How Nahe and I work from home together.

Getting LOTS done. Yep. Lots and lots.

Crazy-vivid lately dreams.

I dreamed I were at some sort of big church, but it was not Kawaiaha'o, and I was sitting in the audience with my friend Jenjen. Auntie N. and some of the other aunties were leading what must have been current HYOC members into different numbers, etc. After one song ended, Auntie N. took the microphone. She noted how many alumni/ae were in the audience and asked us to stand. And it was IMPRESSIVE. It was like every alumni/ae whose life she had ever touched was there. Fully 3/4 of the audience (which was huge) was made up of alums. We then all sat back down, and she got kind of emotional at the mike, seeing us all gathered there, like she hadn't realized quite how many had turned out. And then she started bringing alums up to perform the really, really old numbers, drawing on her intuitive knowledge of what each of us could do, what we were good at, and so forth. It was amazing, her recall of so many people's talents and affinities. I particularly remember her introducing a number (I didn't recognize it) by some of the most graceful dancers, and you introduced their names, and all of a sudden from the crowd rose Mahina, a visibly pregnant Joanna, Lorelle, a pregnant Laurie M., and Lisa U., and they moved so gracefully and positioned into a long-forgotten kind of tableau, positioning themselves to wait for the music to begin, some kneeling, all with arms held just so. It was amazing, like muscle memory, like bone memory, how all these women, who in my dream were living such different adult lives (as they are outside of dreamland, too) could instantly fall back into this knowledge of a piece they had known intimately for years and just remember its every nuance. Or Auntie N. would bring up some others who were known for their renditions of certain songs, Mahi'ai with Ka Wailele, you know, or Ann Y. for See the World.

I also dreamed that the service was partly a funeral for one of two twins, who I guess had been in HYOC? (I didn't recognize them, I don't think they were real people.) Anyway, somewhere in the middle of the performance, there was some kind of intermission, I guess, and Jenjen and I went to the bathroom, which you had to walk on this outdoor lanai kind of area to get to. On the way there, we saw the coffin out in a yard, under some plumeria trees, and there was a huge white Alaskan husky sitting directly on top of the coffin and just ... WAILING. We both were so sad for the dog, understanding instantly and implicitly that that dog was the dog of the person who had died. But what was weird was that we slowly realized it was a GHOST DOG. Did the dog die of grief when its owner did? I don't know. But anyway, we realized it because no one else could see the dog or hear it, but on and on it kept wailing. We felt really bad for the dog, and magically, for some reason, I had a ziplock of bacon in my pocket (never leave home without it, LOL), so I started feeding the ghost dog the real bacon, which really did vanish when he ate it and seemed to cheer him up a bit. Then he started whining and pacing like he needed to be walked, which was ridiculous. I mean, he's a ghost dog! he's not even chained up! shit, he's already in a yard! just go do your business! I tried to reason with the ghost dog, but just like real dogs in nondream life, I could not ... because he was a dog. So you and I went to go get one of our dog's leash and collar. To take a ghost dog for a walk. That was going to look really fucking ridiculous, an empty collar and leash held by us as we walked along, but .... we were going to do it anyway.

Also I dreamed I was Bones (from the tv show, the forensic anthropologist) about to FINALLY get it on with Booth, but Dave's hacking up his lung (in real life, he is sick right now) woke me up. Man was i PISSED to be distracted from that dream. Then, later, I was in a crazy huge awesome vintage store, and I bought a few things, but part of the crazy thing about that store was that when you bought stuff, you also had to help their ad campaign by modeling on other things they picked for you and getting your photo taken. It was crazy. I felt like a pin-up girl. It was hot. And the shoes I dreamed about ... man, I wish I could find them in real life. Then I dreamed I ran into my friend Khaliah on the street, and Jenjen, and they were giving me a shit for not going out to a boozy dinner, and I was trying to explain how broke I am (shit, even in my dreams, I am broke, this is fucked up, I should at least DREAM about being a gazillionaire), and you both told me I was lame.

Stumbling on the origins of story.

I just spent two hours reorganizing a large pile of torn-out planner pages, post-its, and scrap paper--an accurate road map to the interiority of my brain, which, to my OCD's chagrin, is really not that organized after all.

Two HOURS, people.

Somewhere in there, I stumbled on this note, from March 31, 2009:

Short story @ PCC!

performing polynesianness (weird)

edit from Freaks?

What a GEM. Evidently, it was back in March 2009 that I began dreaming up "Circle Island." It began as nothing more than the cobbling together of an observation ("the Polynesian Cultural Center requires Mormon Polynesians to perform their Polynesianness, and I find this WEIRD") with the resurrection and rewriting of a draft of another story that had never quite worked ("Freaks," which meditated on what makes someone a "freak" and was set in Coney Island).

I am really relieved that I wrote "Circle Island" without waiting to find this note again, but nevertheless sometimes my disorganized mess makes me really, really happy. Such as on days like today, where the chaos yields proof of inspiration. How very bright, and yet tiny, inspiration can seem--like a flash of lightning, like the firing of a single synapse, so electric and quick. And yet if you give it the time and space to breathe, it takes on a life of its own.