Writing a Paper: Dreamscapes

Five summers ago I had nothing to worry about but decorating my new house. It was a fun time, picking paint colors and buying more antiques and arrangning things. My dreams were variations on the house theme with many rooms and infinite possibilities. The house in this dream is not my house or any house with which I am familiar. It is the house in my mind - with endless rooms and some unknown places and rooms nobody else knows about that I want to use. The decorating possibilities, I must say, are fantastic. There is a whole section on the bottom floor that is in a constant state of construction. One area is a double room I really want to use someday. There is construction debris everywhere - plaster, sawhorses, and piles of building junk.

Lately, the dream-state house is a mess. I am happy to report that this house is not the house I grew up in that I have to clean before my mother, The Queen of Clean, gets home. Nor is it the home of my grandmother, which was in my dream night before last. (I needed to get things out of it and I could not. It was a very stressful dream.)

As usual, I am attempting to clean up a horrendous mess. The disarray looks manageable but it takes the whole dream before I can find any semblence of order. The stuff in this dream is outstanding. I mean, it is stuff I would really like to have. I just can't remember what all the stuff is - I just know it is excellent stuff.

Once again, there are children in the dream and I am responsible for them. None of these children belong to me and they are not my students. In my dream state, however, they are my students-children and they have really made a mess this time. Last night, I had to get the house in order for Christmas. Then I had to get them all to bed and they were not of a mind to do this. At times, the "house" began to look a bit like a variation of my first house - the one the boys really grew up in and shows up a lot lately.

At the end of the dream the areas I want cleaned are finally in order and I skip off to a "guest room" where I can sleep until the morning comes. But I haven't laid out any of the presents or worked on any Santa stuff - yet I know the students-children will have a delightful Christmas morning, but it won't be my doing and there will be a mess for me to clean up. There will be harsh judgment about my lack of preparation, but there is only so much I can do and I have to get to sleep.

There is water everywhere around the house and pools inside the house. I work my way around these and notice the tastefully exquisite decorating in this guest room. I can't recall anything about it, which is totally frustrating because I come up with the BEST decorating ideas while dreaming. My best window treatments ever were designed during a fever-induced dream while I had pneumonia and fell asleep during a Home and Garden Television program.

The dream is an endless variation of itself. Sometimes I am in "June Lake," one of my most favorite places, but this doesn't look anything like June Lake. There are trails that run next to emerald mountains and flowing streams and these are so beautiful they are surreal - and nothing like any place I've ever been except that I have been there numerous times. This place is "my most favorite place" and I feel bad saying it because June Lake has always been my most favorite place. I know June Lake well but I know this place better.

The dream house is sometimes in June Lake and sometimes near a huge airport and mall complex where there is a restaurant I like but can't seem to get to while it is still open. There are clothes I like - but I cannot find them because I have to leave - the place is closing.

I wish in this dream I could write a paper. It is the paper due next week that I do not want to write. I can't get a handle on it and stress is building by the minute. Most papers flow and then get tweaked and flow some more. Then, they are almost done and I can let them "get cold" before I go back in and stick a fork in them.

I need to find all that outstandingly excellent stuff that was in the kitchen. If I arrange it just so, maybe that paper will be finished.