So my therapist wants me to keep a journal of how I feel during the day starting today. I won’t share all my thoughts and emotions from my journal, just those I’m comfortable making public.

Today I woke up thoughtful. When I dream if I remember it I remember it for a long time. I remember dreams from as long ago as eighth grade (1994-95). Last night I had a dream that one of my high school math teachers wanted an art project — a drawing of some kind. I got a lot of postcards and starting writing names of people on them for the opening credits of some movie I was making, but I realized I couldn’t turn them in. So I made this picture of a lone man in the desert with a lone cactus. It was inspired by the year 9595 in the song “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans:

“In the year 9595/I’m really going to doubt if man will be alive./He has taken all this old Earth can give/and he ain’t put back noting.”

Then in my dream I get the idea to make artwork inspired by each verse in “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans.

Also in my dream there was imagery inspired by “Downtown” by Petula Clark and “Surf City” by Jan and Dean (“two girls for every boy”). I almost always sleep with a CD on, and if I use the continuous play feature a song or two will actually be incorporated in my dream.
Other weird dreams I’ve had were:

1. My best friend in high school had to tranquilize a runaway circus “lion” (it really looked more like a domesticated cat the size of a lion) in order to save my life.

2. The president of my Residence Hall Association freshman year and her roommate were cutting down trees in a swap.

3. My mom presented to the rest of the family one of my brothers wearing a coconut bra.

4. My father had two older daughters from a previous marriage — one a Born-Again Christian and married with a baby, the other a lesbian.

5. I was trying to figure out which pastors of the churches I’ve ever attended were still virgins. (When I woke up I recalled all of them and realized that they were either fathers or grandfathers — so they must not be virgins any more.)

I’m think I’m also due for another nightmare involving people getting eaten by a T-Rex. Ever since I saw Jurassic Park in the theater that’s been my reoccurring nightmare — people, including me, getting eaten by Tyrannosaurs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azf2qycQ5bg

Joel

John Hammond: All major theme parks have had delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked, nothing.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: But, John. But if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.

— Jurassic Park