Memory Lane: Dreams

After the last post on dreams, and all the kind and concerned responses, I decided to take a little inventory of the dreams I've had over the years. The ones that stuck with me. I have had vivid, wacky dreams since I was old enough to remember them; my personal favorite, from about 9 or 10 years of age, featured the Great Rapture, with Jesus as a blond, blue-eyed motorcycle policeman. He returned as I was playing slot machines in our basement next to the big waterbed in the laundry room (the waterbed and the washer and dryer really DID share a room in my childhood home). I passed up my chance to ride on the cycle with Jesus as we floated up into heaven, preferring to let that honor go to my little brother, who would enjoy it more...and remember waking up just as my feet were leaving the ground, watching neighbors and friends float through the trees over the corn fields.

Then there was one in which I was hiding with friends, from a giant extraterrestrial, in an alien supermarket. The shelves were enormous, as it was literally giant territory, and we hid behind some kind of jar or box. Maraschino cherries perhaps, or cornbread mix.

A recurring dream, which bordered on terrifying when it started at about age seven, occurred in a cavernous maze of passages and dark rooms. It is infused with something malevolent. I know there is no way out, but I still move forward. After being lost for some time, I eventually come upon a bland church-office-type room with a folding table (the banged-up kind used at potluck suppers) full of colored sweaters to be folded. They are the only items of color in the whole dream. This folding is of utmost importance but it frightens me and I seek out the bathroom. There, I find a toilet and a bathtub. Both of which are bottomless. The infinity of that dark water is what wakes me, fear of some deep and unknowable mystery at the bottom of the bathtub. I think I had this dream up until about 17 years of age...

(Maybe my mother was a bit too harsh on the whole folding-clothes-thing. I do remember BASKETS of underwear that she insisted we fold. Fold!)

When I moved to Brazil, my subconscious found new themes. Beaches. Heat. Men with guns that were a bit more detailed than the ones from my childhood. Cops. There were a series of translating dreams, from which I woke mentally exhausted from translating from Portuguese to English and back during the entire course of the dreams! After a few years of Rio de Janeiro, I had a series of recurring dreams about learning to drive stick. As driving generally terrifies me, and I have never managed to learn how to use pedals in general, much less with coordinated hand motions, these dreams gave me anxiety. And then frustration, as I woke and realized that I would actually have to learn to mess with the clutch and gear shifter should I ever work up the courage...things like that cannot be learned in dreams!

Creativity, however, can. How many times did I awake with the first few lines for a sure-to-be-Pulitzer novel in my head, awoke singing something so gorgeous that there were tears in my eyes, heard a joke so perfect I shook myself out of sleep with real laughter? Too many to count. Unfortunate, then, that these memories slipped away before they could be captured.

When I was younger, I devised a method for creating that perfect muse-ful moment of utter mental vulnerability right before sleep. I would sit in the regal orangey-red brass tacked chair, with my notebook before me and a pencil in my hand. Focusing on a particular writing challenge (a perfect ending for a poem, a story idea) I would close my eyes and let my brain wander to that near sleep place, hand dangled before me. Rocking into a dazed sleep, the movement of the pencil falling from my hand would wake me to write the resulting thoughts in a flurry of scribbles.

Even though the results weren't particularly earth-shattering, it was good practice. Today, I find myself writing my most honest things in the early morning. Empty my brain and my dreams into the computer or a nice black Moleskine. I put them aside and look a few days or weeks later. Sometimes, I don't even recognize my own words, as if they were in a stranger's voice, some other person's thoughts, experiences. With these new eyes, I see myself more fully, find hidden corners that my normal, critical self likes to ignore and leave to the cobwebs. Brushing them off reveals more than I intended. Perhaps that's the point of both writing and dreams. We can enter another world, play around, test the water, face fears. Sound out the very limits, court danger, soar. And in the process, though we may never discover how to shift into fourth gear, we awake to find the indelible mark of change upon these crusty eyes, new depths rising to meet us as we return to the world altered, yet unharmed.

Blog tag that stops with me...

7 Random Facts About Me:

I was tagged by Jen. A long time ago. Should you decide to tag yourself, feel free to take on this meme!

1. I am a procrastinator. And I find that it works really well for my creativy, to be pushed to the limit. Even when I'm right on track, I'll still stay up to three am the night before it is due, because that's when my mind finally decides on just the perfect sentence...

2. Black is NOT my favorite color. I just can't seem to find clothes I like that are not black.

3. If I could have my way, I would wear floor length formals all day long. They're really comfortable. Better than jeans. And I love to feel elegant!

4. When I was a child, I had an imaginary friend. She was a dryad named Maia and she lived in a linden tree in the 40 acre woods...

5. Betsy, Tacy and Tib inspired my writing "career." I loved the image of Betsy sitting in the tree, writing her dime novels. That was just about the time that I started borrowing blue legal pads from my dad's office and sitting in the red plum tree to write poems about prostitutes and cornfields. It hasn't changed much since then!

6. One of my life goals is to speak five languages fluently.

7. Artisan work gives me goosebumps. I was enthralled the other day by the description of how Globetrotter luggage is finished by a top-secret Japanese laquerer, nearly had my eyes drop out of my mouth when I came across the most perfect Chanel sandal in a magazine, the heel delicately Art-Deco, the colors shocking and sensuous. Browsing in a store the other day, there was a pale green purse with lilac piping that was the most lust-worthy material thing I've come across in a long, long time. And I have nothing green. And nowhere to carry such a purse. But I itched for it...the stitching was perfect. The colors and leather buttery smooth. The design unusual, eyecatching.

I wish I had talent, or patience, to make these things. But I only know how to cobble words together.

Sunday Scribblings: Passion

It's raining but that's not stopping anyone in Rio today. The banners on the street are soaking wet, huge sheets striped thickly red and black, hanging from windows and light posts. The corner bars are packed to capacity, all necks craned towards the 15 inch television in the corner. Gunshots and fireworks intermittently explode, together with men's outraged or joyous voices in a chorus that echoes throughout the city.

Today is Sunday. God's day...and futebol's. Soccer. And today is THE match of the year between the black and white Botafogo team, and the exuberantly popular red and black of Flamengo.

Passion in Rio de Janeiro is best described in terms of soccer, because I'm not sure that men here even love their beer as much as they love their soccer team. The only thing that gets a man more worked up to tears or fists? His mother.

I am without a television, but I don't need one to know how the game is going. I just stick my head out the window. The neighbor across the street hangs out the window at every Flamengo goal, waving his shirt like a flag and joining in the deafening roar. Every opposition goal? Sounds like Armageddon has come.

Me? I'm immune to the passion. The passion, that is, of Botafogo, Vasco, Fluminense, and all those other disillusioned teams. SOU FLAMENGUISTA! ALL THE WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

p.s.

I am not crazy.

I have never been abused...

Nor have my traumatic situations ever been as drastic as those in my dreams.

Just in case anyone is reading and worries...

Sunday Scribblings: Sleep (and/or Teeth)

One of the reasons I love going to the gym, though I hate actually getting out of bed to go there, is that the trainers give back massages. And ever since my trainer put his hands on the bucket of marbles that is known as my neck and shoulders, he’s given me a hard time about my stress and tension levels.

I’ve moved out of the slum; there are no more late night explosions near my windows or fears of getting shot on my way home. I’m still a little freaked out about being assaulted, but that’s pretty normal for this city and I’m prepared to hand over my valuables if necessary. I have good outlets for all my stress: I vent, rant and rave in both English and Portuguese…and joining the gym? That was specifically FOR my stress levels. Spinning class purges more than just excess calories. It’s a great way to forget bad relationships, upcoming deadlines, frustrating people and situations we all encounter on a regular basis. So why am I so tense? Why can I never relax? And why do I fall asleep at the drop of the hat during the day, be that on the bus or on the kitchen floor? Why is it so difficult to fall asleep when the sun goes down?

The answers have been surfacing for some weeks now.

I have an overactive imagination.

Now, anyone who knows me would be able to tell you this, though I don’t know that they could really gauge the full extent of my imaginative powers. Until the past few nights, neither could I. But then I started reading some of my morning pages...

Dream Fragment

…I am in a car. Someone extremely evil and extremely good-looking and very manipulative is sitting next to me and I know that this is our last chance. Whoever “we” are. It has been a long and exhausting journey to get to where I am at this point in the dream, and before I know it, I am pointing a handgun at his temple. All the common sense inside of me is telling me to pull the trigger…but I can’t. The next thing I know, he has the gun, and I am hostage to a cruel person who despises weaklings. There is torture involved, on a farm with dirt roads and horses. After I have been sufficiently beaten and had other not nice things done to me, this masochist makes me lie down in the middle of the road. He forces my mouth open. And his invisible partner brings over a horse with a taste for blood, whom they proceed to try to anger enough to get him to stomp in my mouth. The idea, repeated over and over and over again, is that they are going to break all my teeth. Specifically the back molars. With the horse’s hooves. This proves too much for my unconscious, which screams out for God to please DO SOMETHING! HAVE MERCY! And so I wake up…

There are no words for the relief that came when I ran my tongue around every precious, whole tooth that morning.

I have these dreams nearly every night. Most are a hodgepodge of chases and plot twists, treasonous actions and bizarre events. They are bi-lingual and frequently in color. Sometimes I am in so much pain in my dreams that when sleep finally breaks, I am confused as to why I feel so normal. Why my legs are still recognizable, why I’m not bleeding profusely from some mortal wound. I wish I could record these dreams, because this is fodder for Hollywood suspense and horror movies. But as anyone who has tried writing down their dreams knows, memory evanesces faster than cockroaches scatter at the sound of a light switch.

Writing them down doesn’t matter so much; what concerns me is that when one is running from enemies and fighting off rapists in the dreamworld, it becomes difficult for the body to rest. And so I wake exhausted and wondering why I’m falling asleep again in the daytime. So far, the only remedy that works against the dream demons has been Tylenol PM, and I can’t do that forever!

I wonder if this isn't some kind of Post-Post-Post-Traumatic-Shock. Maybe the effects of living in the favela were minimized as long as I was living on edge. But now that my life is calmer and I worry about more mundane things than whether that leaky black trash bag on the sidewalk contains human remains...well, maybe all those horrific events are coming back up, to be processed. Maybe. This is certainly cheaper than therapy. But I'm not sure it's doing such a good job...

At any rate, by the time I get to the gym, I'm ready to exorcise away the events of the past evening, ready for those knots to be painfully kneaded away...ready for another day which "com certeza" (certainly) will be less stressful and less dangerous than the imaginary world I have just left.

God willing, that is...

Walls and Barriers, part 2

Nehemiah, as it turns out, is quite modern.

You've got an oppressed people group trying to settle down in a place they can call their own. Their city is a trash heap and they've got some pretty powerful opponents who are prepared to implement a bag of tricks ranging from defamation to rumors of treason to terroristic activities--whatever it takes to get their way. The oppressed people aren't afraid to get their hands dirty: the jewelers, perfumers, even the daughters of some mid-level ruler are taking part in the reconstruction. And they're doing a good job. So good that they're attracting the wrong kind of attention, and they start getting death threats. The kind that people take seriously. But they keep working from sunup until the stars come out, with lots of prayers, armed guards at key points, and most of the laborers working with their swords strapped to their sides. That's dedication. And even though I'm only up to chapter five, I don't think I'm ruining the story for you if I tell you that in the end? They win.

And I think about this in light of the situation in that favela. I doubt telling this story to five and six year olds will cause any kind of insurrection, but it perks my imagination. What if the people who lived there ignored the death threats? If they took seriously their desire to have a better life and didn't let better armed and certainly better prepared punks take it away from them? Oh...that would be a good day.

As prayer seems to be the first weapon in these kinds of situations, it's the only one I'm going to be wielding for now. Because I'm kind of revolutionary at heart...and I want to see justice inhabit the streets of Manguinhos.

Walls and Barriers, part 1

Yesterday I received the Bible story schedule for the next few weeks. At the after-school program I'll be working at on Thursdays, I'm responsible for telling the story and singing songs with the younger group.

When I saw the schedule, I was less than impressed. Nehemiah? That's not one of those books people tend to pick for daily devotions, much less children's stories. So I sat down at lunch today with my Bible and a notepad, ready to tackle Nehemiah, bring him into the favela culture of Rio de Janeiro in the year 2008, and see how he'd fare in the transition.

Too well, as it turns out.

You see, several of the nearby favelas are going to be receiving government funded urbanization projects in the coming years. Just yesterday, as I was going to my meeting, I saw the beginning steps: they've put down some pipes and are attempting to create a road, I think, beside the river. The lightposts have big orange signs on them declaring "CONSTRUCTION, NEXT 50 METERS. THIS IS A GOVERNMENT PROJECT. PLEASE PARDON ANY INCONVENIENCE." Which is humorous, as the inconvenience would be primarily for the pedestrians and pigs. A large specimen of the latter was, in fact, not at all concerned with the "obras" and had burrowed himself a nice little mudhole in the newly grated and smoothed dirt road.

The urbanization is supposed to better conditions in the favelas, moving many people out of their shanty-homes and into apartment buildings (still to be constructed). It will offer real services to the people who are allowed to stay: there will be real roads and no more of these tiny alleyways that barely allow a motorcycle to pass, water, electricity, etc. And it will cut down on crime.

That's where the oppressors come in.

Because it couldn't be bad enough, having to move, not knowing when and not knowing to where. Apparently, the local mafia bullies with big guns have announced that anyone who accepts the government's offer is going to face serious punishment. Maybe expulsion, which would certainly include expulsion from whatever government housing project goes up, as the community would be moved in its entirety. Possibly death.

How nice.

The poorest in the favelas have miserable living conditions, few of the basic benefits of being citizens of one of the largest cities in the world, and constantly fear for their lives due to insane violence right outside their plywood doors. Now they're being told that with better possibilities around the corner, acceptance of what they long for will bring crushing consequences.

Evil, demonic oppression. I hate it. It makes me so mad I forget it's 100 degrees inside my house. I spent the whole way home on the bus coming up with outlandish scenarios on how to foment non-violent revolution among the members of our community without bringing attention to myself. My best idea? A new soap-opera. That seems to be the only way people's mentalities are changed around here.

So, with all that in the background, I open to Nehemiah.

Midday Prayer

Reading my afternoon prayers from "The Divine Hours," I came across this beautiful prayer, which I tried to translate into Portuguese as well (readers are welcome to comment on my attempt!):

God of justice, God of mercy, bless all those who are surprised with pain this day from suffering caused by their own weakness or that of others. Let what we suffer teach us to be merciful; let our sins teach us to forgive. This I ask through the intercession of Jesus and all who died forgiving those who oppressed them. Amen.

Deus de justiça, Deus de misericórdia, abençoe todos que hoje serão supreendidos com dor, seja a dor causada por suas próprias fraquezas ou pelas fraquezas dos outros. Que os nossos sofrimentos nos ensine a praticar misericórdia; que os nossos pecados nos ensine a perdoar. Eu peço tudo isso pela intercessão de Jesus e de todos que em morte, perdoava os que lhes oprimiram. Amém.

Fantastic Sunday Storm

As I left the house, I paused, wondering ever so briefly if I should bring an umbrella. But one glance at the blue skies chased away the cautious thought. I had a good half-hour ride on the bus to the church I wanted to go to this evening, and not five minutes into the ride, I looked out the window to a blackening sky. Menancingly dark. And I began to pray...

"God, it's not that I don't like rain. I just don't like it on me, when I'm wearing three inch heels and a white shirt and am without an umbrella. Can you make it not rain, or at least, only rain when I'm inside buildings and buses?"

As we flew by (the roads are somewhat deserted on Sundays), I kept seeing unattended umbrellas everywhere: the back of a car, tucked in a plastic purse. And I was very envious of those umbrellas. Which showed a clear lack of faith.

As it was, there was a slight drizzle as I stepped off the bus. The wind was strong and the lighting flashes and immense crashes of thunder were an indication of what was to come...but the storm held back just enough. Until I got to the right street. Had I not stopped to ask directions, I would have been inside before the skies opened. Instead, I had to run a bit, about 100 feet, which was nothing, considering the bus stop was a good four blocks from the church.

When the skies opened, they opened. I'd never been in such a glorious storm before. Not only was the thunder deafening, it rained so hard and with such force that it was raining inside the church, because the slanted windows and the big doors were open. The wind blew and blew--it was like horizontal rain in Upland all over again. It got so bad, we actually closed the church doors for a time, until the worst of the storm was over...

And just like I prayed, there was no rain when I walked to the bus stop after the service. Isn't God nice to his vain, forgetful creatures?

Sunday Scribblings: Fridge Space

Powdered milk, a bag of chocolate chips, filtered water, taco spice packets, a half-consumed bag of spiral whole-wheat pasta, a few tablespoons of soured UHT milk (I was waiting to make buttermilk biscuits or pancakes but didn't have any eggs!)...some failed attempts at rolls that I'll be toasting into croutons for onion soup...

There's plenty of space in my fridge. And this Lent, I'm going to try to leave it that way. I cook a lot, usually kind of goofy things and end up forgetting I'm cooking for just one person instead of six, which means half of the meal ends up becoming leftovers. Leftovers always get thrown away. (I don't have a microwave). So, for the next forty days, I'm trying to purchase as little as possible. To use the kilos of rice and various bags of beans that are sitting in my pantry. Make my own bread. Be conscious and creative with what is going into my body.

And along with the extra fridge space, I'm hoping to make some extra life space. To be conscious and creative about what is going into my mind. For contemplation, for getting a little writing done, for finding my voice again. The past three years, I've fought tooth and nail to graft Portuguese into my DNA. To have it inhabit my cells, spill out in my breathing, and become as natural and blinking. Now that it has taken root, I've discovered that my English has become neglected, taken hostage by words that no are no longer foreign. I think in a amalgamation of the two languages, find myself struggling to find the right English word just out of my grasp, and too often for comfort, have to ask myself which language a word is in...

As a result, my voice, my writing, the part of me that stays grounded enough to dream, has lain dormant in hibernation, losing edge and flexibility.

People say that we only use about 10% of our brain capacity. Surely, there is room, space enough, for two or three languages in mine. It's simply a question of making sure they're inhabiting the right shelves. Any ideas on how to do a little spring cleaning up there? Nudge the words into the right places and not have them fraternizing quite so much? Help would be appreciated.

And now, I am off to clean out even more space in my fridge, fight off the heat and the languor of a warm Sunday afternoon with an apple, acerola, ginger smoothie. Mmmmmmmm

Funk do Céu

This video might only make sense to those of you who have had the dubious pleasure of hearing the viral funk song "Creu." Even if you don't get the parody, the chance to hear real Brazilian funk is worth it...

This was one of the comic skits at the retreat. Instead of "creu", he sings "céu." Like the original song, each "velocity" is sung faster and faster, so that by the time you reach the Holy Spirit part, it totally sounds like someone speaking in tongues. I laughed so hard...you have no idea how IRONIC this was at a BAPTIST retreat. Loved it!

The translation goes like this:

To go to heaven you need to be consecrated,
To go to heaven you have to seek holiness
I came to tell you there are 5 steps of
And each step of faith has its own velocity…

The first step is conversion and learning
The second step is discipleship
The third step is evangelism
The fourth step is to give your tithe
The fifth step is the baptism in the Holy Spirit...

Heaven, heaven, heaven

More Photos

Carnaval Photos