Spring Dreamin'

I'm a lucid dreamer. Always have been. It's usually entertaining, as long as I don't try to psychoanalyze myself. Sometimes though, I have the worst dreams. Excrutiatingly detailed looks at my failures and impotence. Occasionally, these worst dreams even become nightmares. (A bad dream is typically classified as a nightmare if you are woken up by it.) Whatever type of dream, I usually recall them in a richness of detail that would make any filmmaker blush at her inadequacies. The memories have a tendency to remain clear for years- I still remember in vivid detail the first nighmare I had when I was eleven and newly in the sixth grade.
One of the features of lucid dreams, is that often the dreamer recognizes it's a dream, and may even have some degree of control over what occurs in the dream. I often figure out that it's a dream, but in a paranoid way. Let me explain. A family member or close friend who has died will be in the dream as if nothing ever happened, or as if they had just been on an extended vacation. I react with, "My God! How can this be? You're dead!" Sometimes I'm convinced by the workings of the dream that I have been under some dastaredly misapprehension for a number of years. But, more often than not, I figure out that I'm right and that I must be in a dream. Sometimes the dreams are so real and well, trivial, that it makes me question reality upon waking. And when the questioning is about whether someone you have cared for deeply is really dead- ya; not that fun. [Philosophically speaking, I am very interested in this topic. What is it to be alive? and all that. But, when I'm trying to drag ass out of bed in the morning...I don't want to try and figure out if my Grandmother is still dead.]

when I'm down

The rains came back today. For the first time in close to four years, I walked around in cold grey drizzle. Deep inside of me, there is a place that only comes alive in the rain. A lot of my darker emotions are tied to this place. I don't mind when they surface, but it's hard for people around me to understand.
Darker doesn't mean depressed, either. It just means that it's not the laughing side of my personality; which I don't really like anyways. The laughing side is definitely not the funny side, either.
None of this really matters, I'm thinking about something else that has brought me down, but that I don't want to mention by name.

my mom

With the exception of weird stories that eventually end up on television in one form or another, everybody loves their mom. I am no different. It's hard not to feel an affinity for someone who carried you inside their body for nine months (or in my case, ten). Then the whole feeding, clothing, teaching to speak business pretty much cinches it. But, on top of that they freely give out hugs. They may punish you for some pretty seemingly ridiculous things, but they also make sure still get dessert, sometimes even if it means that they don't.
If you're lucky, and I am, they become your friend for life. The whole unconditional love thing is pretty impressive, too. No matter how big the screw up or the fight, it can always be worked out, because she's your mom.
I love you mom. I always have and I always will.
I'm sure I didn't tell you as often as I should have, but I did tell you- and you told me- that I love you.

My mom past away at 7:45 pm on Saturday, March 5th, 2005. A really hard part of her life is over and in that I can find some relief. And as days pass and I can write about her for longer than a minute without crying, I'll be able to remember more and more of what made her such a special lady.