How does reading change the way you think… and dream? How does dreaming influence poetry? Also: Ptolemy, Andre Dubus III, Maryanne Wolf, Christina Rossetti, Van Halen and more.
I read Reader Come Home a few years ago and enjoyed it thoroughly. In fact, the Massachusetts Center for the Book reading challenge for this April is to read a book about books, bookstores or libraries, and I'm thinking I may revisit it.
Ooo, I love your dream, and also what Rona and Francis see in it. I too went very short on sleep for a long time. In my case, sleep apnea had developed after my kids were born, and it took years before I knew it. When sleep did start to exceed 6 hours on a “good night,” the dreams came in force. (The first major one also involved two houses … and a woman swallowed by a crocodile in front of my eyes!) I love dreams, and missed mine for many years.
I see your two houses as two stages of life. There are many obstacles between one and the next. I’m fascinated by the cars - potential symbols of motion, but it sounds like they were silent lumps under the snow; only you were in motion. That might be good: single-mindedness - the focus on your own journey, undistracted by false starts - maybe. The dark woman could be a voice in yourself, warning that your aspirations are impossible. The dream proves that she’s just another obstacle, not an oracle.
If the mother-friend is also a version of you, perhaps you know exactly what instrument you have and are ready to model your art for others at the same time that you are the learner finding her instrument and rhythm.
Of the shoes, my thoughts vary depending on how you felt about them. If you stepped over them like another obstacle, that would be different from seeing a house of colorful beginnings.
Good luck retraining your body slowly to sleep a full night! It’s hard to stick with it, but I hope you do.
I love your interpretations. The dark woman (she really was a shadow of a woman—a bit not real) was such a negative voice. She reminded me of that lady that was said I reminded her of a former prostitute. Someone who was telling me I couldn’t do something that was meant for someone younger. It was hard in the dream to get over the barrier but I did it. It just wasn’t easy. And the baby shoes were not really in the way, they were actually quite beautiful. It was just too many of them. I have to think about this dream some more! But I love everyone’s ideas.
You're very welcome for the Rossetti suggestions! That Heart song is real nostalgia music for me!
A family coat of arms is an awesome idea! It so happens I'm currently memorising Poe's The Cask of Amontillado - an incredibly taut, layered, devastating piece. Right in the middle of the narrator's account, he relates an exchange about his coat of arms and motto: it's literally the polar opposite of yours! (Give it a read, and you'll discover what I mean! It's a quick read - but repays many rereadings).
On the topic of Language-Based Learning Disabilities, I was slow learning to speak, and was diagnosed with "receptive dysphasia". I now know that was an inaccurate (or at the least a woolly, inadequate) diagnosis: about five years ago I realised I might be ADHD after watching some video channels hosted by ADHDers, and I was eventually formally diagnosed. And slow speech acquisition is not uncommon among our neurotype (in my case, combined with less than ideal domestic circumstances). I can only hope there have been improvements in approaches to diagnosis since (I was also misdiagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder as a teen - which, again, has a history of being a common misdiagnosis for ADHDers!)
I must read the Cask of Amonillado. I loved that story. I totally don’t remember the coat of arms bit. I definitely need to revisit it.
You know, misdiagnoses happened all the time before because there was little understanding of what ADHD is. Even then it wasn’t taken very seriously as a disability, but I have seen it be totally disabling. Glad you have the correct diagnosis now! Otherwise it feels like gaslighting (“you’re just lazy/not trying hard enough”).
And the Rosetti suggestions were fab! Thanks again. :-)
No thoughts on your dream, Zina, but I appreciate this topic so much! (I'm forwarding it to my husband who needs some encouragement to prioritize sleep...)
And I love your family motto - It has been bouncing around it my head since I read this post yesterday and I think it's going to be part of my meditation for Lent - how to better Lead with Love.
Hi, Christina! Thank you so much for reading, and I am glad you found this interesting. I think it is a very American attitude to think that sleeping means we are not being productive. Maintenance and restoration are necessary for us to live healthy lives. And “Lead with Love” speaks to living with *caritas* — love and compassion for others. If there is a witness (whether it be your child or a complete stranger) then every choice you make is an opportunity to *lead* and model a way of life. It is interesting how even the smallest things are remembered. So it is best to do things with Love in mind.
I remember my dreams often enough, and end up using many of them in satires for a satirical journal I help perpetrate.
Tangential note: The line from The Tempest, "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep," was what the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams gave as the meaning, if one wished to find any outside the music (he suggested one shouldn't), for the last movement of his 6th Symphony, a discordant work he wrote just after WWII, which led many to think he was warning against nuclear war or suchlike.
Thank you for your thoughts and especially the link! A very interesting piece. I don’t know much about Williams (British composers are in that knowledge gap I need to close). I love this connection with Shakespeare!
Vaughan Williams was the greatest British symphonist. (His first name, Ralph, is pronounced "Rafe.") Culturally, he was an interesting fellow; he collected folk songs and edited old music scores, especially church music, around the turn of the 20th century (he described it as learning some of the best and some of the worst music). His music started out influenced by English folksongs, but it was highly distinctive and individual, and developed greatly after his service in WWI (he was an ambulance driver). I've run into a number of music lovers who've only heard three or four of his most famous works, which would give a one-sided view of his music--they considered him a pedestrian pastoralist. For example, his 3rd and 5th Symphonies, the only two these acquaintances had heard, both war-inspired works, are very peaceful, while his 4th and 6th Symphonies are very discordant (the pat description is that during wartime he tried to evoke peace, while in peacetime he was ring alarm bells about the next war coming), then his last three symphonies are each something different again--the 9th, speaking of literary influences, started out with explicit references to Tess of the d'Urbervilles, though he eliminated those from the score. (I've never been as great a lover of his first two symphonies, but they're good.)
His most famous work, and deservedly so, is his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910), which among other things has helped revive Tallis's reputation (good, because he was one of the finest British composers), and which is a perfect example of the "pedestrian pastoral" stereotype. (The original theme is a very small thing, a setting of part of Psalm 2.)
A much less famous work, but a favorite of mine that is representative of his settings of literary works and music influenced by literature, is his setting of Spenser's "Epithalamion." It's worth mentioning a story here: I remember when I was groomsman for my best friend in high school--he was Catholic, his wife Episcopalian, and they were married in her church. I was chatting with the officiating priest, and she said she wondered why no one ever set "Epithalamion." I told her that RVW had, and being Episcopalian, her ears immediately pricked up at that because RVW did great services for English church music, despite himself being agnostic, because of his love of English culture.
I thought that perhaps the early images - the narrow cedar-shingled house, the dark, the cold, the tall fence which was hard to scale - might symbolise inner, confining or constricting obstacles you are facing that you want to surmount. The brownstone house, with the warm yellow light, symbolises the solution you crave: space, expansion and freedom. The baby shoes? new birth, small steps of hope towards this joyful resolution, reflected in the beauty and serenity of the Japanese-type garden. The woman/mother friend from the past? A wish to return to the security of your own childhood. And the drum and the ever-changing percussion shaker? Perhaps symbols indicating that you cannot speak with someone else's voice, however dear they may be; you have to find your own inner and unchanging voice.
I am amazed at how many comments this has amassed. I too am fascinated by dreams. My son who has sleep issues says he has no memory or mental images. I’m piecing things together now. 😳
I love the idea of a family Coat of Arms! Thanks for the reading recs. I already had Dubus III on my list, but I need to add Maryanne Wolf as well. My wife Annie loves her work.
It's actually a really fun thing to do, and a great form of family therapy. You can get an outline of a shield and divide it up into different sections and each family member can draw in their part of the coat of arms. (The animals on our shield were foxes because Liss means fox.)
Also, everybody said what they appreciated about one another. We wrote that part on a page for each person that said "strengths" and it was very nice to have that recorded.
The lovely thing about this piece of art is that you can do this every year of you want to.
I have always had vivid dreams. Sometimes I remember them and sometimes I don’t. Many of them are working out some form of anxiety. I am teaching and I didn’t come prepared. I am teaching but due to a technicality, I missed a required high school class and so while I have an MA in education and babies to care for, I have to go back to high school. Or my children are in danger. Those are the worst.
If I were to take a guess at your dream, your concern for children makes you cautious and you are sometimes in situations which are somewhat familiar but in which you feel ill equipped.
One of my sons told me his dream a few months ago. He dreamt that he got too big and I told him we couldn’t cuddle anymore. His is nine and has always been tall for his age (he wears size 14-16 clothes). He had tears in his eyes and I knew that dream tapped into a deep fear. I assured him that even when he is taller than I am (which is likely to be soon), I will always hug him.
I generally try to get 7-8 hours of sleep a night. It is difficult when there is so much I would like to do that is easier once my children are in bed.
I often have a similar dream where I know I have a master's degree, but I still have to go back to high school to finish unfinished credits. I've always wondered what fear that's tapping into? Imposter syndrome? If they only knew I'm not actually qualified? But there's also I think a return to those familiar places, to the classroom and to the rhythm of the academic year-- and to the person I was back then. So I wonder if it's just partly my brain revisiting those times and places and trying to reconcile the person I was then with the person I am now.
Awww, that is so sweet about your son. I also have a 9yo who cuddles and will often wait for me at night before she can go to sleep. Unfortunately sometimes I have night classes or meetings that last a long time and she is asleep on a chair somewhere near me.
I hardly remembered any dreams at all. I recently had a screaming nightmare. I can't even tell you what it was about, but it must have had to do with someone in mortal peril.
I most definitely think that a lot of emotions are being worked out in my dreams!
Last night my kid made me sleep at 9:30pm. I thought I would be able to get some solid sleep but I ended up waking up at 3am and made myself stay in bed until 4:45am. My body isn't used to sleeping in a stretch.
I dream vividly and often use dreams (or daydreams) in my writing. Some dreams have a talismanic quality that invites pondering. Your baby-shoe dream is one. First thought: the little shoes as possibilities, things that might live if you had time to nourish them. How interesting that the other character is a mother friend. What you hold in your hand keeps changing, which suggests a perceived lack of the right equipment. The cliche “big shoes to fill” is inverted here with all those tiny unfilled shoes. Poet at work!
Townie is a memoir I’ve championed for years. What a fascinating look at the true meaning of manhood and the myths that surround it. There’s a memorable scene early on about small shoes. When young Andre tries to run with his father, tagging after him in borrowed shoes that fill with blood, my heart breaks for him. It’s probably a stretch to connect this to your dream, but I had to mention it.
OH MY! Rona! Andre running in his sister's small shoes! That may be where the baby shoes comes from, and I didn't see it. I am so glad you have also read and championed Townie. Have you read Ghost Dogs? It fills in some more of Andre's life, and there is an interesting essay in there called High Life that I remember reading in The New Yorker first.
I also had another dream last night about driving to and from a writer's conference and getting separated from the two other cars I was traveling with. Then I unexpectedly find myself in the middle of a storm. It was a wild dream as well. I wonder if I could just string up my dreams like pearls and take a step back and see what design they make when together. I feel like I am in a very stressful transition part of my life full of non-stop obligations.
But another feature about the mother-friend in the baby-shoe dream is that she is a successful artist (sculptor). She is my only IRL artist friend, and I wonder if her success in rhythm is something I am supposed to somehow mimic... but you are right, maybe I don't have the right tools. There's something that is keeping me from achieving my own rhythm?
Thank you, Rona! If you think of anything else just keep commenting!
Connecting through a treasured book is such a gift—especially when, like Townie, the book is less well known than it deserves to be. I think you’re onto something with the successful artist and the tools, which are probably more emotional than technical. Since the tools kept changing, the dream could be suggesting that it’s time to commit to your most powerful tool. Just a thought from one dreamer to another.
During all the years I was in the Navy, sleep was not the priority. I would usually get 4-5 hours a night if I was lucky. I never remembered my dreams, if I had any to start with. Since retiring last fall, I have made it a priority to get 8 hours of sleep each night. I have also started remembering my dreams and some of them are just weird. They often contain random moments from throughout my life merged together with things I am reading. It is odd to say the least.
I am enjoying our class together and appreciate your insightful comments in the discussion.
Did your Navy schedule not allow for sleep? I've wondered this as my cousin who did tours of Iraq came back and talked about having these long shifts of being on duty.
I think your dreams and my dreams are similarly influenced by real life and reading life. I remember going to a birthday party and one parent asked me how much sleep I usually get a night and I said that I didn't know. And then he pointedly asked me when I went to sleep and when I woke up and told him the times (not thinking to do any math). And he said, *Zina, that's 3 hours!* That was when I was starting to notice that maybe I had a sleep problem.
I think it is grand fun to have you in a Catherine Project class! Your responses are always very thoughtful and interesting!
I read Reader Come Home a few years ago and enjoyed it thoroughly. In fact, the Massachusetts Center for the Book reading challenge for this April is to read a book about books, bookstores or libraries, and I'm thinking I may revisit it.
Ooo, I love your dream, and also what Rona and Francis see in it. I too went very short on sleep for a long time. In my case, sleep apnea had developed after my kids were born, and it took years before I knew it. When sleep did start to exceed 6 hours on a “good night,” the dreams came in force. (The first major one also involved two houses … and a woman swallowed by a crocodile in front of my eyes!) I love dreams, and missed mine for many years.
I see your two houses as two stages of life. There are many obstacles between one and the next. I’m fascinated by the cars - potential symbols of motion, but it sounds like they were silent lumps under the snow; only you were in motion. That might be good: single-mindedness - the focus on your own journey, undistracted by false starts - maybe. The dark woman could be a voice in yourself, warning that your aspirations are impossible. The dream proves that she’s just another obstacle, not an oracle.
If the mother-friend is also a version of you, perhaps you know exactly what instrument you have and are ready to model your art for others at the same time that you are the learner finding her instrument and rhythm.
Of the shoes, my thoughts vary depending on how you felt about them. If you stepped over them like another obstacle, that would be different from seeing a house of colorful beginnings.
Good luck retraining your body slowly to sleep a full night! It’s hard to stick with it, but I hope you do.
I love your interpretations. The dark woman (she really was a shadow of a woman—a bit not real) was such a negative voice. She reminded me of that lady that was said I reminded her of a former prostitute. Someone who was telling me I couldn’t do something that was meant for someone younger. It was hard in the dream to get over the barrier but I did it. It just wasn’t easy. And the baby shoes were not really in the way, they were actually quite beautiful. It was just too many of them. I have to think about this dream some more! But I love everyone’s ideas.
It’s a beautiful dream to mull over. Now, to sleep, perchance to dream…
You're very welcome for the Rossetti suggestions! That Heart song is real nostalgia music for me!
A family coat of arms is an awesome idea! It so happens I'm currently memorising Poe's The Cask of Amontillado - an incredibly taut, layered, devastating piece. Right in the middle of the narrator's account, he relates an exchange about his coat of arms and motto: it's literally the polar opposite of yours! (Give it a read, and you'll discover what I mean! It's a quick read - but repays many rereadings).
On the topic of Language-Based Learning Disabilities, I was slow learning to speak, and was diagnosed with "receptive dysphasia". I now know that was an inaccurate (or at the least a woolly, inadequate) diagnosis: about five years ago I realised I might be ADHD after watching some video channels hosted by ADHDers, and I was eventually formally diagnosed. And slow speech acquisition is not uncommon among our neurotype (in my case, combined with less than ideal domestic circumstances). I can only hope there have been improvements in approaches to diagnosis since (I was also misdiagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder as a teen - which, again, has a history of being a common misdiagnosis for ADHDers!)
I must read the Cask of Amonillado. I loved that story. I totally don’t remember the coat of arms bit. I definitely need to revisit it.
You know, misdiagnoses happened all the time before because there was little understanding of what ADHD is. Even then it wasn’t taken very seriously as a disability, but I have seen it be totally disabling. Glad you have the correct diagnosis now! Otherwise it feels like gaslighting (“you’re just lazy/not trying hard enough”).
And the Rosetti suggestions were fab! Thanks again. :-)
No thoughts on your dream, Zina, but I appreciate this topic so much! (I'm forwarding it to my husband who needs some encouragement to prioritize sleep...)
And I love your family motto - It has been bouncing around it my head since I read this post yesterday and I think it's going to be part of my meditation for Lent - how to better Lead with Love.
Hi, Christina! Thank you so much for reading, and I am glad you found this interesting. I think it is a very American attitude to think that sleeping means we are not being productive. Maintenance and restoration are necessary for us to live healthy lives. And “Lead with Love” speaks to living with *caritas* — love and compassion for others. If there is a witness (whether it be your child or a complete stranger) then every choice you make is an opportunity to *lead* and model a way of life. It is interesting how even the smallest things are remembered. So it is best to do things with Love in mind.
I remember my dreams often enough, and end up using many of them in satires for a satirical journal I help perpetrate.
Tangential note: The line from The Tempest, "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep," was what the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams gave as the meaning, if one wished to find any outside the music (he suggested one shouldn't), for the last movement of his 6th Symphony, a discordant work he wrote just after WWII, which led many to think he was warning against nuclear war or suchlike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AICNns3HicM
Thank you for your thoughts and especially the link! A very interesting piece. I don’t know much about Williams (British composers are in that knowledge gap I need to close). I love this connection with Shakespeare!
Vaughan Williams was the greatest British symphonist. (His first name, Ralph, is pronounced "Rafe.") Culturally, he was an interesting fellow; he collected folk songs and edited old music scores, especially church music, around the turn of the 20th century (he described it as learning some of the best and some of the worst music). His music started out influenced by English folksongs, but it was highly distinctive and individual, and developed greatly after his service in WWI (he was an ambulance driver). I've run into a number of music lovers who've only heard three or four of his most famous works, which would give a one-sided view of his music--they considered him a pedestrian pastoralist. For example, his 3rd and 5th Symphonies, the only two these acquaintances had heard, both war-inspired works, are very peaceful, while his 4th and 6th Symphonies are very discordant (the pat description is that during wartime he tried to evoke peace, while in peacetime he was ring alarm bells about the next war coming), then his last three symphonies are each something different again--the 9th, speaking of literary influences, started out with explicit references to Tess of the d'Urbervilles, though he eliminated those from the score. (I've never been as great a lover of his first two symphonies, but they're good.)
His most famous work, and deservedly so, is his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910), which among other things has helped revive Tallis's reputation (good, because he was one of the finest British composers), and which is a perfect example of the "pedestrian pastoral" stereotype. (The original theme is a very small thing, a setting of part of Psalm 2.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihx5LCF1yJY
A much less famous work, but a favorite of mine that is representative of his settings of literary works and music influenced by literature, is his setting of Spenser's "Epithalamion." It's worth mentioning a story here: I remember when I was groomsman for my best friend in high school--he was Catholic, his wife Episcopalian, and they were married in her church. I was chatting with the officiating priest, and she said she wondered why no one ever set "Epithalamion." I told her that RVW had, and being Episcopalian, her ears immediately pricked up at that because RVW did great services for English church music, despite himself being agnostic, because of his love of English culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYMc-gkp2N4
I thought that perhaps the early images - the narrow cedar-shingled house, the dark, the cold, the tall fence which was hard to scale - might symbolise inner, confining or constricting obstacles you are facing that you want to surmount. The brownstone house, with the warm yellow light, symbolises the solution you crave: space, expansion and freedom. The baby shoes? new birth, small steps of hope towards this joyful resolution, reflected in the beauty and serenity of the Japanese-type garden. The woman/mother friend from the past? A wish to return to the security of your own childhood. And the drum and the ever-changing percussion shaker? Perhaps symbols indicating that you cannot speak with someone else's voice, however dear they may be; you have to find your own inner and unchanging voice.
That’s a beautiful interpretation! Thank you. 🙏
I am amazed at how many comments this has amassed. I too am fascinated by dreams. My son who has sleep issues says he has no memory or mental images. I’m piecing things together now. 😳
I love the idea of a family Coat of Arms! Thanks for the reading recs. I already had Dubus III on my list, but I need to add Maryanne Wolf as well. My wife Annie loves her work.
It's actually a really fun thing to do, and a great form of family therapy. You can get an outline of a shield and divide it up into different sections and each family member can draw in their part of the coat of arms. (The animals on our shield were foxes because Liss means fox.)
Also, everybody said what they appreciated about one another. We wrote that part on a page for each person that said "strengths" and it was very nice to have that recorded.
The lovely thing about this piece of art is that you can do this every year of you want to.
I have always had vivid dreams. Sometimes I remember them and sometimes I don’t. Many of them are working out some form of anxiety. I am teaching and I didn’t come prepared. I am teaching but due to a technicality, I missed a required high school class and so while I have an MA in education and babies to care for, I have to go back to high school. Or my children are in danger. Those are the worst.
If I were to take a guess at your dream, your concern for children makes you cautious and you are sometimes in situations which are somewhat familiar but in which you feel ill equipped.
One of my sons told me his dream a few months ago. He dreamt that he got too big and I told him we couldn’t cuddle anymore. His is nine and has always been tall for his age (he wears size 14-16 clothes). He had tears in his eyes and I knew that dream tapped into a deep fear. I assured him that even when he is taller than I am (which is likely to be soon), I will always hug him.
I generally try to get 7-8 hours of sleep a night. It is difficult when there is so much I would like to do that is easier once my children are in bed.
I often have a similar dream where I know I have a master's degree, but I still have to go back to high school to finish unfinished credits. I've always wondered what fear that's tapping into? Imposter syndrome? If they only knew I'm not actually qualified? But there's also I think a return to those familiar places, to the classroom and to the rhythm of the academic year-- and to the person I was back then. So I wonder if it's just partly my brain revisiting those times and places and trying to reconcile the person I was then with the person I am now.
Awww, that is so sweet about your son. I also have a 9yo who cuddles and will often wait for me at night before she can go to sleep. Unfortunately sometimes I have night classes or meetings that last a long time and she is asleep on a chair somewhere near me.
I hardly remembered any dreams at all. I recently had a screaming nightmare. I can't even tell you what it was about, but it must have had to do with someone in mortal peril.
I most definitely think that a lot of emotions are being worked out in my dreams!
Last night my kid made me sleep at 9:30pm. I thought I would be able to get some solid sleep but I ended up waking up at 3am and made myself stay in bed until 4:45am. My body isn't used to sleeping in a stretch.
I dream vividly and often use dreams (or daydreams) in my writing. Some dreams have a talismanic quality that invites pondering. Your baby-shoe dream is one. First thought: the little shoes as possibilities, things that might live if you had time to nourish them. How interesting that the other character is a mother friend. What you hold in your hand keeps changing, which suggests a perceived lack of the right equipment. The cliche “big shoes to fill” is inverted here with all those tiny unfilled shoes. Poet at work!
Townie is a memoir I’ve championed for years. What a fascinating look at the true meaning of manhood and the myths that surround it. There’s a memorable scene early on about small shoes. When young Andre tries to run with his father, tagging after him in borrowed shoes that fill with blood, my heart breaks for him. It’s probably a stretch to connect this to your dream, but I had to mention it.
OH MY! Rona! Andre running in his sister's small shoes! That may be where the baby shoes comes from, and I didn't see it. I am so glad you have also read and championed Townie. Have you read Ghost Dogs? It fills in some more of Andre's life, and there is an interesting essay in there called High Life that I remember reading in The New Yorker first.
I also had another dream last night about driving to and from a writer's conference and getting separated from the two other cars I was traveling with. Then I unexpectedly find myself in the middle of a storm. It was a wild dream as well. I wonder if I could just string up my dreams like pearls and take a step back and see what design they make when together. I feel like I am in a very stressful transition part of my life full of non-stop obligations.
But another feature about the mother-friend in the baby-shoe dream is that she is a successful artist (sculptor). She is my only IRL artist friend, and I wonder if her success in rhythm is something I am supposed to somehow mimic... but you are right, maybe I don't have the right tools. There's something that is keeping me from achieving my own rhythm?
Thank you, Rona! If you think of anything else just keep commenting!
I love the idea of stringing dreams together like pearls to see what designs they make together.
Connecting through a treasured book is such a gift—especially when, like Townie, the book is less well known than it deserves to be. I think you’re onto something with the successful artist and the tools, which are probably more emotional than technical. Since the tools kept changing, the dream could be suggesting that it’s time to commit to your most powerful tool. Just a thought from one dreamer to another.
During all the years I was in the Navy, sleep was not the priority. I would usually get 4-5 hours a night if I was lucky. I never remembered my dreams, if I had any to start with. Since retiring last fall, I have made it a priority to get 8 hours of sleep each night. I have also started remembering my dreams and some of them are just weird. They often contain random moments from throughout my life merged together with things I am reading. It is odd to say the least.
I am enjoying our class together and appreciate your insightful comments in the discussion.
Did your Navy schedule not allow for sleep? I've wondered this as my cousin who did tours of Iraq came back and talked about having these long shifts of being on duty.
I think your dreams and my dreams are similarly influenced by real life and reading life. I remember going to a birthday party and one parent asked me how much sleep I usually get a night and I said that I didn't know. And then he pointedly asked me when I went to sleep and when I woke up and told him the times (not thinking to do any math). And he said, *Zina, that's 3 hours!* That was when I was starting to notice that maybe I had a sleep problem.
I think it is grand fun to have you in a Catherine Project class! Your responses are always very thoughtful and interesting!
Yes, my career was often long hours at work. It was pretty brutal.