Ignorant Dreams: Part 1

A couple days ago, thanks to it being summer break and my usual itch-for-travel becoming not so much a centralized point in my mind or a small tugging of my heart but more like an all-over body itch, something you can't simply shrug off because its in your very skin, I began thinking of how ironic my dreams are. And what I mean by this is: I have ignorant dreams.

I'll be honest with you here, it took me a while to figure out what ignorant meant, just as it look me a while to remember how to spell "silhouette" and "linoleum". I think it's interesting how we each have our own "word obstacles" in life, does that reflect upon our personalities? It seems 'experts' are coming up with myriad ways to compare something to one's personality. For instance, on the morning show my mom was watching, there was a lady saying that your personality can be determined by where you sit at a table. Seriously? Whatever happened to just sitting down and not thinking about what your position at the table says about you?

Well, that was an inadvertent rant. But I guess when you haven't posted a blog post in nearly three weeks - and I sincerely apologize! - anything can come tumbling out once you fit that plug firmly in the outlet right? Anyway, back to the initial topic of today's blog post. What do I mean by 'ignorant dreams' you might be thinking? Well, I'll tell you.

Since I can remember - well probably since middle school when I first began writing about tornadoes and equally violent thunderstorms - I have wanted to visit Oklahoma and see a tornado. Some people think I'm crazy, others want to tag along, and even I am slightly confused by my fixation on Oklahoma. After all, it's not like it's the only state within the so-called Tornado Alley, right? And I've certainly never set foot in the state, nor even seen a tornado in person for that matter. In fact, thanks to Sheboygan's proximity to Lake Michigan, I haven't witnessed a severe thunderstorm in Heaven knows how long.

So why then, with never personally experiencing the types of weather phenomenon that I write about in my novellas so vividly, do I feel so compelled to write about it? And why is Oklahoma the state in which I base most of my novellas in? I guess one answer is....is that one's imagination is a mysterious thing. Albeit in real life I haven't traveled to many other states - only the U.P in fact - in my mind, well that's a different story! I've traveled to Oklahoma, Kansas, Maine, Upper Michigan, and many other places. Anywhere the characters constantly taking up resident within the hotel in my mind decide to go once they shut the door firmly behind them. There are no locks on the door, never have been, and the leaning, pick neon vacancy sign never burns out. It just sits there humming quietly in the dark, singing the same tune it has since I first put the pictures in my head into words.

For lack of a better 'transition sentence' as our English teachers and professors are always encouraging us to use, let me introduce my second, most prevalent dream. That being my dream of either one day visiting for an extended stay, or perhaps one day living in...New England! Yes, I know, another shocker right? Anyone who lives in America knows that New England has a high concentration of early Colonial-era homes. But honestly, that's not the only thing that draws me to this particular corner of the States. Every autumn-tinted picture I've seen of Vermont in Country and other magazines I find very worthwhile reading, the forests and winding country roads are literally dripping wet yet licking flames with the flamboyant autumn colors. Vermont as a whole seems like a beautiful state, not to mention the old houses!

Now I know, perhaps I'm just falling for the glossy, veneered photographs set up to showcase a state that's as bland as the rest of them, but I believe everyone feels that way about every state besides their own, that there's better scenery out there, that the faded, crimped and peeling mural behind that lumpy 90's sofa in your living room can be replaced, and you'll never grow tired of looking at, because there's so much refreshing beauty around you. That's what Vermont, and the whole of New England, feel like to me. And of course I can't forget Salem, Massachusetts! With it's highest concentration of 17th Century homes. I can't imagine what it would feel like to walk through a house that's 300+ years old. Or walking down the sidewalk and gazing at houses that people looked at perhaps in the same position you're standing over three years ago.

Okay, okay, I'm getting ahead of myself, I know. But before I go on to perhaps the most ignorant dream of all that I have, let me squeeze in one more praise about New England. If all of these dreams I have listed so far aren't total opposites of each other, I've also always loved lighthouses, historical lighthouses for that matter. And along with my dream of saving and restoring a derelict old house, I could also see myself living in a lighthouse and restoring it as well. Here's where my penchant for severe weather goes a step further. I've always wanted to see a great expanse of sea storm-tossed and churning with a gnashing of white-tipped teeth and snarling growls as it crashes upon the rocks and folds in on itself. Never mind the fact that I can't swim and am irrationally afraid of boats of all shapes and sizes. I would just simply like to sit within a lighthouse, or the keeper's house close to some crumbling, rocky cliff overlooking a tempest-tossed sea, listening to the roar of the waves and the exclamation of its breaking's against the rocks. Just as the sky can become a placid, immovable sea of pearly white or blue on the clearest summer days, I am fascinated how it at once can become molted, leaden and wispy green around the edges as a tornado forms within its blackened heart. The same fascination extends to water. How, like my myriad dreams, Earth's elements harbor great irony and contradiction.

Well, I promised you my 'most ignorant dream' didn't I? Well here it is: ever since getting back into photography after high school courtesy of my 'shutter-happy' cousin I have dreamed about becoming a traveling photographer who takes pictures of the countryside, abandoned barns/houses/farms, small towns...etc. and then writing about my experiences road-tripping it around American so I fit my Creative Writing major in there somewhere. What's so ignorant about this, you ask? Well for one, I don't have either a major or a minor in photography, secondly my sense of direction is horrible - I have this deadly thing where instead of paying attention to where I am and solid markers like street signs, I just go wherever it looks interesting and the directions my heart tugs me in - and thirdly...I don't drive!

Now obviously in the future perhaps I'll be able to overcome my fear of driving but seriously? If it's been five years since I turned sixteen, who's to say in another five years I'll be ready? The fear I feel whenever I foolishly think I've overcome all obstacles and slip behind the wheel...is still as palpable as the day I sat in my dad's van in our church's parking lot and inched around the building at below five miles an hour. And yes, that was my only driving experience, now do you understand why I saved this one for last? And to make it even more ironic...I happen to love random, aimless road trips through the countryside.

So why such dreams as these, you might ask? Well honestly, I have the same question! Why is my literary mind seemingly obsessed with Oklahoma and tornadoes even though I've never set foot beyond the Midwest and certainly haven't seen a tornado! And why does my heart pine for New England so when a small part of me can see myself living there, but a bigger part can't because it's halfway across the U.S? And lastly, why do I envision myself a traveling photographer and writer - blogger perhaps? - when I don't drive and aren't go to college for photography?

I've come to the conclusion, to answer all of these questions like a cook tightly pressing the spatula to the edge of the narrow jar and finally scraping out the last bits of sauce, satisfied that they haven't wasted any, that if all of my dreams - both the one's I've mentioned and the one's I haven't - were in fact mindful of my college-student's paycheck, the contents of my wallet, my abilities and fears and everything else...they wouldn't be dreams! Dreams are supposed to press against the walls of our boundaries like so many steel-lined bubbles circling into the air of our conscious, challenging us, forcing us to accommodate them. They spin away, out of reach, refusing to be popped by the oppressive realities around them. They coax us past the sturdy, iron-clad lip of reason and onto the sagging, sometimes dangerously so, floorboards of our dreams where that sturdy foundation isn't there already around us but is in fact a slumbering, old house yearning for a gentle touch, and an understand gaze. It is a security we build around us, overtime, a place that acquires the title of home, rather than it being slapped about the lintel by someone else's hand.

With all of these broad-stroke dreams like deepening evening sunlight casting a shimmering net upon the undulating plains, I forgot to mention my foremost dream of all...to find and restore a dilapidated Victorian home with a wrap-around porch, soaring turrets, (possible) mansard roof, and more repairs than a 17th century cemetery needs to its headstones. Well that was certainly an odd metaphor, wasn't it?

For all my obsessions with old houses, and all the mediums I use to incorporate them, I know nothing about old house restoration, and even more interesting, I have never lived in an old house myself, and for that matter have rarely had a prolonged stay in one. Yet I know unflinchingly that I wouldn't want to live in a new house - and by new I mean nothing under a hundred-years-old. Yes I know when I finally set my eyes upon a derelict home to restore, it will immediately begin clawing at my wallet like a plump, greedy child fingering the delicacies spread out before him at a wedding, but more importantly, that old house will tug on my heart - corny I know, but bare with me ;) - and that's what matters to me. Which brings me back to the above paragraph, where if our dreams are conscious of our financial trappings and limited abilities and knowledge, they would fizzle like flat soda beneath the glaring summer sun strung high in the trees. And what would we be left with then? A stark reality outlined harsher than a photograph treated with HDR. (Yes, I have recently become obsessed with the many abandoned house pictures on flickr.com and thus is the explanation for that metaphor).

Perhaps all of these dreams are the reason for which I choose to gravitate so heavily and find it so natural to write about them, so I can at least have some avenue to reaching them, even if it be metaphorically and fictionally. Perhaps when I finally do step beyond the threshold of this life and into a dream and find it forming solidly around me, I will find that the novellas I created about them, aren't that far from the truth. Maybe in some small way I have already achieved the first step in accomplishing my dreams, by using my many characters as a way to cling to them, and not let my mind forget.

PS: Next week's post will be Part 2 of this impromptu "dream series". :)