Notes from the Mattress

Still dealing with an upper respiratory infection; my immune system rose up to fight it and I am subsequently in a lupus flare, unable to eat because the entire surface of my mouth is covered in blistering sores (this happened overnight....at least it made me understand more why I need to be on chemotherapy for lupus. as it seems to live like a mean troll just under the surface of my life).  I do feel sad about losing out on so much of what I want to do....I can't do very much this week.  I am extremely grateful not to be working as it would have been a bloody disaster.

CG made me a nice cup of tea and brought it in.  We talked for a few minutes, and he was saddened that I was going to have to stay home tonight...I usually have a dance class and so need the social support.  But it's the big "oh, well, another day" at the moment.  I give up a lot with this illness and its treatment.  In exchange, I get life.`

I had an amazing dream last night, that I rented a lovely apartment in New York with very nice, practical-yet-luxurious furnishings.  Thistle was there as an older child, with a long mane of shimmering red hair (she's increasingly a redhead).  At one point, she ran out of the apartment to check out her new elementary school and then came back (I wondered in the dream that she should not have done so, that I had not protected her in that moment).

It was a long dream, down streets and through department stores where expensive gifts dissolved in my hands, until I reached an ocean landscape so real that I have trouble, in waking life, believing it was not real.  I knew I was about to pass into the world beyond this one as a giant, frothy white wave rose and curled right over me; I opened my arms to welcome it, and was thrown into a sea as warm as a giant bathtub, with all the others who were crossing over swimming alongside me.  I put my head above the surface and screamed out that I was home, that I had been away from this place too long. 

I think dreams are very much a reality--in fact, I finally decided that in The Jezebel Project, the denizens of the "utopian world" actually inhabit the dreamscape, the strange countries and landscapes where our consciousness travels at night.  I have named the "utopia" Kelem, which is a derivative of chalam, the Hebrew word for "dream"...it is a nod to the fact that dreams are given great importance in both the Old and New Testaments (eg Daniel's dream of angels climbing up and down a ladder to heaven).  I have no idea whether this book is viable, but like the writing I really love best, it is a weaving of many threads.  Kelem originally was going to be a place where nothing dies etc, but that was so sugarcoated that it would be impossible to be anything but ridiculous--instead, the residents try to make Kelem peaceful and safe, and conserve their environment.  Above all, there is no rape, no domestic violence, sexual abuse of children etc, because I think that such violence is a great taproot of evil.  I guess what makes Kelem an utopia is the unacceptability of greed, selfishness, money-lust, and exploitation. People still die there, and still struggle, but nobody is deliberately harmed by another person.  They at least try to live in harmony with each other.  Perhaps that harmony is what the dreaming consciousness strives always to find.

I was finding myself feeling sort of stupid for writing what I guess is probably science fiction, but then reminded myself that CS Lewis, the author of serious theologies, wrote The Chronicles of Narnia!  At least this book is a good exercise in developing characters, something I always like to work with.