BANG OUT

1. When you wake up in the morning, lie in bed lazily, but recall your dream as quickly as you can. If you have trouble recalling the dream, shift back into the position you were in when the dream ended. Something about recalling the body’s position will shift your brain pattern back into the story it was focused on in the dream state.

2. While you are recalling the dream, try not to add or delete any facts. It’s just a dream, after all. For instance, if you dream that you had sex with the seventeen-year old boy who works at the library, and when he took his cock out of his boxer shorts, it looked like a fudgsicle, don’t leave that out. Resist leaving that out. Conversely, if you started to have sex with a younger, better-looking man than your husband, but the action petered out for some reason before the two of you could do it-try not to change that. Try to resist embellishing or finishing the dream in your half-awake state. For example, let’s say you’re lying in a field, no, it’s your parent’s pasture. You walked over there with this slender, good looking young man, and you were lying down together in your pasture. You were young and beautiful again. You didn’t care how much your stock was worth. You weren’t saving for your children’s educations. In the dream, you and the man lie down. You’re surrounded by barbed wire, though. Then a song started playing in your head called “Love is a Battlefield…” You probably woke up then with that song in your head and that was the end of the dream. Don’t leave that part out. Be real.

3. When something happens in the dream that doesn’t make sense, don’t try to make it make sense when you write it down. If the woman in the dream who is you is suddenly Sally Field, don’t explain that. You are in a field after all. That doesn’t need explaining.

4. If all your dreams take place at your parents’ house, don’t be annoyed. This is a natural dream phenomenon. Everybody dreams they are at their parents’ farm and that their brothers and sisters are turned into pigs that are trying to eat them. Everyone. Even in our forties and fifties, sixties, we are all still struggling with the fear that our siblings could’ve murdered us in our sleep when we were children.

5. If you have a sex dream about Brad Pitt while you two are doing it on a wooden floor; if you wake up and your dog has his paw in your crotch, don’t use that as your dream story. That’s funny, but it’s an anecdote, not a story. Nobody wants to picture your dog’s paw in your crotch.

6. Blend imagery from your waking life with the dream imagery. Use examples from your own real life if necessary. Think of something that is going on in your life that could account for the bizarreness of your dreams. If you are having trouble deciding how your waking life affects your dream life, answer the following survey:

a. Are you getting enough sex?

b. Are you anxious about being late for work?

c. Do you have road rage because people are still holding their cell phones in their hands?

d. Are you anxious about the size of a body part? Either too large or too small?

e. Are you anxious about the size of anything in your life? For example, your house, your car, your wife’s breasts, your husband’s gut, your yacht….you get the point. Anything upper middle class.

f. Are you unclear about where your life is headed? (Don’t be, by the way, death is ultimately the answer.)

g. Did you eat too much for supper?

h. Did you watch too many reruns of Project Runway?

i. Are you getting enough exercise?

j. Are you worried about what class you are now in, socio-econimacally?

k. Are you concerned about the billions of dollars the government is still spending on war?

l. Are you concerned about the billions of dollars the government is going to spend bailing out the banks?

m. Are you trying to figure out how this all trickles down to you?

Lumberjack?

Housekeeper?

Hat factory worker?

Radio parts factory worker?

Starbucks worker?

Teacher?

Maintenance man?

Plumber?

Contractor?

Musician?

Writer?

n. Is you house held together by newspapers?

7. While blending the realistic images from your daily life with the dream imagery, try to make a point. What purpose does this dream life serve? What is the purpose of dreaming your life away in a story? What is the purpose of your reality? What is the purpose of walking through life like you are in a dream?

8. Write an imagined ending to the whole scenario-something either tragic or comedic. Tragedy lasts, but comedy sells. So make your choice according to your taste. If you want a happy ending, write it. It should exist somewhere.

9. Use one dream per story if possible. This is consistent with the fact that you only get this one life.

10. Go to sleep if you can and keep dreaming. Sleep is good for you. Remember, you are going to die anyway. Later is better, of course, so try not to lose too much sleep over the state the world is in.

Copyright © 2009, Jamey Genna