Poetry, Dreams, Next Week, and Photoshop...All in That Order.

I was recently going through some of my old writing when I found this lovely poem:

One of Those

I have dreams like fire and thoughts like rain.
They came from the boy in the green shirt.
I guess he did something nice for me, but I don’t remember.
I’ve run after him my whole life.
I’ve never found him.
I guess I’m looking in the wrong place.

I think about him all the time.
Thank-you green shirt boy.
Your limey, grassy, delicious color makes me happy.
I don’t even know what your face looks like.
I never see faces there.
Maybe they’re not important.

I want to know who you are.
Why do you always wear that color?
Where do you read comedic novels and drink cheap hot tea?
I think what you do is glorious.
Nothing I do is glorious.
Maybe one day it will be.


I wrote it about a dream I had of chasing a boy in a green shirt all over a college campus.  Apparently I started planning a story for it too, but I totally forgot about it.  I really enjoy a lot of my dreams and I wish I could remember more of them.  They would probably give me so much material for my stories.  Of the few I do remember several of them have turned into stories.

One of them went from dream to story to illustrated book project.  It's the capstone project I'm finishing up for my experimental drawing class.  I've never taken on something so ambitious, but Caroline says that if I can do this then I can illustrate books for a living.  Excuse me while I search for a monster that eats procrastination.

I remember a period during my public school days when my sister became obsessed with dreams.  I think it must have been some sort of psychology class she was taking, but she started to write down her dreams.  I thought I had strange dreams until I read hers.  I wish I still had what she wrote because all I can remember is something about a house with a bunch of rooms and a guy at a piano that had a tie that was as big as his head.  Am I the only one who sees a potential story in that?

There are other dreams I've had that I wish would go away and never come back, like the recurring dreams I have where I get into situations that cause me to fall from great heights.  It never fails that I have one of those at least once a month, but when I was younger I had them waaaaaaay more often.  I'd say it probably has to do with my fifth grade teacher leaving the TV on while people jumped from the twin towers on 9/11.  That's totally appropriate for ten-year-olds.  There went my innocence.

But enough morbidity!  I'm also currently working on another ukulele makeover during my breaks from studying for my Spanish exam and working on my book.  So next week you guys get to see the results of the ukulele makeover AND my illustrated book.

I'll leave you now with my photoshop projects from my digital foundations class:

First thing we had to do was repair an old picture of this scary-looking woman.

Then we had to make "Frankenstein" creatures out of a bunch of different things...so behold, Unicorn and Peacock!

The last thing we had to do was take an old photograph and alter it, then give it a back story.  I got this woman standing in the grass.  She's a pig herder: regular pigs, pot belly pigs, car-sized guinea pigs, you name it.  But she got really bored so she started experimenting and created a literal guinea pig.  Now she has to carry that shepherd's crook to fend her freakish new creature off, because it loves her just a little too much.

Also, the woman totally looks like a Mori girl.  It's turning out to be a good Friday.