Crustaceans...

Last night I dreamt that while I was walking through a moor, a crustacean shaped a lot like a scorpion pierced the sole of my foot. The wound was about an inch deep and the creature started burrowing and filling the hole up with sand, saltwater and air. It was very painful and I had to rip the creature out, leaving a curved beak embedded in my foot. This would not have happened had I been wearing shoes.

Newspaper Makeovers...

Dear Readers (if you exist),

Greetings during these lazy, hazy long days of summer. It has been a long time since I had a decent shoe dream. I don't know about you, but I get quite bored waiting for these to occur to me. I've been reading a lot of fashion magazines to try and prompt my imagination, but all I keep dreaming about are places in Greece, places in Spain and all the spas in Budapest. Humbug!

So I've decided to start a new, and more guaranteed regular, feature of my blog: our weekly makeover doodles on Globe and Mail columnist Warren Clements' portrait.

Every Saturday, I get together with a group of friends (also pictured; B-- missing because she is away on a bicycle in Jutland) to do the Fraser Simpson cryptic crossword in the newspaper. Before we begin, we always give neighbouring columnist Warren Clements, of word nerd fame, a new 'do.

Viz above.

The Schizophrenic Future: Excessive and Minimal

We are entering an age of purple suede; I can sense it coming. Was it the season finale of Canada's Next Top Model, with its artificial excess, that made me see these extremely high heels with their band of sparkly studs across the toe? And check out the wispy nothing of a heel I dreamt alongside it: the shoe of the future. Just a platform to raise the heel, no sole, no vamp. Sportive.

Rorschach Shoes...

Last night, an image of plain white satin shoes, with black spots of ink bleeding across the toes. It was awfully hot last night and sleeping was difficult. I was thinking of the things I should do, or wish I would do, and all the things that I am not. Suddenly these shoes appear. Their once-perfect white satin sullied by a formless smear. However I instantly like their ink decoration. I've always preferred clothes with paint smattered on them.

These shoes are everything in my mind that hasn't yet come to be. They are the recognition and acceptance of messiness--the fruition of the creative violence I sometimes feel towards the expectation of perfection.

This is what I make of these shoes. Is it too much? Who knows? But that's what you get on a hot, humid and sleepless night.

Good Things Come in Pairs...

In an earlier post I wondered "what is it about Montreal (and my shoe dreams?)". Well I can scarcely believe it, but after a long period of shoe-less dreams, I had another once my head hit the pillow IN MONTREAL this weekend. A real crop of beauties, I saw. As usual, the most beautiful pair (and as you know, beauty in a dream is conveyed not by a visual image but an all-over feeling) were the most plain, though the most fun pairs were the most pink.

The day after I dreamt of these shoes I went for brunch at Byblos, possibly my favourite restaurant, for a Persian meal. The sun was streaming through the giant open windows and I was drinking honeydew melon juice alongside my bowl of cafe au lait. I told K-- that I'd had another shoe dream, and here was the drawing to prove it. Then N--, a friend of K--'s said, "you dream shoes too!?"

I nearly dropped my spoon of cantaloupe/rose jam. It turns out that N-- not only dreams about shoes, but she draws them as well. This makes me giddy! I can't wait to see her drawings. I suppose if she's going to post here, I might as well drop the convention of the dash-dash and tell you that her name is Natalie!

We all wonder if anyone "gets" us. Recently I'd been wondering if my interests in beauty, colour, form, pattern and image were so unpopular. Sometimes it seems as though I'm alone in observing these things while my friends obssess over politics, finance, policy, science, etc. Weighty topics. I think about these things too, but...drily.

Anyway, it's exciting to think that Natalie and I might share a little flag in our individual imaginations, one that signals a vision of a world of beauty, character and free expression. Through shoes and other things.

Frog Charmer

Do you see images behind your eyes before falling to sleep? I've always found this time wonderful, when anything can pass into view--a canoe on an otherwise empty lake, cottonwood blowing through an office, two purple sticks. Anything! It is important not to force this phase of sleep or to conjure the images willfully, or else you will be disappointed. The subconscious imagination is not an engine to be started and stopped; it has its own drive. You can just let go of the wheel. This is sometimes most difficult to do.

Last night I half-dreamt of a little frog inside a sandal. I felt certain, somehow, that this was happening in India. However the frog was most likely a North American frog, because I've never been to India or seen Indian frogs. I have, on the other hand, seen Indian shoes. So we have here an ethnic hybrid of a dream.

How is this possible, that I can dream non-native species into being? Or combine two objects and know that they signal another country? I can travel such distances by going absolutely nowhere....

Donald in Spurs (?)

I hadn't wanted to post news of any other of my dreams but those of shoes, but I am in crisis. I have had no shoe dreams in months and I don't know if they are ever going to reappear. My mother--aided by hilarious anecdote--admonished me growing up to never tell my dreams to anyone. (This advice was derivative of some dinner-party interchange where she was embarassed by an armchair psychoanalyst...) I am now going to have to disregard these words of wisdom because I have a blog to fill.

Last week I dreamt that I was a woman living on the range. I occupied a ranch-style bungalow nestled amongst some prairie burms, and I was waiting. I was waiting for my husband to return...and when he did finally come riding over the ridge on his horse, it was none other than Donald Sutherland, with a double-barrelled shotgun in his hands. An impressive sight, I assure you. (A multi-layered package of subconscious inference, too...but let's move on.)

Now, think what you will of me for having dreamt this either exciting or unbearable (depending on who you are) imagery, but what I'm wondering is: what was I wearing on my feet? What was Donald wearing on his? For the life of me I cannot conjure what footwear was involved in the dream. And that is bothering me.

Was I wearing ladylike slippers or was I wandering around barefoot? Was I kicking up dust in my desert boots or was I tottering around in heels? (God forbid I was sporting Ugg boots....) And Donald, what was he wearing on his feet? I hope that regardless of anything he was equipped with spurs!