"The notion that such persons are gay of heart and carefree is curiously untrue. They lead, as a matter of fact, an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats."
- James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Is there a new trend on the horizon?

I am forever telling my husband, "I had the strangest dream last night." He replies by staring at me, waiting a beat, then saying, "Stranger than the last strangest dream you 'ever' had?" He might air-quote the 'ever.' This doesn't deter me from announcing that every unusual dream I have is the strangest one.

That being said...

Last night truly was the strangest dream I've ever had. I can only remember one other dream that approaches it, and that one was a psychological self-realization in two acts, a divine A-HA.

This dream was strange in a different way. First of all, I wasn't playing myself in it. I was a young girl, late teens to early twenties. I can't tell you much more about my character, except I seemed to have long, blonde hair, which had nothing to do with anything that I can think of.

In my dream, Poseidon's son fell in love with me.This didn't work for me for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I lived on land and could not see a future, well, under the sea. For another thing, I already had a boyfriend, the son of another, lesser god (don't remember who). I don't know that I was crazy in love with him, but at least our dates didn't result in drowning, or pruney fingertips.

Poseidon's son was not to be deterred. He kidnapped me and took me to his home in the ocean. As he pulled me into the tide, I protested that I couldn't breathe underwater. He turned (I still see the smile on his face) and said, "I've given you gills so you can marry me and we can live together forever."

We dove into the water and it felt like I was drowning but not drowning, because my brain was telling me I couldn't breathe water while my gills were taking over and letting me breathe water. There was a very visceral feeling of all this in my throat and nose - even in my ears. It was unpleasant, let me tell you.

My boyfriend tried to rescue me, but as I awoke, Poseidon's son was threatening to take my gills away if my boyfriend didn't leave. If he couldn't have me, he would drown me. My last thought before opening my eyes was to pray to Poseidon to step in and save me from his son.

After pondering on it for a day, I'm now starting to wonder... could some YA author replace the romance of vampires/werewolves/sparkly-but-evil-paranormal-creatures with Greek gods? How about mer-men?

P.S. Aren't I right? That was a weird dream.

1 comment:

Tameri Etherton said...

That was a very weird dream. Tell me, did you casually stroll to the bathroom mirror just to make sure you didn't have gills? I would've.

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