Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A Dream and A Book Review


I have a reoccurring dream that all of civilization resides on various platforms atop seemingly endless pillars in the sky. The way to get from one platform to another is always very difficult and dangerous.
One of the ways to get from place to place was roller coaster-like contraptions that would swing up, changing every few seconds.  They would switch entrances to intice you with, from a flashy McDonald's sign sporting a large, frankly creepy Ronald McDonald clown, to a simple portal leading to the grocery store.
The way to board one of these swirling, precarious tubes was to jump from your platform into it.
Sounds easy enough, until you take into account the empty space beneath you leading to fluffy, white, unsupportive clouds.
I've always had a bit of a fear of heights, and my usual way of getting past my fear in the real world is to estimate how high up I am, calculate how high I have been in the past (say, while riding in an airplane) and tell myself "I've been higher than this before."
This method, while effective in my usual physical surroundings, has no use in dream world; I am up above thick clouds where I have no idea how high I am, for I cannot see the earth, or whatever planet I am perched above, and thin atmosphere is not an issue, so I don't even have whether or not I can breath to give me a point of reference.

I am usually a small child in these dreams, with some sort of mother figure with me whom I cling to.
It is so windy on these minuscule islands that I feel as if I could blow off of at any moment, so I hold onto whatever I can, be it the aforementioned parent or a seemingly sturdy piece of architecture. 

A book I've been trying to finish for the past four months finally, mercifully, ended (more accurately, I skipped to the end because I could not bare the author's anthropomorphic comments about her horses anymore, among other idiotic behavior she boldly displayed) without much character growth and no change to the plot other than a horse the author was trying to nurse back to health had to be put down because of a fatal tumor.

I half-enjoyed reading the book when she was actually talking about the animals, which the title indicated it was written about, until she displayed how LITTLE she knew about horses.
She wrote affectionately about how her lead mare would push her around, bite her, and step on her feet if she didn't give the horse a treat, or it's feed right away, or if she happened to give one horse more attention then the lead mare.
She would also pretend she knew what the horses were thinking, and wrote things like 'one group looked like it was gossiping about the other horses.' It was irritating to me, reading about how she would project her own insecurities and criticisms onto other humans and onto her horses.

This was not a fictional character. The author was writing about herself.
She also claimed that she had a degree in English, and that she used to teach it to highschool students, when her writing and ability to make a pleasant to read paragraph was no better than my ability to do so, and I am a unschooled young adult, not a middle aged English teacher.

Really, I would never have found this unhappy piece of literature if it wasn't for Glamazon.com suggesting it to me based on my interest in a far superior book, that was more of a informational novel on how the author became a equine facilitated therapist, not an autobiography about a dysfunctional nitwit.

Anyway, people irritate me, and I wish more people were actually exceptional at what they do.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Dreams are Fickle Things

Recently, I had a very realistic dream that a friend of mine was standing in my room with no pants on while screeching like a bird. The fact that it seemed realistic is the interesting part to me.

When I was 15, I dreamt that insects were eating people's faces.
Like most of my dreams, the plot shifted many times; the flesh-eating affliction became a disease, a chemical burn, rats were at one point the culprit, and so fourth.

The only thing that remained consistent was the rotten hole in my ankle between my ankle bone and my Achilles tendon on my left foot.
The wound looked much like what other people were experiencing: black, rotten flesh that covered a good deal of my foot and,  from the side, you could see a hole,  the diameter of a quarter, running right through my foot at the aforementioned spot between the ankle and Achilles tendon.

Most of this dream was spent hobbling around on my damaged appendage.

Many of my dreams for the past six years have revolved around vivid and violent imagery.
Why, just a few nights ago I had a dream about a man and a woman sitting in a white room. They were both very pale, with lips blood red. Their hair was jet black, and their eyes were just as dark. 
The man began to shave off the woman's long hair, until only a few stringy patches were left.
He then cut off her left arm with a long silver knife, which upset him as he realized she could no longer hold him.
Desperate for her affection, he placed her right hand on his cheek, and began sewing it in place.

The only colors were red, black, and white.

As he ties off the last stitch, the scene fades away and I drift on to another dream.



Falling off of Horses

I love horses. 
I have loved them for my whole life. 
My first experience with a horse when I was an infant, my family took me out to the pasture and placed me on a horse's back.
From then on I loved riding. When I got older (4-5) I would spend most of my time with the horses.
My horse, whom I have had since I was two years old, died this past year.
His tendons dropped (they stretched so much that he had a hard time moving) and he was in constant pain. We had him on heavy pain medication, but one day he just lay down and died.
Our horses were trained in the Pat Parelli natural horsemanship method, which is all about your relationship with your horse. 

I never liked the strict horse training disciplines such as dressage, showing, jumping, etc.
My favorite way to ride was with no tack; when I was 10-12 I would go out with no bridal, no saddle, and sometimes no clothes.
It was wonderful, just me and my horse, Ellaruso.
Although no-tack was my preferred method, I would sometimes ride with a bridal and saddle, especially when I wanted to go down the park road for a long trail ride.

One day, when I was six, I was riding Ell alone in the pasture. We were doing great, I was relaxed and comfortable, secure in my new black western kid's saddle.

My father came into the pasture to check on me, he watched me for a while, then left through the big, metal gate.
A few minutes later our horse, Avalon, bolted out the gate my father had accidentally left open. 
Ell quickly thundered after Avalon with me unwillingly clinging to his back
I can remember bouncing up and down saying "Woah" and trying to hold onto the saddle horn to keep from flying off.
Ell had completely forgotten that I existed, and about half way through their run (they only ran up and down a long strip that was cut for power lines), Ellaruso stumbled and I tumbled off into the wild Yaupon bushes.

Luckily, the horses were fine and I only walked away with scratches, bruises, and a tetanus shot.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

On the Rocky Road to Dublin 12345.

We're starting to eat a raw food diet again, yummy, but my belly still hurts.

I was four years old. A small group of adults were nearby; my Mom, Dad, Uncle, and Peter, my sister's boyfriend at the time.
I splashed into the water in my blue one-piece swim suit.
The current was strong in spots, and the rocks slippery, but the water was only 12 to 24 inches deep where I started. It became deeper (3-5 feet) farther down the river.
As I happily jumped from rock to rock pretending to be a wild horse crossing a treacherous river, I slipped and fell into the water.
I wasn't initially alarmed, thinking I could grab a hold of a nearby rock to keep myself from washing down the river, but the slime and moss on the half-submerged stones made me unable to grasp anything that may have stopped me from floating away.
By this time I was panicking. I screamed and tried to dig my feet into the mud or swim against the current, but I made no headway. 

Everyone heard me cry out, and the one that jumped into the water to get me was Peter. I found this ironic, later on in life.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Unicorns and a Fear of the Dark

When I was five I had a dream that I was playing in a field of cartoon flowers with a unicorn. The unicorn let me ride on it's back.

Around the same age (four or five) I lived in a small cabin with my mom.
My mother would spend some time during the evening with me, then when night fell she'd leave and tell me she'd be right back.
She would never come back. I used to stay and wait for her, sometimes I'd cry hoping she'd hear me.
Usually I wouldn't be able to stand it. I would run through the dark up the dirt path, through the machine shop and into the incense factory where my Dad lived.
This was where the kitchen, refrigerator, and general food stock was. There was also a television, which seemed to be the thing that held my mother against her word.
When I went up to the factory, I would always run.
I was terrified of the dark, and a flashlight just made more shadows for my imagination to alter into gremlins and ghouls.
So I ran, as fast as I could to get to the next safe place.

Once I arrived, my mother would always give me a look of confusion, as if to ask why I was scared and out of breath.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

My Earliest Memory

I was born in a cabin in the woods.
I can recall everything of that old building; the bare particle board walls, the beautiful Rain Dragon a friend of ours painted that I was born under, the hole in the floor my mother burned from our old wood fire heater, the piles and piles of things my parents hoarded that I would climb across to get to the bed.
We never put up insulation, we never built the cinder block extension on the back like my sister had always planned, we never really finished any of the buildings we started.
It was in this unfinished house that most of my earliest memories and dreams occurred.  

I am laying on my back, looking up at my tiny, wrinkled hands.
A feeling of anger overtakes me, because my hands look like those of an ape.
Hating the way my hands looked, I would keep my fingers straight as often as possible.

Like so many other events, I can no longer recall if this was a true memory or a vivid dream.

All through my early childhood, I would have bouts of self-judgement such as this.