Month: September 2014

“Are you the seven-bell Dane?” An Alice in Wonderland sort of dream

I’m running in wide long carpeted corridors. The place is gigantic. I am in America, this is certain. The mix of people I see however is strange. Clusters of students carrying books, wealthy looking elderly people in formal dress.

Even a whole burlesque party, progressing slowly through a massive hall, women laughing loudly at men’s jests and waving colourful feather boas. I slithered among them in a hurry. I reached three sets of double wooden doors leading to a bigger area. A dead end it seemed. I doubled back, paused.

High-heel shoes, glittering slender naked body, small firm breasts, she wore a costume made of golden silk and rhinestones, two fine chains of gold crossed her chest and rippled on her shoulders. Two people at her sides hold her graceful hands. “Make way!” one of them said. “Make way! The artist needs to prepare for the performance!” She seemed absent; is she there of her own will? Not my business, I must be running again.

More corridors. Marble halls and wooden intricate staircases. More young people in groups, dressed in everyday clothes. I’ll take a left here, it has to be this way.

“Are you the seven-bell Dane?” a young man asks behind me. I slow down, turn to him, frown and tilt my head. Seven-bell? I have no idea what he’s talking about. I tell him in my mind. I am in such a rush, can’t he see that? He continues unsure, “Err, are you… Dane?” Already he’s raising a hand in an apologetic gesture and turns away. I’m half French half Italian and I’m lost, dammit!

I take a left, running –I’m so late by now. The hallway leads me to a velvet padded lecture hall. An elegant old woman comes forward. “Are you lost, child?” In my mind I tell her I left all my things in a meeting room and I’ve been running like crazy for too long to find it again. I don’t know where I am, which room I left. I don’t even know where to start. Purple velvet –what is this room? “Sorry, I’ve got to go!” I jumped in what had become a thirty-feet purple velvety cliff. I dived in little gravity, bounced off a purple cushion at an angle, kicked at another one and landed at the bottom.

Painting life

A clearing in the forest. A medium canvas on a wooden easel. I dreamt I was painting a woman.

She was standing, her back to me, in a pastel pink satin and organza dress. I was painting her neck, the fine strands of wavy hair rippling under her large-brim hat, around her silky shoulders.

My brush gave her life. She was free from the canvas and stood before me gazing at the forest and humming to herself, as I worked on her green-grey hat. It stirred gently in the wind and so did her auburn hair curling around her neck.

The forest murmured in the wind. The canopy swayed and rustled, patches of sun light danced on the ground. I kept weaving intricate straw braids on her hat. In a strong gust of wind, leaves fell from the trees –we shivered.

I stepped back when I was done and contemplated the canvas. Such disappointment! I looked at my fat brush, grudgingly. This wasn’t the right tool for such delicate work! Yet it seemed so perfect, so real moments before.

It was a beautiful dream within a strange dream.

I don’t paint very often and I don’t have an illustration of the mysterious auburn belle in pink, so all I can think of is this yellow iris in my parents’ garden that I drew on iPad last May.

fuzzy looking digital painting of a yellow iris close up

My little adventure in my little room in London

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When I opened the door to my little hotel room in London, I liked it immediately. Small but clear, crowded with two beds, but cozy. I noted the kettle and a good supply of freeze dried instant coffee, a tiny flat screen TV that I won’t watch high in a corner, flowery curtains at the window, a pair of cheap dark flowery paintings above the queen bed, two bedside lamps with flowery light shades. I sat at the tiny desk facing a mirror. This is when I noticed the lamp shades were crooked.

I made coffee and then looked for wifi. The password seemed all right but it was taking forever to get through. Airplane mode on and off didn’t help, so I rebooted my smartphone. This is when I PUK locked it. First time this happened to me!

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I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my rather miserable expression –and a crooked lamp shade. I sorted out the PIN code situation using my laptop to hop on the wifi and find my PUK code, but the whole thing took a half hour.

At that point I rewarded myself by sorting out the vile crooked shades one! That required unscrewing each light bulb, removing the shade, unscrewing the flat ring, screwing it back upside down (or downside up?), resting down the lamp shade back on and screwing back the bulb.

It’s the little things.