For the last several months I have been writing my dreams in longhand every morning, whatever I can remember from the night before.
Also, I’ve taken infrequent notes about waking life, treating it similarly to a dream.
Now, it is night, and I’m going to write something of my day before I go to bed, remembering my day as if it were a dream, with the added help of devices and notes. My notes from last night’s dream will play a large part in the process.
I was just telling Ily about this new plan. I was reading a Spanish dictionary, seeing words in the definitions that I didn’t know, having to look them up and finding more words I didn’t know. Lalan told me this helped her learn Spanish when she lived in Spain as a teenager. In one definition there were the words ‘Joroba’ and ‘chepa’. Ily says they refer to hunch-backed old people. I forget which definition they were in. Neither of them has its own entry in this dictionary.
I’m switching to the present tense now for these recollections, the same as when I write dreams in the morning. I am remembering. I am accessing memories. These memories exist in the present. Spanish language has 14 tenses, seven simple and seven complex.
In my memory, I’m thinking I had used up all my good tea before I went to the United States. The tin was empty when I left, but now it is full of bad tea with little or no flavor, but a dark color. I ask Ily what happened and she insists she didn’t touch it while I was gone. It looks like someone transferred the contents of another container (low quality tea I bought months ago by accident) into my tin. I throw the tea in the trash and make a cup of the tea I brought back from Whole Foods. I steep it twice, then again. This reminds me, it is still steeping.
A moment of feeling a little cranky dissipates after I eat something and drink the tea. I also make a batido of orange juice and parsley, blended and strained. This is our main method of getting something green in our diets.
On my way to work, I walk past the gas station, called La Bomba here. Just past the gas station, I see something on the sidewalk, a dead bird. When I tell Ily about it, she says it is bad luck to see this. But for me it is not. The dictionary has a word, agüero, meaning omen. I tell Ily about it. I think it is related to the English word augur. A lot of Spanish words start with the letter A.
I see the dead bird, and I see a smallish dog, a good looking, well-proportioned, brown and black dog like a miniature short-haired German Shepherd. It gently sniffs the dead bird, then puts its cheek down on it and rolls its head over the bird. I find this amusing, it brings a smile to my face. I continue walking, looking back at the dog rolling on its back on the bird, working the scent into its fur.
It is a beautiful day, cloudy and sunny, a little overcast, with the blue sky visible. This part is hazy in my memory. I wear my hat on and off as I pass in and out of the shade. For some reason it is much more confusing to speak of the walk to work in the present tense. A dream is easy to relate this way, maybe because it doesn’t “matter.” But really, this story doesn’t really “matter” either.
At work, I do some testing of websites and emails, read some news and bloggery. I look at entries in my own blog from years ago and discover they aren’t as badly written as I imagine them to be. My blog is probably just as interesting as a lot of other blogs.
My dream from this morning is of a sunny beautiful day in Monterey, a trip to a restaurant, a day of taxi driving, a meeting with an old friend, doubts and worries are prominent. This relates to my present life, a mindful of thoughts.
Mary reads my blog, sends email: she likes it! This leads to the aforementioned revisiting and reevaluation. Maybe Jackie will like it too.
At lunch time I have vegetables, mostly carrots and chayote, plus green salad, boiled yuca and breaded fried fish, probably farmed tilapia. The salad is good, and I remember the dressing while I’m at the counter, squeezing it from a plastic bottle.
Before I see the bird and dog, I’m walking along the broken sidewalk past the bus stop, thinking about dreaming, listening to my thoughts, thinking of ways to bring more consciousness to waking and dreaming life. I want guidance from a higher power, my higher self, I want to open myself to this guidance, dwell in it like my wife does with her God. I rarely think of guidance or my higher self.
My plan is to be more present in general, more attentive to what’s actually happening, less lost in thoughts. It is a habit I haven’t developed too much. My dreams are karmic, for the most part, replaying the past over and over. Memories of yesterday’s dreams contain material related to the day before, when the decision to write before bed was made. I like the passive construction of sentences. I like to write in the passive voice.
Now it really is time for bed. Robin W. is on tv, playing a priest/marriage counselor. Ily laughs. It is kind of funny.
