Glimpse of the Dream Cycle

So yeah, guess what I dreamed about!

Zombies!

I've been playing Left 4 Dead way too much since its release on Tuesday. For those of you who don't know, Left 4 Dead is a PC/XBox game that pits you (and 3 other players) as survivors in a city infested with zombies. You have to escape. It's hard. Very hard. :) Which makes it fun. There are times when you get attacked by hordes of zombies. It's great! I am preparing for the inevitable apocalypse.

Braaaaaaaaaaiiins...

Writer's Workshop

Mama Kat has put up the next set of prompts over at her blog for the writer's workshop. Think I'll write about something a little more personal this week.

Write about something that bothered you this week.

This past Monday my mother was in the hospital to get her pacemaker replaced. The old pacemaker was running out of juice which in turn meant her ticker was running out of juice. She even mentioned that she could feel the pacemaker was losing energy since she would get tired more easily from moderate exercise. That is a scary thought to know that your heart is slowing down. I was worried for my makuahine!

It was outpatient surgery and she went through it just fine. Luckily, my sister works at the hospital where my mom was getting the operation done. This afforded me the play-by-play of what was happening. Here are some of my sister's text messages, paraphrased: "Mom arrived at the hospital", "She's now in pre-op and on hold", "The op is starting later than planned now", "She's gone in!", "Mom came through with flying colors!", "I'm taking the rest of the day off now".

Both of my sisters and I worry ourselves sick whenever either Mom or Dad need to go into the hospital. Though I figure most families have that same mindset. No sleeping, no eating, just worry worry worry. The bad thing is we have these kind of worries even for the little things. "Dad's going in for a checkup?? What's wrong? What kind of checkup? Do you need me there to drive? Is it his thyroid again? Its just a regular checkup? No such thing!" Yeah, we're freaks. :)

And I personally despise hospitals. I don't see them as places of healing. I see them as cold, clinical, breeding grounds for germs. Never mind the fact that hospitals contain monolithic potential for zombie infestation that is absolutely staggering. (Yes, I've been playing Left 4 Dead. ;P )

Writer's Workshop

So Mama Kat has put up the next set of prompts over at her blog for the writer's workshop. This time around I'm going to tackle three of these prompts.

1.) Write a haiku about what you see out the window.

Structured mass of glass
Building rises to the sky
A reflective skin

Concrete vein stretches
Traffic is the highway's blood
Extending outward

Incidentally, I have a blog dedicated to nothing but haikus.
If you're interested, take a look: The Daily Haiku.


2.) Begin with "I thought I saw..."

Considering the main purpose of this OHCF blog is to record my dreams, I thought this second prompt could fit well with it.

I thought I saw, in a dream, a great nuclear cloud rising above the city. I was in the bedroom of my apartment and looked out the window towards Philadelphia. The sight that greeted me was both horrendous and terrifying. The cloud was an ominous mixture of orange, red, and black. I stumbled back from the window aghast, eyes wide with fear...

... and promptly woke up, sweating and slightly shaking. I usually don't wake from nightmares, but this scared the crap out of me. I am glad it was only a dream and pray that it never happens to any city on this planet.


3.) If I could live in any era of history, what would it be -- list 10 reasons why.

I'm mixing a few different eras into the list since listing ten reasons for any one era would be a bit difficult. :)

Ancient Greece.
I would have loved to experience this era. Some of the greatest leaps in scientific advancement came from it.

Also, I would have liked to live in Ancient Greece to experience a fully polytheistic society.

And Ancient Greece's dashing manner of fashion! Toga! Toga! Toga! (OK, so I'm kidding on this one. ;)

China during the Song Dynasty
Some of the greatest brush painters have come from this era. I find so much inspiration in their paintings and I try to learn from them as I create my own paintings.

The Viking Times
Ok, so this is my heritage talking here. Granted they were big on pillaging and plundering, but were also big on exploration. I would have loved to have been on one of the longships that discovered Iceland, Greenland, or Nova Scotia.

OK, it's not ten, but that's what I got!

Writing time...

It's that time again! More literary strangeness for the writer's workshop by Mama's Losin' It. This bit is a flight of fancy (a somewhat foreboding flight of fancy, that is) of a slightly surreal situation. It's somewhat written in broken thoughts - the way I think, the way I imagine, the way I visualize. :)

You awaken with amnesia in what looks to be an igloo. You have $4 and a rock in one pocket, and a toothbrush in the other. Someone is staring at you. Write this scene.

Blackness... ow... my head hurts. Feels like somebody embedded a gutter nail into my right temple. I put my hand to the right side of my face and head; crust flakes away from the skin. Dried blood - caked on my face and in my hair. Wonderful. What the hell happened to me? My head pulses in short little stabs of pain, but other than that, I feel fine. I can feel a large gash above my right ear... and stitches?

I bolt upward, sitting forward as the blanket falls from my face and chest. The light assaults my senses. As my eyes adjust, I see musty white with a hint of cyan everywhere. Ice? Holy crap, it's cold. Where the hell is my shirt? Wow, there's dried blood all over my chest and right shoulder and arm too. I pull the blanket around me as I slowly begin to discern my surroundings. One opening in the wall, a table with a picture frame upon it, this bed, a gas heater, the walls curve inward as they go upward. Is this a freaking igloo?

I stand from the bed and begin looking around. In a box by the bed, I find a shirt, coat, gloves, hat, and shoes. I guess it's time to get dressed. Now properly attired for this chilly environment, I decide to explore the igloo a little more. What first catches my eye is the picture frame on the table. It contains the photo of a little Beagle staring soulfully at me. I slide the photo from its frame and look at the back, "C.J. Rufus, 3 years old." Ah, a pup named C.J. Rufus?! That feels familiar to me. Come to think of it, I have no idea who I am. The wound on my head must have done more damage than I thought. There's nothing else in here worth examining so I might as well take a look outside.

Walking through the entrance of the little ice hut, I take a step outside. Nothing. An empty, vast, expanse of nothing. White ground and blue sky as far as my eyes can see. Well, at least the skies are clear and the sun is at my back. There is nothing here, just a glacial wasteland that looks to stretch for miles in all directions. Wait, I think I see mountains on the horizon behind the igloo's entrance. Damn, I can't even tell which way is North.

There are no tracks here, no signs of life. So I slide my hands into the coat's pockets feeling a bit defeated and demoralized. Hello, what is this? From the right pocket I pull out four American dollars and a rock. A lot of good four dollars will do me in the middle of a frozen forsaken wasteland. Well, at least I can use this money as tinder in case I need to start a fire. I can also use the rock as a weapon, if needed. In my left pocket, I find a toothbrush! Hmmm... well at least I dont have to worry much about my oral hygiene. Yet it seems I'm just finding more questions and no answers.

Who am I? Why am I in the middle of a arctic wasteland? What happened to my head? Was that puppy mine? Where do I go from here?

The Dream Cycle, 2008.19

Pale Spiders

I remember being in a house and noticing that there are many bright flashes outside in the sky (it's night). Looking upwards out through a window, I see thousands upon thousands of little parachutes slowly descending from the heavens. I waited until one of the parachutes came closer to the window and I snatched it out of the air.

The parachute is white and attached to is is a little plastic skull about the size of a plum. In the mouth of the skull is a little piece of candy. I found this to be very very odd and also noticed there was more room in skull's mouth, but nothing was there.

So I went into the living room, sat down on a recliner and ate the piece of candy. Don't remember if it tastes good. Just by accident I looked up at the the skylight in the ceiling and saw thousand of small pale spiders pouring in through a long crack at the edge of the skylight.

I panicked and abruptly woke up!

Can we say 'halloween influenced dream'? I thought you could!