I've been playing Arcade Fire's first EP on repeat at work this week.  It has such a dream like, magical quality to it.  Great music to de-stress with or to just keep yourself calm as situations become more stressful.

It's fitting, I kinda feel like I'm living in a dream state.  For me, I guess I dream a lot about love.  About having a connection with someone.  Sometimes it's an adventure.  Sometime it's just me fighting for someone else.  But that feeling of giddiness, like the butterflies before a first date and the excitement when you're first talking and flirting and the connection is made, that feeling is transferable for me. Not from person to person, nothing like that.  More like from dreaming in your sleep to making your dreams come true.

I guess that could be confusing.  It's a feeling and they don't always follow logic.

I just feel like I've woken up and that giddiness hasn't gone away.  I check my email and there's progress on the next step and I squeal before I even read it. And then I start to prepare my response and it's like that fear of rejection, fear that you won't be heard, but it's also not a real fear.  It's something keeping me in check from getting wishy washy and not staying logical and practical.

Then at the same time it is a dream. An American dream.  A dream for grown-ups and families and independent ladies and determined men.

You wanna be set apart?
Burn all of your art
repair the wasteful part.

Labels: Arcade Fire, be positive, be present, be the good, dreams, I feel it everywhere even in my red hair, start anew

I needed this weekend to really relax, so this morning I slept in and then read, and then read the next short story, and the next much longer one.  Next thing you know I've spent my whole morning quietly reading, not talking to anyone, and still feeling extremely pissy about a dream.  The dreams I have are so emotion driven. 



This dream though.  Curiosity killed the dreamer.  I mean, I didn't die in the dream, other than in the sense of that "I'm about to die of humiliation" feeling.  Just in the sense that curiosity often times fucks with your secret day dreams and any bit of happiness that was hidden away pinned to a dream that can easily be popped by an actual dream.


This dream was not the most painful one I've ever had, but when I woke up I felt so gross. I acted like a crazy and sick individual in this dream. I was insanely jealous, I was possibly insane. I know the only reason I did that shit was because it was a dream and I was not actually in control.

I felt: like crap about myself, check; jealous, check; uncomfortable, check; upset, check; crazy, check; pissed off, check.  Just because you have feelings for someone does not mean anything will ever come of them.  Just because you care about someone does not mean you're in love with them. Right?

Sometimes I just want what I can't have.  Sometimes words can't always describe a feeling.  That's why I prefer mixtapes.

Edit: Sometimes I talk too much.

Labels: all the feelings, dreams

It is such a strange concept to me that people can wake up and not remember their dreams.  They can have such positive and negative impacts on my days.  They inspire me.  They can fill me with rage and motivation and ass kicking certainty.

I think this song speaks to my dreams.  You wake up and you feel one way.  You do all these things and you still feel that way. 

When I was younger I hated waking up when I was having a really good dream.  I would tell my mom I had to finish it and then I would fall back asleep and attempt to finish it.  I had a lot of dreams where I could fly, so clearly that was better than SAT prep first thing in the morning.

In college I had dreams about these perfect guys, maybe not perfect, but perfect for me.  The dreams had all that initial fall in love montage of feelings, that feeling when "are we going to kiss?" is the most exciting question in the world and your heart beats faster and you can't wipe that dumb smile off your face and you just feel warmer.  Like love is a feature you wear.  Those dreams put me in such great moods.  I was in college, I was young, I could have that glance across North Campus moment with anyone.

These days my dreams all center around my current doubt.  My cats show up in my dreams sometimes.  It's so odd, but it calms me in the dream too.  Unless they're in danger and then I am the angriest mama bear you've ever seen.  Some times Tess shows up in my dreams, but she's never in danger.  She's always just that smiling silent type. :)


One thing about my dreams - they make me so fucking vulnerable. The other night I dreamed that my two front teeth cracked halfway up and I was going to lose both teeth and I felt so ugly.  I was working from home and I still put makeup on to fight that feeling.

I'm not going to let these dreams keep me down.  I am not going to succumb a whole day's mood to them.  I'm not going to focus on the negative or try to investigate the negative possibilities.  I am, you guessed it, going to do my best to stay in the light.

Labels: be positive, dreams, emotions, I miss you., stay in the light

I had a nightmare last night so terrible that I can't shake it.  I dreamed about my ex having sex with my friend and then she told me about it and then because that's not torture enough I was there when they had sex again.  It's so twisted, why would my mind make that shit up?  I wasn't mad at either of them when I woke up because I knew it wasn't them, it was a dream, but I am so fucked up by it.

Thankfully I needed to vacuum and clean my closet and there's drip marks all over my bathroom from the epsom salt soak I did.  Angry cleaning is the only way I can really get through all of it. Still, I don't care how productive I need to be today.  I have this fucked up imagery in my head, this fake memory, and I have no one to talk to about this.

If I do call my best friend or a close friend, they'll point things out that I already know.  Yes, he's going to sleep with other people. No, it's not a good thing to dwell on.  No, I was not previously dwelling on it. Great talk.

Labels: all the feelings, dreams, nightmares, We used to be friends.

You're not haunting me. I was free.  I tried not to linger too long on memories of you and us.  You showed up in my dreams occasionally, but you had been for so long it wasn't much different.  My world fell apart and got better and fell apart all over again without any connection to you.  So much went wrong, so much that I've been too embarrassed to even allude to on Libby.

Before you started cutting ties, you seemed like you were finding yourself more.  You seemed happier.  I never knew if you intentionally meant to leave certain ties in tact until you cut those too, but they allowed me to paint this picture of you moving on and being happy.  I don't know if that helped, since my life was going to shit and all, but I have always wanted the best for you so that's the picture I painted.

Your comment did not hurt me the way haunting implies.  I didn't expect you to reply, but I wanted to make you acknowledge yourself.  It's childish, but I couldn't convince myself that you would come back here, that you weren't actually a troll from Singapore.  That sounds made up, but Libby attracts a variety of foreigners according to her statistics and I can't figure out why there are over a 100 views from Poland in the last month and 10 from Singapore in the past week alone.

Going through all those bad times did allow me to start over.  I stripped myself bare, went off all my meds, detoxed and started again.  I'm building myself back up like Kenneth did when he got fired from the Page Program.  The dreams, while mostly sexual, have been resurfacing thoughts of you because I have to find a way to move forward with that piece of myself.  I haven't figured that out yet, which is why I still reference you throughout Libby.  I don't want to hurt you, but I'm not going to censor myself here.

Labels: comments, dreams, Libby, my response, past love

For some, dreams can have a lasting, memory like quality to them. A dream about a lover cheating can bring a person a seemingly unshakeable anger toward their lover - at least for a few hours or days while that person tries to rationalize the dream. As Gael García Bernal's character Stéphane says in The Science of Sleep, "In dreams, emotions are overwhelming."

A simple fabrication you create while trying to digest all the day's information, references to the past week, observations about the future. Once it stirs emotions, a dream can sour a day, create distance in a relationship or in my case, on a weekly basis, stir old feelings to the surface and fuck them every which way. You see, I have been having dreams about my ex again. They're dreams about adventures,  betrayal, and false memory-like feelings of love.

We didn't end things in a firestorm. We came to an agreed upon decision filled with logic and supported by facts. Facts and logic my head is well versed in, but my heart, ah my heart. Treacherous, emotional, easily swayed to love, my heart. Add a few emotionally crafted dreams to my reason and logic, and no historically documented farewell can hold up to this feeling of longing.

We were in each other's lives for over five years, yes, but we have been completely out of each other's lives for months. While there is much that I cherish from those years, there's much that I regret as well. Distance, ill fated decisions, moods, resentment, and yet, through it all, love. I support our decision to separate with reason and logic on my side, and with love we wished for happiness. So with love, one must support the other's need for a complete and total end of the friendship that laid the foundation for love to grow.

Is it the lack of familiar contact that allows for longing to resurface? Does time allow for facts and reason to blur? Or are the emotions created in dreams really that overwhelming?

Labels: dreams, emotions, Gael Garcia Bernal, longing, The Science of Sleep, We used to be friends.

Work is going so well these days. My department drives me crazy at times because I feel like everyone should know their jobs by now, but I still love being there. I had to make up some time today so I was leaving just after seven and ran into a few of the other hard working ladies of the company. It was beautiful outside, the sun was just right, and our laughter was such a great end to the work day.

I am officially salary and I have business cards! One is more important than the other, but my Grandma collects the business cards of her grandchildren so I am excited that I could finally send her mine!

Tess is still crazy attached to me. I need to teach her to stop whining when Fitz doesn't want to play. Which is always. I've been having a lot of dreams of my ex recently, which is normal I guess, but this past weekend his cat was in my dreams and that's not fair! She is such a sweet cat.

And final life update, because the few people who read this sincerely need a laugh. I was walking Tess and she stopped to do her business. I shouted triumphantly, "Poop yes!" Apparently there was a man sitting in the van with the windows down next to where we were. Scared me to death, but that tells me how loud I am when I talk to myself.

Labels: dreams, Felix, hard working ladies, Tess, work

I had a very strange nightmare this morning that won't shake out of my thoughts completely.  I dreamed that my ex was marrying one of my friends and I was in the wedding party.  We were at this convention center feeling venue for the wedding, and I was going to go change into my dress when I saw the bride fall backwards down a super tall marble/slate staircase.  I rushed over and had someone else call 911 while I cradled this super bloody friend of mine.  A few days later I went to meet her at her house after she came back from the hospital, and she had one really swollen ankle and cuts on her face but she wouldn't stop smiling.  We go into her house, where my ex was, and she says that she's not upset about what had happened because the doctors were able to tell her that she was pregnant and the baby was okay.  And then I lunged for this girl's neck with the agility of a cheetah. After attempting to beat her up, I then attempted to seduce my ex back.  It was like one of those romantic comedies that makes you want to shake your head and turn off the TV.

I don't ever want to become that person.

Labels: dreams, jealousy, nightmares

I had a strange dream about Sebastian last night.  I was at some diner like place in Athens with Lindsey and he was having dinner with this kid I used to go to school with, who is so unimportant I forgot his face & name as soon as I woke up.  Lindsey & I were at a table of people like Shane & the Kelsey who lived next door to us and for some reason Lindsey had to walk me up to him to say hi. And he was all, no big deal.  Left Argentina, moved to your old college town.

I woke up thinking, "What the fuck made me dream about him?" I haven't spoken to him in over 5 years.  I never talk about him.  Have I been thinking about Argentina more lately?  Maybe.

All I know is if you're going to move to my continent, country, state, & my old college town you better get in touch with me!

Anyway, I spent the day thinking about him.  I wonder if he's happy.  I wonder if he went into music journalism or just stayed on the broader journalism path.  I wonder if he's living with that girlfriend of his now.

I kind of miss him.  In the sense that he was there for me during a lot of hard times with my family, without ya know, physically being there. I wrote a lot back then but I don't think I ever showed it to him.  I'm pretty sure I did once and he laughed at me.  Fucker.

Labels: Argentina, dreams, old friends, Sebastian

I have a soft spot for inappropriate lyrics, preferably when surrounded by a lot of wit. Hence my constant return to blasting Say Anything out of my car speakers.  Perhaps because I grew up with such a prudish sense of self, I felt it was acceptable so long as it was someone else's words.  Whatever the case, I have been crooning along with the start of a southern twang for many, many years.

So the thing about Say Anything is that I kind of love Max Bemis.  There was so much that I could relate to him with growing up that I kind of think I did a lot of my personal writing with him in the background.  The band took a huge hiatus because of his collapsing mental state and when they came back, he owned up to what happened and didn't try to downplay it at all.  I guess I was always encouraged to be myself, but there was that expectation to be normal and fit in.  That created this huge hole in me.  I tried so hard to hide my social awkwardness by not trying at anything else at all.  Then I figured out how to hide it all inside.  But the thing about hiding huge secrets is that there is only so much room for them inside your head.  So I pushed out all the pointless other things and found that once you let me start, I couldn't shut up.

During the past few years I started having problems with word recall.  I know so much about the word, but I cannot tell you what it is.  It's so frustrating.  As an English major it made in class essays a bitch because I would forget names or adjectives and I would just stumble through the rest of the essay praying that describing it would bring the word back to me.

So I've become frustrated and kind of a pain to be around.  Listening to Say Anything is like revisiting a younger version of myself. I kind of just want to immerse myself in it.  In that loud happy state.  The kind that comes when you allow yourself to embrace the sad moments and then scream about it.  Mostly I want to write.

I'm still the optimist though it is hard when all you want to be is in a dream. 

I feel like I've had all these amazing dreams recently and I live more in the dreams then I do in reality.  Pretty much work is awesome and I love being there.  Then I leave to go home and nothing that follows is as fulfilling or wondrous as my dreams. Except Fitz, because you know, he's like the best cat ever born.

Labels: crooning, dreams, English Major, Fitz, inappropriate lyrics, Max Bemis, mental instability, Say Anything, word recall, writing

Hide me under a rock already. I feel so insignificant. I have no real stable job with benefits and I'm no where near being ready for grad school. The most creative energy I've had lately was in a dream and it was still not strong enough to provide something worth writing about. I've gone back to having no exciting weekend plans. OR rather, I get back so early on Friday and Saturday nights that I don't feel like I've actually been out for the evening. And I really have not adjusted well to the amount of times I see friends per week or per month. I understand it's an appropriate post-college/adult amount but that still does not cut it for me. I still haven't figured out if this feeling is a result of the medication or the lifestyle. I want to see at least one friend multiple times a week to tell all of my crazy little daily stories to and to fill my days with something bigger than myself. Is that too much to ask for?

Labels: dreams, instability, post-college, unemployment, writing

I want to give up on my internet addictions but then they just show up in my dreams, which really fucks up my reality. My parents used to have these run of dreams where the other spouse was cheating on them and they woke up so angry at each other. Those kind of dreams hurt so badly but you can't hold them against people without being unreasonable. It gets worse when you don't want to be the unreasonable one but you feel like you need to just talk about the dream, face it, and move on.

According to my dreams, in the past week I've been proposed to, hunted & also forced to watch a psycho with an ax kill all of my close friends, witnessed the creation of the ultimate man-eating beast and survived only because my friend was a ghost, & then I made a mockery of myself amongst my friends because I couldn't hold it in any more. I was filled with false hope and then scared shitless when everyone I cared about was being killed in front of me. You wake up and you want to shake it off, it was just a dream, but that last feeling remains to confuse you.

I'm so confused. I want things more than ever, things I had weaned myself from thinking of, cares I told myself wouldn't concern me any more. No matter how closed off I make my heart it still gets fucked with in my dreams. Like it's one big trick that I don't get to laugh at. It's hard for you to accept things or lose people or move on when your feelings are tricked to flip flop. And it's all in your head, and it makes you feel delusional. Nothing stays buried. Nothing is as easy as it should be.

Labels: and you're spelling out your love, dreams, nightmares, Rupert Grint is apparently my soul mate, you could be above ground, you shouldn't be alone in there

Blog time. This morning I woke up during this awesome Phantom Planet dream, which is reason enough to blog.

Phantom Planet and the Dream

Preface:
I first found out about Phantom Planet in 4th or 5th grade when they guest stared on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Oh yeah, we've had a tight connection since grade school. When they first hit The OC they bounced back into my life and we've had a behind the scenes kinda relationship ever since.

Actual Contact with Band:
Freshman year of college the band came to the 40 Watt in Athens promoting their upcoming album and taking any and every request to play really old songs.
Haley and I went all psyched. (Since we're pretty much the same person living two different lives, she had an obsession with Phantom Planet in middle school/high school that rivals my Kings of Leon obsession.)
So we were excited, we had a great spot in the 2nd row, and my friend Janie let me borrow her amazing Nikon = I took 100 pictures that night and many actually had photojournalism potential. We stayed after the show to meet the band, and we had really good conversations with everyone except Alex, who was still dealing with a swarm of fan girls.

So we went outside and talked to the other guys some more and Alex came out, finally, with his stuff to put into the van and Haley and I lamely approached him and he ended up inviting us to a post-show dinner. This is what I famously reference as my date with Phantom Planet and my narrow escape from syphilis. What a night!

Second experience:
Haley and I went to see the band the day after my 20th birthday, and stalker girl knowingly 2 days before Alex's birthday. They played a really short set, mainly because Alex stage dived too much. Alex reached out and grabbed my hand in the audience, like a scene out of some lame girl's first concert experience or something, and the next thing I knew the set was over and we were in the parking lot listening to Darren tell us that it was haunted 'round those parts' and then it began to rain and BAM, we're all huddled around the van. Jeff offered me a bite of a poisoned apple, Haley & I got somewhat into the van for a photo, and all the guys wished me a happy birthday.

Pre-dream:
About two days before this dream I watched THIS video. Which explains....enough.

Actual Dream:
I'm in my kitchen, cleaning out the fridge, and Alex is sitting at the island singing me a song about the months that he's making up on the spot. We started with our birthday month, cause duh it's the best, and then we just started working through the calendar. As I take things out to throw away, like strawberries, he includes that item in the verse. So the verse about February mentioned strawberries. After that, all I remember is that we didn't get past April because of my alarm clock which was really annoying.

Labels: 40 Watt, concerts, dreams, Phantom Planet, Sabrina the Teenage Witch