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12:20:2003 Entry: "Ann : DREAM - How can you have your story if you won't write your plot? How can you have a plot if you won't let me create the characters?"
DREAM - How can you have your story if you won't write your plot? How can you have a plot if you won't let me create the characters?
It was pretty vague, but I remember being with a bunch of people on our front lawn. It was as if there were two parts to the dream going on simultaneously. First, there was the part where the people were like a high school class of mine, like creative writing or drama...similar people, same teacher (in high school, the same woman taught both). The teacher was organizing us into writing a story. She took charge of writing the plotline, and she asked for volunteers for other duties. I volunteered for creating the characters, but I don't think any of the other "students" volunteered for anything. Then she left the "room" (which was our front lawn) and I wanted to get going on character development, so I consulted someone else there--another woman I think, or maybe it was the same teacher, I don't know--and asked her if she wasn't ready to develop a plot, could I at least start coming up with characters. She said that there had to be a plot before there were characters. I was disagreeing with her and telling her that it is completely possible to have characters in mind before you know what they're going to do, and that sometimes a plot evolves out of characters' personalities themselves, rather than the other way around. She kept denying my requests and I was getting rather agitated, and--this is rather funny--I started quoting the line in "Another Brick in the Wall Part II" where the school teacher says "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding...how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" I think what I was doing was pointing out the circularity of her argument, that there was not going to be a story until she got her ass in gear to create a plot, but how could there even be the beginnings of a plot when she wouldn't let me create the characters? While this was going on, there was another part of this, and that was there were these people working on my garden out front. There were these immigrant laborers that were pulling things out of shelves or trucks that were arranged around the perimeter of our front lawn, and there were these young women who seemed to be interns for some landscape or horticulture class that were working there too, but there was quite a disparity between the women students and the male workers...it sort of bothered me, and because it was my house that was being landscaped and I was thinking, surely Stan and I could do this ourselves without having to hire people. I think this whole landscaping thing was sponsored by Stan's aunt...she was behind it all, we didn't really have a say in the matter. I felt bad and guilty for hiring people to do the work for us, even if she was paying for it. Also, there was someone there with a large cat, by large cat I mean tiger, leopard, one of those, except the markings or spots were hardly noticeable. But it was that size. It was semidomesticated--they had raised it as a cub, but I was afraid of it because it was not used to me. I didn't want to get near it or have it get near our dogs.