Dreams & Writer’s Block

The following is a bit of story telling, albeit all real. There’s probably no lesson to be learned here; or maybe there is. I’m practicing my writing –– I’m just trying something different.

This morning I woke up remembering that I dreamed for the first time in a long time and that I didn’t need to take melatonin to sleep through the night.

I had stayed up late the night before reading Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” and had a haunting nightmare about being a child, clinging to my mother, who was dressed in a long white gown. She left me, huddled in a ball on an ashy stone table and soon I began focusing on a black, dead tree standing near an abandoned house. The tree began to decay, and as it fell a part, locusts flew at my small, pale, frail body. I screamed for my mother, and then I woke up. I imagine the boy in “The Road” had similar dreams.

“Huh,” I said to myself lying awake starting at the bright sun pouring through my window. Illuminating my Pride flag and sending the most beautiful rainbow reflection into Jeter’s eyes.

I awoke early – 8:30 a.m. – and decided I’d get a head-start on my day. Like I said, this was the first time in a long time I didn’t take melatonin to help me sleep. And while it took me over an hour to finally find rest, it did come, and when I woke up six hours later, I didn’t feel groggy from the medication. I felt good, beside the dream.

Today was warm and bright – at least for mid-February. It was so bright my eyes were a sickly shade of red from rubbing them. The reflection of the snow burned at them, so I put on my sunglasses and Caesar and I went off for a morning walk.

As the sun climbed higher and higher in the blue sky, I felt a longing for warmer days. It has been since October since we went on a vacation together. Each week I say to him, “The next warm weekend we are going…” But there’s yet to be a weekend that has seemed just right.

After our walk I come home, shower, shuffle about the house picking up things here and there, then sit on the chaise and finish “The Road.” When done, I sit it down and I melt downward into the couch, starting out the window, watching as the sun dips further and further into the horizon.

“I don’t know what to write about,” I say to myself. Earlier that day I told myself that I would finishing all my writing assignments, but “The Road” seemed like a more enjoyable task to complete. “I will read it for inspiration,” I had told myself. “To see if it sparks anything.” Now, I lay looking out the window. Still no inspiration to write, occasionally lifting my head to take a sip from my third cup of coffee.

I thought about my dream that started the day. I don’t dream. Most nights I hardly even sleep. What is my brain trying to tell me? What is my subconscious thinking?

Maybe it was just the book. What an odd, interesting book.

Finally, I pulled out my MacBook and began to write as close as I could to McCarthy’s style. Here we are at the end of it. I still don’t know what the dream means. Maybe it means nothing. I hope I don’t dream tonight. I hope I sleep through the night. I hope I find something interesting to write.

Just write, anything, whatever, just anything at all.