Bits of dreams, here and there ...

Okay, this dream ...

I remembered that I had a bird that wasn't properly caged and I didn't want it leaving messes around the apartment/house/home. I tried putting it in one cage, but there was no door and there were other holes it could get through. I found a couple of other cages, but they also weren't secure. I think I finally found one that would work, but I would have to fashion a door, and by this time the bird had escaped where it was and I would have to find it in order to cage it.

This weekend, fries are su pposed to be free at Burger King. In my dream I went through the drive-thru at BK and ordered a hamburger or Whopper and fries. But to pay, I had to go inside. While I was waiting, I remembered I had given Cayla all my cash, and I was trying to figure out a way to pay. The cashier took a long time to come to the window, which was secure like at a currency exchange (we had them in Chicago). The cashier started talking about my health issues and said stuff about diabetes and other things (none of which is diagnosed since I haven't been to a doctor in ages). I got angry and said I wanted to pay for my meal but had to explain about giving Cayla my cash and offered to write a check. The manager said they would only take a check written from my savings account, so I threw the bag of food (which had to be cold by this time) on the floor by the door to where the cashier was and left.

There was a quest and a guy came back from it (he came from "there" to "here"). He was famous somewhere for being in a band. But he was unhappy "here" (wherever "here" was in the dream). He was washing dishes for a job and feeling like coming "here" was a mistake. I said, "you hate your job and want to quit. Write a song about hating your job and wanting to quit. Your fans feel the same way. They'll love it." He looked excited. Then I said, "unless it backfires." (Because his fans expect songs about great things like slaying dragons.)

I was in the parking lot at church and Cayla had been driving the van. There were kids running through the parking lot as though it was a playground and I was worried about that as a driving hazard. (In real life, I always check behind my van for small children when we leave church. Seriously.) I noticed something sticking out of the place where the gas cap is supposed to be, but when I told Cayla to wait, she drove off. But I was in the back of the van now and getting angry because she drove off like that. When she stopped and I could get out, I started yelling at her. There was also a moment where I could see her from the outside of the van driving through people's yard. Then I started yelling at her because it wasn't even our van she was driving, and we had to get this one back to church so the real owners could have it and we could have ours. Some of the reasons I could tell it wasn't our van (besides a back seat that faced the back window): pointy roof, wrong license plate number and not enough rust.

So, that's my dream for today. The sequences sort of connected to each other. The last two were a little interconnected. There was more to the last one, like Cayla wanting to wear a dress that was a little too big and trying to use a large safety pin to make it fit, and I tried to have her use the pin where it couldn't be seen. And I think someone brought a miniature donkey to church for those kids playing in the parking lot. There was also some more about driving through a campground and in a Walmart and then riding scooters or something.

No, I'm not on drugs. I just have really, really weird dreams ...

Into dreamland

This is not a work of fiction, per se. It is a fragment of a dream.

I often have what I call vivid dreams. These dreams are as emotionally charged as watching a movie, and I usually don't wake up rested after them.

Some are bizarre, which is what I also call them, when trying to explain to people why I look like I've been up all night, even though I got eight (or more) hours of sleep.

The one I just woke up from:

I'm in my kitchen, yelling at a passel of small children to get away from the sink. My scream scares them, and they run. But it's not the sink I want them to get away from, it's the stove. Where the pan I put on to boil water has been on a lit burner since before I took my nap.

I throw a dish towel over the pan and it bursts into flames. I grab at it and drop the pan on the counter (where in real life I promised in a signed lease that I would never place a hot pan - and this thought bothers me in the dream), where it leaves a scorched mark (I can actually see daylight underneath the flaked-off remnants, which is truly bizarre), while I try to deal with the flaming dish towel.

I get all of this under control - hot pan, fiery dish towel, and the next thing I know, I see in the trash my think bamboo cutting board (which I don't have in real life) and a bunch of my pretty, all-different-colors knives (which I do truly own). I don't know why they are in the trash, but I pick them out and start washing them all by hand.

And that, kiddies, is where I woke up.  There was more before that, but I can't make sense of it to write it down.

I've been wanting to write, and am part of a couple of writing sites and a closed forum, but yet can't get the fiction to come forth.

I have plenty of ideas, sometimes. I will see something and it makes me think, that should be a story. But I have a hard time getting started, even with prompts like the ones in the stories on this blog.

So I'm going to start putting my dreams down - as much as I can remember and is appropriate. Because there may be things in my dreams I don't wish to share for one reason or another.

I will try to remember to have the word "dream" in the title, to distinguish it from something that I make up with my waking mind.

Stop SOPA and PIPA

Many websites are dark today in protest of two bills before Congress right now. The danger if the bills pass is that the Internet will be crippled, sites will be taken down for suspected copyright infringement/piracy without due process, ordinary people will be prosecuted for doing so much as posting a video of themselves singing a copyrighted song or quoting a copyrighted work.

I'm not tech-savvy enough to take my sites down and get them back up, so my support is this: watch this video and see the dangers, then contact your senators and representatives. Tell them that SOPA and PIPA are not going to solve the problem of piracy and they are likely to cause more problems in the long run.
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Not quite abandoned

Although I haven't posted in about a year and a half, I didn't intend to abandon this blog. I have my own hosted site now but I think I'll keep this one for writing.

So I picked out a fresh theme at The Cutest Blog on the Block (where I also got the theme for my original Blogspot blog.

I kept the name "Carol's random babble" from my Blogspot blog for my new site. I've tried to post at least once a day but missed April 8. I'm extremely busy with school and work (and avoiding doing homework), but I'll try to post some writing here anyway. Maybe a single paragraph or a couple of paragraphs here and there, even if that's all I have from the story.

NaNoWriMo

Yes, I'll be signing up again this year. I spent some time on the site's forums tonight. I'm not going to school as I had hoped, so I should be able to do something on NaNoWriMo. More than last year, I hope.

And now a word from our sponsor:

Not really. I just took a quiz and decided to share the results here, since this is my writing blog.

I am: Isaac Asimov One of the most prolific writers in history, on any imaginable subject. Cared little for art but created lasting and memorable tales.

Which science fiction writer are you?

As I posted on Hatrack, I don't feel like an Isaac Asimov. I think my writing style is closer to some other authors, none of which is on the list from this source. One of the first science fiction authors I ever read was R.A. Lafferty. I don't expect to be as good and prolific as he was, but I can hope to be as good as I can be.

The resemblance between my work and Lafferty's is quirkiness. I work toward the surprise ending. I would have to compare my work to Lafferty's in the sense that a child's drawing would compare to something by Salvador Dalí.

Flash Fiction Friday No. 5: Snakes ... not on a plane

(Author's note: I have seriously abandoned Flash Fiction Friday for the past few months - since Sept. 21, 2006, actually. I decided to try to catch up. So, here is my much-delayed entry.)

Snakes ... not on a plane

Lorraine loved her job. Well, most of it. She loved doing research on the various works of art collected by the Duncombe Art Museum. She loved organizing art classes for people of all ages. She even loved making catering arrangements for various luncheons and open houses at the museum.

The only thing she hated was walking in the door.

You see, just past the employee entrance was a fabulous exhibit - a demon serpent mask from Sri Lanka. It was on semi-permanent loan in exchange for a set of Native American bird masks. Lorraine had passed by the serpent mask for two years now and every time she did, she shuddered.

She imagined that she heard a faint noise when she passed by, a slithery sort of sound. Although she hated to look at the mask, she firmly watched and memorized the formation of snakes, their coloration and the number of them, just in case.

A letter arrived from the sister museum in Sri Lanka. The museum directors wished to terminate the temporary loan of their artifact and return the Native American exhibit. They said they must have the mask back within two weeks. The Duncombe's director was upset - this didn't leave much time to make the arrangements: packing, shipping and insurance. He told Lorraine to "get right on it."

Lorraine was relieved and upset at the same time. The mask would be gone soon, but she would have to actually handle it - something she had avoided so far. She knew that nobody else at the museum had the same reaction that she did to it, so she kept her fears silent.

She made the necessary phone calls and brought the original shipping container from storage. She knew that she couldn't do this alone, so she asked the maintenance manager to assist.

They worked quickly but carefully and the mask was soon packed away. The delivery driver came and the container was loaded on the truck. Lorraine watched the truck drive away.

She phoned the museum in Sri Lanka to leave a message that their mask was on its way. Lorraine expected to feel relief, but that feeling didn't come.

At the end of the day, Lorraine went home. Her dreams were restless and confused, and she woke up tired. She dressed slowly, dreading going to work even though she knew that the mask was gone.

As Lorraine went to work, she imagined the spot where the mask once was. The director had ordered a modern art piece put in its place. Modern art was something that Lorraine felt neutral about, so she thought it should be easier to go to work. She climbed the steps and put her key in the door.

Lorraine paused, then opened the door and stepped in, expecting to see a lite box painting by Bill Sherwood. Instead, she saw what was literally her worst nightmare – the demon serpent mask she had packaged and sent off the day before. This time, the slithery noise was not her imagination – it was the sound made as the snakes twined around and reached for her.

Flash Fiction Friday No. 4: Elephants never forget

Challenge: This sentence - The elephant found me. Bonus points for using the phrase: stinky smelly stenchuous odoriferous elephant dung.


Photo:


Elephants never forget

They say that elephants never forget.
They know what they are talking about.

It was a job. I mean, I needed to work and there weren't too many places that would take an ex-druggie ex-con. But there was the zoo and they needed help.

So, I applied. I was thinking I would be working in the office - after all, I participated in the prison job training program and learned to type (okay, "keyboard") and got pretty good at MS Word and Excel and all. But, no. It was manual labor for me.

Specifically, the cleanup crew.

Yeah, that's right - I was the guy with the broom. Cleaning up the messes they didn't want the public to have to see.

Can I just say one thing? Stinky smelly stenchuous odoriferous elephant dung.

You have no idea how much those things can poop. And pee. I'm talking a flood of Biblical proportions.

And I was the one cleaning it up.

So, I got the bright idea to feed them a little supplement - you know, like when a human gets the runs. It didn't work out. I got fired (of course). My parole officer wasn't amused. I can't find another job.

But that's the least of my worries.

I've been having these dreams. I'll be walking down the street, turn around and there's one of the elephants from the zoo. They follow me in my dreams until I turn a corner and walk into a dead-end alley.

I know these streets pretty well from all that job-hunting, and there aren't any dead-end alleys where I've been, but there are in my dreams. I don't want to think about what happens next.

So, here I am, just walkin' down the street and I turn around ... nothing. There is no elephant. But I can feel my dream creeping up on me. So, I go around a corner and - you guessed it.

The elephant found me.