Excuse me, Dr. Freud?

So anyways.

I promised you dreams.

I keep a dream journal (though I haven't added to it lately). I've been doing it for about a year and for absolutely no reason. Every now and then I read through them and shake my head over one or two. What the heck? What was THAT about?

The worst one I can remember was one where I had killed somebody and had their body parts cut up in a garbage bag UNDER MY BED. I was more or less sanguine about this situation until the darn thing started seeping and I knew I was going to get caught. I kid you not. It was a horrible dream to wake up from in some ways, but I like guilt dreams because later you can rest easy, knowing you haven't killed anybody and you aren't going to get "caught." That one was a doozy, though.

Honestly, I don't know why I feel so guilty. Raised Catholic, I guess. That will do it to anybody. Bless me Father, I may have had an impure thought. WHAT WAS IT, MY CHILD? None of your freaking business. See? Now that would be a mortal sin not to answer the priest. I couldn't take that risk, so I didn't tell. But if you have a mortal sin on your soul and you don't tell, you now have an additional mortal sin on the tally. I think I left the church because my math skills weren't up to the job.

Not all my dreams are troubling and/or indicative of mental problems. I dreamed I was imprisoned in a Rubik's Cube--trapped in a cage in one of those little squares, down on a lower level. This may be related to my job and my invisibility there, as I have discussed before. I do a lot of crossword puzzles, though, so it could be that.

Here is an actual entry:

DEC 30,2004 I am in a college hallway. I am taking two classes, not teaching them. A very nice man is the teacher of one and afterward he is pushing a kind of shopping cart in the hallway and I call to him I need to find [identity deleted--sorry, folks, do you think I'm totally nuts?] and then I am in an audition hall where students are already up on stage doing brassy “Golda” kind of roles in Oklahoma or Fiddler. Each one thinks she is the greatest. Then I find out that my PARENTS are evidently hosting or sponsoring the University of Arkansas basketball team (wearing red) and they are on television in my parents’ kitchen cooking. They are cooking a bag of onions. The onions haven’t been peeled and the bag hasn’t been opened, it’s just that kind of mesh bag that you can see through and there is general laughter over that.

I could do a YA title about camping Girl Scouts: THE SLEEPING BAG

and an adult thriller: THE SEEPING BAG.

I love possible book titles. I find them everywhere. BAG 'O ONIONS could be one. One week from tonight will be my first book signing. I really hope I don't get dizzy. Nah. It'll be like standing in front of a class, except they'll be friendlier. We did class presentations today, or the students did, and they were pretty good. One girl brought in a bunch of liquor bottles that looked real (they weren't). I could just picture the college president walking by my classroom--her office is just downstairs from our class. Hi, Madame President! We're just knocking back a few pops! This goddamn English is hard work!

A bientot

becky