Marinating...

It's unusual to have four writing groups and one salon meeting in one week--but what an inspiring week this has been!

Each group--all women--is a unique and wonderful burst of talent and humor, leaving tracks in the minds of all of us. We want to write for all kinds of different reasons: to pay attention to my life, as one said; to publish, another said; to be with like-minded creative people, another said.  And me--I'm just over-the-moon lucky to get to be the official leader.

As a college teacher, I always enjoyed interacting with students, but you don't actually learn all that much from 18 and 19-year-olds.  In groups of women, you learn something new from each person, always, every time. There's a freedom in doing what we choose to do, without grades, without being compared with anyone else. We are just doing what we want to do, each for our own reasons.

After each group meets, I avoid talking and phone calls for a while.  I just want to marinate in the words that I've heard and read, extending the energy of being with my writing friends for as long as possible.

Sometimes I can't sleep--I'm so jazzed.
Other times, I fall asleep and dream strange dreams.

Last night, I dreamed I stole a bowl from an antique store that was valued at $7000!  I mentally tossed and turned all night, trying to decide whether to fess up and take it back, or keep it. (In my real waking life, I have never stolen a single thing from a store,  even a pencil.)  But in the dream, I asked for the price, considered it ridiculous, and brazenly stuffed the white pristine bowl into my pocket book.

After using the bowl, I discovered that it wasn't a real bowl; it was made out of some kind of exotic paper--and that the food I had put in the bowl had ruined it, making the option of taking it back out of the question.  So now what?

Fortunately, I woke up.  I have no idea what the dream might suggest about my psyche or character. The bowl could be the container of valuable things.  The bowl could be ordinary looking (the one in my dream looked about as interesting as a piece of Corningware) but could be worth far more than it appears to be.

The paper from which the bowl is made could come from the variety of papers I've collected for sketching, possibly my fear of "messing them up" with my inexpert lines and marks?

But theft?  I'm still working on that one!

A dream is a rough draft. A sketch.  Lines of a poem that don't fit together neatly.  Bits of narrative without the string needed to hold it together. I'll just let it marinate, see if tonight's dream will unravel or explain it.