Saving dreams.

I know I know I know. I didn’t finish Act 2. I began it and have it saved to publish for the proper day-after-date (02/01/11) but it’s just not ready yet. I apologize. I jumped the gun.

But listen. I have to write about something else this morning.

If you’ve only known me for an internet second, that’s probably enough to know my connection with the dreamworld. My dreams have the power to completely determine and control the outcome of my everyday. On an honest note, and semi-embarrassing one: I dream quite often about people I read about online. People I have never and probably will never meet. I also dream about people that I communicate with online that I’ve met in person but never really communicated much with, face to face. My dreams let my brain wander into a world where I am chatty and outgoing (not that I am a quiet mouse in reality, because I’m not. I just get shy.) and where questions I have about people I know very little about get answered.

Last night I had a tremendous dream about a person I know only through the Internet. In real life, I have been asking a thousand questions about why this person communicates with me and what this person really thinks about me. Usually, dreams caused by these kinds of questions result in dreamworld embarrassment, humiliation and the likely outcome that I’ll wake up feeling defeated at the start of a brand new day. Not the right foot to get out of bed on. But last night, I had this long, epic dream about an Internet acquaintance where I finally got to know more about the person than a website could ever teach and by the end, we were practically great friends. I woke up feeling like all of my questions and worries had been answered and even more notably – I have been more inspired and productive than ever. My hands are flying so fast on my keyboard I can hardly control them. (And I’ve barely had one cup of coffee. Remarkable!)

I’m writing this, really, for no one but myself. Because I’m sure I’ll need the reminder that my dreams really do effect my outlook everyday and that unfortunately, I really have no control over what I dream unless I go to bed with overly happy or overly terrible thoughts. My only logical explanation for all of this positive dreaming last night is that I finally watched The Social Network for the first time, before going to bed. The ending made me think about the unforgiving desire (I have) to be liked and the possibility that others just want to be liked (by me), too. I’m going to work on this.

February 7, 2011  Leave a comment

Act 1: What your eyes say about you.

For whatever reason, it came up (again) in my thoughts while I was driving today, the curiosity about my left-eye dominance. I was thinking about how many people I see, all of the time, with their right eye behind a camera. Which made me feel bizarre. Until recently, when I was reading one of my favorite photographer’s blogs and discovered this image of him in a video:

Meet Jose Villa. One spectacular photographer out of California who captures weddings and real life with total fantasy and charm. I am obsessed with his polaroids and photos of horses.

Elliott Erwitt-esque!

After seeing this video of Jose, I started to wonder if his eye dominance (and mine) had anything to do with the way we viewed the world. I like to think it does, but this is just my own opinion (because I love his work). Jose seemed like the perfect introduction to my recent study about eye & brain dominance and my two-part blog posts. Kind of like this American Life only we’re working in two acts instead of three. Our blog today (and tomorrow): Gaining self-knowledge (at any age). Act one of our post: What your eyes say about you.

I’m left eye dominant. I never really thought about it too hard until the past couple of years when I started shooting more films. Curiosity lead me to wonder if it influenced my composition or aesthetic. I’m not certain that it has anything to do with how I shoot but I will say, it has a lot to do with who I am.

Eye dominance reflects brain dominance. Not everyone has a dominant eye or dominant brain, but most of us do. Left eye dominance means right brain dominance while right eye dominance means left brain dominance. Have you ever thought about which eye or brain dominance you are? There’s a test here or just think – which eye do you look through a camera with? or shoot a gun with? (eek)

So what does it mean? Check it out:

Left Eye Dominance

• Agreeable, social, creative
• Casual, easygoing
• Future-oriented, philosophical, imaginative
• Impractical, unorganized
• Tend to be closer to their mother
• Right brain dominant -
+ Visual learners
+ Intuitive
+ Connected to emotions
+ Risk takers
+ Face readers
+ Look at others while listening intently, then look away when answering
+ Mutlitaskers/Simulataneous thinkers
+ Looks for similarities/connections
+ Have difficulty understanding or listening when there is background noise
+ Scan or skim over things when reading instead of reading the whole piece
+ More ADD prone

Right Eye Dominance

• Logical, self-oriented, practical
• Ask definitive questions, have specific goals, prefer to be organized
• Hold traditional values, like stability and structure
• Skeptical, slow to change – often resist new/innovative ideas until proven
• Tend to be closer to their father
• Left-brain dominant:
+ Analytical learners – good at math, science and language skills
+ Problem solvers
+ Neat and orderly
+ Independent
+ Prefer quiet and solitude
+ Perfectionists
+ Thorough readers
+ Looks for differences
+ Controls emotions

How do you line up? Maybe these are all just coincidences (if so, I have a perfect set of ‘em), or maybe they actually mean something. Either way, it’s seemingly no mistake how humans were made. Everything connects – but maybe I’m saying this because I’m right brained – in our bodies, our minds and beyond.

Tomorrow! Act 2: Connected to the stars.

All above images (except the one of me) copyright Jose Villa. Please check out his work!

January 31, 2011  Leave a comment

Eskimos.

I love winter. He loves winter. They kind of love winter (when they can play in the snow and their paws don’t freeze). Every November I await the first snowfall and so far, it’s been pretty microscopic around these parts. Last year we got dumped with a few blizzards and golly, was it heavenly. Will it snow tomorrow? (I hope so!)

January 25, 2011  Leave a comment

The Yellow Bird

{Play this song. And start reading at 30 seconds.}

In March of 1987, we were born, the two of us, one a Stanley and one a Stella, only a minute apart (- a debate-able day apart). Two souls hooked like one greater, bigger one, inseparable in their hearts and the perfect Pisceans (only something they’d discover years later). It came to be that they were George and Natalie not just George or just Natalie because that is the way God wanted it. Strategists for each other. One more of a talker, the other more of a listener. Two compassionate, loving dreamers who saw the world as they wanted it to be and not how it actually appeared. They shared a freckle, a single mark of uniformity, on their left thumbs. This meant they were connected, physically (though it was deeper, spiritually) until death did them part, and beyond.

Their mother said it began like this – Natalie started talking first. And George just didn’t. For a while, she wondered if he couldn’t. Natalie did everything for him. Maybe she just knew what he wanted? (Or maybe he told her and only her.) After a while they noticed it and after a while, someone got George to start talking. But really, it’s that period of time when George didn’t talk or wouldn’t that made them think of the possibilities. And later in life, it made Natalie think, too.

Some people feel driven to a single purpose in life. Motherhood, fatherhood, career-successful-hood, money-richness-hood, whatever-it-is-hood. For me, it has only ever been one thing, for the past 6 years. Just one thing, that’s it. Nothing more nothing less. The Yellow Bird.

There’s a boy and a girl, two inseparable souls. One is a musician, the other, an artist. The girl hears the wonders of the world and speaks of them with such force, the boy hears nothing at all. Not even her voice. So they are a team – he sees things she can’t and she hears things he’ll never understand. Until one day. After years of their dreaming of a perfect project they can create together, when in the midst of it, she goes. She really goes. To the other world. The one they always dreamed about visiting together someday, but together, nonetheless. And he’s left with silence, not even white noise, and a single solitary figment that keeps her alive. One vibrant bird. Who visits him in his dreams. And helps him to hear with pictures. And helps him to live on his own in the way he never could.

Last night, I met a deaf woman at dinner. When she left our table, my mother said she was deaf – but I never would have noticed. She read lips, she spoke, she seemed near perfect. And then I thought of Peter. And Penny. And The Yellow Bird. And how some things get abandoned in life that you regret abandoning (like this screenplay).

Someday, I’ll make it happen – but not until it’s right. Not until every last word and detail is the way it’s supposed to be. In a way, it’s my preparation for losing him someday (in case that ever does happen), because I’ll need preparation. Because losing him would be worse than losing anyone else. And only he understands that. A twin is not just another family member born on the same day, from the same womb. It’s beyond Godly, something deeply spiritual where two bodies are walking separate lives but living with fractions of the same soul. For this and the other things we can’t explain, like why my dreams effect the dreams of those sleeping next to me and why we share the same freckle, I am living to find the answers.

January 14, 2011  Leave a comment