Sunday, November 27, 2005


I had a wild dream last night. I was at some sort of writing competition at an indoor swimming pool. The pool was a narrow one, about two laps wide, and the water was cloudy, milky, warm. A bunch of writers had gathered; I am not clear what the contest was all about, but we had to swim the length of the pool and back with a jar of preserved fruit between our legs (quite a challenge! We had to swim on our backs). All of the writers were clothed, wearing business suits, not swim suits. I was the only woman in the competition; I'm not sure what I was wearing. The actor Rainn Wilson was in the contest (he's not a writer, but he's married to one--Holiday Reinhorn; what a great pair of names betwee the two of them!--so maybe that's why he was there.) His jar of fruit was very strange; he stopped me after the first length of the pool to show it to me. The fruit was shaped like alien organs; little grenades and stars in all sorts of murky, gleaming colors. He had names for all of the fruit, too--I think one was called "conga." He offered to let me taste it, but then I realized I had fallen behind in the contest, so I kept swimming. Very bizarre...

2 comments:

Joan McMillan said...

Hi, Gayle--I was working with your Fruitflesh book yesterday and am so delighted to find your blog. It's a marvelous book. As for your dream, someone once told me that everything in a dream is a part of us. But who's to say? I often feel that my dream-life is as much of a reality as my waking life, though at times an odd one. Anyway, nice to stumble across your blog. best, Joan

gayle said...

Thank you so much, Joan! I'm so glad that Fruitflesh is proving fruitful for you.

I really like that theory about everything in a dream being part of oneself (if that's the case I wonder what parts of me are competing against one another?) I think writing fiction is like that, too--even if it's not an autobiographical story, every little part carries a piece of the author. Writing and dreaming often feel very similar, so it makes sense there would be parallels!

Thanks again for your kind words! Happy writing!