Dream Weaver
When people ask where I get my ideas for my books, there is no single answer. Resonance started when I read an article out of Harvard about polar shifts. There I was, reading this standard scientific journal entry, and the characters simply came to life and all fit together. With Vengeance, the story just came to me. This was my interpretation of the classic revenge tale. But honestly, Owen didn’t exist until I hit page four. Then, suddenly, there was this agent who was in the FBI for all the right reasons, and suffering the fate of those who give themselves to the greater good. But dreams have been responsible for more than one story of mine . . . and throughout my life I have been the recipient of some very weird dreams.
God’s Eye grew from a dream of black cats disappearing in dark corners. In the dream, I stood in my room and knew – just knew – that something was behind me. Though I knew that ‘something’ had been the cat, I didn’t know what it really was, or even if I should be afraid of it. I awoke feeling incredibly ignorant. Katharine, Allistair and Zachary plagued me until that dream made sense as a novel. And later – several books from now – you’ll read the story of Fortune, a young girl who vanishes one day. Only when she is gone does everyone begin to realize that Fortune’s life was never what it seemed. That book will be told in vivid detail almost exactly as I remember the dream. It was a dream I had when I was fourteen.
So you can see I have been treated to some doozies, courtesy of my subconscious. If reading God’s Eye doesn’t convince you that I should have some serious concerns, maybe the rest of this will. . .
Though I’ve rarely suffered the standard ‘naked in public’ dream, I do have the occasional ‘teeth fall out’ dream. Anyone with a dream book will know that this is supposed to translate to any number of things . . . concern about appearance, loss of power, or (the most common belief) stress about money. Hmmmm. While I have at times been worried about money (haven’t we all?), I don’t have this dream then. My sister has also had these dreams. Sis and I are convinced that this dream symbolizes the concern that our teeth will fall out.
Hear me out. Sis and I come from bad teeth on both sides of the family. Not the rotting, ugly kind, but the kind that tend to chip. Bah! In fact, we figure, since it’s going to happen anyway, we should have a contest going to see who can chip a tooth on the most innocuous substance. In the past I have lost tiny shards of tooth to an M&M and once to a Dorito (lame, huh?). But I think the scariest thing here is that – even though I have chipped a tooth on pumpkin pie (yes! Pumpkin pie!) – I am still not the winner of this oh-so-wrong contest. Yet I can’t find a single dream book or web site that admits the possibility that my teeth dreams are about my teeth.
Another common dream of mine is the house dream. Dream books are full of ‘house’ interpretations too. And to be honest, a lot of these read like Intro Psych 101. The floor represents your support. Living alone in your dream means you need independence. A fence means you sense boundaries. Welcome to Duh. After reading the dream books, I now have an idea what it means if I see a new house or an old one, if I repair the house or get stuck in the bathroom. But none of these things are what my house dreams are about. My houses (and in the dream it is my home where I live with my family) are always multi-level. ‘Split level’ is such an understatement as to be guffaw-worthy. My dream homes have no fewer than seven levels, with most rooms up or down at least four or five steps from the next. Some of the rooms have tilted floors (in one a black baby grand sat in the middle of a tilted floor with theater seating all around. I don’t play piano.) I have rooms down long hallways. Or hallways that clearly curl around other rooms. In the dream, I always find a fully furnished room that I forgot we had. It’s usually down a hallway or behind a door I mistakenly remembered to be a closet.
Though the dream interpreters are often overly simple in the ‘house’ interpretations, they all agree that ‘your house’ (which, in my dream, it always is) is representative of your psyche.
Well, that’s a simple interpretation then: whatever’s in my head is seriously honked up.
Just in case you aren’t sold yet, I offer this final piece of evidence. Sometimes I figure out how to fly in my dreams. This is best accomplished if I get that flash of insight that I’m dreaming. I can manage some conscious control of the dream. When possible, I choose to fly. There are only two problems with this . . . 1) I never fly gracefully. It’s always closer to Wile E Coyote with an Acme kit. And 2) I’m always concerned that someone is watching me sleep and I’m embarrassed by the possibility that they are seeing that I’m flying . . . badly.
What can I say, except Sweet dreams, Chickens!
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