Reality and unreality

The first half of my dream, I was picking walnuts out of cookies and leaving them in a pile for someone else. The second half of my dream, I was riding a dragon through my grandparents' neighborhood to save Jacob from a life of prostitution.

The Game

(Note: Often I record these dreams right after I wake up, so the language and grammar is sort of in "dream-speak"...this sort of disjointed, stream-of-consciousness way of writing. Which, given the context, makes sense.)

Anyway, had this dream a month or two ago.

There was a mystery game in hidden passages in BYU-Idaho, just waiting for people to come play. Parts were tacky, parts were awesome. Filled with animatronics. You would finish one task, then exit that area and come out somewhere else. Those doors were like wormholes--you never knew where you'd end up next. Jacob and I and a bunch of theatre kids were playing (Brant W, Jordan Tait, Kelly).

You had to ride those arcade horses like in front of grocery stores. There was a bathroom with a witch's head that came out of the wall and made a prediction, and a clue to the next part of the game. In between areas, Jacob's dad was there to guide us.

The last area was set in New York...Jordan and I were told to go to this window to buy a prostitute. Behind the window was a steep room full of animatronics in chairs. The woman behind the window would hand you a piece of trash that you were supposed to take into an office.

I worried about Jordan but before anything could happen, an animatronic said "Police!" and we had to get out. I ran through a few rooms before finding a window to unlock and escape from.

Hats were a big part of the game somehow, and there was a $30 charge for them. Porters was attached to the game somehow. I remember being amazed that this entire world existed hidden in BYU-I and so few people knew. It looked like it had been there since the 1970's.

Scary

Jacob and I were preparing to go to a wedding reception, which was pirate-themed. We were living in this cottage with my family and getting ready, and he went ahead of me. Beckah, Melissa, Annalicia, baby Kaitlynn and I were all sitting outside on a swingset in front of the cottage when we noticed that someone was sitting on the porch and petting a wolf.

The person (I don’t remember who it was) petting the wolf let it come over to us. Kaitlynn loved petting it and I let her for a little while. But she was a little rough, and I didn’t want to wolf to get mad, so I picked her up and wouldn’t let her any more. The wolf slowly transformed into a man. He seemed friendly enough and we kept chatting, and it turned out he lived in the attic of the cottage—renting the space. I put Kaitlynn down and let her play and all of us continued chatting. I was still wary of the wolf-character…I just couldn’t quite trust him.

Finally, he said, “Hey, let’s all go sit in the car and talk.” And I knew right then that I couldn’t trust him…that what he was trying to do was get us all in the car so he could kidnap us and take us away. I immediately said, “No. We’re drawing the line there. Sorry.” Annalicia agreed and went inside the house, but Beckah and Melissa turned to me and said, “Relax. We’re just going to sit there.” I looked at both of them and said, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you go and sit in a car with this man.” They both just glared at me and started to follow him to the garage on the side of the house. Melissa picked up Kaitlynn and started to take her, but I snatched her back.

I didn’t know what to do…at that point it was 2 o’clock in the morning, even though it was still light out. I stood paralyzed for a moment and then ran inside and woke Dad and Mary up. I said, “Sorry to wake you. But we have an emergency. Melissa and Beckah are getting in the car with the wolf.” Dad immediately got up and said, “No.” Mary added, “Curt, they’re gonna get hurt!” Dad hurried into clothes and I felt scared out of my mind but glad that Dad was going to help.

When Dad and I ran out to the garage, with Kaitlynn on my hip, sure enough, they were backing out with the car, prepared to go somewhere. Dad stopped them. Beckah was driving, the wolf guy was in the front seat, and Melissa was in the back. Beckah was so angry at Dad for stopping them. “We’re just going on a drive in the woods!” she said. “Would you relax?! We were going to go pick up Jacob on our way home anyway!” She and Dad argued until Dad finally said, “Okay. Fine. You can go. But I’m coming. And I’m driving.” Beckah irritably moved to the backseat and Dad climbed into the driver’s seat. I gave him a worried look, and after holding my gaze for a moment, Dad backed out.

The dream continued in a slightly different direction for a while…Jacob came back and we went through the cottage, getting rid of old furniture and talking about renovations we wanted to make. Then we realized that Dad was back.

Beckah and Melissa were in the bathroom, covered in cuts and bruises. Mary was there with them. She gave me a cryptic look when I went in, and said, “They got in a car accident. The wolf man is dead.” Beckah looked furious. “Are you okay?” I asked. I went to hug her, because I was so glad she was back and safe, but she just turned to me and said, “It’s your fault he’s dead. I will never forgive you.” And she turned back to the mirror.

I walked out in tears. As I was crying, I walked out to the car. The whole front passenger side was smashed in, and Dad was sitting in the driver’s seat, just staring into his lap.

“Dad?” I asked. “What happened?”

“They’ll never forgive me,” he replied, not looking up. I walked around to the smashed passenger side and reached into the battered glove box. I saw some papers and pulled them out. They had titles like “How To Control A Car Crash” and “Controlled Damage on a Passenger Vehicle.”

“It’s our fault,” Dad said. “It’s our fault they’re dead.”

“Who’s dead?” I asked.

“Your sisters.”

I stopped. “No,” I said. “They’re not dead. I just talked to them. They’re in the house.” Dad just shook his head.

I ran back into the house and found Mary crying softly in the bathroom. “Where are the girls?” I asked. “Oh, Lizzie,” she replied. And I knew they were both dead. I started crying, and it was the crying you can’t stop. When you feel so broken you don’t think you can actually go on with life…that you will never stop hurting enough to live again. I went into the old bedroom that Beckah and I used to share. Jacob was there, sorting through things already. “Hey, what of this do you want to keep?” he asked. I just shook my head, crying too hard to talk, and gently pushed him away, hugging all of Beckah’s belongings to me. He walked out. I sat on the bed and tried to control my tears. Finally, something occurred to me and I went back to the car.

Dad was still there, still sitting, this time with the papers from the glove box in his hand. “Dad,” I asked through my tears. “I have to know.”

He looked up at me.

“Did you do it?” He just looked down at the papers. “Did you do it on purpose?”

He paused, then his voice broke as he said, “I had to. It was the only way I could kill the wolf. Was to kill them too. And it’s better that they’re dead than away somewhere with him.” He looked up at me. I paused for a long time.

“I won’t ever tell,” I said. “It was an accident.”

Dad nodded. I walked back toward the house, knowing that I would carry the weight of that secret my whole life. Knowing my father and I had killed my sisters, trying to save their lives.

Kanye sits in the car and tweets

Kanye West looked like a combination of Kanye West and Eminem, and he was sitting in my spot in Jacob and I's car. And I kept being all "Kanye! Get out of our car! I don't want to get the police involved." And he kept just sitting there and tweeting about how wronged he was being, but I had like 5 dozen roses to take home for Beckah's birthday and I was getting impatient, so I called the Rexburg Police. Even though we were in Fremont. As soon as he heard me start to explain to the police what was going on, he got out, even though he was still grumbly about it. Geez, Kanye.

Visions of the Future?

The 2nd BYU-Idaho Theatre Summer Camp took place on a cruise ship. So we got a cruise, in ADDITION to our salaries as camp instructors, so that was pretty awesome. The ship was fairly small, but it had a carousel and a pool, a few rich people and I think I recall a pirate or two. The camp had two guest faculty members: Ben Isaacs and Whoopi Goldberg. At one point, the ship spun around and scraped against the wooden dock we were aiming for, but it was okay because a flock of seagulls saved us all.

I also stopped Wendy's employees from smoking marijuana, but that was the B-plot of my dream, and not nearly as awesome as the cruise ship theatre camp part.

Dream Snippet

Shahrukh Khan broke up with me in a pancake house. And then my parents and some guy from a reality TV show brought me to Disneyland and gave me $500 every day to spend on new clothes while we were there. And then Jacob came and everything was better permanently, and I didn't care about whether or not Shahrukh Khan broke up with me.

Five-minute Dreams

I had a strange morning. I hit snooze about fifteen times, like I do every morning nowadays, but in between each snooze alarm, I had a distinct dream. Sometimes they were connected, but it was especially odd because there's only five minutes between each alarm. So apparently, each dream was less than five minutes. I don't remember the order, but I dreamed:

1. Ray and my mom had a haunted house, which we weren't very scared by because we helped set it up. We were in another part of the house, where everyone was cooking, but I couldn't concentrate on this book I was reading, so I went INTO the haunted house and just hid in a corner while tours went on. That's all I really remember, except there were dancing skeletons. Which was fun.

2. We had found an antique table with stained glass inlays, which I thought looked pretty run-of-the-mill, but which others around me were so impressed by that they decided the table couldn't have been made by human hands. So we set off to Mongolia to an Alien Artifact Convention to have our table appraised.

3. Sarah Jagger was visiting, and becoming besties with Jacob and I's two-year-old daughter, who had the ability to open any door, no matter what.

4. Sarah Jagger was visiting, and we went outside and saw the Taits. Heather was holding an older Kaitlynn (about a year and a half) on her hip, but when Kaitlynn saw me, she grinned and wiggled to get down and then ran toward me to be hugged. (I hope that dream comes true...it was so sweet! And I think my brain did a pretty accurate job of aging Kaitlynn.)

And I know there were others. But I can't remember them.

Sleep poetry

Sometimes I write lines of poems down in my sleep. Well, in that half-awake, half-asleep state that you get into sometimes, where weird things make sense. (Speaking of that, here's a great story about that state of being.) I always think "This is such a great line! I gotta write this down so I don't forget it...it's going to be one of the greatest poems I've ever written!" But it's always something crazy.

Something like this. Here's what I wrote last night:


Ducks speak in tongues.
Verbs verbs,
wrong sums,
then nouns.
I have been born
from the viscera of
my sleepiness.

July 11 - Lake Elizabeth and tricks of the mind

Heather and I were visiting Lake Elizabeth in Fremont, and for a while Jacob and Jordan are with us. We wander into a boathouse and find Opa there, working on a small remote controlled boat. He’s a much younger version of himself, and it’s a surprise to see him there, but he greets us warmly and serenely, and sends us on our way.

We continue our walk, and Jordan and Jacob get distracted and end up falling behind. Around the other side of Lake Elizabeth, there’s a labyrinthine little shopping village, similar to Pier 39, but everything is on a smaller scale…the sidewalks, the doorways. Not too much smaller, but as if it were made for people who were an average of a little under 5 feet tall. Heather and I are wandering around when we hear Jordan, and all of a sudden it becomes a game to run away from him, so we duck down a boarded walk and run, laughing as Jordan chases us. We keep repeating this game, and every time he gets closer and closer to catching up to us. Finally, we escape by crawling through a small wooden tunnel, fifty feet above the ground…a sort of “sky-walk” (except it’s a sky-crawl). Jordan sees us go in, and then as Heather and I get out the other side, we see that to save time, Jordan has climbed on top of the sky-walk tunnel and is running along the ridge of the roof of it to catch us.

All of a sudden, from our side, John Cleese, and Roger Merrill (who is wearing a fake moustache) climb up onto the ridge of the roof and begin chasing Jordan. It was hysterically funny in my dream, and Jordan, Heather and I were dying of laughter. Jordan was finally “captured” and he joined us, and we spent the rest of the dream telling the story. (Somehow the fact that we met John Cleese never really was extraordinary.)

When we caught up with Jacob, we discovered that he had run into Derren Brown, and the two were discussing his next big “trick” thing. (Jacob and I have been on a youtube binge of this fellow lately, and both of us keep having dreams about him. He's probably making us do that on purpose, the bugger. He's a fascinating person.) Anyway, the only part I remember is that it involved convincing strangers that he was a tennis coach, and that his trainee was a champion who couldn’t find a court to play on. We had to knock on people’s doors and convince them to let us play on their tennis courts, just to practice, even if they didn’t have a tennis court.

In the process of knocking on these doors and finding someone to let us do so, we ended up in an Easter dress shop with a ton of people…I remember the following people were there: Dave Grohl, Tyler Beus, Amanda Horrocks, Omar Hansen, Melissa Whittaker, Jenny’s sister Kelly and her daughter, and a recently returned missionary from our ward whose name I don’t even know. Then the dream took this dark turn, and I don’t remember the details…all I remember is that all of these people in this house were actually trapped there.

It was an elaborate building…it had a gym and a warehouse and several different shops. Everyone in the building had slowly been brainwashed, and as the dream continued, I slowly realized how close they were to destruction. As the dream went on, we would see little clues of how far gone these people were, and slowly the clues became more and more dreadful. At first, we would find a few dirty books around, and find food left out for days, or realize that someone hadn’t changed their clothes in days. But as time went on, I realized that children there were starving, and I would walk into rooms to find secret orgies going on, and no one could remember anyone else’s name. I finally found Jacob left on a table downstairs, dying of starvation. The people around him kept saying “The master said soap and water, soap and water only,” and they were squeezing a sponge of soapy water over his face, waiting for him to revive.

I pushed them out of the way and tried to feed him some cereal that I had found, but he was unconscious. In the room down the hall, I could hear a meeting of some kind going on, and I finally stomped over and opened the door. I didn’t stop walking but interrupted what was going on and said “I move that anyone in the vicinity with medical training of any kind be called upon to save the lives of Omar Hansen and Jacob Chapman!”

The room was silent, and finally someone said “Who seconds the motion?” And slowly, hands went up as more and more people sort of “woke up” and realized what they needed to do.

I’m not sure exactly what happened next, but it seemed like suddenly everything was different, and suddenly Derren Brown was there, smiling at me and helping us put everything to rights.

(There was also a bit with Hyrum Conrad being dressed as a tourist--Hawai'ian print shirt, etc--and having a huge emotional breakdown, but I don't remember the details.)

Being a woman with a sword

Beckah and I are on campus, but it's a different version of campus. We are walking toward the car, where it's parked, and discover that a huge old SUV thing with a lift kit has parked ON TOP of our car. Or "over," to be more precise. We climb in and prepare to back out from under this car, when we start to notice that things are weird...the seats are pushed forward, things are missing (like my wallet), and we find a sword and a small dagger. And the keys are suddenly magically tied to my shoelace. Then we find a letter calling us to play this role-playing fantasy game, which makes us both furious. We have a ton of stuff to do and these people stole some of our belongings.

After leaving and conferring with friends and family, we bring Isha and dad back, and then we all climb into the SUV ourselves. We start looking through their trash, looking for a name or phone number. We find a wallet, but suspiciously, we find that they have at least four different driver's licenses (all with different names and phone numbers). We discover a few advertisements for a story-telling group, and the name on the flier is the same as the name on one of the driver's licenses, so I call Judy to ask her if she has contact info for this group. But Shadi answers the phone (my old boss from Kirby) and tells me Judy isn't there. Then we find a cell phone, and Isha and dad somehow figure out how to find all of their contact info by taking the cell phone and hooking it up to a computer and running a "spider program." Which consisted of actual spiders digging through the info, wrapping what we wanted in silk, and delivering it to us.

So we call the number, and a friendly, slightly flirty guy answers and says he's excited to meet us and that he'll meet us at the car(s). When he comes, it's him and his brother, and they're both nerdy but extremely shmoozy. We request our belongings (wallet, especially) and say something to the effect of "Take your invitation back. We don't want to play." The main guy smiles and starts opening the doors of my car, and digging things out that I didn't even know were there, but his familiarity makes me furious. I take the sword out of the car, and hand Beckah the dagger. I walk up to the main guy, and point the sword at him.

"Here. You forgot this," I say. He smiles and starts to take the hilt from my hand. Before he can take it, I snatch it away and put the sword at his throat. "And if you ever try to steal things from this car again, I will end you." I glare for a moment, then start to return to the car.

He smiles and says "Why should you have the right to decline this game?"

I turn and lean on the sword. A breeze picks up and blows my hair (which is long in this dream). "Because I am a woman. And that is enough."

The guy smiles again, but this time like something has dawned on him. "Now," I say. "I'll return this sword to you, and you and your dumb-ass brother get your SUV off my car." (In retrospect, it seems that returning the sword was a risky thing to do given the confrontation. But in my dream, my certainty in the power of my sex was so solid that it didn't cross my mind to worry.) The two boys get in their car and have some trouble figuring out how to move it, until one of them says "Just do the same thing you did last time." And then the other farts and the power of it lifts the entire car up into the air enough so that they can back up and "free" my car.

And then Beckah, Isha, my dad and I all drive into the sunset.




I'll come back and analyze this dream a little later. Right now I'm too swept up in its awesomeness.

Lately

(I want to revive this blog. Even if it's just an exercise to keep me writing.)

I've been dreaming about babies a lot lately. Probably a combination of several very close friends being about to give birth/just recently gave birth. But I think part of it is also because of all the new lifestyle changes that Jacob and I have been making lately. We're both trying to be more healthy, more positive, more courageous. Some of the babies I dream about must be a symbol of those new ideas.

It's also part of the vicious broody cycle...

Feeling broody --> Dreams about babies --> Feeling broody --> Dreams about babies --> etc.

"Why are you building a time machine? I'm right here. Just kiss me, dammit." --Jacob Chapman, as George Washington

Goal (which is dependent on the ability to control dreams):
Have a make-out dream about every American president.

One down, forty-three to go.

More snippets of dreamage

- Teaching Ronald Weasley how to pirouette.

- Killing the White Witch in a bathtub in a cheap hotel, in this totally gruesome battle involving giant pencils, spears, bead curtains, and fishnets. She wouldn't die and I kept having to stab her over and over and over.

- Befriending a talking pelican from London on the shores of a lake in Yellowstone, who turned out to be a man, and I had to keep tap-dancing in Safeway to keep him from turning back into a pelican.

- Beckah needing a costume to go to a party at our old Parkside Place apartments in Fremont at the last minute, so I suggested she go as a zombie. We ripped up the clothes she happened to have on, and then went outside and smeared dirt all over them. It was a great idea, except Oma and Opa pointed out that it ruined the only outfit she had.

- I'm friends with Zac Efron. I've been having dreams about this for weeks now. We've taken a humanities class together with our mutual friend Danny, and hid in a residential area from the authorities, who were mad that we stole a Little Mermaid poster. I keep thinking of adding Zac as a friend on facebook before remembering that we're not ACTUALLY friends.

Dream blur(b)s

Tuesday, July 14th: I was extremely pregnant, but still had until October before I was due. I started having what I thought were contractions, and had to drive myself to the closest emergency room, in Idaho Falls. I was really scared, but it turned out that it was just standard pain that comes with pregnancy (?). My mom, who turned out to have a degree in "Pharmacy" which I'd forgotten about, was the main source of comfort and stability...the voice of reason in my pregnancy-induced panic. [Look up "pregnant" on the online Dream Symbols dictionary--link to the right--and this dream is pretty neat.]


Wednesday, July 15th: Michael Jackson and I were hanging out in an LDS Church building with my family in Virginia. (As in from when my family lived in Virginia.) It was before he got super-dooper weird...he was frozen at around the time that "Off the Wall" was released. We skipped Sunday school because A) we needed to go to the Broulims Bakery to help a lady order a cake, and B) he didn't want to deal with all the publicity. We were really really close friends, and a lady in the foyer thought we were recently married, and we just went with it to avoid trying to explain that we weren't. It was difficult, because I knew and he knew that he was going to die soon, but I enjoyed being close to him while we had the time.


Thursday, July 16th: I was suddenly a contestant on this season of "So You Think You Can Dance." We were all supposed to act like I'd been there the whole time, and everyone (Mia, Nigel, etc.) was too busy to really sit down with me and explain everything. So I just depended on the cast. Jason and I got to be good friends, except one night he kept trying to kiss me. I finally let him, just to get him to stop, but then...I didn't want to stop. Except I did stop, because Twitch was in the room and he was clearly jealous. I'm apparently one hot commodity in my dreams.



Friday, July 17th: Dad and I were keeping a dinosaur egg under the old school bus that was in our yard. We knew it was a Tyrannosaurus Rex because of the rate at which the egg was growing, and because of the paisley pattern on its shell. About 4 days before the egg was to hatch, I panicked and realized what a terrible idea it was to raise a T-Rex. But Dad would have none of it. So instead, I planned a picnic at "R mountain" with my sisters, but we got distracted by the fact that one of the "winning youtube videos" in the latest issue of Newsweek was of some of my friends here at BYU-Idaho.

Make-out Mix-ups

Just a funny little dream. Beckah and I were on some kind of double-date, never mind the details, because I can’t remember them. Well, at the end of the date, the activity planned was “making out.” You know how you plan…meal, trip to the sand dunes, movie? Well, our date plan was meal, something, make out. Except when it got to that point, we somehow accidentally…switched partners, and I found myself snogging with Evan Kasprzak of this season of “So You Think You Can Dance.” It was pleasant for a few minutes and then I pulled away and said “Wait, hold on. I don’t think I’m supposed to be making out with you. You’re too short.” I turned to Beckah and her date, Jordan, but when I made the comment about Evan being too short, Jordan just looked at me like “So am I. Way to be sensitive about height.” Then I woke up.

Always get free texting...just in case.

I was trapped in a basement, where some bad guys had kidnapped and trapped the spirit of Spencer W. Kimball. And the only way that he could escape/be set free is if Addison or Jillian of the Playmill Cast of 2009 texted me. But I couldn't text either of them. So I was trying desperately to somehow "use" the spirit of Spencer W. Kimball to send them both telepathic messages so they would know they had to text me. Finally, Addison DID! It was something trivial and irrelevant to the desperate situation we were in, but nevertheless it saved the day, and the spirit of Spencer W. Kimball was set free.

This could be a film as famous as Casablanca

Ok... My dreams:

1. I dreamed that I was hiking up this snowy mountain. Suddenly I heard this terrible roar. I looked and above this snowy mound I saw a huge killer whale! It was beached on the top of the mountain. It opened it's mouth and lifted it's tail at me. I was so frightened but also really thrilled. SO I ran and called for help and called for anyone with a camera. And who came to my rescue? David Walker. He holds me and comforts me. We almost have a "moment" and then he looks and me and say, "So how does it feel to be attracted to a gay man?" And I reply with, "Like every other man I can't have."

2. I don't remember much of this. I do know that I was on a really tall tower and I had to jump off and an eagle would catch me. Then somehow I dreamed about pregnant dragons. To show that they were pregnant I showed the doctor used tampons which he opened up and and inside were another, smaller used tampon which clearly indicates pregnancy. 

I don't have a lot of time to sleep, let alone dream, but when I do... As Julia says, "I'd like to take a trip in your imagination some time."

Destiny

"Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny." --Carl Schurz

It's been a while since anyone's recorded anything here, but I've just had a couple of really cool dreams lately that I want to share. Nothing spectacular, or even particularly detailed, but they've been sort of big cues from the universe/the Lord/my own knowledge of myself as to my life, which has been awesome.

The first one was several weeks ago. I dreamt that I was student teaching at my old high school, with my friend Chalise Ludlow as my cooperating teacher. (I did a few shows with Chalise here at BYU-I before she graduated, and she currently teaches at Rigby High School about 20 minutes away.) It was a little nerve-wracking, and I remember in my dream that I had a vague sense of not knowing exactly what I was doing or what was going on, but knowing that I was qualified enough to do the best I could with what I had. I remember I had great students. I remember they were talented and quirky. I remember some of them were there because they wanted to act, and others were there because they didn't fit in anywhere else. It was a fairly realistic dream for the most part...I remember I taught a film class, an acting class, and a musical theatre performance class. The other parts of the dream that were a little less couched in reality were pretty symbolic, actually -- there was this whole thing about a train and trying to decide to take the train now or to drive around town for a while and catch another train later. (Journey -- get on the graduation train now, or just take it easy and learn for now, with graduation sometime in the future.) The other details of the dream are fading, and actually not terribly important. But I woke up thinking "Yes. Time to hop on that train. THAT is what I want. I love performing, I love learning, and I love BYU-Idaho. But it is time to get my degree." It was kinda cool to be motivated by that. And conveniently, even in hopping on that train, I still have 2 more years of learning, performing, and BYU-Idaho-ing. The example of Shanelle and her love for her kids at Kearns, and Chalise's passion for what she does, and that dream have reminded me of why I came here to this school in the first place...of what I want and why. I want to teach high school. I will learn and perform for my whole life. While teaching high school.



The other dream I had just last night. I dreamt that I was wandering around somewhere as part of some sort of performing arts day camp at a high school or university. It was pretty prestigious, full of proffessional-level talent, and now that I think about it, I don't remember exactly what I was doing there. But anyway. Someone stopped me and told me I was supposed to be in room blah-blah-blah to start choreography rehearsal. I dashed off, thinking that they'd made some mistake, either in choosing me to choreograph, or in not notifying me earlier that I was choreographing. I get to the room, and Mia Michaels is there, along with Thayne from season four of "So You Think You Can Dance." Mia Michaels was the assistant choreographer, which meant she watched my choreo and helped correct dancers where needed. Thayne was just one of the students. I remember feeling slightly intimidated, but more just surprised that Mia Michaels was my ASSISTANT choreographer. Intimidated mostly because I hadn't prepared anything, and had to make stuff up almost on the spot.



I still remember my choreography and it was kinda boring. But apparently more difficult than I thought, because everyone kept getting off on the counts. The number of students I was teaching kept building every time we went through the combination. Eventually it was so crowded that dancers had just enough space to do their moves. Whenever we stopped for a moment, everyone would start talking and I couldn't yell over everyone and was getting so frustrated. Finally, we were going over a jump on the first 8 counts...everyone kept jumping on "7" and having a little bit of extra time, because the jump was supposed to be on "AND 8." I was yelling over everyone, saying "Okay, just the last half of that count of 8, jumping on AND 8 -- ready, 5, 6, 7 AND 8." And hardly anyone did it. I climbed up on a chair and tried to yell over the din, until finally I got everyone's attention. I was furious. I yelled "Out of the 40-something of you here, know how many just did that jump? About 8 of you." Everyone started quieting down. There were a handful of girls who had gone to their bags by the mirrors and were talking on their cell phones. I walked over and held out my hand, saying "Cell phone, please, give me your cell phone, you will get it back after rehearsal" and taking them out of hands without giving them time to say good-bye or make explanations. (Which is probably something I would do...I have zero tolerance for that kind of disrespect.) Then I stood up on the chair again and made this speech, and it was one of those things where you don't plan what you're saying, but as you're saying it, you realize how true it is. I'll have to paraphrase a little, because I don't remember the details, but what I said went something like this:

"You guys have SO MUCH talent. And I cannot stand to see you wasting time like this. You NEED to pay attention. You NEED to listen, you NEED to dance. You guys can do things that I will never be able to do. I love dancing, I always have. And you have to dance if you're going to choreograph. But I am not half the dancer that some of you are. I'm a choreographer. You guys, all of you could go on to do incredible things, to be lead dancers in the most prestigious companies, and to made a CAREER out of your dancing. I cannot do that. I never will be able to do that. So PLEASE, do not waste the gift that you have! It is a gift that others have longed for. I'm not telling you these things to be mean, it's just that I LOVE you guys, and I want you guys to be the best you can possibly be. If you're just here to have fun, you are in the wrong place. There is a place for that, but this class is not it. You are here to dance. I am here to make you the best dancer you can possibly be, but you CANNOT DO THAT if you are not paying attention in rehearsal. Got that? Okay, let's take it from the top of that first count of 8."

Everyone was quiet and the room had that subdued and guilty but newly determined feeling that always comes after a speech like that from a director. We continued dancing and then the dream shifted to something different about Bear Creek Park and sketches for a movie set. But I woke up from that dream with a strong impression of "Yeah. That's true. I'm not the greatest dancer. I could never do some of the things these people can do. And I'm almost 24. Realistically, I can't expect to begin my dancing career now. I can always look to improve, but I'm just not meant for the dancing big leagues. But I can still contribute. Just because I'm not Mia Michaels doesn't mean that I can't choreograph. And just because I'm not Thayne doesn't mean I shouldn't put as much effort in as anyone else." It was just cool...kind of a lesson learned/reminded.



Just lots to think about. =)

Scary...

I had this dream a few nights ago while we were still in Roatan. It is one of many that night, but it was definitely the most lasting.

I was living and working in some sort of Institution for mental patients or something. I was standing in a small room, wearing a white cotton dress, holding a bunch of keys. I walk to a door, and just as I reach it, it opens, and a frenzied looking man comes in and looks at me. He asks for the keys, but they're not in my hand anymore, and as he stands there looking at me, the Joker comes into the room. His face is white, but his scars are barely visible on his cheeks. His greenish hair hangs down to his shoulders, and he's wearing a kind of army green jumpsuit covered with patches. I was so frightened I backed into a corner and slid down the wall and sat there holding my knees to my chest. Then the Joker started talking, and bringing people into the room one by one, and he would kill them, and I would have to write on a white board how they died. Once there was an old man with glasses in a wheelchair, and while he was talking he suddenly started coughing and sputtering until he choked and died. Spittle was running down his mouth, and the Joker laughed and told me to write that down. I wrote, "choked as a good idea."

Then the Joker turned on the warden, and forced him down onto his knees. He held his neck and pushed his face down toward the floor and held a knife against his neck. He started chanting "I was an honest man" and other strange and horrible rhyming lines louder and louder in the warden's ear while I sat by. Then he had me put my hand to the warden's neck, and it was wet and sticky, and it came away red.

When the warden was dead, the Joker looked up at me and laughed, and I knew that he was going to cut my face to look like his, and just as he came towards me, I woke up.

I wish my dreams weren't so stressful...

I hardly slept at all last night, but when I did my dreams were very rushed and stressful.

I was on the side of an abandoned road, where there was a river with a couple of trees nearby and then a big hill with lots of brown grass going off in the distance. Behind me there was a huge semi parked, with two old wooden boxcars attached behind. I had my friend Lisa's baby with me (Jonas), but at some point I saw Melissa and one of her friends from school climbing the hill with Jonas. Then I had Jonas with me, and I was carrying him in one arm and I had another little boy in my other arm. He had brown hair, and he was probably about three years old, and he had silver braces with silver bands, and I remember thinking that that was weird because he was so young. I was following my friend Lisa over behind the semi when this huge steel robot man came out of nowhere and starting shooting at us with a futuristic laser gun. We ran to the last boxcar and went inside, and as Lisa was taking care of the kids I found a large laser gun on a bunch of old sacks and picked it up and started turning all these knobs and buttons to turn it on and make it stronger. I go outside and start shooting at the robot man, and at first every time I hit him he would flinch and squirm and cry out. When I stopped, however, he laughed and then I realized that he was just toying with us and that I couldn't hurt him at all. He shot at me again but I managed to dodge it. So then I pointed the gun at him and held down the trigger, and that seemed to work. He backed up against a tree, and as I held the laser to him he started to shudder, and then all of a sudden his legs got all hazy and then bent outward at the hip, and he dropped down and hid arms came in and he was small and roundish. He came at me again, and so I let go and held down the trigger again, and he moved past me and stopped next to the boxcar. It looked like there was some kind of thick nylon net around him, and the area around him started to glow and expand. I knew what was coming next, so I called to Lisa and we hopped into the boxcar and protected the children while the robot exploded outside. When we went back out, the robot was a small ball of melting metal, and somehow Lisa managed to tie it up in the net and then she threw it in the river. I watched it and it went a short ways, and then bounced up onto the shore again. I went over to it, picked it up, and threw it in the river again, further, and I stood and watched it float away. Though some part of me knew that it wasn't over yet.

Wow, sorry this is long. Only a bit more. So then we were driving on the highway in the semi, and I was in the last boxcar watching behind us. I looked up and suddenly there was a huge dead reddish steer flying through the air, and I knew that it was supposed to land in front of us but we were driving too fast and so it landed behind us. I watched it hit the highway and then roll and the other cars try to avoid it. So then right behind us there was a huge cement mixing truck, and behind that another semi. The semi behind all of a sudden started going really fast, and hit the cement truck so that the cement truck came and hit us in the rear. We managed to go faster and get away from them, but then a huge truck carrying gasoline drove right by us and sprayed us with gas. Then a couple of fire trucks went by and for some reason they carried gas too, and they sprayed us. I was really afraid because I knew that they were going to set us on fire, when...

We pull into this tiny tourist town, with lots of little Old West shops selling ribbons and post cards and taffy, and we all pile out and go into our friend Rachel's house, where she's just setting out tea and scones for us. We all sit down and I eat a bit of scone, wondering what's going to happen to us.

Then I woke up.