Sloth, Maybe?

  I found myself at a reunion at my high school.   I had brought my art portfolio which I assembled over the four years I worked there.   I open the portfolio and examine my work dating back to my teenage years.   I hated it, not only because it was the work of a child, but that I had not practiced since my graduation.   As a result, my talent not just stalled, but regressed.   A fellow alumna approached me.   She said she was now part of the Shen Yun dancing troupe.   We got into conversation and I told her I had become a filmmaker - a half truth, since I was also out of practice with that discipline.   Excited, she asked me if I could film her leaping over a hedge. I managed to corral   some fellow alumni and we built a slide ramp on which she can dance.   We orchestrated how she would slide down the ramp and leap into the air.   We fixed a camera on a pendulum to film her slide down the ramp and leap through the air. We disc...

I dreamt that I was at a mid-sized theater in early August at an amusement park named Rye Playland.   The theater seats were soon filled with a sizable crowd.   Some of the audience members were shaking my hand and patting me on the back.   Then it occurred to me the production was a musical I wrote:   The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi. The curtain draws back.  It reveals King Dumuzi of the kingdom of Uruk seated at a canted desk with a wet clay tablet.   Queen Inanna stands next to him and teases him.   Dumuzi notices his clay tablet is drying.   Inanna and Dumuzi fuss with the tablet to keep it wet.   The pour water on the clay and their regal attire gets soaked.   Soon they begin to flirt in increasingly graphic ways.   I shrank in my seat, hoping that my mother is not present. Finally, Inanna and Dumuzi confess their love for one another.   Dumuzi follows the trope of picking up the very tall Inanna and carrying off to a f...

What began as a dream about the Incredible Hulk became a dream about a young goddess named Vána (a Tolkien Valier).   In this dream she is a goddess of plentiful food and confectionery. The dream begins with David Banner in the process of transforming into the Hulk.   At the same time, I am “editing” the story.   I decide Banner is changing too soon in the story.   He should be rescuing a damsel in distress while trying to avoid a gang of thugs.   Banner finds the damsel trapped in a bedroom on the top floor of a suburban house.   He frees her, but as they go down the steps, the thugs jump them.   They restrain Banner while they run off with the damsel, this triggers Banner’s transformation into the Hulk.   He thrashes the thugs restraining him and he chases down the fleeing car holding the damsel.   Banner pulls the damsel free from the car and carries her off. That evening, they are in bed together.   They did not have sex.   Bann...

  I’m on location for a film shoot.   It’s for an action adventure film starring Nicholas Cage.   He plays a solider that served during the American Revolution.   He abandons his post at a fort along the Hudson River.   He fights his way past his brothers in arms who are as large and brawny as Vikings.   He grabs a double barrel shotgun (an anachronism) with four shells and jumps into the river.   The director calls “Cut!   Where is the songwriter?”   I discover that I’m under a blue tarp underwater.   The tarp creates a pocket of air where I can breathe.   One of the Viking stuntmen grabs me by the scruff of my neck with one hand and carries me over to the director.   The director says, “I need you to write a song for the soundtrack.   Follow me, I’ll bring you to your co-writer.”   I follow the director and he introduces me to a heavy set young man with a face that makes him look like a simpleton.   I shake han...

I had a disturbing nightmare where I was back in my old neighborhood of Co-op City.   It was a dark gray overcast day.   I entered what is called a “Tower Building”:   One of three models of building in the development. I got aboard an elevator, and headed for the 34th floor (There is no 34th floor in a tower building in real life).   The elevator stopped at the 37th floor.   Any dweller in an apartment house knows the reflex of stepping out of an elevator, even if it’s the wrong floor.   That is precisely what I did. I ran into a large man with piercing dark eyes.   His muscular arm and hand grabbed me by the wrist.   He asked if I can help him with something. Some instinct told me that he had malicious intent.   I excused myself and stepped back on the elevator before it closed.   The large, dark eyed man followed me onto the elevator.   Then he started to ask personal questions.   Even in the dream, I found myself bodily cri...

I never had any personal experience with hard drugs, but nonetheless they have influenced my life. I remember a day when my mother left my estranged father and I on a line to see a movie.   When she left to park the car, Pop abruptly took me off the line with him and we wandered around the neighborhood going randomly from store to store.   As we walked along the street, I would hear him stifling a chuckle (or a sob?).   When my mother caught up with us, horrified at the thought that my father may have kidnapped me, she never left me alone with him again. When I told mom about my father’s inexplicable chuckling, my Mom said bluntly, “I think your father has a drug problem.” I had already been in classes at intermediate school where the cops told all the horror stories about drug abuse.   Through that lens, I saw my father as some kind of ghost, if not an outright monster.   I didn’t just feel he was no longer a part of the family.   I felt he was no longer o...