the dream about the house...

Often times I awake from sleep via my beeping alarm clock. Yes, I am a Luddite, and I actually do have an alarm clock.

 (And yes, I buy lotto tickets...)

I hear that nowadays the kids use their cell phones for everything. I don't have one, so, yeah, I have an actual alarm clock. And yes, that blue piece of plastic often dictates the end of happy fun sleepy time.

Anyway, often times I awake from my slumber and have utterly no recollection of what I dreamt.  Today was not one of those days. Today I had the dream about the house.

The "dream about the house" is fairly mundane. It always takes place in what was formerly my mother's bedroom in her childhood home (a.k.a. Grandma Duda's house).  From what I recall, my Grandfather built / refurbished the upstairs of the house (in the nineteen sixties). So, it had these acrylic tiles on the floor that sort of looked like wood and plastic at the same time, and square acoustical tiles on the ceiling.  And because it was a converted upstairs - some of the walls were slanted (like this) to match the shape of the roof. Plus, the extraneous area around the sides was the attic, so there were these door panels in the walls that led to these little storage areas.

Frankly, as a child, those attic doors scared me shitless. I was glad that the bed in my mother's old room was pushed up against the door there. Because I had been in the little attic area next to it, and irrationally as a child - there was a garden gnome statue somewhere in that house and I was convinced that it was evil or possessed or something and was going to come and get me in my sleep via that attic door. Obviously, I would hear the sound of the bed sliding across the floor tiles and at least be able to wake and scream like a banshee before the gnome got me!

*giggles*

You know, I slept through thunderstorms, but that gnome I would hear. Logic and children's fears have very little to do with each other. ; )

Anyway: the dream about the house.  It involves that back bedroom, except instead of it being the back bedroom it always turns into this giant open space via that attic door - like the ball room from "The Shining." Except it isn't a ballroom it's usually a giant restaurant (like an Olive Garden) but it's always decorated in this eighties style with very square yellow table tops and red and turquoise colored accents... and it's always filled with people, including my dead grandparents, specifically Grandma and Grandpa Duda (except they're very much alive). I have no idea why they're always there, I mean, I suppose technically, it is their house...

So, yes, I had the dream about the house. Except this time it was different. It was Grandma Duda's house, but someone had redecorated it, and I couldn't find the staircase leading upstairs. The staircase in their actual home was accessible via a doorway in the dining room. Well, I thought I finally found the doorway, but when I opened the door there was just another door that opened from the opposite side, and when I opened that door there was simply another door, and each door was smaller than the previous door, and I continued to open them even though I was thinking "this is completely pointless because by the time one of these actually opens to something besides another door - the hole is going to be so small that only a Barbie Doll would fit through here..."

Yes, I said all that stuff to get to that point, which isn't so much a point and yet it is. There are people who very much believe that dreams are symbolic or metaphoric or the human mind solving problems in an inexplicable way... When I have the dream about the house - I always remember being in the fantasy restaurant room, but I never have any recollection of what went on there with all those people. I just remember 'being there.'

So, I woke up from a recurring dream that failed to follow the script of all its previous incarnations, and I was struck by that difference. Metaphorically, I have no idea what the restaurant room really means, but tonight, I couldn't even go upstairs... I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

Anyway, in real life - I've been working on a project for a while. I realized some time ago that I had stopped drawing people. I drew birds and trees and flowers and clotheslines and the occasional insect and more birds and trees and flowers... but not people. And that isn't to say that I stopped drawing people entirely. In fact, I have a couple sketchbooks just of drawings of figures or girls. It wasn't that I didn't draw people - I just never turned those drawings into illustrations.

I think that's because there's something 'safe' about animals and trees and flowers (and even clotheslines). No one really looks at an illustration of a bird and asks "who is that?" It might be some specific kind of bird, but it's not like I had to personally know the bird to justify drawing a picture of it, or then explain the bird's "story."

People are different. People are somehow more specific and have names and favorite things and likes and dislikes and stories... People - particularly when they're not someone you know in real life - are characters.

And I've been working on my sketchbooks with the drawings of people... although I don't really think that's why I had the dream about the house with the alternate ending. Yes, sometimes logical and metaphorical connections are tenuous and inexact.

Just in case anyone wondered what I was blathering on about - that's one of my sketches.  The yet undecided part of the project is how I'm going to convert the sketch to an illustration. Do I want to go through the process of scans and blue pages and inking and filling? Or do I want to do something different? And what's the rest of the picture? Sketches are a staring point, but the actual finished illustration is a journey and a destination...

As for that dream? Grandpa Duda did appear and he was remodeling the house (in spite of the fact that he died in 2004). And I finally found the door to the staircase that goes upstairs, but the dream ended before I got around to wandering up there... and it wasn't via my alarm clock. I simply woke up, as today was my day off so there was no reason to set an alarm.

Oh, and those are some more sketches... every time the work weeks ends and my days off occur I think to myself about all the sketching and drawing and illustrating I could be doing. And then usually very little of it gets done. Sketching always seems to happen when it is least planned...

Anyway, sweet dreams, and have a pleasant weekend, and hopefully if the architect in your dreams moves your metaphorical staircase - you figure out the solution to whatever the problem was.

; )