Modeling isn’t a career.

Neither is DJ’ing.  I’m sure you can think of a bunch of others that fall into this category.  By definition, “career” means “an occupation or profession, especially one requiring special training, followed by one’s life work.”  There’s a reason for the existence of the expression “don’t quit your day job.”   Ultimately, your career should lead you to a way that lets you take care of someone else too, other than just your immediate needs.  There’s certainly a period in life when it’s acceptable to chase these occupations, but if they don’t work out, do the responsible thing and walk away, even if it’s to find a career that can support your hobby.

I’m starting to question memory in dreams.  In some of my more recent dreams, the feeling of being familiar with the dream happens.  Does this mean that I really did dream about that dream before, or is it all part of the fantasy and illusions in dreams?

Recently, I’ve had dreams that I’m in a play or a musical back at my high school.  I have to remember all my lines and dance routines and cues.  Last night’s dream was the actual performance of the play, and I had such a hard time remembering all my lines and parts, but I was very familiar with them.  There was a complicated costume change where I had to wear some sort of Roman soldier chest plate under my dress shirt so that I could make a critical change quick enough.  I remembered rehearsing that part…or did I?

I’m really curious as to whether my dreams are picking up fragments of old dreams and I’m interpreting them as memories.  Or maybe I’m just being fooled into thinking I’ve dreamed about it before.  Broken down, it’s all just chemical and biological reactions.

I’m actually getting a little stressed out about it in my waking life, as well as my dream state.  I’m worried that I’m not creating more unique dreams but I’m stuck on the same recycled concepts.  I’m worried my dream memory is failing and my dreams will not be as fun as they used to.  Maybe my dreams will wind up just being similar to the real life of an old man with Alzheimer’s.  Am I there already?

It’s important to dream, but know what’s a dream and what you’re just not working hard enough to achieve.

I wish I could be invisible.  Yeah, flying is nice, but it sounds tiresome.  I think invisibility has at least the possibility of happening, I mean, as soon as we figure out how to bend light.

I had a dream Kallie and I went to California to visit her family. Only, her family was an african american family. She had 2 half brothers and a half sister. Kallie is a halfrican. It was weird. They were throwing a picnic for us, and Kallie hadn’t seen them much, and I didn’t know much about them. I kept thinking, “I don’t remember these people at our wedding. I wonder if they even came.”

Kallie was joking around with her half sister, saying that Kallie’s dad was back in down, and her mom overheard and said, “wow, I didn’t know he was back in Michael.” As if the town they lived in was Michael, Ca. I didn’t realize until after I woke up that Michael is the name of Kallie’s biological dad. Anyway, the whole time it was very awkward and I wondered why Kallie kept in touch with these “siblings” because she obviously had nothing in common with them but an african american mother, that wasn’t even all that nice to us.

I woke up thankful for my mother in law

Here’s another video game idea that actually came to me as a result of a dream.  In the dream, I’m in a big city landscape, being chased down by military and such.  I end up stealing a Gatling gun and taking a bunch of them out at a time and then running away on roof tops and such.

So here’s the game idea.  Think Grand Theft Auto meets Streets of Rage 2.  It’s just a game of survival set in a city with lots of cars, fire escapes, roof tops, lamp posts, etc.  You start off walking down the street, either looking for fights, or fights are looking for you.  Like, you walk by a guy, you can get the party started right there and punch him in the face.  Or even some guy comes and mugs you.  Someone joins in to help him.  Someone else calls 911.  The cops come, they call for swat.  swat comes and they call in the national guard.  helicopters come in.  more and more men.  barricades are set up.

You have your choice of a few characters, each with their own specialties:

• Athletic karate chick – Quick, agile.  She can’t take a lot of damage.  I’m thinking there’s a UI (user interface) for points where she can grab on to.  Like a little “shiny spot that glimmers” on a lamp post or ladder.  You’d have her run at it and jump, she could grab on there and either climb to higher spots easily, or catapult herself at enemies.
• Big strong dude – He can take a lot of damage, but he’s slow.  He can’t fit in cars to drive them around, but he can pick them up and throw them.  He can break off lamp posts and swing them around.
• Weapons expert/PC Hacker – Probably comes equipped with tons of guns and bombs and such, but he/she can also use all the guns of the military and fly their helicopters.  Maybe something like being able to hear where the military is forming and planning next.  Maybe something like being able to shut down the powergrid and fighting in the dark with night vision goggles.
• Rich dude with political/social connections – Whatever you want, it’s at your finger tips.  You can make a call and have the military called off, you can call for someone to pick you up in a helicopter and take you away, you have your own body guard(s) that fight people off.

It’d be an arcade type of scoring, the point is just to get the biggest score/stay alive the longest/kill the most enemies.  The unique things to the game would be the “cooperation” moves when playing with multiple players.  the rich dude can order some awesome weapons that only the weapons expert can use.  the strong dude can throw the weapons dude at a helicopter for him to take it over.  The hacker can broadcast a message for the rich dude to the media to get news copters and reporters on the scene  (that would increase points multiplier as well as change difficulty).

Unique game play additions would be with media coverage.  If you’re on the news, people will come out and fight with you maybe.  You’re also less likely to die in front of a news camera.

Maybe the game takes a little bit of a riot/revolution plot.  Each character has a back story with why they need to fight against the government.  You start riots in cities across the country/globe, unlocking more and more cities until you get to the capital.  Maybe once you get the riots started in the city, you have to sneak away someone to the next city to get it started.

I’d play it.  Sounds like the multi-player would be where all the fun is.

I’ve written before that I’m convinced [at least my] deja vu’s are my past dreams coming true.  Part of my dream blogging is an effort to prove that.  The hard thing is to separate the dreams from things that can possibly happen from the impossible, and then remember the non-remarkable dreams after waking, and the final step is usually the kicker, to blog about it.  It’s easy to blog about the entertaining, far-fetched, or intriguing dreams, but it’s hard to place importance on the dreams, or part of the dreams, where I’m sitting at a table with 3 people and someone says or does something and another person says or does something else in reply.

A lot of my dreams take place at the estate (the house where I grew up).  I would say it’s the most frequent dream location, with Heritage Hills (the school I attended from 3rd grade until 9th grade) being a close second.  Both of these places no longer exist.  I know these will never turn into a deja vu.

A lot of my dreams involve my dad, or me at high school, or just at a younger age.  I know these can never happen.

It’s the dreams that are mundane, or even with people that I don’t know (yet?) that I need to focus on and document.

Sometimes, my dreams are hard to deal with.  Sometimes, I do things that I’d be ashamed to do in real life.  My dreams are in my memory though, so they don’t just fade away.  I remember them, as if I did them.  If the act alone is not bad enough, sometimes the emotions that go along with it make it a nightmare.  In real life, I’ve trained myself how to deal with my emotions.  Possibly as a result, my dreams become emotionally intense, and that emotion does not go away when I wake up…

She’s standing on the landing to the upstairs of my house.  I get down on my knees to be at her height and she laughs at me.  “How old are you, Daddy?”, she says to me as I chase her up a few steps.  “I’m 37″, I reply, knowing I’m lying, but not really able to remember the right answer.  She says she’s older than me.  I look at her analytically to figure out her age.  “No way, you’re like a 2 year old, Jule.”

I know her name.  She’s my daughter.  She looks like Mara Wilson of “Matilda” and Mrs. Doubtfire, only with shorter blonde hair.

As she climbs a few more stairs to the top, she calls out that she’s taller than me now.  I crawled up to her and tackled her to put her under my height again as she laughs.  Kallie’s at the top of the stairs, holding our son.  “I’m going to give Micah a bath.”,  she says.  I reply, “OK, I’ll keep Jule busy.”  As I roll around with Jule, a yellow lab comes up the stairs and joins in on the fun.

And then they’re gone.  Your first reaction is probably, “aww, that’s cute.”  My first reaction, in the middle of the night, is tears.  Actually, as I assume I felt myself waking up, I held Jule closer, starting to cry even in the dream, and that carried through to reality.  This was not a dream to me.  That was my child, I knew her, and I loved her.  I effing loved her, and then she’s gone.  It’s the same exact thing as death.  Even though the cause (what takes them away) is different, the effect is still feeling like someone you love is not there anymore, and never will be.  It’s pretty effed up.

That’s part of the reason I don’t want to talk about kids.  Dreams tend to pull inspiration from your real life and your actual thoughts that day.  I want to reduce the risk of me ever having dreams like that.  A beautiful nightmare?  Perhaps, but a nightmare still.  I’m still getting watery eyes just typing about her.

I had a pretty wicked dream last night about my step dad, Chris.  It was more like a short film itself.  It took place in this old time chinese town, with a royal family.  The first scene had this mother in a kimono at the door of a house on a rainy night, kissing her ~6 year old son good bye.  She was sad to see him go, but there was an urgency for his safety that he had to get away.  The boy is taken away by a guy in a long cape.  There was a guy with camera across the street that kept trying to take pictures of the boy, but was never able to get a shot of his face.  So there’s this theme of mystery around the son of the lady.

Next scene is years later, and a 20 something year old man, who is trying to find out if the lady is his mother.  They walk down a narrow path behind some houses with a waist high white wall to their left and these 1 story white houses/apartments with big windows to their right.  They’re walking and talking about their history, and she knows who he is, but she can’t admit who he is right away.  So, I’m like this bodyguard person walking with them, and every time we pass one of these large windows, I throw out my arms, grabbing my cape and blocking people from inside seeing the two together.  Then, one window has the same camera man behind it.  I bust through the window and try to chase him down, but I’m not successful.  He’s not able to get a shot of the man’s face though.  So I’ve done my job.

Then, we flash to modern day in my mom’s house.  I’m sleeping downstairs and I hear a noise upstairs.  I rush upstairs all ninja like, check the back bedrooms are clear, and when I come to the main door, it’s open.  Someone made their way into the house.  I’m yelling for Chris to let him know that the camera man is in the house.  I locked the door and start to make may way through the livingroom into the back bathroom.  Then I see the guy with the camera standing in the door way.  It’s friggin creepy to think about it right now.  So i lunge towards him, he goes into Chris’ room, where Chris and I try to corner him, but he slips back into the bathroom, still not being able to take a picture of Chris’ face.  When I go back into the bathroom area to find him, he had disappeared into piles of garbage bags of clothes that are all over the floor.  Our old dalmation, Dante, is there, and he sniffs him out and the dude jumps up out of the bags with his camera in hand and I throw out my arms with my cape and block a picture of Chris again. 

I woke up somewhere after that.  This dream is a little foggier than some of my dreams I write about, but the concept seemed pretty cool.  I could see a little short movie being made where the identity of the heir to the throne must be kept safe.

When the most beautiful words I never spoke,
Are at the tip of my tongue and then I choke
On the possibility that you might respond,
And then we’ll meet, and I’ll grow fond
Of the way your hair slowly covers your eye.
Or the way your hand gently brushes mine.
Or how the blood from my heart rushes
At every one of your sparking touches;
Forcing my eyes to shut and body stilled;
A quick deep breath and my lungs are filled.
I can’t move. The only thing moving is my mind,
And all the images of you that it can find;
Projected onto the back of my eyelids as a screen;
Debuting a movie that no one else has seen…
Or ever will, because once I regain sight,
And start to gaze at the most beautiful thing in my life,
The movie goes back into production inside my head.
But maybe I’ll get to catch a sneak peak as I sleep in my bed.
All this goes on in the matter of seconds.
And when it’s all over, my heart beckons
For another moment just like it.
A moment where my body won’t fight it.
How your touch invokes something so intangible.
So much beyond anything imaginable.
And all I can do is imagine us there,
At that same table, at that same restaurant,
At the same time, and our bodies in the same spot;
Your eyes focused on mine, and mine on yours.
And we stop time around us for what seems like hours.
Just you and I, continuing our lives without the world around us.
And we’ll continue talking about how love found us,
And put us together for the very first time.
How everything was easy as it just fell into line.
I never knew what I was looking for until I met you.
I never knew how to act until I watched what you do.
When you talk to people that you don’t know.
How they walk away after with a certain glow.
And as for me, I’m a lighthouse shining bright;
Protecting your shores from lost ships at night.
Letting them know that I am guarding your beaches.
And that tonight, land will be out their reaches.
They’ll have to set anchor in the ocean as blue,
As the eyes I’m staring at; the eyes of you.

This was a poem I wrote back in February of 2007 I was reminded of it when I watched this short film:

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

- Edgar Allan Poe