raybear | I woke up in between a memory and a dream

One time years ago, back when I was sharing a nightly bed with

limenal, she said, do you ever lie down at night, and in the first few moments, you have an immediate flashback to last thing you were thinking/dreaming when you were last in the bed? And I was like, um, no, never, that's never happened to me.

But after the suggestion was made, it started happening occasionally. Now it happens fairly frequently. Today I had a heavy lunch and was immediately lulled into nap mode, and when I got into bed and started to drift off to sleep, my brain suddenly took me back to my dreams of last night/this morning, which involved me being married to Diane from The 4400. No one reading this knows what I'm talking about except

dommeyourass and

vfc, so here's a picture of her which I'm mostly wanting to look at, because a) it's hilarious, as all posed press photos are to me, whether it's for tv shows or stills for local play; and b) the actor Diane is with on the left, he used to be her boyfriend on the show and I was sad they broke up because hello, he's kind of me if you reverse the hair. He wears lots of loud, tight-fitting gay shirts.

And while I'm at it, let's post this one of the "The Women of 4400" or whatever because it's fcking killing me too.

The woman on the far right who plays ~~Anabel~~ Isabelle, she wears those boots a lot at the end of season two, and every time I see them I think "those are some Naomi Campbell-picking-up-trash boots!"

But all silliness of the pop culture dreams aside (the plot of my dream is vague, but it felt like an episode, with a problem and conflict and running around, etc. etc.), what is still hanging onto me and I'm unwilling to shake off is the intense emotions of the dream surrounding our relationship, and how good it felt that she was my...wife. It feels weird to type that word in this context, by which I mean, admitting to the parts of me that culturally have a residual connection to it. I mean, what's haunting me is the feeling of being in-love and being together, but the context of it -- being a fairly traditional marriage (as far as the oft-repeated story/legend goes) -- is kind of strange in my waking life. Or rather, that it felt so good is strange.

It's also just strange to wake up and miss someone, who it totally fictional and imaginary. It's somewhat unsettling, because then I start to think, what makes those feelings any more 'real' whether they happen in a dream or not? Or, the feelings are there in both cases, but only one is considered 'real'. Rather than just feeling sad or longing about it, I actually started to glimpse at the possibility of conjuring within me. Its my tendency to rely on the drugs of hormones to make it happen easily, quickly. Why not my imagination?

It sounds sort of silly now that I'm writing it out, but I think its just because who talks about this phenomenon except for weird writer types like me, who get all jazzed when I'm writing about a problematic affair and its beginning and demise and while I'm writing certain scenes, I get that same feeling in the pit of my stomach, the same taste of attraction and obsession in the back of my throat, that comes in the first throes of addictive relationships/crushes/etc.. If I can conjure the messy parts (which are also, of course, hot), why not also conjure the big gushy romantic parts too, even if I'm not in the actual midst of a honeymoon adventure with some traditionally standard attractive straight white lady actress who plays a homeland security-type person?

Whoa, there's a whole other desconstruction there in my unconcious about this dream woman that will have to wait for another time. Or, hello heteronormativity.

In Other News^TM, how is it that one day I just woke up and was suddenly a Tom Petty fan? I have been completely ambivalent towards him for nearly 30 years, and then suddenly, hey let's download a bunch of his songs and listen to them on repeat!