Crack dreams of space, and a video

[la_belle_laide]

The last two dreams I had were so cracked out that I have to write them. I totally know that the first one is from watching Gundam Wing before bed which makes me the biggest geek, but both dreams still beat the ones I've been having. (Like a friend of mine warned me that I would, I keep having these dreams that Dad is still around, and then when I wake up it takes a few seconds to remember.) I much prefer these crazy space dreams.

I love space dreams and wish I had them more often. When I dream about planets and space and stuff, they become actual characters rather than settings. And they're larger in my dreams than would fit in my waking brain. Space seems as huge as it is, but somehow makes more sense in dreams. Space-dreams are majestic and insane, but usually fun.

The one I had two nights ago starts out where I'm watching these Gundams and Mobile Dolls battle in outer space. Just like in the anime, distant battles are represented by gold “explosion” balls. So I'm watching all of this and then I realize that I'm not in any kind of suit or shuttle or any sort of vehicle myself. Instead, I'm just hanging on to the string of a balloon. I look down below me and I can see the Earth in this tremendous distance. Not only that, but I can even see planets I don't recognize ahead of me, planets from other solar systems and I think, “Oh crap, I'm way too far up! I need to get back to Earth.” So I climb up the string and I see that this balloon is freaking HUGE, and it has a button on it where I can little by little let the helium out (yeah yeah, helium, zero gravity, I know, but hello, I was floating in oxygen-less space with no suit, so.) I start to let the helium out and slowly descend back to Earth, finally landing in my back yard.

I deflate the balloon in my yard and then I realize that I shouldn't have come all the way down because now I'm too far from the action, and what if they need me? So I need to re-inflate the balloon to get back up. Except now it won't re-inflate. It's this huge, yellow rubber thing, and I keep pressing the “inflate” button and it just won't go. So, I crawl inside of it, into a cavernous room. But instead of looking like a room you might find in a spacecraft or something, it's like someone's attic, with old furniture and things like that. I think, “Well, this is what's bogging it down; I have to get rid of some of this stuff.” (thanks, dream symbolism,) and I start throwing things out of it, like toasters and stuff. Eventually I get enough thrown out that I can re-inflate the balloon. It gets bigger and I grab the string and start to go up again, but I only make it as far as the trees before the balloon starts to go all wacky and out of control. I can't seem to steer it anymore, and I think about that huge battle out there and those unusual planets. I know it's dangerous to go flying up there into this distant, chaotic space, but I'm going anyway, just hoping that I can control the balloon by the time I get there. It was a little scary, but more fun than anything. I felt excited.

That was dream number one. Last night's dream was just as cracked out, but I think it was shorter.

In this one, I'm in outer space again, except this time I'm specifically looking for different planets. For some reason I'm out there scouting for something habitable. There are some other people with me, though I'm not sure who they are. (And waking, I'm not sure who they represent in real life.) A blond young man and a few women, that's all I remember.

So, I find this tiny blue planet and I grab it, thinking that I will bring it back to Earth. It's small enough to fit in my hand but it's impossibly heavy. As I'm bringing it down to Earth I realize that it actually is Earth, only another version. (And I have no idea how I'm flying through space this time, by the way. There was no balloon. It didn't interfere with the dream logic, though.) As I begin to land on Earth, again in my back yard, there is a summer party going on. It's night-time and people are jumping into the pool. The tiny Earth lands in the water, and suddenly it's not summer anymore, but Autumn, and not night, but day, and suddenly there are no more people in the pool; rather the pool is covered and the little planet is revolving in an eddy in the shallow water. As it spins, the sky on my Earth gets dark really quickly. It occurs to me that the tiny Earth is somehow controlling what's happening on my own Earth and that it's making time move too quickly. And it's in shadow. If I can move it into the light and slow it down, I can fix the sudden dark. So I put my hand in the water and turn it a little bit the other way. Then there are all of these people around, getting ready to jump into the pool and I realize that I've turned back time.

This is, of course, part wishful thinking and part the whole time-travel aspect of my own novel. I realize my dream symbolism is about as subtle as a brick to the teeth, but what can I say, I'm a simple creature. ^_~;; At any rate, I like my space-dreams, even the ones that are scary (like the one I had about superhuge beings opening the sky from the other side and stepping through, or the moon turning into a tremendous lemon slice that I could see out my window.) Even when they're weird and kind of spooky, they're still awesome and majestic.

My dreams totally make me wish that I could draw.

Except if I could draw, I would spend the whole day drawing scenes from my novel. And hot men. ;)

So it's really funny that I had those dreams and then this Carl Sagan / Stephen Hawking* music video showed up in my life today:

Randomly, I got a PM from this other writer on this writing board where I hang out. We started out talking about Kung Fu (she does Wushu,) and then when I answered her in a thread, I saw this link in her sig line. She didn't say what it was, and I have this rule of never clicking on any links if I don't know what's' in them. Not because I am afraid to get viruses, spam or porn or anything, but just because I don't want to waste my time clicking on someone's link if I think I might not be interested. I tell this to people who email me with stuff saying simply “CHECK THIS OUT!” No, I'm not going to check this out until you give me a hint. Rare exceptions: one specific friend of mine on LJ always has good links, so I usually click on whatever she posts even though I have no idea what it's going to be. And once in a while, someone will strike me as nice and interesting enough that I'll go, “well, why not?” And this gal just happened to come along with this link in her sig.

You must imagine my surprise when I clicked on it. I've seen, read, heard variations of these clips before, obviously, but this whole thing was new to me. And because it caught me on a day when I was already feeling space-love and very much in need of that kind of scientific beauty, why, I just have to take it as a sign. :)







*HOW IS IT that fandom has forever sullied the once-innocent little slash?

Comments

[skitty-kitty.livejournal.com]

That vid is really cool and mildly hypnotic, though that may be more my fascination with Sagan's crazy eyebrows. :D

Lol, fandom is taking over everything. Every. Thing. The world will soon be ours.

[shonagonchan.livejournal.com]

Man, I just feel so ashamed that I wrote it that way and then thought it might look like I was hinting at, like, Sagan/Hawkings or... Yeah, no.

Selling your book

[(Anonymous)]

Kapunua,

You must simplify to the point of lying in a letter attempting to sell your book. Read the blurbs on books in the bookstore; then read the book. Often it's nothing like the blurb. I wrote a book review of a novel. I read the novel three times before I wrote the review. I KNEW what that book was about. Afterward, I gazed at the blurb on the back of the book; it oversimplified to the point of being an absolute lie. It was bs. It's like Seinfeld - He sold his show by saying it would be about how a comic gets his material. That was a lie. The show was never about that. But he needed a hook to sell it, a passable lie, a way to get through a thick skull quickly and let the man who could put him on TV "think" he knew what the show would be about. For what it's worth.

-Cloud

Re: Selling your book

[shonagonchan.livejournal.com]

I've found myself resorting to kind of shading the truth when the truth is just too damn long / difficult to explain. I mean, they're going to find out what the story is (hopefully, if anyone ever asks for a manuscript some time :) ) and then I just have to hope that it doesn't make them feel disappointed or mislead.

I know (as my awesome friend and writing confidant pointed out recently as well) that I'm going to run into trouble with the ending, at least in the synopsis. Because I don't like happy endings and didn't write one, and I more or less left it open. I mean, it's a series and all so hey, cliffhanger. Except, no one wants to take a chance on a series, so yeah, that's giving me some trouble.

Hmm. Meditate on this I will.

In the meantime, it's nice to read you. :)

[malenka-zeut.livejournal.com]

That video is fantastic! Thanks for sharing.