08/24/04
"The Story Is Already Written"

I took notes for this, as it was clear between rounds of sleep, yet it's somewhat foggier now even with the notes, sorry.

I was in some kind of very large class. The room was built like an auditorium, but a lot bigger--I think it sloped upward or downward toward the front/back, was carpeted (red?), with dark walls and a high ceiling, and lots of seats or desks in horizontal rows (parallel to the front of the room), maybe with an aisle down the middle. It was lit by electrical light; I don't remember windows of any sort, though at the back of the room there was a door/double (?) doors leading out into a lobby or hallway or something like in a movie theater maybe, perhaps with a concrete floor. VERY big room, but I didn't feel uncomfortable there.

The teacher was a bespectacled older man, a little stocky, who I am certain was well known and possibly famous; I get the feeling he was a writer, maybe a famous sci-fi writer. Maybe he was like a cross between Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. But he also made me think of my high school science teacher, Mr. Workman. He was lecturing the class while I...wandered around near the back. I wasn't in my seat and I wasn't even listening! I just wandered around and around, pretending to be my characters. This would be very weird behavior for me. I was acting almost like a little kid. I went to the door(s) and took a step out into the hall, turned around, and came back in, pretending I was one of my characters just entering the room. I thought I would pretend to be my character Derrick Grant. Then as I walked into the room I decided, maybe I should pretend to be Justin Reichert, instead? I imagined myself as Detective Reichert, stepping into a room and nodding hello to people.

As I did this I finally thought, "Maybe I should go back to my seat and listen to what the teacher is saying before I miss out on everything." I at last felt a little bit guilty for ignoring the lecture, no matter how little the teacher seemed to care, so I walked back up toward my desk. (I guess it was more likely that the floor sloped downward toward the back.) I turned to the left where my seat at my desk was. I get the feeling we were more attached to our seats rather than to the desks, for some guy had taken my seat and I was more concerned about that than about the desk; I do think they were desks, but with how unterritorial we were about them, perhaps they were more like long tables. In any event this guy had taken my seat. I think it was one of those plastic chairs like in elementary school, colored, possibly light orange-yellow. The guy in my seat, I believe, made me think of Jeremiah S., a student from high school--kind of big guy, close-cropped black hair, odd husky voice. I never liked him much though we weren't really enemies and just didn't really care to know each other. I felt a tiny bit upset about losing my seat but as I stood there looking at him he got up and moved to a chair next to mine and sat down without a word. Relieved, I resumed my own seat. The teacher, in the meantime, was saying something about amnesia, or maybe I was thinking about amnesia in conjunction with losing my seat. I'm afraid I can't recall that part.

Well, I sat down, and now the teacher walked down the aisle (?) between the desks, and he was talking about how people write stories. "Sometimes," he said, "it's as if the story is already written, even before the writer has a chance to write it out on the page. It's as if the story appears fully formed in their head, almost without them willing it, its plot already entirely present. The writers then merely put it down on paper as they've already seen it in their mind."

I guess this was a writing class. A few of us started nodding thoughtfully. The guy beside me got a skeptical look. "I don't buy that," he mumbled.

I shrugged a little. When I spoke it was more in general, toward the class or the teacher, not directly to the male student. "I've had something like that happen to me," I murmured. "I won't entirely plot a story out, then when I'm already writing it, it's like the rest of the plot just falls into place in my head somehow, somewhere along the way. Then I start writing from that. It's like I can just 'see' it in my mind, the way the rest of the story should go, before I even thought of writing it out that way."

(This is all paraphrased, remember.)

I don't know if the guy student was convinced or not, but I think the teacher heard me. I guess we then all moved to start working in groups on some kind of project, or just to wait for something. I now faced the back of the room and I think the desks were arranged in squares so the students would face each other across them. My old friend Mya S. was with my group; there were about four or five of us, and we may have included the guy student and another girl and somebody else. I can't recall the specifics of this part either, but Mya seemed to have asked the teacher's permission to go ahead on some sort of project or paper or something. The teacher stopped by our group--I was seated closer to the left wall on facing the back of the room, and he and Mya stood over toward the right sides of the desks, students sitting between us--and started talking with Mya. When she presented her idea or whatever, the teacher denied her request, saying something like, "I think you should get more out of your work." I got the feeling he meant that he knew she had potential, but he felt she wasn't applying herself as hard as she could, to achieve the best results. She was in effect wasting her efforts on trivial things when she could do so much better. He seemed to be saying that if she put more of herself into her work, she might get more out of it that would help her grow and learn as a person. I got the feeling Mya wasn't really caring about her work as much as she should--it was just a chore to her, not a learning experience. Or something like that.

Mya's reaction was to simply turn and leave the class. I get the feeling she took another student or member of the group with her though I don't recall seeing this--and oddly enough I get the feeling it might have been Jessi W., another old best friend of mine. (In real life Jessi and Mya did not know each other; they were my best friends at different times. Both of them moved away while we were in school, BTW, and that was what led to the ends of our friendships.) This reminded me vaguely of something that happened in a real-life creative writing class I had in college; when the teacher harshly criticized another student who was a sorta friend of mine, Heather R., she grew so angry that she argued with him and then stormed out of the class, never to return. I felt bad that I didn't try to help her feel better, though there wasn't anything I could have done. As a matter of fact, I disliked a lot of that teacher's criticisms as rather stupid and restricting for "creative" writing, myself--he actually took issue with usage of the word "seems," for crying out loud, and thought that big words like "infinitesimal" were unnecessary when "little" would suffice! I was always too chicken to speak up against him, though. Anyway, Mya's reaction here made me think of Heather's reaction--rather too drastic, in my opinion, though I could sympathize. Although in this case, I felt the teacher had more of a point than Mya did; after all, he was telling her she had lots of potential.

I felt a little bit bad as Mya (and Jessi?) left; I hadn't even gotten to talk with her. I had been excited to learn she was part of my group, but now she was gone without a word for me. I felt kind of bad, like I should have stopped her, or followed her, but I didn't; I wanted to work on my project. I wasn't as upset about her leaving without me getting to talk to her as I would be in real life; the class seemed more important, I guess.

Anyway, I believe we all returned to what we were doing. I seemed to have some bright fluorescent colored paper that I was writing on. I can't remember what I was writing though. I kept my head low and pretended not to be paying attention to what was going on around me. The teacher turned and came over toward me and stopped beside my desk. I just kept my head down and continued writing as if I didn't notice him. I felt embarrassed, like I was too stupid and untalented to be here.

The teacher leaned down as if to talk to me in confidence. "I'd like for you to be the one to help me out on my comedy project," he said (or something to that effect). I sense maybe the other students peered at me when he said this, and I suddenly felt VERY self-conscious. I got a flash of dream memory here; the teacher had asked myself, and maybe some other students, to consider helping him out on some kind of comedy writing project, maybe a play of some kind, and asked us to consider it for a while. Since I never see myself as helpful in any respect, I hadn't committed to anything; it had been tempting to be offered the chance to work with such a well-known teacher, but I felt I would never do so. So my own consideration had been merely to be polite. If he would have asked me straight out before, I probably would have meekly turned him down with a lot of excuses that I wasn't good enough for the job and a lot of other students were, and he would have gone on to pick one of them.

Instead, several of us had been offered the chance to think about it, I believe, and then he decided to choose the best one for the job...and that one happened to be me. o_o In real life I am not much of one for comedy, particularly comedy writing, but this didn't seem to register as much in the dream. Now when he told me he had chosen me for the job, I felt VERY self-conscious and anxious. I could hardly turn him down now! He'd picked ME out of all the students he'd deemed worthy enough for the job. Me! That meant he must think my writing was good, and that made me feel giddy. On the other hand, I really did not believe I was up to the task, nor was I sure I could be helpful in this particular area. It's not like the teacher would have FORCED me to do it if I didn't want to, but I did not want to turn him down, especially if he felt I was the only one who could do it right; whether I agreed with that judgement or not wasn't the issue. Even if *I* felt I wasn't the right choice, it was HIS choice, and I felt bad turning it down. So I just scribbled on my paper and bit my lip and thought, not sure what to say.

He stood beside me for a moment, and I was still trying to overcome my anxiety and tell him okay, I'd try to help him out, when he started to talk again. I think (but I'm not sure, foggy) he leaned down and started to tell me how I'd best prepare myself for the project: "You're going to have to..." I lifted my head and tried to stop scribbling in order to listen to him...but that was when the alarm clock went off and I had to get up. I never did get to hear what I was meant to do, exactly.

Real-life associations? I've already explained the deal with Mya and Jessi, and then with Mya and Heather; though in the dream Mya's reactions were very unusual based on what I used to know of her. The orange(?) chair made me think of how a few days ago I saw a similar chair in real life and explained to Ma how whenever I sat in a chair like that back in elementary school, I'd get very thirsty for orange juice all day long. Other than that, I can think of no reason why this particular dream showed up. I did get a strong feeling that I wanted to please this teacher in whatever way I could, so perhaps he was my Animus.



2004 Dreams
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