Depression Dreams

One thing you can count on with a depression is great dreams. They may be terrifying, but they'll be terrific! So I thought I'd share some of the best ones.

I've had two musical dreams so far. In the first one, I was practising my scales.

Now, most people think of a "scale" as one octave up and down. However, remember I was in training to be a concert pianist in another lifetime. For me, doing one key is an hour or longer.

For starters, all the scales are 4 octaves in length, and yes, they were all 4 octaves in my dream. I believe I was working in the key of A Flat.

I meticulously dreamt my way through 4 octaves, hands together, of the major, harmonic minor, and melodic minors of the key. I did them in thirds (where the left hand starts on the first note of the scale but the right hand starts on the third), tenths (the left hand again is on the first note but the right hand is on the third note, only an octave higher, so it's actually ten notes away from the left hand), and sixths (the right hand begins on the first note but the left hand starts on the third note). Four octaves, major, harmonic minor and melodic minor.

Then there were chromatics, where you play each white and black note, 4 octaves, and also in thirds, sixths and tenths.

Then there's contrary motion, where you start both hands on the same note near the middle of the keyboard and go two octave in opposite directions. These are done in major and harmonic minor only.

And then there are the arpeggios. These are done in the "normal" position, where the hands are an octave apart, but then you start on different notes. Those are called inversions.

Needless to say, it was a very long dream! The beauty of the key of A Flat is all the different fingering patterns you have to use because of all those flats. My brain would slow me down to a crawl while it watched my fingering very carefully, as if in slow motion. And I think I did everything two or three times in the dream, which would have taken two or three hours in waking life, back in the day when I could do scales nice and fast. Today I don't know how long it would take - next time I find an available piano I'm going to have a go at it, just to see!

Today's musical dream was of a piece I used to play, the Prelude in C from J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavichord. It's a simply, easy and lovely piece to play. I went through it easily about five or six times in the dream, in close-up, seeing the music right in front of my face, and then in different scenarios. As a teenager, on my grandparents' piano in their living room, as a child in a house with two other children who happened to be my Stepchildren, as an adult with the two Stepchildren but with my grandparents in their bedroom listening to me practise.

And a few days ago I had a "work" dream, where I was printing large-scale posters and mounting them on foamcor for a display. The pictures were of the royal family - not the current one, but the one in The Tudors - Henry VIII, Katherine Howard and Anne of Cleaves, specifically. But the fear was that the king wouldn't like them, because they weren't strict portraits, they were artsy-fartsy, done in a modern style, as if Picasso had painted them. But the toughest part was getting them mounted on foamcor - all I had were strips, and I had to glue and weave the foam strips together to make a solid backing for the posters.

And then there was the slightly scary dream, where I'm in my grandparents house. It's winter and it's nighttime, and the snow is piled into huge drifts, half burying the cars. Their old Buick is in the carport, the streets have snow-clearing machinery grinding away, but there are hoodlums pestering me, a gang of teenagers who are trying to break into the house or break into the car, and I keep running from door to window looking for them, trying to scare them away while checking to see if the locks are secure. But the most powerful image is of the blowing snow and the lights swaying in the wind.

The scales dream and the dream of the posters are both about structure. The underlying structure of my life, my real life, has been removed, shattered, and I'm dreaming about structure as my unconscious attempts to put the pieces of my life into a new order, trying to make sense out of the strange situation in which I find myself.

The Prelude in C is about me trying to figure out my relationship to my family, whether I'm a child or an adult, and who the family is that lives in that house.

And the winter nightmare is my unconscious warning me my borders have been breached, so to speak! My unconscious letting me know I'm having a breakdown of sorts.

Fun, eh? The only drawback is that I seem to be limited to one significant dream per night. The current insomnia pattern has me waking up at 4 a.m. every day, unable to get back to sleep. Which is too bad, as the dreams are very entertaining in an otherwise quite dull life.

Unwanted Pumpkin

I have an unwanted pumpkin on my hands I simply don't know what to do with.

Well, strictly speaking, it's not a pumpkin, it's a potiron. Sorry - don't know the English for that.

I picked up two potirons from the Atwater market a few weeks ago. I purchased them because the lady said they had more meat inside than a pumpkin did. I knew I had to make four pies for Thanksgiving, and I wanted to be sure I had enough "squash-meat" to do it with.

(Aside: Yes, this year's pumpkin pies were made without pumpkin. Nobody noticed. Except that the unpleasant flavour of pumpkin was absent from the pies. I swear we could feed the hungry millions of the world on pumpkin, if we could only make the stuff palatable!)

Well, a single potiron gave me enough for four pies, and now I have this beautiful round hot-orange colored squash sitting on my counter. Glaring at me accusingly.

What's that - make more pies, you say? Yeah. In my tiny microwave, it takes three separate cookings to get through one of these things. Cut it up, put it in the only dish that fits my MICRO-wave, cook it for ten minutes, cool it for twenty, scrape the meat out into a bowl, cut up the next bits, cook them for ten minutes...

It's enough to make you buy the stuff in the can! Yes, I miss my big microwave.

But back to my current dilemma.

Carve it up, you say? Well, remember that bit about there being more meat in this thing? It's true. There isn't any actual space inside this thing once you take the seeds out! It wouldn't hold a tea candle!

Make a squash soup! Make a stew and use it! Make pumpkin bread with it! Make anything!

Yeah. How about just throwing it out?

Every fibre of my Scottish ancestry writhes in agony at that suggestion! Throwing out food is a sin, just about the one sin I haven't given in to yet! And the only one that makes me seriously uncomfortable any more! "Thou shalt not waste food" is more deeply ingrained in my soul than any of the others.

Maybe I can make some pies, and just not eat them and get fat, but instead take them to some mission or other.

Now that would satisfy my inner demons. Let's see if I can make myself do it.

Who would have thought a stupid pumpkin could cause such moral anguish?

Haiku! (Gesundheit.)

Golden leaves flutter

Across an empty field, like

A storm of butterflies.

This is the picturesque view through Boyfriend's patio doors. I am staying out here in the boondocks this week in an effort to recover from my latest depressive episode that has once again flattened me and removed me from the workforce.

(If you can call my trifling 3-day week a "force," that is.)

I've heard all the comments several times before. "I'd like a job like yours." "I'd like a doctor like yours." "Where do I sign up?"

But I don't think anybody really wants to sign up for this crippling set of symptoms. Sure, we'd all love a month off for "free" sometimes.

But it's not free - that's the problem. I've already paid the toll, and it's going to take me a month to recover.

Now, I'm as lazy as the best of them. Given a chance to snooze in extra long on a weekend, I'll happily roll over and stretch in the sun! A day where I don't get dressed is as therapeutic for me as it is for anyone.

Provided I have a choice in the matter, of course.

What's different is that I went to roll out of bed and get showered and dressed, only to discover that a work crew had been there overnight and methodically removed access to the shower and my clothes. I could not get to them. Someone had taken a jack-hammer to all the floors in my world, and there was only rubble to crawl over, from the safety of the bed to the safety of the couch. Even the coffee maker had grown in proportion to everything else, and to turn it on required a herculean effort. It was in pieces, for one thing, a puzzle I did not feel qualified to fit together properly. And with lack of morning coffee came lack of morning anything, and it was suddenly afternoon and I hadn't eaten anything, nor had I showered and dressed. I was back where I began. Nothing started, nothing accomplished. Not even simple grooming.

That's the difference, see. I don't have a choice whether I'm in this club or not. I didn't sign up for anything, but here I am.

"Work expands to fill the time available." That's Parkinson's Law - C. Northcote Parkinson, to be exact. My dad had the book when I was a kid. I would read bits of it from time to time, I seem to remember it was funny.

See, it's one thing to be healthy and to take time off, goof off, for a day, or a month, if one can afford. To let a day's work become two or even three day's. But it's quite another matter if you're unable to do anything for a day, or a month, however long the disability lasts. Where it can take you a month to do that day's work because you can't wrap your head around it, because the world has become an obstacle course where every step is a struggle, every movement precarious.

So I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see a cloud of leaves being blown across the field outside, looking for all the world like the butterflies of summer even though it's freezing now. A small gift from Life, a sign of hope. Contained in the dead leaves of autumn are the beautiful wings of spring. It will be warm again.

Impromptu

Okay - I have 25 minutes to write this blog. Twenty-four and a half... Yes, I'm coloring my hair. I am going to spend 25 minutes wrapped in a cloud of peroxide that makes me gag and causes my eyes to water. And for what? So I can look younger?

Have you ever noticed that just about the time your hair is driving you nuts for whatever reason, you suddenly get compliments on it? This happens to me all the time. At yesterday's Thanksgiving get-together, everybody gave me compliments on my hair. Now, it has outgrown its last trim and is now a shapeless mess. I had been obliged to spend nearly 45 minutes drying and brushing and twisting and finally spraying it into shape. This is not what I consider to be a good time!

Right up to five minutes ago, my "roots" were nearly 3 inches long. I could see these roots because my Darling Daughter somehow got me to take leave of my senses this summer and go blonde again. My natural color is a dark grey.

I kid you not. I once had a stylist take all her colors out and tell me what my natural color is. She said, "If your hair was fabric or wool and you made a suit out of it, it would be a dark grey suit."

Not "Ash-blonde." Dark grey.

So I thought I was doing fine, keeping my hair tinted a fairly dark color. But my Daughter (who is a natural blonde) bemoaned it constantly, saying wouldn't I like to try blonde for a change.

Oh, the years of memories that brought back! My Grandmother colored my hair blonde from the time I was seven years old till I was 19. She denied it vehemently. She'd be there, standing over me, putting the dye in, and from where I sat I could read the packaging that said "Hair Coloring" - and she'd still say "I'm not coloring it - I'm conditioning it."

Gotta hand it to Gran - she could have been a politician!

Anyway, it desperately needs a trim, the summer's golden hue has turned slightly brassy, the dark grey roots are 3 inches long, and it was time to finally drag out yet another bottle to help me cover my shame.

I'm going for dark blonde this time. Clairol number 106, to be exact.

I do not expect my Daughter to like it, since it's rather dark, as blondes go. But I'm hoping to get to Christmas without having to do it again.

The fact is, I'm tired of dying my hair. Just think, in four more years I'll have been coloring it for fifty years! I mean, isn't there a point where you just give up, call a spade a spade, and get on with your life - without the addition of chemicals?

I seem to remember a few years back I did just that for a couple of years. Nobody liked my natural color, either. And then I entered my "red" period.

It makes me real jealous of pussy-cats, who have beautifully-colored luxurious fur all over their bodies. All they have to do is groom themselves to be completely and utterly gorgeous.

That's how I'd like to be. Have beauty built-in.

Not squirted in a smelly mess from a plastic bottle.

Clothing

They say, if you want to be rich, don't take up with anything that has a mouth. I often think they should also say, don't take up with anything that wears clothing.

I have a difficult relationship with clothing. Part of the problem is historical: when I was five years old I was whisked across the country by my dad, who thought he was doing "the right thing." Five years old is when girls and boys get their gender identity fixed in place. I had just begun to play dressup in my mother's crinolines that hung in our basement - can't you just SEE those '50s dresses and their beautiful crinolines?!

But upon being removed from the family home, bereft of mother, I settled upon good old Dad as my role model. I learned to wash my face, once a day, that was that. To brush my hair in the morning and before I went to bed. And to put on whatever clothes got laid out for me. Once my grandma got into the picture, she took over - completely - and I was nineteen before I demanded the right to choose my own clothing. This is from my own closet and drawers mind you - I was twenty before I went to a store and choose something from off the rack!

So I did not experience the primping and wardrobe changes that most girls went through in this culture. The idea that I should, or even could, check my appearance in the mirror more than once a day was a foreign concept to me. I wore a lot of hand-me-downs and never really learned to take any particular joy in dressing up.

From time to time I would try. I did a lot of sewing, most of it rather badly. I was impatient with details like pressing, so what I did end up making was, for the most part, ill-shaped and ill-fitting. I liked it because I made it, and kept hoping that maybe the next thing would fit better, without actually laying out a different plan of action, like, for instance, measuring...

In between these "fits" of sewing I would lose patience altogether and go out to a store and buy something. So my wardrobe "grew" - much in the sense of a tumor or a wart, and with about as much elegance.

Fast forward to about eight years ago when I discovered "What Not to Wear" on tv. Stacey and Clinton, help me! I'm dying here! I don't have a clue!

I did manage to glean a few tips over the years: that a woman with my (full) figure should wear structured garments, (so I don't look like a shapeless blob) for instance. Not to put fancy things up high on my chest, since ruffles and what-not look better on flatter women than I. Much flatter than I.

Since around about that time I was in menopause, I also learned that I'm only truly comfortable in natural fibres. Man-made fibres made me sweat profusely, a very distasteful sensation, I assure you!

Well, I've had it. I want off. The world, the game, the fashion whirl. I'm tired of bras, even the goddess bras that fit me so well. I'm tired of matching colors, of trying to remember to wear some of my jewellery with certain outfits. I'm tired of layering, arranging, and tying. It's just not me.

If I lived in a warmer climate, I could easily become a nudist, or "naturist" as it's popular to call them nowadays. Isn't that funny - there's even a politically correct term for being nekked! Say - I wonder what nudists call the people who wear clothes? Fuzzies? No, wait, that's something else...

But I live in Canada, closer to the Arctic circle than the equator alas! So I'm openly declaring myself to be a pyjama-ist. Long underwear (men's, fyi) and a long-sleeved nightie on top. (You know why I wear men's long underwear? Because it's long enough and it's BIG enough. Men don't put up with uncomfortable clothes - it's a mystery to me why women do.)

I declare my pajama leanings. I want to wear my jammies to work. To go grocery shopping in. Why do I have to put on an uncomfortable set of somethings when I have this perfect pairing available? More of us should go to the supermarket in our jammies. Maybe we could bring world peace.