Dreams

I had a dream last night that has launched the idea for a book series. Lest you begin to fear, I will explain right away that it has nothing to do with vampires or other supernatural creations. I am going to write it in a style reminiscent of both J.K. Rowling and William Shakespeare, and it should be a beauty--when I finish it ten years or so from now.

I am coming to grips with the reality that an author's first few books are almost always flawed and immature. Even the greatest authors show this to be true; and in addition to that, the more I think about it, the more I see that many authors sometimes have weak works, even in the prime of their careers.

So, while I can't even claim to have the beginnings of a writing career yet, I have to have a thorough understanding of the fact that these first few books I write are not going to be the ones on which I will look back proudly. It's a little discouraging to know that I have ideas that are much more brilliant than my own ability to execute them, and I feel in a way that I should be committing a sort of reverse triage by taking the ideas that I feel the most urgency for and putting them on the back burner so that I can develop my craft while working on the ones a little less important to me.

With that in mind, I'm going to get to work on a plot sketch of this dream.

Fear

"I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fear, I will let it pass through me!"

Fear is an interesting thing. I find I experience it often. Therefore, I am going to make a list of things I'm afraid of, in an effort to face it. I will even make an attempt to rank them.

1. I'm not as good a writer as I've always assumed I am.
2. Living the rest of my life alone.
3. Men. Especially very attractive men.
4. Getting fat and/or ugly (I know, I'm so superficial, it's true).
5. Disappointing people.
6. Being perceived by others as boring.
7. Talking too much.
8. Losing my temper (which probably should be higher on the list, because I do that a lot).
9. That I will never actually read all the books I have on my bookshelf.
10. Extreme heights.

I will now contemplate all the ways I can face my fear and let it pass through me.

Wicked!

I went to see Wicked last weekend, and my newly formed opinion is that it is the second-best musical there is. Yes, I know. I haven't seen them all, and I've never even been to Broadway, but it was so good I found myself grinning practically the entire time.You know those experiences you expect to like and enjoy but end up surprising you by being even more likeable and enjoyable than you ever imagined? Wicked was one of those. I liked it so much I forked over the money to buy a t-shirt, which I never do. I am not going to say how much it cost.

The only show I've seen that I thought was better was Les Miserables. Everyone loves Jean Valjean.

Now that I've started this post, I can't think of any specific thing to say in a review of Wicked, other than it was just, like, you know, really good. I had heard the main songs before (sung by the original cast, who are much better than the tour I went to, but oh, well), and liked them, and I even tried to read the book several years ago (HUGE mistake--it was so dirty I nearly threw it across the room). So I was surprised that there were any surprises in store from actually seeing the show. But there were! That, though, was mostly because someone misinformed me about some of the plot details. Speaking of plot, it was probably the weakest part of it. The reason it was so enjoyable, I think, was the way it portrayed an unlikely friendship. It was all about the weird dynamics between Galinda and Elphaba, and though most of us could probably identify easily with Elphaba--the misunderstood, well-intentioned misfit--I know some Galindas too, and now that I'm older I don't think they're all as bad as I used to believe. In addition, the libretto is really clever, disguised as something silly with all the malapropisms.

I wonder if the audience usually connects as much with the show as ours did. The feeling in the room was one of intense joy the entire show, and everyone was obviously having a good time, laughing at the jokes, gasping at the special effects, and feeling all the outrage and suspense right along with the characters.

Fun in San Diego

I am currently vacationing in San Diego, and I came with the expectation of doing lots of outdoor, active things. So far, I have not been disappointed. I'm a little disappointed that my knee got as sore as it did after yesterday, but today's activities have taken care of that.

The trip began with a California burrito from Santana's. While I enjoyed the burrito, I will not be repeating that experience any time soon--this was an intense burrito. Chicken, tomato, and all that stuff--and french fries. Wow. After burritos, raspberry cake, and Cold Stone Birthday Cake ice cream, we played the new version of Balderdash, which is so much better than the old one. I like to think we laughed off all those calories from that heart-attack-inducing burrito right there, what with some people's answers being calculated more to make people laugh than to actually score points. It was great.

Then the next day, we went sailing. I vetoed a second sailing trip for this particular week, but I would be happy to sail again, if I ever vacation near the ocean. It was fun. I especially liked passing the buoy that indicated we were entering open ocean; there was a sea lion just hanging out on the side of it. We passed a lot of Navy stuff, most of which I can't remember specific names for, but one of them was a dolphin pen. I almost avoided getting a sunburn, even. Except for the random spot on the left side of one of my feet, and the little strip on my upper arm where the jacket sorta fell off, I stayed as white as ever.

On Sunday, we walked out near the port in the morning, and then I went to church in the afternoon with a friend from college. It's always good to go to church. Then I went home. J, by the way, is a fantastic cook, and made the best lentil soup I've ever tasted. I'm buying her cookbook as soon as I get home.

Monday was the hard core day. J and I went hiking up a mountain, then back down to the beach, then back up again, then back down to the car. It was a pretty low-impact hike, and most of it was pretty leisurely. But then, after we had some lunch, we went to J's gym to work out. She said she would be my personal trainer. After walking about a mile to get there, we ran for about 20 minutes, stretched, then did muscle work for another hour and a half. I learned a lot of new exercises. Unfortunately, at one point I almost passed out. I think maybe it was lack of water rather than wimpiness. Was I sore this morning? Oh, yeah.

After the gym, I cleaned up and went to dinner with a friend who lives in El Cajon. We walked at least a mile to a place called Ali Baba's, where I ordered Sharwarma, and my friend got Kabobs, Chicken Tekka, and some kind of cream chicken stuff. You eat it all with Arabian flatbread. Yum. Then we walked back to the condo and talked about books.

After all that, I was tired. I slept a good ten hours, and then J and I sat around talking over breakfast, about all the things I should do now that I'm not working full-time. By the time we were finished solving the problems of the universe (or at least my own), it was almost lunch time, so we went to a place called The Living Room for sandwiches (she got eggplant, and I got chicken caesar), followed by a kayaking trip. For anyone who's been kayaking before, you know it can be pretty intense on your arms, especially in the ocean on a windy day. But I absolutely loved it. We made friends with a big, fat sea lion who likes to hang out near the fish market. The fish market people hate him, actually, because he's a nightmare for their health code inspection--he hangs out there and poops all over the place, so it's considered untreated sewage too near the premises, and you can see why they discourage people from feeding or befriending him. We didn't really make friends with him, we just steered the kayak near him and said hi.

Now that my legs are feeling better, the plan is to do some more hiking tomorrow, and Sea World after that! Right now I'm just chillin' while J is making Falafel. I made the Tahini sauce and cleaned up, so there's not much for me to do at the moment. I think I'll go get my book. I'm re-reading Lord Jim.

J and R are really great hosts. I feel very spoiled.

Two Days Later:
Last night I had this dream that we went to the beach and the huge sea lion was there. But he was twice as big as he was in real life, and he dove and ate two other sea lions! It was so scary. Then someone went up to him and made him spit them back out. What an experience.

Yesterday's hike was great. Let's see if I can give a description that gives the whole thing justice. It was a National Park (I'll have to look up the name of it) next to the charming little town of Julian, where apparently they make the best apple pies in the world. I had some of the apple pie later in the afternoon, and it was pretty good. I can't really give a fair assessment, because I ate it while struggling with the beginnings of what turned out to be a really awful headache.

J and I set out bright and early, around 6:30. The drive was supposed to be around an hour, I'm guessing, but it didn't turn out that way. I attribute it to the fact that whenever you go anywhere with J, it's going to be an adventure. It's a good thing R let us take his Subaru, because we went off-roading in a wild attempt to follow the GPS.



After about 5 miles of driving (that took us a good hour), we arrived at our destination: the beginning of the hike around the sides of a few mountains, down to Cedar Falls. We didn't stop and swim because it took us so long to drive there, and anyway, I'm not crazy about swimming most of the time. The waterfall was cool, though. I liked it. And even though it was really hard, we took a "short cut" to get back from the waterfall--a billy goat trail. That was more like rock climbing rather than hiking. I started out more sore than I wanted to admit--mostly because of the lunges and squats we did at the gym on Monday, but I've decided that I like to do hard things.















One day after that:
Went to Sea World today. It's a good thing it was fun, because it costs a lot! The first thing we saw was a dolphin show. I could have done without some of the cheesy music, but I liked the dolphins, and I liked the acrobats dressed as birds. That was cool.

Then we went to the Cirque de la Mer. There were these crazy dudes running around chasing people. It turns out it was all a setup, but it looked like they picked a random dude out of the crowd and forced him to do all kinds of daring things, like doing interpretive dance in front of people, then going in a speed boat to a floating trampoline, then finally getting stuck inside an enormous floating ball and sent out to the ocean.

The performers came out dressed like amphibians, and I am still reeling from how impressive it was. It's hard to believe anyone can be that strong. They were doing acrobatics on poles and stuff, and sometimes the only thing they were using to stay up was their feet, or one hand. Can you imagine being strong enough to do a one-armed handstand on top of someone else's hand, when he's standing with his arm extended up? I can't do it justice. You just have to see it for yourself.

After that, we saw the Shamu show, which was good, but a little cheesy. J says the whale trainers are all kind of divas. She also said that the whales get really moody sometimes, and when they are, they can be dangerously aggressive. I guess most of us have heard about the one in Florida who killed the trainer. The trainers used to get in the tank with them and swim around, but they don't do that anymore. Sometimes they even have to cancel the shows if the whales aren't being cooperative.

Following the whale show, we went to look at a sea otter. I like those guys. They're cute. Then we went to the sting rays, and I touched one. I expected it to be rubbery, but it was kinda slimy. Not the most pleasant thing to feel, but interesting all the same. Then there were more sea lions, more dolphins, an aquarium (my favorite part of the aquarium was the bullfrogs), then the Arctic Circle, where we rode a fun helicopter simulation and saw beluga whales, polar bears, walruses, and penguins.

So Sea World is a fun place. I liked it. We're having shrimp and rice noodles for dinner (yum!), and tomorrow we're going to the beach so the guys can do some surfing. I'll have to make sure to wear more sunscreen, because today I got a little burnt on my face.


The End:
I am finishing this post about two weeks after I started it. The surfing day was fun. We went to the seal beach afterwards, and that night we went downtown for some really great sushi, some of which I will attempt to duplicate this week.