned it to face the man. Ramin again said, "Are you crazy? If you shoot him you'll be the one in trouble." But I shot at his arm anyway. Nothing... just air. So I aimed the gun at the yard beside me and shot again... just air. Then I reprimanded the man in the truck, "You were going to steal my stuff with an unloaded weapon?" I was still yelling at him when the dog woke me up.

This dream has loads of guilt in it.
Things that are bothering me that I keep replaying in my head.
That I still watch ill-humored movies, that I forgot Laurelin's show, that I screwed up the pattern for my daughter's Halloween costume cause I don't remember how to make sleeves. (I haven't done them since college.) It even has a bit from the book I'm reading called "Son of Hamas" where the machine guns he bought didn't work. The chapters in the book since that moment have filled me with guilt because I relate to the Israeli side, and they have kept the writer of the book in a prison torturing him for the past few chapters. (A true story... good book.)
The truck bed I'm sure has to do with me driving my husband's truck the other day to pick up my son's bike. (I don't drive it often... it's too big.)
Ramin is always put in my dreams when there is advice about my fashion career, because he is a person I will listen to. I think he stayed in the dream for the machine gun part because he is originally from Iran... which fits the setting of my book, at least in that neck of the world.
I think that the part about Laurelin's art not being "her's", was about myself as well. I used her in the dream because she is one artist I know that has a very common theme through her work so it's easy to see when it's not coming from 'her'. Most likely this was a reminder to me to be true to myself... which was also emphasized by the horrible clothes I was tracing... They were SO not me. :)

Kid's Driving

My daughter is finally home, which means someone else is able to have the puppy sleep with them. :-) And that leads to me remembering more dreams!

Last night I had three that I remember.
One was of my friend Barbara's daughter Brooklyn, driving.
Brooklyn is only 11. Barbara and I were sitting in the back seat and her two daughters were in the front. We drove out of a gravel parking lot and on to a busy one lane road going the wrong way. We drove on the shoulder past a steady stream of cars and trucks. The whole time I was panicking and telling Barbara to hop over the seat and take over.
We finally arrived at an apartment building and went inside to their house. (They don't really live in an apartment, but they did here.) We stayed inside and got ready for a day of school. My son was with me and we were ready to go. We looked at the clock and it was past time to leave. Then Barbara reminded me that her daughters were home schooled now (which they are), so they really didn't care if school had started; it didn't matter to them. I was a bit upset, because it did matter to me, and we were going to be late to the first day of school. She suggested that we not go and just show up the next day. I woke up after that.

The second dream involved my son being a toddler again, and peeing in a sink while I held his body up so he could reach. It was an odd dream, but sure enough, I woke up having to pee.

The third dream was at work. I was back at St. John's and was assigned the task of going through a room full of samples. I went through piles and piles of clothes and accessories. The piles were mostly clothes from my Disney job not from St. John's. (Mostly little girl's princess dresses.) I put a huge stack aside for myself, saying that "my nieces will love these." Then a co-worker came by and asked how it was going. I told her she could go through the piles I didn't want. Then she questioned my free-for-all by reminding me that last year we saved everything til the end and had a sample sale with it all. "Oh yeah", I thought. So then I put everything back into categories and went over to a large metal shelf and started sorting through briefcases and other men's accessories.
That was the end of that dream.

Any meanings? Well... Kids ran the show in all three dreams, either directly or in-directly. But is there a lesson... I'm not so sure.
I do need to call Barb; she hasn't called since her daughters have been home from their dad's house.

Illustration Assignment

In last night's dream I was back at my old job, assistant designer at St. John Knits. In the dream I had an illustrating assignment.
I had my rough sketches with me as I got in the car with my mom and my sister.
We went to a post office for my mom to mail something.
We were in a small hatch-back sports car.
We got out and noticed that the store would be closing soon.
I stood for a moment with the drawings on the top of the car while my mom and sister went in, then I joined them. Inside, a lady with green on tried to cut in front of us. (All of us were wondering who would be the last costumer seen, since they were closing.) I informed her that we were also in line. (Very out of character for me.)
As we were at the front of the line my old friend Tim came from the back room (as if his family owned the place). We hugged and exchanged "How nice it is to see you"s. Then he suggested we go outside to be able to talk better.
As we walked out he turned into my friend Ramin (they have a vaguely similar look and similar character). Ramin looked at my drawings, (he worked at St. John's back in the day too) and critiqued them. He told me to make them curvier. "Things have changed. Make 'em look more like we did in school."
I woke up as I was imagining a hippier illustrated body.

In real life, last night I worked on a fashion illustration of my friend Rebecca. It's the second friend I've done this past week, and I'm planning on doing a few more friends before the year is out. They are indeed curvier than the illustrations I drew in school or at work. But perhaps I need to adopt a curvier style into all of my fashion illustrations and get back into that a bit more in general. I love doing it. I always forget how much until I actually do one. (It's been around a year since I've done an illustration.)

PS... Found out today was Tim's birthday!

Beauty Shop

(This is getting published much later today because I got called away from the computer this morning.)

I find it interesting that as I opened my home page a second ago, I noticed my friend's blog has a Beauty Shop theme this morning too. She is a folk painter and has started a series (I just discovered) on "Beauty Shop Girls". (You can check it out at folkartbycampbelljane.blogspot.com )

Well, my main dream last night started in a St. John beauty shop. "No such thing," you say? True, there's not, but it all makes sense when you know my background.  I used to work at the St. John design house before I got married almost 11 years ago. So, often, when I dream of 'work' I dream of St. John. I am currently working on some designs of my own, and one of my main dilemmas is finding models. 

So... In my dream I went to this "Beauty Shop" with my one model-esk friend. I sat in the waiting room, waiting for her to get dolled up for the show. Then my old boss from St. John pulled me in the salon room and asked if she could do my hair. The hair-do was far from a St. John type style. She inserted numerous bright colored extensions (from hot pink to red to purple), and swept up each real strand of hair into an up-do. By the time she was finished my whole head was purple, and run-way worthy. She was so pleased with it she decided I could model in the show. She walked off to do something and her assistant came over to me and asked who my favorite jewelry designer was. She explained that I could pick whom ever I wanted, and that I would wear their stuff in the show. She side noted it with, "You'll get to keep it all, so choose wisely, but it can't be loud, it has to go with the clothes." (Now that's interesting seeing that I'm sitting there with 'loud' purple hair, and given that St. John makes their own jewelry.) But I chose Roberto Cavalli. Maria (my boss) went off to order jewelry and Marie Grey (the big boss) came over and told me to sit down in a dental looking chair to get my makeup done. I asked if I could use the restroom first, and I walked out. Passing the waiting room, my friend Cheryl, walked up to me and asked if I could get her some clear nail polish. I told her I was going to pee, and she could get it herself, as I pointed out a small and large bottle of clear sparkly nail polish. I left the building in search of a restroom, out onto a cobblestone street. An outdoor restaurant was my first encounter.  The matradee pointed me past the restaurant to an alley in the square. I must have peed and come back out (don't remember that part) but as I came out I was met by my husband and four other friends. We were all walking down the cobblestone street in the direction of an amusement park. The roller-coasters towered in front of us, and my husband and I discussed which ones we would ride. Just then a man zoomed over our heads riding a scooter on top of a zip-line. I pointed out the zip-line to my husband and asked if he wanted to try it. Another rider zipped by. We continued to walk and I had an internal conversation with myself about the mechanics of the ride. I was terrified, but thrilled at the same time at the idea of riding this dangerous thing.

Well, shall we give an interpretation a go?

OK. We'll start with assuming this has something to do with work. It could be about the past, or it could be about my present solo endeavor. The emotion in the dream was all positive, so that's good. There was a message about being 'good enough', in the part where I was asked to be in the show. There was also a promise to keep jewelry worth lots of money. 

References to bathroom behavior usually has to do with getting rid of waste. (When it's poop, it's obviously yuckier crap you're working through), but in this case it was just pee and that part of the dream didn't even really happen (that I remember). (One exception to this 'bathroom' rule is that sometimes when you dream of peeing, it's your body telling you to "Wake up... You have to pee." But if you actually get through the pee or poo in your dream, then there's symbolism to it.) 

We notice that when I was done getting rid of the waste, I came out to a new story. I didn't go back to the salon, I went to an amusement park and was going to ride on a terrifying but thrilling ride with my husband.

You may have also noticed that this is the second dream with cobblestone streets this week. What's that about? From my life, it reminds me of Italy (where I lived for three years during adolescence). In a general way, it just speaks of an old world vibe to me. It's nothing new.  (Maybe speaking of the story as old, or of the circumstances as nothing new).

Now, if we take this as a "past" story, we could correctly recall that I left my job at St. John to marry my husband that lived up here in Sacramento. That could tell the whole story right there.

But why would I dream about that? 

It's more likely that I would dream about the present or near future. (That's what we normally do, unless we have baggage from our past that is still be sifted through.) I could make the same conclusion though, that I have set aside my 'work' (I haven't touched my dress form since November), to embark on a terrifying but thrilling ride with my husband. That rings true because we are about to start counseling over our differences in parenting. (You can only go so long on two separate pages, before the negative effects show up in your kids.) 

I'd like to assume that I'm still invited to "be in the show" and that I'll still get to keep the valuable "jewelry", but who knows, that could all be "pee".  

I'll be praying for some clarity on this one. Perhaps I'll dream again about something that will clear it up for me. Or, as is often the case, the fuzzy parts will be cleared up in day to day life, or in my quiet time.

Happy dreaming everyone.