NaBloPoMo

Dreams are a lot of things, many of them inexplicable.

Sometimes they’re wish fulfillment – why, yes, thank you, I would like to take that very large check and go purchase my own tropical island complete with fresh water and airport! Oh, and look, Angelina’s here without Brad and the kids. How convenient!

Sometimes they’re your conscious mind’s way of getting out impulses you otherwise couldn’t act upon – shall we discuss my screaming in staff meetings dreams now? No? Good.

Dreams can sometimes be just your brain taking out the garbage – then there was that time that I dreamed I was a fluffer on a g@y p*rn movie and our star was one of the particularly odious male cylon models from Battlestar Galactica. This one required professional analysis.

Sometimes dreams connect me with the creative impulse bringing ideas, stories, and characters – indeed, this is how got the idea for my second novel, asleep in a weird little hotel room in Chicago, one where the bathroom, where I actually had to go at 4am to write down said idea, was actually as big as the bedroom.

I’m not sure how the dreaming process works. Experts will tell you that you dream whether you remember your dreams or not. I’m not entirely convinced this is true. I’ve spent months not remembering my dreams and now that they are back they’re weirder, and more inappropriate to my current life, than ever. I think, perhaps, that my brain has been storing them up, waiting for a time when I could get some utility out of them. There is no other reason why I’d be dreaming about a job I haven’t been at since July, at least no other reason that I can come up with.

It’s funny, though, isn’t it, that we refer to this unconscious process, this wish fulfillment/taking out the garbage/connection to the creative impulse thing that our subconscious does pretty much automatically with the same term that we use to describe ambition. Maybe this is a recognition that we often have ambitions we don’t understand, or ones that come to us inexplicably.

Dream interpretation, too, is a huge complicated business, almost as huge and complicated as astrology, started by Sigmund “I’m so neurotic I can’t even go to the graveyard where my father is buried” Freud. Dream analysts will tell you that certain objects or sequences have certain meanings. One site I looked at gave a flat interpretation of dreaming about a shack as a need for self improvement. I don’t know: if I’m dreaming about a shack on a beautiful beach and there’s a warm breeze blowing I’m not sure it gets much better than that so what’s to be improved?

All this thinking about dreams comes from a particularly vivid one I had last night. It is rare that I remember my dreams fully, even when unmedicated which I haven’t been in a while, and even rarer still that I remember the feelings, textures, sounds, and smells from a dream (sometimes this is a good thing (reference: fluffer…cylon)). Last night, though, was different.

Last night I dreamed I was working on a film editing and restoration project for Marianne Faithful. All the bits of film were of Melissa Etheridge, various pieces of concert footage, interviews, career spanning sort of stuff. And it was actual, honest to god film with sprockets and a celluloid layer and a soundtrack stripe down the side.

Marianne’s house was welcoming, bohemian and eclectic, filled with Victorian furniture and bounded by windows framed with heavy, velvet drapes. There was always the smell of something tasty permeating the air and someone willing to make a nice cup of tea or provide any other beverage that was needed. It was relaxing, the kind of place you’d want to just hang out for a weekend.

I walked into the dream, and the house, knowing I’d been working on the project for at least six weeks, that it was no where near completed, and that I was doing a damn fine job.

Arriving for work that day, I found instead of my employer, reading as she was wont to do (I have no idea if Marianne Faithful reads for pleasure or not) and waiting for her daily screening/update, a nice note written in extremely well formed cursive congratulating me on a job well done, saying the project was being terminated, and extending thanks and payment in the form of a check with a very large number on it, a generation and form of iPod that doesn’t yet exist, and a sampling of personal memorabilia, both from her and The Rolling Stones, worth a fortune.

Now where the hell did all that come from? I never made any promises that the thoughts that come unbidden would be coherent, either.

As board games go Trivial Pursuit isn’t really all that much to write home about. The concept is pretty simple: trivia questions categorized. You roll a die, move around the board, which is shaped like a wagon wheel, and when you answer a question correctly on the right square you get a “pie” (a little bit of plastic that inserts in your piece (which is, of course, round) to signify that you are one step closer to winning the game). Because of the rule that you must answer your correct question on a certain square to get your pie one of these games can take forever. TGF‘s family solved this problem and my family solved the “Barbie’s boyfriend” problem.

The downfall of Trivial Pursuit is that the questions vary wildly both in accuracy and difficulty. Over the years we’ve spotted at least a dozen questions about DC that have incorrect answers. And then there is the problem of the final question.

According to the official rules, once you have all your pies you must roll yourself into the center of the board where upon your opponents, usually based on your previously demonstrated incompetence, pick a category from which you must answer the single question correctly to win the game. Now, not only do the Trivial Pursuit folks have a little research problem at times, they also demonstrate a weird sense of categorization. This is how during one memorable game we ended up answering the question “Who is Barbie’s boyfriend?” to win the game.

To get around the game that goes on for hours we now play the “short” version: basically, you get a pie every time you answer a question in that category correctly. In order to win, after landing in the center of the board you must answer four out of the six questions on a card correctly.

What does all this have to do with this entry’s title? I once played a game of Trivial Pursuit during which a particularly ditzy friend of my aunt’s was bound and determined to answer that Mt. Rushmore was a natural phenomenon. No, there were no mind altering substances involved; she was just that much of a ditz.

And all of this is a round-about way of getting to the thought that came unbidden: have you ever wondered what Mt. Rushmore looked like before they carved the faces into it? I sure can’t find any pictures, and I know they had cameras in the 1920s.

Just a random thought inspired by badly executed military contractor advertising on the subway ride to work yesterday.

I would lay down good money that if you called 200 people (100 men and 100 women) at any one of the Fortune 500 companies to listen to their outgoing voicemail messages at least 75 of the women’s messages would include some form of the phrase “I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now.” See, women apologize too much.

We apologize for things that aren’t our responsibility. We apologize for inconveniencing others when all we’re really doing is attending to other, more urgent, business. We apologize for having our own needs by putting them last on our to-do lists or letting them be superseded by needs sold to us by cosmetics companies and retail marketers. It’s not entirely a female problem though; it’s also a linguistic one.

In American English we use the phrase “I’m sorry” to mean a lot of complicated things including “I made a mistake” and “I wish I hadn’t been caught at whatever it was I wasn’t supposed to be doing” and “I beg forgiveness for my transgression.” Odd, isn’t it, that the Oxford English Dictionary lists “feeling or expressing regret or penitence” as the second definition for the word sorry? Not so much when you consider the other way in which we use the phrase “I’m sorry.”

We use it to mean, as its primary definition lists, “feeling distress or pity through sympathy with someone else’s misfortune.” Great denonatively; not so great connotatively. The difference being that while “I’m sorry” as an expression of sympathy meets the dictionary definition in practice it takes on a responsibility for the other person’s problems that really shouldn’t be there.

Women in American culture are expected to be care givers, nurtures. Our myth is that we comfort our friends with a nice cup of coffee, some cookies, and a good cry and then get down to helping them solve their problems if there is a solution or helping them make a new life out of the ashes if the problems are immutable. In short, we are trained to this culturally, told that this is our role, and language reenforces that. Really, how many times have you said or heard the exchange

Person 1: [some news about something bad happening]
Person 2: I’m really sorry.
Person 1: Oh, it’s not your fault but thank you.

More, I’m willing to bet, than you realize.

When I was a kid I had to take these liquid vitamins. I’m not entirely sure why but I did and, apparently, they tasted horrible. I was none too shy about them tasting horrible and my father, with a pithy turn of phrase, told me it was a bummer but I had to take them. Shortly there after my parents left me overnight with my aunt and my uncle but neglected to bring the vitamins. I was inconsolable telling them that I couldn’t go to bed without my bummer. They had no clue what I meant (what does a 2 year-old know from vitamins).

The point is, I think, that we start behavior reform with language (it is, after all, humanity’s primary means of expression). So how do you express sympathy without falling back on taking responsibility, even temporarily or tangentially?

Part of it is saying what you mean (I wouldn’t wish what you’re going through on anyone and if there’s anything I can do to make it easier let me know) for the really big things. Part of it is not bringing out the big guns for the little stuff (someone’s car getting towed; having to go to jury duty). Thus I propose the resurrection of the phrase “That’s a bummer.” It acknowledges that the situation is less than satisfactory and it also acknowledges that you recognize the person is going through a rough time without taking responsibility for it.

And for the record, my outgoing voicemail does not contain the phrase “I’m sorry I can’t take your call.”

It’s cold and nasty and gray and rainy here. It was 78degF yesterday, spooky warm with the light not matching the temperature or the leaves crunching on the ground as you walked. The wind is starting to howl as whatever front that moved in overnight blows its way through.

My entire house smells like breakfast, though; eggs and spicy sausage and freshly baked bread. It is, in fact, a good day to curl up with a book and a cup of tea. So, I think I’m going to do just that.

view larger In the meantime, here’s a look at the Japanese maple tree growing by the garage behind my house. We’ve got several of these trees on the property and they are among the last of the varieties to lose their leaves. The red is even more stunning when touched by the evening sun. They almost seem like they’re ablaze.