Dreams of Dreams Lost

I’ve just woken up from a dream of losing my car. I was with friends heading to our vehicles after an engagement, I think we had just been out to eat lunch. We were getting into different vehicles and for some reason I was thinking I was riding with another person but that car was full. I questioned myself and realized that no, I had actually driven myself to this meeting and started to wonder where my car was and search for it in the parking lot. Someone - a colleague, a friend, possibly a character foil or sidekick went looking with me. As we neared the edge of the parking lot I saw my car - a 1978 white Ford Granada - my real-life first car rolling away of its own accord, slowly at first but then it began to pick up speed.

At that point my unnamed sidekick turned to me then back to the car and said, “Oh you have one of those cars. You know they’re known for doing that,” as it careened over curbs and then launched itself into the flooded and raging river to the left of the lot. Running to the edge we stood there for a moment watching it float away, bobbing in the fast moving currents. This of course, was not agreeable to me, and I (we?) took off running after it. First running across a busy highway bridge that didn’t cross the river but ran parallel to it for some reason. Eventually the river wound its way into a more populated inner-city location. For some reason it seemed like Pittsburgh but I could be projecting. The river still raged but now was bordered on either side by high concrete walls topped with roads and small shops on either side. Detritus and other vehicles were now accumulating in the river with my white Granada.

We (I?) continued running along the river looking over the railings frantic to catch it. The river burst over the banks and into an area with side streets and houses. At this point there was no difference between the streets and the river other than the tops of stop signs differentiating the streets. People were caught in the water trying to simply get to higher ground, eventually a number of us were able to climb steps and get inside a house. Abandoned or condemned I’m not sure. It was dark, we were cold and exhausted, but safe in our domestic ark, or so we thought. There were two men (boys) who, looking out only for themselves decided to take my pocket knife - because that is always the key instrument one needs in a survival situation? And a woman’s pair of sneakers. Somewhat confused and a bit fearful, no one put up any resistance. Silently we waited to see if these ravens would return. Only in hindsight and using third person omniscient storytelling can I tell you that they were quickly swept away soon after stepping away from the house.

Eventually conversations started among those remaining. I mentioned the situation which caused me to arrive here, explaining the loss of my seemingly self aware vehicle’s intent on escape. The young woman who's shoes were taken expressed genuine empathy for me saying that it was an awful but odd thing to have happened. My response was something to the matter of “Well, actually this is the second time this has happened. The car I had before this did the same thing.” At this moment in the dream and only in the strangest depths of dream logic did I realize that I was actually dreaming this dream and that I had indeed had this dream before, but wanting to see how things played out I kept this to myself in the dream. Encouraged by her kindness, I asked the young woman to come out with me to find our way home, at which point she informed me that she was actually home but that she was ready to step outside to see what awaited. We opened the door to see the floods had resided, the sun dappled streets empty and drying and clean up of the carnage beginning. I never found my Granada but realized maybe I didn’t really need it anyway. At this point, the dream completed and resolved, I woke up, made coffee and began to write.

It’s a fun dream to consider and contemplate meaning but maybe a bit too fresh to really commit to any particular interpretation. I’m not sure I even want to comment on meaning other than to say that those things that we most want in this earthly life may not always be what we need. Making peace with this is a lifelong journey.

I also have to say that something similar actually happened in real life while in grad school. I was visiting my friend Anastasia and as we sat discussing life and school I looked up to see my truck rolling backwards in the parking lot. I probably have never run faster in my life trying to get to the truck which I had apparently left in neutral before it crashed into other parked cars. Luckily I had not locked the doors and was successful in opening the door, jumping into the moving vehicle and stopping it before any damage was done.

The work on the film came to a crashing stop when last semester started. I’ve since started working again on it, even if only for a bit before the spring semester starts. I’m continuing to rough in the architecture of the room. I’ve been working on a section that will be tiles and recently have begun to install the ceiling and areas over my house’s old duct work which does not figure in with the aesthetics of the film. I’m hoping that once all of the major construction is done the finishing will be able to go quickly. I continue to dream of a large barn to build sets in instead of my small basement. Hopefully the Granada is not my barn.

A Feeling Best Forgotten

A small snippet from latest draft. Keep moving and watch where you're going. It is no time to be wistful, but instead be thankful for the good that can be found and embrace that which you have no control over. It may be of purpose to you someday.

Thought-Knots

I want to be honest. These posts are less about updating others on my project and more about keeping me on track and focused. I also hold no illusions that I'm reaching vast numbers of people. I'm no Instagram influencer and I'm fine with that and apologize up front for anything that seems too self-indulgent. Keeping all of this in mind, these ramblings will probably have and will continue to exhibit a fair amount of hashing out thoughts and circling back on ideas since repetition often helps my understanding. It's also a good way to work a problem to find patterns and meanings that I often don't see on a first pass, let alone the twentieth pass. I do hope that others may find some solace or encouragement from the occasional observations found here. Lessons learned should be lessons shared.

Some of these ideas, problems and reflections are specific to this current narrative project, but they are also certainly connected to the times we're living through; How I/we navigate this crazy and beautiful world we're given, how we respond to things out of our control and where and with whom we find our anchor and peace. Other ideas I often grapple with are long standing issues. Annoying and often fleeting moments of thoughts that are somehow entangled in a thought-knot, looping in and around itself that has to be worked out. The tighter and larger these thought-knots are the more pervasive they are, creeping back into everyday thinking as annoying distractions.

One such annoying distraction manifests itself generally as second guessing. It happens sometimes when I'm walking through the set to get to my office where I'm teaching remotely these days. More often it's on those days that I have planned to get a lot done and for whatever reason nothing is going smoothly, everything is halted by distractions or setbacks and somedays it's just that general morass we're all bogged down in to some degree. I wonder if this project will ever get finished. I wonder if it will be any good, but more often than not it comes down to something that is totally irrelevant at this point. I wonder what would have happened if only.

If only is a useless thought, but it is exactly this thought-knot that I can't seem to untangle, and I know it's tied to an experience I had early in my teaching career when I was strongly encouraged to not pursue larger projects that would require extended amounts of time to complete. The suggestions by others was that if I were to put multiple years into a project and then the project failed, my attempts at tenure would be placed in severe jeopardy. I dutifully took these well intentioned suggestions to heart and pivoted directions. I quickly but reluctantly abandoned the feature-length experimental narrative project I had invested time and creative energies into and instead tried to work on smaller and quicker projects to find ways to fit my work into an expected mold. There were certainly some successes that came from this and a fair amount of creative work that I am satisfied with, however I often still wonder if only I had continued on the path, what would my creative work look like now. If I had not so easily turned away from the path that I was already set on, where would I professionally be right now?

Of course it doesn't matter. These are questions that serve no purpose other than to distract, and they've done a substantial job of doing that. Somewhere deep down I think one of the driving forces behind this project is my need to untangle this thought-knot. If I can allow myself to create the work that I want to, to spend the time needed to realize the project and see it to its rightful completion then maybe if only will be replaced with as a result of, and then hopefully that thought-knot will loosen, if at least a little bit.

This past month I found that seesaw I was so proud of keeping balanced in my last post start to tip drastically in favor of things not related to the project. I have to be very careful now, because it's too easy to pause, and as soon as I do that, then it's a slippery slope towards allowing more excuses to take precedent. Life distractions are easy to accommodate and justify. It's easy to fear this happening but I also take solace in knowing that this is a long term project and not something I'm sprinting to finish. It will get done when it gets done. I have that luxury.

Still, there are small triumphs. I now have installed and wired all the lights on one wall of the set. They aren't finished and have a way to go before they actually resemble what I have in mind but it gives me something to build on and look forward to. I've also built the hidden door/wall that leads from the set to my office. Still some kinks to work out, but I think the plan will work. The challenges of working with limitations always create interesting results.

I tested a fog machine that I had planned on using during production. A number years ago I used one on Soulmaker, but this one is too powerful and the space too small for it to work effectively and safely. My first go filled the set completely. It took opening basement windows and multiple box fans to clear out the space. Certainly impressive and fun but not what I needed. I'm looking at alternatives including canned atmosphere which I just recently learned about.

Sometimes, progress is illusive. Sometimes, progress is made in such small increments that it is imperceptible, and sometimes, progress is simply more painful than we'd like, so we stop trying. The results of our progress may be hard to see, let alone understand or appreciate at the time, but when we are patient and willing to take the time to look closely and reexamine it, this progress manifests itself in revealed answers. This is something that we often have to remind ourselves. It's easy to get distracted by those thought-knots that only serve to distract, and create doubt in what we do.

I'm looking forward to working this knot out and unravelling another distraction to wrap it up neatly and put it away for good.