tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70904892011-12-07T16:50:58.012-08:00The Song In My Head When I Woke Up This MorningMost mornings I wake up with a song in my heart and a crazy vision in my head. I've been writing down my most vivid dreams since I was 10. Now, technology lets me give you a peek into my sleeping brain.Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.comBlogger361100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1042559046459747002011-08-04T19:56:00.000-07:002011-08-04T19:56:19.794-07:00Writing ExercisesI attend a weekly writing group. I thought it was a great coincidence one week when I arrived for class and the prompt on the blackboard was, "What did you dream last night?" I wrote most of "Go North For Freedom" that day.
There were other prompts too: first was to write a dream dictionary for five words yelled out randomly by class members. Here's what I came up with:
Dirty Dishes - if you Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-10214561947379184102011-05-06T14:01:00.007-07:002011-08-04T19:12:41.875-07:00Getting it on with Till Lindemann
Forgive my obscure and exotic taste in celebrity crushes. For the uninitiated, this is Till Lindemann:
...and this is what he does for a living.
My dream began with me traveling to Europe on holiday and meeting a random guy in a bar who turned out to be German rock star Till Lindemann. Oh lucky me! So I dragged him off into a corner and had my way with him.
Some time later, my back suddenlyLeona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-45483900064066073622011-03-10T13:11:00.000-08:002011-03-10T13:11:51.125-08:00Go North for Freedom, part 2
I fall in love with a man. He's not glamourous or perfect in any way, just a nerdy looking guy with a blue collar job. We decide to move up to the Yukon and set up housekeeping, so we load into an old Cutlass Supreme and point it north. it's already winter when we leave and there's snow on the road.
For a Canadian road trip it's a romantic experience; the truck stops are charmingly gritty andLeona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-75084377138033594892011-03-03T23:08:00.001-08:002011-03-03T23:57:31.500-08:00Go North for Freedom
Unlike in real life, I had a whole lot of fun in my dream last night. I dreamed I was the type of girl who goes to parties every night. Some friends and I were getting drunk and dancing on tables in a run-down old house, well on our way to trashing the place. Once it was trashed, we moved on to another house, the one I lived in when I was 10. We started up the party again, an ounce of pot was Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-58121026915265293352011-01-11T10:30:00.006-08:002011-05-07T12:43:32.504-07:00I dreamed an episode of Doctor Who.Walking with a neighbour, I come to a park bench and there's a man sitting there. He's Asian, with dull bushy hair and dressed in jeans and a hoodie. My friend speaks to him gently for a while. Someone passes by and says, "Why are you so nice to that guy?" My friend says "He's going to die soon." She puts her hand on his leg and shows that he is skin and bones, his leg the thickness of a bone Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-62620767399610245352010-08-25T13:59:00.002-07:002010-08-25T14:05:15.776-07:00
I took a brief break from reading scifi novels this summer and got into horror movies instead. Guess what I dreamed about (once I finally got to sleep, that is)? I dreamed longingly of a long and dangerous journey through conflict and adversity to visit my friends the aliens and space travelers. So I guess it's time I resumed my trek through CJ Cherryh's Foreigner novels that I started Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-4858713388147325182010-08-01T14:25:00.004-07:002011-03-04T00:12:17.452-08:00
I have not actually been sleeping these past few days. It's a pattern: when the hottest nights of the year arrive, sleep goes away, and I walk around for days in an altered state, feeling giddy, thinking in symbols, not language, and feeling like I'm on the brink of big changes.
All you folks who reliably sleep through the night have no idea how much time there is in a week. To pass the timeLeona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-54399808643482865842010-06-03T00:50:00.005-07:002011-08-03T13:58:42.062-07:00
I dreamed I was driving in Ireland on a hedge-bordered road at night, when a strange light in the sky caused me to stop the car and get out, and start wandering through fields, up and down hills in the dark. I keep exploring til I reach the crest of a hill and push my way through a hedge fence. There is a stone circle on top of the next hill, and people are dancing around it. A sudden flash of Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-6925528993836370762010-05-30T21:18:00.010-07:002010-08-01T23:27:56.716-07:00Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-12432551046757383122010-05-24T10:30:00.002-07:002010-05-24T10:31:46.766-07:00Bridge Crossings
... in which I explore two divergent ways to cross a bridge.
One: Two supervillains an a hovercar speed away from the scene of the crime, laughing evilly. Ahead, a huge bridge is just beginning to open to let boats through, but the villains gun the engine and sail right over. Just as one of them notices that battery power is getting low on the hovercar, the other suddenly remembers somethingLeona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-8715179863944499582010-05-15T11:20:00.000-07:002010-05-15T11:20:19.415-07:00A Song That Doesn't ExistLast night I dreamed that I was at a karaoke party with The Police, except that they had a different lead singer, a woman who was wearing Lululemon yoga pants for some reason. Anyhow, they did a song in campy karaoke style, but it was no Police song I had ever heard before. Sounded good, though...Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-66465560245725499052010-05-13T23:05:00.004-07:002010-05-13T23:06:40.408-07:00
A few nights ago I dreamed that I was a pregnant teenager. I've never been pregnant! Always wanted to know what it felt like though ... not because I want kids or anything. I'm just curious. I was a bit disappointed when I woke up.
And speaking of disappointment, last night I dreamed that I was looking over some of my own short stories written over the past few years and coming to the Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-38606966547823042122010-05-06T05:15:00.010-07:002011-08-03T14:19:27.510-07:00Feeling a Wee Bit of Anxiety Perhaps
On this day, I missed a friend's funeral so I could attend a meeting and be spoken to rudely by several people. I could have done that any day. My friend will only die once.Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-45460976931058257792010-05-02T12:00:00.004-07:002010-05-02T14:31:35.487-07:00This morning I dreamed that I was on a river cruise from Central Africa to Scandinavia. My sisters and I swam in the river and watched the water change as we went north - crocodiles and water snakes giving way to trout and kingfishers. I remember trying to recall the names of the countries we passed through on the map, but couldn't; can anyone remember that kind of symbolic detail while dreaming?Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-24905424848461719722009-05-15T11:11:00.005-07:002009-07-24T14:05:23.568-07:00The neighbourhood is changingThere was a bit of time travel in this dream: two eras of my life sitting site by side on the landscape. At the beginning of my dream, I am back at mom & dad's, painfully depressed and wondering how I got back here. It's the suburban bungalow where I lived (miserably) from age 10 to 14, in my room in the basement, on a tree-lined street. The house is full of mom and dad's friends, a family Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-3210711612426962422009-04-05T22:36:00.005-07:002009-05-15T14:32:06.311-07:00Art TherapyI dreamed that I went to the house I grew up in (happens every so often) and found the place haunted by the ghosts of a man and a woman. Their bodies are in the house too, all dried out in peaceful attitudes. I asked them what they were doing in my childhood home; they said they are here to tell me I needed to take some things away with me: a black cat, a grey cat, and an apple from the tree in Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1027972059914677442009-03-12T11:22:00.003-07:002009-03-14T14:22:15.053-07:00Stuffed like a down pillow'... the previous night I had been plagued with strange dreams about friends dying. "We say that when you dream of a friend's death," Kunley replied, "it means your friend ate too much last night." Anyone dreaming of my demise lately? Because I have been stuffed like a down pillow.)'Exerpt, Seeking Happiness in Bhutan, by Steve Burgess, The Tyee.Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-68389703385053514072007-10-14T12:24:00.004-07:002009-02-28T16:43:48.999-08:00Asian HolidayI am steaming down a river in Asia in a giant American military ship. Little wooden boats scatter around us & trail off after us as we pass. The sailors seem concerned that we might come under attack from guns on the shore. Just as I am wondering, "what am I doing on a military boat anyway?" we dock at a tiny village and some friends and I disembark to do some touristing.The village is all Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-47645667336900136992007-06-04T15:09:00.003-07:002011-05-06T14:40:10.310-07:00The boy who turns onto a dogI am coming down a steep flight of wooden stairs when I hear a commotion below me. Some boys run past me up the stairs, looking frightened, and I see they are being threatened by another boy their own age. He is a scary kid - he has that vibe of someone you can't trust. As I come up to this kid, he suddenly turns into a pitbull & bites my right hand. I can hear the bones crunching. People Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-65275024519892548252007-05-27T08:18:00.002-07:002009-02-28T16:44:50.393-08:00A picture of what frightens youI am with a group of people at a workshop or something, and the facilitator asks everyone to draw a picture of what frightens us. I leave my page blank for a while while I think it over. The woman next to me draws a shark, which is usually the symbol I fall back on to show primal fear, and I think to myself, great, now I have to think up something new, because I can't draw exactly what she has Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-44734234130173745932007-03-20T01:34:00.004-07:002010-08-04T21:50:18.112-07:00A poem was the best way to express itFirst, giants herded all the people into the basements of buildingsby breaking windows and rattling wallsand once a suitable number were down there,sprayed them with chemicals to preserve themand then knocked down the buildingsand sealed the people in, for freshness.
Then, the city set about building itself back up again in its own image.Power stations grew up in the rubbleof office buildings, Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1148326941086371342006-05-22T05:39:00.003-07:002009-02-28T13:32:24.136-08:00I had a dream last nightI had a dream last night that I was housesitting for Philip Seymour Hoffman. His place was pretty ordinary except that it had a distinctive smell, a sort of tangy, medicinal, eucalyptussy odour that I eventually traced to a bottle of shampoo. Also, he had a creepy neighbour who looked disturbingly like ... Philip Seymour Hoffman.Originally posted on my Buzznet with a picture of a sock monkey (Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1148198676386867742006-05-20T23:34:00.003-07:002009-07-24T13:54:09.508-07:00The time I drownedThis dream felt so much like memory that I woke up re-evaluating my beliefs on past lives. I dreamed that I was a fifteen-year-old girl living with my father and grandmother (who were the same as my father and grandmother in this life) in a small wooden house in a forest on a river. It was a gloomy, depressing place, all drooping trees and rotting wood and sticky mud, and, then as now, my familyLeona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1145155786239846572006-04-15T18:33:00.004-07:002010-10-15T19:39:54.037-07:00This building will fall down
I think I have been a little stressed out. Change is good - but it hurts - and it shows in my dreams. The other day I had one of those flying dreams that you remember from childhood - I was flying over the city I live in, looking at all the glass towers and the construction cranes, marvelling at how fast things are changing. After a little while, because I am not a kid anymore, I felt the Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1132289082839442082005-11-17T14:30:00.006-08:002011-05-07T12:28:14.321-07:00Another Nuclear ApocalypseMy family and I are preparing for a farm-country fall fair or something, collecting bushel baskets in the pickup and carrying around armloads of pies. The fair is a big outdoor event, with a number of tents and trucks parked all over a field. Hundreds of people are socializing happily and eating well.
Then news comes over the radio that nuclear war has broken out. The news spreads fast Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1129012766972999532005-10-10T23:14:00.002-07:002009-02-28T16:52:29.207-08:00Black PowderOn a cruise ship one night, snow begins to fall out of the darkness, and some of the children on board go out onto the decks to play. The snow is so thin that it disappears under their feet, leaving dark little foot-shaped marks.Then, as they stomp and jump in the snow, black things peel off the bottoms of their feet and float in the air like jellyfish. They are crisp little parachutes, Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1121068867610470142005-07-11T00:18:00.004-07:002009-05-15T11:57:24.708-07:00A tiny yellow lizardIm my dream I am six years old and someone has given me a tiny yellow lizard to look after. He is so small that he lives under my fingernail. It feels good to be responsible for a such a friendly little creature, and I go about my six year old business, happy and confident that everything is as it should be.Then one day, after some time has passed, I am in the midst of frolicking in a mud Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1105596482912485572005-01-12T21:00:00.004-08:002009-02-28T16:54:41.334-08:00To the Far NorthIn this dream, I took my younger sister Colleen to the far north on a visit to some friends who live in a shack on a cliff over an icy span of water. Once we arrive, my friends declare that we are all going on a trip to a far-off, mysterious place. First, though, we have to go into town for supplies, and that involves crossing the icy water. We don't bother with a boat; we simply spread Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1094540638471439822004-09-06T13:23:00.002-07:002009-02-28T16:55:35.434-08:00Luxury TowersI have many dreams in which my partner and I are royalty. This is the most recent one. My lover and I are jet-set royalty, enjoying all the luxuries that life can provide. We are overseeing the construction of our new palaces, a gleaming complex of towering silver spires complete with every conceivable luxury. Unfortunately, we seem to have run into some legal trouble and construction has Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1093464399952132792004-08-25T12:25:00.002-07:002009-02-28T16:56:30.564-08:00No honour among thievesSometimes in my dreams, I come face to face with the extreme moral ambiguity of my beliefs and actions. Breaking into my ex's apartment and poking around is one example (see below); here is another.I dreamed I was part of a deep-sea exploration team, searching inside sinkholes and underwater caves for something very valuable that has been lost, and which we are going to steal. We stop our Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1092210072298394222004-08-10T23:09:00.003-07:002010-08-04T21:55:48.573-07:00The ultimate modern loft apartmentI dreamed that I was in a strange apartment building, about 100 storeys high. I am doing some discreet espionage, skulking around in the hallway outside the penthouse spying on my ex-lover who lives there. I peer through the spy-hole and, seeing him not home, I sneak in and search through the place.
Inside the door is a wide hallway with family photos on the wall, mostly shots of my ex and Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1090605188329482482004-07-23T10:06:00.003-07:002009-07-24T14:02:44.188-07:00CassandraIn this dream, which I had when I was in highschool, I felt like Cassandra, the prophet whom no-one would believe. I dreamed that I woke up one morning convinced that the Earth would be invaded by aliens that day and that we would no longer be masters of our own destinies. I go to my mother, my friends, my teachers etc, but they all think I am playing a joke even though I am in a rising panic. ILeona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1088134752953497762004-06-24T19:55:00.003-07:002009-07-24T14:03:57.984-07:00A childhood dreamI had this dream and wrote it down when I was about 14, so the main players are family members: my mom, stepmom and siblings. There's also an old man who looks like Wilford Brimley. We are all in the midst of climbing a treacherous mountain with a fortresslike monastery on top. Falling rocks and dirt roll past us, and we look up and see that evil-looking monks are throwing themselves off the Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1087969489231504262004-06-22T20:51:00.003-07:002009-02-28T17:06:30.855-08:00Philosophy QuestThis was a fun dream to dream. I was starting university (something I have not yet done in my waking life) in a program where I'm required to take philosophy. I enroll in a class with a prof named Torquemada. Her classroom is in the dank, oppressive basement of a crumbling old building; her teaching methods consist of torturing her students, and instructing students on how to torture each Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1085966946905280702004-05-30T17:16:00.008-07:002009-07-24T15:37:57.990-07:00Nuclear ApocalypseThis dream I had back when I lived in Toronto, years before any thought of moving to Vancouver had crossed my mind. I've thought of it a lot since coming to BC in 1999, and especially since the wages of greed came home to North America in 2001.Here's what I dreamed: I am somewhere in BC, living in a little cottage-like house, when nuclear war begins. I hear about the approaching disaster on Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7090489.post-1085367396797699532004-05-23T19:47:00.003-07:002009-02-28T17:05:58.404-08:00The first dream I can rememberThe first dream I can remember in my life was of lying on the bottom of the ocean in the mud while grasses and seaweed swayed all over me. Some nights I would find myself sinking down into the mud and freaking out when it started to leak into my mouth. Other nights my baby mind would make up strange creatures like the elusive "grass shark" to menace my sleeping self. It was scary, but only Leona Shananahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17451604418065068758noreply@blogger.com0