“I don’t sleep, I dream” -REM

“Every day I travel 

To keep my mind quiet in its cage 
Every night I`m dancing 
With the images I generate ” Seabound: travelling 

Woke from one of my recurrent nighmares. I’ve been feeling a little under the weather, so I zonked for a nap, and blammo. The Airport Nightmare. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love travelling, and by luck, and family, and some thrifty, smart travel planning, I go places, and while I travel less than your average CEO, I sure travel more than the average person. 

And I dream, nay, nightmare, about airports, missing my flight, lost in the boarding tunnels, forgot to pack luggage, denied entry to countries, confused by the language, lost lost so utterly lost. and then there’s the dreams of flying, which some say is a sex thing. but it doesn’t explain the myriad of flying contraptions my brain thinks I’m to board for parts unknown. ( if you care to take a flying armchair analysis at this, feel free.) Low tech prop planes and high tech suborbitals. I wake, sweating, heart pounding. 

But dreams, and nightmares are where my ideas burble up in my writing, from the oddball stew of images and thoughts. I never really think of running low on ideas. It simply really hasn’t happened yet. I’ve fished more than a few ideas out that needed more simmering time, but the first novel was a series of recurring odd dreams, fragments really, that I pieced together. ( I’ve heard you really don’t remember dreams, but I do. vividly. Easily.) 

A classmate wryly observed “Nico, your dreams are other people’s nightmares.” 

Perhaps. 

I’m travelling again in 10 days so perhaps that’s the kicking off of the new batch of dreams. After returning from China, the hum of a truck motor in the alley was the hum of jet engines in my sleep. 

( Oddly, the main character has rarely flown, the logistics of long haul flights and commercial air routes and vampires is not a simple one, nor did he have the access to the elite private jet thingy. So I put him on a plane and made him terrified. Much fun.) 

So that’s where my ideas, my nightmares, my dreams come from. Removing one aspect probably causes the whole rickety mess to fall apart. Still, wouldn’t mind a heart pounding dream that doesn’t involve sprinting to a gate. Would prefer something a little more…well, y’know.  

( My apologies, my lack of photomojo has left the images a bit borked.)