d r e a m

Dare I do what I've always dreamed to do; dare I admit that I'm afraid to try for fear of failure? One side suggests that I stay silent and the other urges me to stop being silly and just go go go. 

d r e a m

I recently had someone refer to my sketchbook as a 'book of dreams', after having left it face open on my desk after work. Whatcha got there in your book of dreams, they said; the page was rife with the swirling lines and happy face variations that I'd produced for a tattoo design request.

•

Lately, I've been experiencing episodes of exhausted disconnectedness; I'll get off the streetcar after a day at the office and wander aimlessly, looking into shops and at passing people in a daze. Last week I meandered up a street I'd never spent much time on for an hour or so, halfheartedly determined to buy something: a snack, some dinner, a book, a trinket. After passing plenty of interesting locations, I doubled back, entered a juice bar and realized that I had neither cash nor plastic; I shuffled awkwardly outside once more, balanced my purse on my knee and rifled around for a while. Eventually, I migrated to a bench, continued to dig around in the depths of my bag (cluttered with nail polish, pens, mints, receipts, pins, screws...) and found a handful of change.

I continued back down the sidewalk, coins in the palm of my hand. After some debate, I bought two dollars worth of strawberries from a fruit market (which was swarming with bees who kept swooping erratically past my head and colliding with their own reflections in the store's mirrored wall — so much anxiety). The sun had set by then, the street was bustling and cool.

Life is arbitrary — where we go, what we do. It's strangely pleasurable to disassociate from the structure of habitual life, to wander and let go of routine. 

f i s h i n g

Voila, new illustrations. Click here to see more fishing fun!

g o o d . t a s t e

 

l a s t . n i g h t

Dreams — I love them.

In university, when I proposed a series of work illustrating dreams that I'd had, my professor shot me down; he reminded me that "no one is interested in reading about other people's dreams". I've heard that opinion more than once; someone likened the experience of listening to the dreams of others to flipping through snapshots that you aren't present in (initially mildly interesting and ultimately boring).

I can agree, to some degree; when someone exclaims:

"OH MY GOD, I had the strangest dream! I was shopping with Lance Bass and then he tried on this red shirt and then we were on a beach and then my grade school best friend was somehow there and wow...it was so weird..."

Stories like this are, in my opinion, boring not because the action centers around someone else but because the person relating the story is doing so in a poor fashion. When it comes to story telling, my motto is :

In my opinion, if a dream is told properly, it has as much potential (if not more) to be engaging. A narrative presented by the subconscious is free flowing and organic — there is no creative anxiety, no forced dialogue or counterproductive logic-induced pressure. I view the dream as a perfect self contained story, which when relayed properly, is vibrant, strange and unsettling; the dream is a skeleton to be fleshed out with jarring adjectives and sharp movement.

I'm adamant that dreams can be interesting; I'd like to share my own with you — I'll let you be the judge.

*
I'm a difficult night-time sleeper — my mind wanders and I find fear in every shadow. I've always needed ambient noise to unwind at bedtime and lately I've been sleeping with my television and fan on timers. When I slip away to dreamland, I'm surrounded by sounds and light; when I'm awakened hours later by nightmares, it's to silence and darkness. Within the dreamscape, I embody constant composure and uncharacteristic calm; conscious, I lie still, frozen with unease.

*

She's a monster masquerading as an elderly woman with immaculately curled, pale blonde hair. I see her smile sweetly with her pink lips pulled taught; her eyes are orbs the colour of slate. She's been living next door for years, and now that we're moving, she wants to come explore the house.

Our family is packing; I'm drawing glowing constellations on the rugs (paisley-patterned velvet) with yellow, iridescent paint. She enters the shadowy living room, paces slowly and poses before the bare window. She taps her long, pointed nails on the dark glass as her spectral reflection gleams back at me. She sneers; her teeth are razor blades, finely tapered, pearly daggers.

There's a struggle — she's vicious, despite her bony countenance and thin, veined wrists. There's a box of sharpened pencils on the mahogany table and she aims them at me, one by one: grey, yellow, orange.

Suddenly, she's suicidal, dragging me towards her body and grinning madly as she beckons for me to impale her with one of the sticks. I strike; blood wells up from a tiny hole in her skeletal shoulder. She sighs contentedly, and reclines onto the floor. In the dim moonlight, I stab her in the chest, struggling to push the pencil through a fountain of red and into the stiff muscle of her heart.

Eyes closed, she's wriggling her head side to side like a puppy, searching for a comfortable position in which to die.