Tag: dreams

Movies, oh, movies

When I was little, I saw the films “JAWS”, “Deep Blue Sea”, and “Lake Placid”.  They all sport a main character/predator who is an oversized water creature, the first two having a shark main character and the third an alligator.  (Though I now realize that it could have been a crocodile, I still believe that it was an alligator, because I do not remember its having a really long and narrow snout.)

Suffice to say that these movies succeeded in terrifying me of the ocean, of lakes, and of swimming in general.  Now, seeing as swimming was a large part of my family’s life, as was the beach, I learned to manage these fears (i.e. realize that, I just had to let it go if I wanted to swim, or at least accept the fear alongside the joys of swimming).  This mostly meant that I was typically initially hesitant to enter the water at the beach, and always preferred being with others in the water – not to be grimm, but the probability of being the one nabbed decreased, the more people who were out there with me in the water.  No, I didn’t want anyone to be nabbed, but I had a high sense of self-preservation.

Whenever I was on my own in the water, I occasionally would recall the possibility of sharks as I was walking toward the shore, and suddenly would find myself jumpily sprinting out of the water (jumpily, because it is easier to run through water, when you pick your legs all the way up out of it, doing a sort of hopping dance forward, which becomes more and more like normal running as you get closer to shore, and the water level goes lower and lower).

The interesting thing – to me, anyway – about this fear, is how it transferred to pools for me.  With others, I never had concerns (as I recall, anyway).  However, put me on my own in the backyard pool at my brothers’ dad’s house, and I’d occasionally start to freak.  It was a weird sort of freak-out, because I logically knew that I was totally fine and safe, but surface-level panicked and rushed out of the water suddenly anyway.

It would happen like this: I would be in the water, usually swimming casually toward one side or end of the pool, and suddenly have this thought that someone could have opened up a secret panel behind me on the pool wall, and released a shark.  At the point of this thought’s occurrence, I would put all my effort in swim sprinting to my aimed-for wall, and climb manically from the pool, panting.  I think I even scratched up my stomach and/or legs in my haste a handful of times.

It was illogical, and yet I completely understood why I had the bizarre fear, and I accepted it as a weird and unrealistic fear, even as a little kid.

Fast forward a good many years, and where do I stand?  The last time I was alone in a pool, about a year ago now, I still had to turn my head, just to check to make sure no panel had slid open behind me.  No, I wasn’t sent rushing to the walk and out of the pool, but I still had to respond to the thought and the sense of panic that was rising within me.  Essentially, the panic and fear is significantly lessened, but totally still there.  If I don’t think about it, I’m totally fine.  The moment I think about it, I’m slightly paranoid, and sinultaneously annoyed at my nonsensical paranoia.

Such is my life around pools (and also the earlier bits regarding my life with beaches).  I think this is why I just don’t want horror films.  Ever.  The few scary films I saw as a kid were enough for me*, and each had enough impact on me to cause me never to want to watch scary movies again.  So I think, anyway.
*”Scream”, “Scream 2”, and “Anaconda” still stick with me today, as well as the shark and gator movies.

Post-a-day 2017

What’s my type??

People always seem to ask me my type.  Possibly, this is more of a recent thing, as it is one of the top questions Japanese high school students ask, and I don’t really remember having considered the question’s answer more than once or twice before this past year.  Nonetheless, it has been on my mind for quite some time now.

The deal is that I have never really known a type for my own interests.  I find attractive to be attractive.  Period.  However, I have been recently distinguishing even further the difference between being attracted to someone and that of wanting to be with someone.  On this distinguishing inquiry, I have at last found one definite common factor between men when I instantly find attractive, and with whom I always want to develop a relationship of some sort (even just a friendship), and often actively pursue.  That factor?  Being tall.  It’s not that I don’t find men I average height to be attractive – I definitely do find them quite attractive on a regular basis.  However, I tend to have a quite strong desire at least to be around handsome men who are also tall.  I have found shorts men to be handsomer than taller men, and yet the taller attractive guy always holds my attention much better.
Just something I discovered/noticed this weekend.
Post-a-day 2017

Our Stories

“Share your story here…”. Share your story here.  Share your story here?  What is my story?

Tonight, my story is that I am like Rapunzel, locked on my own in a tower, merely dreaming of what life could be if only I weren’t stuck in this tower.  I want to cuddle up and cry with my despair and loneliness.  The earth just shook long and low beneath me, deepening my unease for a handful of seconds.  I don’t want to turn off the light – there seems to be a certain power in its being illuminated (and I do not mean the electricity), a power to keep me safe and okay and able to handle things.

Tonight, my story is that I am lonely and alone, and, though I am so close to being in a place I could and do call home, I feel as though I am in the point A to point B race where you constantly only go half the distance, thereby making progress toward the desired destination, but never actually arriving there.

Also, that just reminded me of how much I love Patrick Swayze.  I wish I could have been in the film “Dirty Dancing”.

Anyway… I want to cry tonight, and to let it all go, leaving me to wake up refreshed and excited and capable in the morning.
Post-a-day 2017

A philosopher for the moment

Today, I did some fun things including showing up my friend at children’s games, but I don’t feel like sharing about that right now.  I feel like being philosophical, ponderous… something like that.  And yet, here I lie with almost no thoughts, no words in mind or even on their way.  I am listening to the guitar upstairs, and what sounds like company sharing in the music for once (it is Saturday night, after all).  I am somewhat worried about the next couple months, specifically regarding how they will unfold.  I fear regrets, especially for after I have left this country, and am back living in my own.  I fear my being wonderful and amazingly successful in my endeavors once I’m back there.  I fear letting go of my endeavors in exchange for something safe.  I fear not becoming myself, not being myself once I am back there in a seemingly unchanged world as an incredibly changed person.  Someone told us to take a picture of ourselves before we begin this time in Japan.  I had forgotten to do that before leaving home, but I took a picture in the elevator on my way down to our very first meeting on my first day of orientation here.  I wonder what I will see different in my final photo as I say goodbye to this place.  I know that the two people in the photos are similar, however, they are in no way the same.  I loved and still do love who the former person was, and I do not want to become her again.  

These are things that are sitting in my being right now.  If you would have asked me before I wrote this, what I was thinking, I couldn’t have told you.  But now, as I have written this, I can see clearly that this is what was resting in my mind, in my heart, in my bones and flesh and breath… in fact, somewhat restricting my breath…, and that that is why I do not care to share the joys of today, but feel myself to be of a philosophical persuasion at present.  I could have lived with the greats right now.
Post-a-day 2017 

Declare your wish with gratitude

I think it is incredibly valuable to declare what we want to have be part of our own lives.  In doing so, I feel that we truly do allow space and guidance for those things to manifest themselves.  I wrote on Facebook that I wanted a baritone to serenade me, and a distant friend sent me a sort of birthday present singing video.  He’s a baritone.  I declared over and over again one day that I really wanted a certain card, and found one forever left behind in the bathroom the afternoon I was leaving.

Of course, these aren’t very good examples so far as I see it all.  However, they are decent ones, and they are all that currently comes to mind as specific recent events.  Declare it to the world, and it will come to you, in some way or another.  So, when you do declare it, be prepared.  🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Accepting a Dream

Have you ever finally realized how you feel about something, – something kind of big – and, rather than be shocked about it, notice that you already knew how you felt deep down, but it was really just a matter of being unwilling to admit it to yourself?  I feel like I have been a boy who loves the color pink, and, resisting the color for years for the social construct’s idea of what colors boys are meant to like best, depriving myself of something I love, becoming so good at making excuses not to love pink, that I even began believing my own made-up excuses (and had other people reminding me of the regularly, as though it had been their ideas in the first place, instead of given to them over and over again by me).

Anyway, I’m not actually a boy, and I don’t particularly like the color pink (oddly enough), but I feel as though my situation is similar.  I have resisted the dance world for “reasons” of practicality.  If you get injured, people’s preferences change, you offend someone, you get sick, you take vacation, or any number of about a bajillion* other things that do not endanger typical job-holders, then you do not make money.  Being a professional dancer (of any kind, though I am mostly referencing partner dances, as opposed to the common understanding that being a dancer is synonymous with being an exotic dancer or stripper) is simply dangerously impractical.  And so I easily brushed it aside when I was younger, seeing how it clearly is a terrible idea, and so there was no point even to consider it.

In doing that, though, I eventually let my reasoning take over as an excuse for not improving in my dancing, as well as for giving in to my fears, and not speaking up enough or demanding enough that actually would have made a difference in my dance opportunities.  But after all, I’m not aiming at a career in this, so why invest more time and money than necessary for a simple pastime or hobby, hmm?  A thought which, of course, led me to a sad state of affairs both mentally and performance-wise with dancing.  I not only want to be good enough to be one of the professionals, I actually want to be one of them.  Period.

Period.

And I’ve never actually said that before.  It’s kind of terrifying, really, even just considering how much I just might mean all of that.  Deep down, I know I mean it.  And that in no way changes my surface level of resistance.  Well, a tad, but not much – I still don’t want to accept it, because of what all that would mean regarding my past with dance.  Granted, I realize that I am the one interpreting things in this way, making them mean this or that.  Even still… if I truly want to be a professional dancer, and truly be good enough to be one, as well, then I have spent a good amount of time doing a lot of nothingness, when I could have been actively seeking and working toward my absolutely achievable dance dream.  It’ll take a good amount of high quality work, for sure, but that in no way alters the achievability of it.

So then, where does that leave me now, and what steps do I take next and next and next to achieve my dream?

 

 

*I have spent most of my life believing that word to be spelled with a g.

Post-a-day 2017

 

Dreams, come true?

Have you ever been afraid of getting everything you ever wanted, for fear of losing it?  I’m not so sure where I’m going with this, but I’m beginning to wonder if that fear somehow plays a part in my own role of not pursuing fully my dreams, and not creating the space in my life for certain dreams to come true…

It’s only a thought, but I just wonder…
Post-a-day 2017

 

Dreams that inspire tears

This morning, I woke up in such comfort as I had not known in months.  As I began to come to, though, confusion roused within me.  When I finally discovered where and when and what I was, I pitifully crunched myself under the blankets, smashing my face into the mattress, and resisting the intense, despairing urge to cry.

Why all of this, just from waking today?  My dreams.  I cannot say how many times this has happened, but I do know that it is incredibly rare for me – when I awoke this morning, I initially believed that what had just been my dreams were, in fact, memories from actual events.  They, of course, were only dreams.

On this occasion of dreaming, I was wandering around a warm, beautiful place (beautiful in the sense of the space, as opposed to scenery) with a friend of mine.  His parents were in and out of the events, too.  At one point, we were all participating in a fun effort to help a group play fabulous music (It was like a modern-day version of pumping the organ, but for the musical ensemble as one large unit in need of this pumping.).  We all sighed happily from the effort when the music was finished, and walked separate ways from the band’s setup to relax after the sort of workout.  My friend handed me a local coin, mentioning the nickname people have for it, and thus his reason for giving it to me.  We both laughed as he passed it to me with a slight flourish-esque bow (think old-timey British servants presenting something to the master), and then he gave me a kiss on my forehead, rather casually.

I smiled, and even gave a small chuckle at the gesture, both via the sweet joke about the coin and comparing it to me and the loving kiss.  We each briefly said something else, immediately after which, he casually lifted my chin and gave me a full, brief, and, again, casual kiss, this time on the lips.  I was surprised, though not opposed, and even had willingly accepted/participated in the act.  We both turned to resume whatever it was we were doing before these two kisses, but glanced back at one another as his eyes went wide and he made a face of “Uh-oh.”

  1. He’s not one for public displays of affection.  2.  His parents were nearby.

Naturally, his mother, though across the room, had noticed, as we could tell by her loud and calmly delighted, “Aaaaaaaaah, whaaaat is thaat, exactly, hmmm?”  And his dad expressed a chuckled agreement to the question.

I replied quickly and with honesty and ease, “Oh, we don’t even know, really.  He can’t seem to make up his mind about it, and I’m too lazy to do anything about it.”

And we were all, in a semi-silly way, happy and together and lovingly content.  My friend slipped his arm around my waist, and pulled me into a big sideways hug as I said the words to his mother, and everyone had a nice laugh or chuckle of true and easy contentment.

 

And that was it, really.

And it was all so believable, because of the experience of being there.  It was real joy and caring for one another (all of us) and ease – life was easy with all of us together, where we were, just like it is when I am with family and my closest friend (a different friend from this one).  So, when I awoke this morning, I was going from perfection (you know, the goofy ‘life is perfectly imperfect’ kind of perfection) and the bliss that followed after such an experience, to a cold (literally) realization that my circumstances are actually the opposite from how it felt they were…

How’s that for a start to a Friday, huh?  Though, I do recall how our dreams help us handle all sorts of psychological struggles, it kind of makes me even sadder.  How bad off am I right now that my sub-conscience decided I needed that kind of and that specific dream?  Kind of made me hope for it to have been an accident that I’d had such a dream, as opposed to intentional in any way.

But, after the rough day that has been today, I’d be quite happy to continue these dreams tonight.  Even though they have a near zero percent chance of coming true, I’ll be able at least to go back to sleep in the morning, free and at ease, because it will be Saturday, and one with no specific daytime plans but to sleep in.  And everything feels better when you get to sleep in.  🙂

 

Post-a-day 2017

Across My Dreams

In high school, I had this playlist entitled “Sleepers”.  Every night, after I turned off the lights, I would snuggle into my bed and put in one earphone (because the opposite ear was against the pillow already) to listen.  The first two songs were from the early release of the music from the film Across the Universe, “All My Lovin'” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”.  The third song, which was on the playlist three times in a row, was “Iron and Wine” by The Postal Service.

I’m not too sure what had me pick these songs in particular, but there was something magical to me about them.  It was as if they were the first steps into my having beautiful dreams, that they began and represented the life I wanted, but could only dream.

Something like that, anyway.  And I was truly happy in my life at the time, too, which makes it almost silly that I wanted something more, even though I was happy exactly where I was with it all.  🙂
Post-a-day 2017