crossing clouds

I always have strange dreams.

I shouldn't say strange. They're just very vivid, and real, and beautiful. Sometimes they're weird, sometimes they're scary, and sometimes they're awesome and I don't want to wake up.

I've written a few of them in this blog. I went back through the archives recently, and my most favorite dream I came across was the one where I was in some plain of Africa among really tall grass, in a beige shirt dress with a camera around my neck. It ended with me eating fruit from a tree. I dreamt it after my painting "Adapting to You," which very well could have been the reason for the dream.

Lately, I've been dreaming about Boston neighborhoods that do not exist. This is something that will happen a few times for a period of time, stop for months, and then happen again. Sometimes the neighborhoods are scary, sometimes I want to live in them, or do live in them. Lately, they've been good neighborhoods. The last one was a combination of Wonderland, the North End, and cities I know that are not Boston. I lived in a tall, modern, more Natick-like apartment building. What's strange is that these Boston dreams always take place at night.

The other night, on the cusp of being awake, these words were said to me by someone in my dream:

"It is more unusual for a man to do something than for a woman to say something about it."

What does that even mean? Does my brain know and I don't? It sounds kind of old-fashioned, but who knows. What do any of you think it means?

If you know me, you know that I'm obsessed with the fact that our brains seem to know more than we do (as though they were another being or something) and that that untapped knowledge comes through in dreams, via "books" we're reading or things "people" say to us. And really, they're our own thoughts, coming through in this strange way.

Dreams are so lovely.

(picture from Big Fish)