[Cancer, Dreams]
[dreams|cancer] More dreaming of loss and diminishment
I had a long, complex dream last night. In the first part, I was leading a large, multi-day workshop in a hotel, perhaps in Arizona or New Mexico. It was a lot of fun, emceeing the large group, being a critiquer and teacher in the breakout groups, partying on the patio in the evenings.
Then the workshop ended, and some of us retreated to the home of one of the local participants for an evening afterparty. It was a smaller group now, and people kept drifting off. I was having trouble keeping track of my belongings. For some reason, instead of being on my computer, all my drafts were handwritten in red ink on scraps of paper or in spiral notebooks. I kept dropping and losing the notebooks. The scraps got picked up by other people and used to mop spilled drinks or feed the fire in the chimito.
Eventually I found myself out on the sidewalk in front of the house in the light of morning. My writing was down to a few shoeboxes full of scraps. The notebooks were all gone. And as I kept sorting through the shoeboxes, the scraps were vanishing. Blowing away in the wind, or simply disappearing. I was grubby by then, looking like a homeless man. The crackle of police radios echoed nearby. Soon I would be run off, and probably lose even those few last bits of writing I was clutching so desperately.
You don’t need to be Joseph interpreting dreams for Pharaoh to grok this one. I awoke with a deep sense of sadness.
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Posted: 6:23 am Thu May 02 2013 |
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You are reading the blog of Jay Lake, speculative fiction writer and author of hundreds of short stories, many novels, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award.
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*hug*
So much <3
I do not think that your writing will disappear into the winds. I think that it will last — it will be protected, gathered, loved and even studied. For a very long time.
Jay, I hope it helps to say that your writing is not only *not* disappearing, it’s never going to go away. Ever. *You* might be in peril, but the writing is safe. Might I suggest? Writers (journalists too, by the way) see themselves as what they do, more so than a lot of other professions. Might your concerns for your own well being be translated into your loss of your writing in your dreams? If so, can I suggest that the “you” represented by your writing is so, so safe. As has been put, you can’t stop the signal, baby. Yours is strong.
Oh, Jay. So much sympathy.
A friend of mine went to the ER on Saturday with abdominal bloating and intense pain that had started the day before. Everyone thought it might be appendicitis, and she had been previously healthy. A CT showed an abdominal mass, and today she is having a complete hysterectomy; the doctor suspects ovarian cancer in the grapefruit-sized mass he felt. I’ll be there with her husband when she wakes up, and we’ll hear the news. I think of her and of you and yes, of myself, as being on different points of life’s road, but we are all on the same road nevertheless. You’ve given me so much to think about over the last six years. It, and you, mean an enormous amount to me.
Sending love from afar.
((HUG))
Yikes, that is a profoundly sad dream. I really feel for you; I don’t know there’s much else I can do…
So sad you’re having to go through this.
Your posts over the past couple of days make me sad because I feel I see you trying so hard to control the process of your dying, and assuming that it will happen soon so you must put everything in place right now.
I would like to see you let go of some control. Let others do some of the work. Don’t worry about things that aren’t really important. It’s nice to clean your basement so others won’t have to deal with it later, but is that more important than spending time with your loved ones? Is making a spreadsheet “to do list” better than time with friends or a quiet moment to relax?
Why not try living as if every day is your last not from the perspective of “I have to get all these things done before I go”, which seems to be what I see in your blogs, but simply to enjoy being alive? Maybe it will alleviate some of the stress that is inducing these dreams.
Rachel, thank you. There’s a lot more to it than this. Among other things, it’s good for me to exert some control in a life which has largely slipped beyond my control. Maybe I’ll try to explain more in a future post.
I missread the first part of your share on FB scroll and I thought you said you were leading a a large multi-day worship in a hotel, in your dream of course. I imagined you dressed in white linen with your arms up in the air, leading a worship. My dream interepretation says that dreams of loss are that “being too sarcastic can hurt you.” lol! I love Joseph. I love that he interprets dreams and that he forgave his dastardly brothers. *hugs* ((Jay))