Feasting at the Fast

For the second time in three days, I dreamed about eating at Yom Kippur services. In both dreams, services were in full swing, the clergy resplendent in their special white robes, when I realized I wasn’t sitting in a pew, but at a table for eight, set for a banquet. While the cantor continued his fervent chanting, servers brought dinner, and everyone dug in. The cantor looked annoyed, but not surprised – certainly less surprised than I was.

In the first dream, I stuffed my face, like everyone else. (I don’t remember the menu, besides a crusty baguette.) On the dream’s second pass, I was the only one at the table who didn’t indulge.

What does it mean, doctor?

My former therapist, who wasn’t into archetypes or psychoanalysis, tended to see this sort of question as an opening for more free-form introspection. “How did the dream leave you feeling?” he might ask.

And I might answer, “In the first instance, guilty. And the second time, when I abstained? Annoyed. And a little bit self-righteous, maybe. And then guilty, for judging the people around me.”

“Good for you,” I can imagine my therapist saying at this point, smiling that warm, between-you-and-me smile of his. “Even though the second time you were the one doing the right thing, you still  figured out a way to feel guilty about it.”

And then we would probably dive back into our ongoing conversation about guilt – what triggers it, its uses and (more often) uselessness, and what other emotions it might mask.

But what if my therapist’s questions weren’t about feelings, but metaphors, plot points, imagery and motifs? What if  his question in response to my question were, “How might you use these scenes in an essay, a work of fiction, a poem?”

Then I would have to say, “It depends.”

In an essay, I could use the twin dreams to illustrate spiritual indifference in today’s society. Or the social irrelevance of today’s religious institutions. A more personal essay might delve into my own passionate ambivalence around religion.

In a short story or a novel, the scenes might emphasize my role as outsider – my failure to conform with the service in the first dream, and with my co-congregants in the second. I might build in a moment where I look into the face of one of the clergy and get a glimpse of understanding, and from that an unexpected connection.

In a poem, the feast and the fast could be symbols. The diners might be feasting on the substance of the service, tanking up on prayer or tradition or regret. Or the unstoppable service could be the background of wrongdoing or good intentions that’s always there, as we blithely go on passing the bread. Living our lives.

Or, how about this? In a blog post about writing, I could use the service to stand for form – the rules that govern different genres, the structures and basic story lines we expect. And I could use the meal to demonstrate what happens when a piece breaks the rules and confounds expectations. A dream that was only about sitting through Yom Kippur services wouldn’t be worth telling. And neither would a dream that was only about eating. Put the two together, though, and you’ve got something interesting – something that opens the way to new meaning.

In My Dreams

I’m in a huge hotel complex with confusing corridors linked by stairways and escalators. The place is packed, so as I navigate the architectural maze, I also have to maneuver the crowd as I hurry to my meeting, which of course I’m already late for. Luckily, I make it to the designated meeting place before the man I’m scheduled to meet with arrives. At first I’m relieved, but as time passes and he still doesn’t show up, my worry about being late turns to anger at his rudeness. Is he just making me wait, or actually standing me up? How long should I give him? I practice saying, “Tell him I said fuck you,” and start looking around for someone to trust with my message. That’s when I begin to have second thoughts about my decision to show up for this meeting stark naked.

But the dream doesn’t end there. Naked, I hastily retrace my route, pushing past people and jogging breathlessly up steep stairways. When I arrive at my room, it’s being cleaned. There’s an awkward encounter with the chamber maid, whom I surprise in the process of zipping up her skirt. Waving aside her embarrassed apologizes, I grab a filmy, lime-green camisole and a silky lilac skirt, and struggle into them.

I wake up kicking myself for wearing a black bra under such a pale blouse, and laughing at myself for having such a ridiculous, clichéd dream.

It’s been a while since I had my last anxiety dream. When I was little, I had a lot of anxiety dreams, mostly involving fire. Later, fire was replaced by impossible architecture. When I was an editor at Seven Days, I dreamed regularly about losing my desk. Either the streets or the building had mysteriously changed or someone had moved my work station without telling me. The naked theme is hardly new, but it’s gotten more frequent lately – although, as I said, recently my anxiety dreams have been markedly infrequent.

So why last night’s dream? The crowded hotel is clearly borrowed from David, who spent part of last week at a philosophy convention, interviewing job candidates. He came home talking about the applicants’ justified anxiety. As for the meeting in my dream, it was explicitly an actual meeting I’m having later this week. I guess I’m more worried about it than I’d realized.

But even if David’s convention and my upcoming appointment hadn’t lent my dream its details, I probably would have had some kind of anxiety dream. I blame New Year’s. Although nothing other than an artificial number on a calendar actually changed this past weekend, the turning of a year naturally encourages reflection. For me, this scrutiny has been focused on the professional. What have I accomplished with my writing in the last 12 months? Not what I had hoped. What are my goals for next year? I’m not really sure. And that troubles me.

On the other hand, I really can’t complain. Each night, as I’m falling asleep, I run through a mental check-list of my day. When I have come up with three good things, I can empty my mind and drift off. The good things can be significant events, but they’re usually pretty subtle: how pretty the water looked, a conversation with one of my kids, something good I read or heard or ate. Going through this process is about as close as I ever come to personal prayer. Like traditional bedtime liturgies, the ritual helps me feel safe to sleep.

If I were to apply my three-good-things ritual to last night’s dream, this is what I would list:

1. I did not get lost in the corridors.

2. I was not late for my meeting.

3. I not only figured out on time that I shouldn’t be naked, but also managed to get dressed.

Take that, dream.

Sure, I’m anxious about 2012.  But hopeless? Far from it. And no matter what else happens at my meeting this week, I’m pretty sure I’ll remember to get dressed.

Drive

So here’s last night’s dream. I’m driving a car, holding between the tips of my thumb and index finger a scrap of paper the size of a Post-It on which is written the key to my new novel. It’s crucial that I not lose this piece of paper, but it’s hard to hold onto it and drive at the same time. Making matters worse are the three thugs – broad shoulders, sunglasses, shiny suits – riding beside me and in the backseat.

I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be going, only that it better be wherever these scary guys want me to go. They never utter a word, but I know that whatever they’re thinking can’t be good. All of this is making me super nervous, especially when I realize that the place I’m about to drive is suddenly filled with people.

They’re sitting all over the pavement, all facing the same direction and in the same straight-backed, crossed-legged pose, like some kind of art installation, or movers in a board game. Each one represents a different type: Business Man, Homeless Woman, Hipster, African Market Woman, Soldier, etc. This is like a hokey dream sequence in a movie, my dream self thinks.

The dream people look up with concern as I approach, but not one of them moves, and it’s immediately clear that unless I do something different, I’m about to run them all over. I throw the car into reverse and hastily back out of there, squirming with self-consciousness as I sense the thugs’ silent criticism.

I turn onto a new street, this one filled with different figures from a different kind of movie. Like the last group, these figures are also perfectly still, evenly spaced and facing the direction. But they’re standing, wearing coats and hats from the 1940s. Some hold luggage, like they’re waiting for a train. And this movie is in black and white.

Before I can think of what to do, I lose hold of my little piece of paper. It floats across the lap of the thug beside me. I lunge and snag it, then lock it safely inside a have-a-heart trap, which I set on the console beside my seat.

Did I mention that yesterday I hit a snag in my new book?

It was bound to happen. For the last few weeks, the work has been flowing so beautifully. A little encouraging nudge from my agent and I’d managed to turn off my inner editor. Once I started trusting the process, scenes and characters and conflicts blossomed. I didn’t try to write well, or even to write. I just started making notes and watching to see where they took me. They’ve taken me pretty far — far enough so I now feel like I can safely say I’m actually working on something new.

This process got a jump-start about a week ago, when I switched to new software. A bunch of the writers I follow on Twitter rave about Scrivener, which is specifically designed for writing long manuscripts. I didn’t pay attention. I’d managed to complete a 103k-word novel, with multiple characters and interwoven plot lines, on my plain vanilla word processor. I didn’t need to stinkin’ special software. Also, Scrivener was only available for cool Mac owners, and I’m still a PC dork. On the other hand, when I saw that the program was available in free beta downloads for Windows, I jumped at the chance.

I don’t love everything about this program. The fill-in-the-blanks character forms feel a little, um, formulaic. And the name generating tool is just silly. Also, the program froze on me a few times, which was very scary, though I suppose par for the course when your working with a beta. And in the end I didn’t lose any material.

The beauty of Scrivener is that it makes it really easy to see your manuscript as a whole, to navigate within the book, and to move back and forth between jotting down or referring to notes and drafting actual text. I did that with my last book, using an imperfect, byzantine system I spent way too long cobbling out for myself. Having that infrastructure already laid out for me, and working in a program that actually encourages my sort of non-linear thinking – let me follow my natural inclinations and kept the creative juices flowing.

When my energy flagged, I could turn to Scrivener’s progress meter, which lets you set your goals, and then tells you how you’re doing. It seems idiotic, and it’s nothing I can’t – and haven’t – done for myself. But, like the read-out on the elliptical machine at the gym, Scrivener’s word meter turns the process into a game. And sometimes that’s just the jolt you need.

What Scrivener can’t do is actually write the damned thing. Or tell you whether you’re headed in the right direction. Or figure out the solution to that big mystery you’ve hung your whole plot on. That’s the problem I bumped up against on Wednesday — the solution to that big mystery I’d hung my whole plot on. I actively wrestled with the problem all day Thursday, without success. It was still on my mind when I went to bed last night, and had that dream.

Your analysis, Dr. Freud?

The barely-in-control car is one of my standard worry tropes, a motif that arises when I have some problem on my mind. I’ve dreamed variations on this dream countless times. But last night was the first time I can remember a dream so literally identifying the problem that inspired it. The two sets of dream-sequence figures I was trying not to run over might have been the characters whose fates I’ve been trying to figure out. As for those thugs forcing me to go forward even as they silently second-guess my driving, let’s name one Inner Critic and another Publishing Industry. The third guy we might call, well, Drive.