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Saturday, February 14, 2015

"Sleep"

I had a dream when I was a kid.  I climbed a tree and turned into a hawk.  I looked out at the world from that high place and felt free.  I started flying, and another hawk joined me.  We spent a perfect summer day flying together and I loved him.  Eventually we went back to my tree but I didn't want to wake up or for him to go away.  He promised he'd find me when we grew up.  That dream gave me hope for a long time.

Flying dreams are the best, though I had a different kind of flying dream when I was married.  I was flying around with a friend and my husband wanted to join us.  I told him it's easy, come join us.  He kept jumping and trying but couldn't do it.  I suppose my subconscious was telling me he wasn't my hawk lover and the marriage wasn't right, but at the same time I felt so much joy in the flying.  Was my subconscious telling me to be true to my nature and find my own kind?

I value the information in dreams.  I wasn't ready to get divorced, but the message stayed with me.  I felt the inevitability of where the marriage was going.

Sometimes I wake up and write my dreams down.  Once, I got a pencil and paper and fell face first into my pillow, writing the dream left-handed in the dark as I fell asleep again.  That made for interesting reading in the morning, especially since I wrote several lines over each other.

...side trip into my dream folder.  I'm not sure what to make of "Chocolate fish hand.  Kind of pathetic, but sweet too."  Where did that come from?  My waking mind doesn't think stuff like this.  I don't think I'm creative enough awake to come up with a chocolate fish hand, but I think dreams exist to help us.  They give us a different way to look at things that we shove out of our day thoughts.

People long gone still haunt my dreams and effect my waking life.  I had a moment like that this week when people were talking about an 11 year old girl killing a baby.  That's horrible, and I remembered Vaughn.  He was a horrible boy who regularly threatened to kill me, kill my family, kill my dog and make me watch.  He left dead animals in my yard to emphasize the threats.

Vaughn has been in my dreams all my life even though he drove his car into a tree and died years ago.  When I have a Vaughn dream I know the fears I'm facing in the present are visceral, important.  The fear and rage I feel, but keep tightly clenched inside, hurts me.  Dreams provide the lesson that I have the power to do something about it.

We all have this -- the power to recognize our issues in our dreams, the power to face it, the strength to come up with solutions.  Our dreams are the product of our own minds.  We don't have to explain them to anyone else.  It is the most private of all aspects of our ourselves.  They are our joys and our fears.  They are us at the most essential level -- even if it's a chocolate fish hand, but mostly I like flying.

This eagle is ancient history.  I did it for a printer who wanted to show customers thermography, a heat process which makes a special powder turn into a glossy, embossed surface.  It's usually used on business cards.  This was printed as regular 4-color process, but the dark brown and white were added on top in thermography.  Even though I did this for a job, I think it's also a good example of how to get printed samples of your work.  Talk to a printer and maybe you can both end up with a sample to show potential customers.

15 comments:

  1. I love the eagle. It looks like you had a lot of fun with the feathers. I just posted in IF too, and I saw your eagle and smiled, wondering how you would connect it to sleep but knowing you would--and you couldn't have done it better.

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  2. My first thought was drawing a chick sleeping, but I thought it might look dead. One thing leads to another and I remembered the eagle and I ended up with a post :) I like the way IF gives me stuff to think about. Thanks Melissa!

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  3. Love the eagle - a "win-win" project! I miss having time for IF...
    I find dreams to be so interesting, but then some don't make any sense at all. I have some that involve people I don't recognize, but in the dream, we've known each other forever. Who are they?

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  4. Dunno. I think there's so much more to reality than we know, and we get glimpses of that in our dreams?

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  5. very cool illustration. very "70s" looking (that's a good thing!)

    Dreams are weird.

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  6. Aw thanks :) And yeah, dreams are weird.

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  7. Very cool eagle, and another thought provoking post. Dreams ARE weird. I often have dreams about my car....that parts are stolen, or it has gotten damaged...once I dreamed it had no floor, and I had to propel it like Fred Flintstone. When awake, I AM protective of my car, so these types of dreams are always alarming, but I can usually tell they are dreams and are able to wake myself up. I've had the car for 16 years....and I suppose, the dreams for almost as long...

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  8. I loved flying dreams. I'm not sure if I still have them. I don't remember many dreams. But when I do they are weird. Holy cow. Great eagle.

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  9. 16 years for a car?! That's impressive. I think my longest was 10. Though considering how much they cost they should last at least 16 years, and without having to propel it like the Flintstones.

    I think we remember more dreams when we make it important to remember them, or especially if we make a point to remember them right when we wake up. But I don't remember having a flying dream for a long time either.

    Thanks for the comments!

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  10. What a wonderful connection - the flying eagle and "sleep" ... It's been a while since I had a significant dream like yours but yes I do agree it's the brain's way of giving a little nudge. Chocolate fish hand though lol :D

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  11. It's been a while since I've had a significant dream like this too, but they stay with me when I do have them. Sweet dreams!

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  12. Great post Linda. I find dreams fascinating too. I love the chocolate fish hand imagery :)
    Lovely illustration, I love all the iridescent colours.

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  14. I think the chocolate fish hand would make more sense if I were a thumb sucker, but I still don't know what that was supposed to mean. Thanks for the comments!

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  15. Great article Linda! Your article is interesting and I have forwarded it to some of my links.
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