Alarm Clock Dream Commentary

"The Alarm Clock Affair" by Christina Snyder

Last night I woke up several times, and several of those several times, I woke up in the deep part of sleep, the part in which no one should wake up—it's akin to how they describe waterboarding...

I kept waking up thinking something was crawling on my bed, something heavy. A very fat cat, or a very slim dog. I felt something like paws on my back, I felt weight materialize on the other side of my bed, the part where no one lay. I tried reaching out, I tried moving to open the door, to let it out (I had the cognizance to think, oh, the neighbor's cat must have wandered over and gotten in, he's probably peed and buried it in my laundry, I gotta let him out) but I couldn't move, my body was pinned by deep sleep. I fought against it, first by trying to scream, to make some kind of noise. I fell in and out of this state, more and more frightened each time I woke up like this because I thought, this already happened, it didn't go away. Finally I did summon up enough will to cry out, and I woke myself with my own voice.

I'd already posted my Alarm Clock Dream story, and it kept popping up in my thoughts while I struggled in between levels of consciousness. I don't know why. I didn't have any "epiphanies" while in this very, very strange and uncomfortable state of mind, except for realizing with terror that the veil between realities is very, very thin. I had no doubt that I was feeling something creep on my back, then settle itself near me on my bed. None at all, it was as real as anything else I could feel. And it wasn't the "thing" that scared me, or, after the lights were on and I could idiotically realize the truth, the lack of a "thing." It was that I couldn't do anything about it, that I couldn't shoo it or move it; it was feeling powerless over something that ultimately didn't exist, at least not in the "real" world.

Aside from that flash of brilliance, I don't have much to say about this prompt: it was a very fun one to write, especially given the task of "mirroring" between dream and waking. I think most people have had experiences like this; in The 3 AM Epiphany, Brian Kiteley explains that upon hearing the alarm, before fully waking, your mind instantaneously creates an entire dream that ends with the alarm ringing—it isn't, as one would think, that you were dreaming something, were interrupted by the alarm clock, and then the noise was seamlessly integrated into your dream: the dream happened after but felt like before.

I dream a lot, and usually very vividly. I believe I am very good at interpreting dreams, as well, which comes in handy for reading and for writing and for remembering dreams. While I had a dream similiar to the one I wrote about, I had forgotten quite a bit of it. I think the story speaks for itself, or rather I hope it did, but as the story indicates, sometimes finding your voice is the hardest part of the struggle, and as I realized last night, sometimes finding your voice is the most important part in breaking free from being paralyzed by yourself.

Alarm Clock Dream

Write a short story in which an alarm clock going off in the middle of the story plays some kind of crucial role. Half of the story will be dream and half reality. I don't usually encourage my students to write about dreams (it is very difficult to do it well, and the results are usually clumsy and obvious), but in this case, try to construct a mirror image on either side of this alarm clock sound.

(from prompt # 22 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:


"grab" by wheat in your hair



Medusa appears suddenly, behind me but I can see her, from the corner of my eye or so it seems. I wonder if she’d been there all along. We are at the church, my church, where everyone believes in me and what I might say, before I say anything. It is true, whatever it is I will say. I am on a mission, the most important mission. I have to talk to these people, tell them the truth, and it is just out of reach, the truth is just past my reach. I am busy, I have things to do, and Medusa comes suddenly to my side. Following me and watching me closely as if I am teaching her a dance. She matches my movements. I am aware of her presence now throughout the church, my honey colored church. I have to prepare my words, I have been interrupted while preparing to speak to the people of my church, and as we move through the hallways Medusa gets closer and closer, assuming control. I fall behind her and watch in awe as she speaks to the man who built my church, the man who gave me control of my words. They move into an office and I have been so caught up with her that I don’t notice the waters rising. The water is waist deep now and brown, ugly, tepid. It is warm water that keeps rising and I haven’t noticed it, and as I shout out the truth I am muted by the loud loud words of the people in my church, some blaming me and some warning me but all of the words are loud and insistent and more important than mine. There is an urgency now. I look for Medusa, she has been at my side this whole time, I had felt her, but amidst the yelling I hear her, standing in the rafters and pointing down at me, saying my name like a curse word, “e! E! eeE!” Someone pushes me, telling me in a sleepy voice that it is 7:40 and I will be late for work, I am almost late. I wake up and try to wade through the water that isn’t there anymore, I try to push myself into the day, but the weight of sleep and of my dream pulls me down and under the covers and close to the warm bare back of my someone. I am wading through images and all I remember clearly is the honey colored planks of wood and the supposed safety of a church. I get up, slowly, and as quickly as I try to move, time is moving faster than me. There is a pile of clothes that I sort through, eyes adjusting in a dim morning, and I pull out pants and a shirt and I try to think analytically. Do these clothes match? Does it matter if my clothes match if I am late? I remember I parked farther away than I care to walk this morning. I brush my teeth in the bathroom, walking on my tiptoes through the quiet house; I go to someone’s bedside and kiss him before I leave and I try not to let the door slam. Suddenly I realize that I have to think of why I am late, if I am. Instead I listen mindlessly, half-aware, to DJs on a morning talk show. I am anxious to get to work, locked in a kind of race that doesn’t matter. Try to think of why I am late, I construct excuses, I plan the execution of my lie of the day. Traffic, not my fault, car troubles, something. Either I lie, or I say nothing, slipping into my place of work with a quiet prayer that I won’t lose my job, my silly job, because it’s all I have. And I do, I appear and it’s as if I’d been there all along.

Clothes

Use a particular and fairly vivid piece of clothing to tell a story. What does clothing say about us? How does it select us, as opposed to being selected by us? What do clothes hide? What do they reveal?
(from prompt #21 in The 3 AM Epiphany)


Read my response:

"Heavenly Blue" by tata aka T



I am blue and two pieces. My stitching shows, the thread is a contrasting shade of blue on blue. A tiny bird, mid-flight, is on my left side, just above the heart.

I am all about tits and ass; I am a collection of strings to tie the two, or three, together. The four if you want to be honest.

He bought me for $40 just before going to Mexico. He picked me out, ran his fingers along the back of the ass and checked the size. XS stands for extra small, he was told if he found that to get it, and so he did. I was his as much as I'd ever be. I don’t know how much thought went it all, into purchasing me, because it was all taken care of quickly and without a lot of talk. The important thing was that I fit, and I did.

That’s why I was kept, even after he left. I go well with lots of things. I look good with a white skirt on a hot summer day. As subdued as I am, a dark navy, I do not go unnoticed. I turn heads, I am small but hardy, I cover what’s to be covered without letting go. I do not get loosed no matter how strong the wave. But I am best and most effective in the sun.

Since that spring, four or five years ago, I’ve been to Mexico a few more times. I’ve been to San Francisco, I spent a little time in Colorado and Arizona. I’ve been taken off by different hands, quickly pushed about, slowly unknotted, mischievously pulled from behind. The same two hands always put me back, always tie me up with a bow.

The first time I was used, I didn’t get wet. I was put on, and he—the guy that bought me—smiled appreciatively, said I looked great, asked if I was okay. He was nervous: he’d never done that for a girl before. Lucky I worked out, otherwise there’d have been some trouble in Mexico, and not just at the beach. But he did a good job with me. When I did eventually get in the water, it was supremely satisfying; I’d had some time to adjust, being worn about town under clothes and by myself, sunbathing. So when I went all the way in, at the beach, I was already comfortable; I could enjoy body-surfing in the waves without concern for how I looked, without wondering if I’d fall off or come undone.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been in the water now, hot tubs and hotel pools and lakes and even river rafting. I’m surprised I’ve held up this long, but I guess that’s the test of quality: I’ve gotten better, more adaptable without losing any of my strength. I’m cut simply, but well. Like I said, I hold up well. Especially the tits.

As long as I’ve been around—relatively speaking, as my kind don’t last long, four or five years is an eternity—I know that I’ll be done soon. There’ve been good times, I’ve had fun, but soon I’ll be replaced with something more demure, a little thicker; bands and straps instead of strings. I go out less as it is, and I’m stretched out.

If I’ve been provocative yet tasteful, functional yet fun and all the rest, then I can retire proudly, with my stitches showing and with wings spread over the heart.

Colors Commentary

"Yellow and Red" by lrargerich

Two things: colors, and a situation with which I am already very frustrated. I first thought of red and blue as my colors, and situations with which I am already frustrated seemed initially to be out of the question as fodder for fiction. I didn't want to invite speculation about who or what I was writing about, or why. So it was sort of surprising to sit down and start writing and within like, three words use yellow as a color and my own frustrations as the character's.

The frustrating situation is not moving, not rising to action, feeling blocked in and limited. Red, interestingly, has several connotations in popular culture, and a lot of them are opposite. One implication is passion: you burn with passion, it lights you up, there is inspiration, movement, action, fueled by passion. Another implication is stop: red light, stop sign, access denied. Meanwhile, yellow is mellow: it can spring up lightly like a flower or piss away slowly like piss. Strong emotions aren't connected to yellow, but a lot of other things are. So for this exercise, red was always connected to the girl: on her lips, on her feet, in her hands. Her passion, her lust for life, showed up chapped, scuffed up, fading out like the flame in a cigarette. Yellow isn't a strong color, but if it keeps popping up in little ways it can create an overwhelming effect, like a yellow car with yellow lights driven by yellow hair. What kept the girl trapped, getting in and out of her car, starting her engine multiple times without going anywhere, was her own stupidity. (Stop parking there if you are getting parking tickets!) Finally what keeps her from leaving is red, and its her own lack of fuel, the last of which she probably burned starting and restarting her engine.

Writing this was fun, because of the challenge of repeating two colors almost to the point of inanity, of finding multiple ways to inject these colors, of figuring out synonyms when what I mean is red and yellow. I had to stop in the middle of writing it, and during that pause, driving around, EVERYTHING in the whole world was red and yellow. Everything, I saw red and yellow everywhere. So that was fun; I kept thinking, and then the girl can go to McDonalds! And get in the exit only lane! And yield! And also stop! At stop signs! And stop lights! And brake lights! And then she can get pizza! It was interesting to get back to writing it, because I felt like there wasn't enough of these two colors. I thought, while she is stuck in a parking garage, there is a world of yellow to interact with. I felt bad about every sentence I wrote for this that didn't include a primary color, which explains the extended sentences. It was also interesting to symbolize my frustrations, and to think about them in the abstract.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one overall; in some ways I am thinking that not much happened, in some ways I am thinking that was the whole point.

Colors

Write an exercise in which you repeatedly use two different primary colors. Describe these colors without naming them too often—and try to find effective synonyms for the colors without being too obvious about this disguise. Repetition of anything alien to the human elements of a story is bound to influence the way the story sinks into the reader's mind. How would red and yellow, appearing over and over again in drapes, carpets, clothes, handmade ashtrays, or toilet bowls, affect you as a reader? If you know anything about the meaning or symbolism of colors, choose your pair of hues well to play off emotions against each other. Apply this exercise to a situation with which you are already very frustrated.

(from prompt #20 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

"icetea fantasy" by shikeroku





She took the yellow envelope off her windshield and tossed it in her glove compartment without opening it. Two more manila envelopes already sat in there. She mentally added and subtracted money from her life and then, biting her lip and tasting flakes of chapping Devilicious lipstick, she took out her cell phone and went to the bouncing, sunny calculator icon. The keys lit up a dim gold in the cab of her car and she jumped a bit at the light reflected in the rearview mirror. She added and subtracted and started delving into fantasy holding down the glowing yellow zero. After a minute, with the phone still flipped open, she put her head down on her steering wheel and stared at the black skids on her red heels. She tried to muster up energy but didn’t move her forehead, even putting her keys in the ignition and letting the radio play while she stared down at her scuffed up ruby slippers; there’s no place like home, even when home is the last place you want to be, she thought. Until she realized that she had tears in her eyes listening to “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” then she sat up, wiped her eyes, pushed herself out of her stupid mood, and started her car.

Suddenly motivated to get going, she put the car into reverse and backed out without looking behind her, where a little VW Beetle, bright as an egg yolk, was double-parked with blinking piss-colored warning lights. She slammed on her brakes and the brake light glared angry red at the Beetle less than an inch away. She did not miss the irony of her predicament as she eased her car back into the spot and reached for her fire engine lighter and a cigarette. She got out of her car, slammed the door behind her, and leaned against the fender watching the warning lights blink on and off. The dim fire at the end of her cigarette inched closer to the filter; she flicked it, stamped it out, lit another.

Three Devilicious tinged butts lay around her feet when she reached for her phone to call a tow truck. Instead she half wrote a text message twice, then got back in her car and turned on the dome light, illuminating the interior with enough of an amber glow to reapply her Devilicious lipstick and to notice her bloodshot eyes peering back from the vanity mirror. She took out the three manila envelopes and thought about putting them on the blinking Beetle and maybe getting a beer. Adding it up in her head, she accepted that she could not afford a beer, but rationalized this thought against the fact that she was stuck and might as well knock herself out while down, so she got out of the car again, clutching her saffron purse. Hell, why not just get a Bloody Mary, she thought. She could just taste it, thick spicy tomato juice, when the blonde came running towards her, keys in hand, calling out apologies. She waved it off and got back in her car for what felt like the hundredth time, started her engine, and realized, thanks to a pulsing red icon, that she was out of gas.

A Comment

I find the stories behind stories interesting; looking at a photograph, thinking about what it shows, and how, but also why was it taken? Why did the photographer stop and pose this, structure that, capture anything? Was she trying to demonstrate the bleakness of American life in the midst of the dust bowl? Trying to draw a parallel between dust and human mortality? Or just take a picture of a striking woman, because she's there, and her image, in whatever way she is interpreted, has meaning, and seeing it, the photographer had an inclination, obligation even, to share her image? And in music: where did that line come from? How did that particular sound come about?

It's partly curiousity, a genuine wonder about the artistic process: simple luck, 10,000 hours of practice, a concscious effort to create this effect or emotion, a mindful manipulation of expectation? And it's partly knowledge, a history with creating, a shared experience; I know that sometimes things come about in unlikely ways, from the stories I've heard and from the stories I have myself.

But in starting this blog, initially I took the opposite approach: here are circumstances, and you can see the result. Like Jeopardy, a little bit. "These things: don't use first person pronouns in a first person narrative" and I say "What is The Reluctant I?" by writing and posting. Which is interesting, at least to me, because it's my writing, but there isn't any dialogue. We need Alex Trebek to mediate between answer and question and we like to know who these people are that are providing the questions. And while the question they provide relates to the answer, it isn't the only answer for a question like "Who is Theodore Geisel?" or "What is Honduras?" And of course, while the question relates to the answer, there are still more questions that have meaning.

So, while I will continue to respond, in order, to the prompts provided by Brian Kiteley in his book The 3 AM Epiphany, I will also post my thoughts on the process, to share how I approached the prompt, what I was trying to do in my response, etc., when it seems relevant.

Canned Film Commentary

"'The Blind Assassin'--Margaret Atwood" by Karol M

Lately, it seems like every book I've read is about to be made into a movie. (Well, I read the "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!" edition of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, so that's on me, I guess.) Some of them, like Blindness and Memoirs of a Geisha, I had read and loved long before they had a page on IMDB. But with some of them, production details seemed to be springing up just as I was delving into the fictional world of the novel. Like The History of Love, and King Dork, which may not ever be made into films, anyway.

At any rate, and on a somewhat separate note, with certain books I read I can't help but cast the film. Sometimes, after I've put down an especially engrossing book for the evening, and I'm trying to fall asleep, I'll direct the film version in my head. Even before finishing the book; its a hobby of mine, in a way. I imagine the sets, and the scenes left out, and what technique the director could use to convey some abstract character quality.

I recently finished reading The Blind Assassin, and as I was reading I tried to imagine how the three different stories that are layered within the book would be conveyed. There is the present day character, an old lady, remembering her youth, the novel within the book, also called The Blind Assassin, and the story told between the two main characters.

For this prompt, even though it said "an imaginary film," I wanted to write what I imagined when I read The Blind Assassin instead of creating a wholly original film. I tried writing it several times, and kept using too many words. Also, I kept relying on an imaginary director magically telling the viewer that something happened, rather than on images, which is the whole point of this prompt. So I simplified the plot of the book, took some liberties manipulating the characters, and focused more on images.

It was still a struggle, and I'm not entirely happy with the end result. I wasted a lot of words with the main characters, and I sacrificed a lot of the plot for the introduction. Also, I found it difficult to conjure an animated world, a specific time period, and the effect of alternating scenes. Writing an abridged version of a very complex novel was hard too, and I worry that I cheapened the book by reducing it to the romance.

I do think the book would make a really cool movie, and I think it would be neat to use different film styles for the separate plots.