Monkey Dream

I often dream of bizarre things but this one last night I can't shake from my head: I was walking through the ancient ruins of some foreign land (Peru?). Perched in an old window bay was a small monkey, a macaque perhaps. The peculiar thing about this type of monkey was that it would find the skulls of larger animals and craft them into masks. It was the only species besides humans to comprehend the idea of a mask.

So I see this little monkey wearing this giant skull on its head. I tried to take a photo but it ran away. The photo turned out blurry anyway.

What does this mean? Does the mask theme have anything to do with Halloween? There were some other odd things going on in these ruins (actually the ruins turned into a dilapidated child-care center later in the dream), but the monkey was the oddest.

Avoiding real-life foreshadowing

I was walking up my hardwood stairs today wearing socks, cradling my open laptop in my left arm and clutching a full, hot cup of coffee in my right hand.

As I went up the stairs, my dog Tuffy was racing up with me under my feet.
Some background . . .

My laptop: Full of all my short stories, various other pieces of writing, school work, music downloads, photos.

The cup of joe: Coffee not important, but the mug it was in was hand-crafted pottery made by my wife Erin.

As I carefully made my way up the stairs I dreaded taking a fall. Not for fear of getting hurt or spilling coffee or even breaking the laptop. Rather, it was the metaphor of the fall that frightened me most.

Because if my life was fiction and my character simultaneously drops a) a machine equated to his creative expression and hard work, and b) a mug crafted by his wife's loving and caring hands, it could only be foreshadowing for the disaster and heartbreak looming around the corner.

Thankfully, I made it up the stairs unscathed.