Paging Dr. Sandman

Hi, guys. Whatcha been up to? I've been dreaming my ass off. Usually, I leave that to Simon. I generally wake up with only the vaguest notion that my brain was doing something off in the corner while I slept the sleep of the dead. But not lately. Lately I have full technicolor dream recall.

I think it might be because I'm writing something about dreams for my job. I've been ruminating on the twisty logic of dream images, reading about the unconscious mind and its weirdnesses. Perhaps it's unsurprising that I've remembered a disproportionate number of dreams lately. And so I've found myself doing the thing that I do when I recall my dreams: trying to figure out what the high holy fuck they mean. What can I say - I took Psych 101 in college, but I was kind of hung over that semester.

I've had a good dose of "the usual": trying to dial a phone, but I just can't get the numbers right; going someplace else but inexplicably ending up at my therapist's house; getting a tattoo I instantly, vehemently regret; discovering that a dead loved one has been alive all this time; and, of course, the one where I wander down to the ocean and everyone's taking their clothes off and jumping in. (Yes, I know that one's about sex; even I got the memo on water imagery.)

Dream of this tattoo, wake up screaming.

I've had dreams lately that have proved fantastically useful. I've plagarized them for work, for one thing.

And I had a dream where I ran into a writer who's in the middle of a ginormous and daunting project - a guy who'd slipped my mind for months. (In my defense, he lives in New York, which is really, really - check a map - really far away.) I woke up doing the "I shoulda had a V-8" head slap and emailed him copious good wishes. Because God knows that when I'm the one gnawing a hole through the outer limits of my brain (did that metaphor work? I'm thinking no) trying to write something hard, I like to be reminded that someone out there assumes my work is going passably well. So, file that one under Dreams Leading To Mildly Menschy Behavior.

And I had this other dream, about this other person, and in the dream I was beating the shit out of her. I didn't check the credits, but my guess is - directed by Tarantino. It goes without saying (I hope) that in life I rarely punch people so hard my hand goes all the way through their sternum. But in the dream, I was a total cartoon ninja supreme. I was scary. I was She Whom You Shouldn't Have Fucked With. It felt awesome and queasy, like a roller coaster ride at an amusement park known to occasionally kill a customer or two. And I woke up not angry but the opposite: in this zenlike state of blissful calm, fully aware for the first time that I really. Don't. Like. That person. At all. And therefore have a great excuse to use that new word I've been hearing tossed around, "frenemy." How awesome is that word? Wish I'd had it in high school. Coulda applied it to everyone!

And then. Oh, and then. I had this dream.

In the dream, I run into a male acquaintance. Someone I know casually. You know, a friendofafriend. (Quick, someone coin a shorter word for that.)

We're on some mazelike studio lot, don't know which - kind of like in waking life, where I've gotten lost on every lot in Los Angeles. I once walked around the Paramount lot for a fricking hour trying to find my car. And no, it's not that big. Anywho. He walks me to my car. We give each other a friendly hug. And then, out of nowhere, incredible, movie-caliber kissing ensues. If that kiss has really happened? Top five of my lifetime so far. No joke.

It bears mentioning that this gentleman has been entirely off my radar in real life. You know, the Radar Of Bangability. Never once thought about it.

So, naturally, I wake up feeling all tingly, and, well, slightly obsessed with that particular man. But more important to you, oh faithful Blog Reader, I woke up asking myself the appropriate question, which is, "What the fuck was THAT? What did it MEAN?!"

I've decided to stop at nothing to answer that question. But let me tell you, it's not simple. There are just so many rows to hoe when it comes to interpreting the Unconscious As Auteur. I asked a lot of people, and I got a lot of contradictory opinions. Then, I remembered this is a tangentially Jewy blog, and I emailed a real life rabbi. Posed the question to him: what's the proper Jewish way to interpret dreams?

I have so much to share. I'll tell you all about it... in our next installment. Unless there's an installment in between, which could happen. But point is, I'll be getting back to you, with rabbinical fruits of wisdom. In the meantime, enjoy your nap.

Good News: Sera's Aura Totally Cleansed!

Have you heard of Esalen?

Esalen is an institute founded in the late '60s, at the height of the Human Potential Movement, as a place for the brightest thinkers of the time to go work whilst surrounded by natural beauty. People like Aldous Huxley and the dude who invented Gestalt therapy. It's one of the only places like it to survive the subsequent shameful decades of humans so not giving a shit about their potential, and it remains an aesthetically designed, well-intentioned, workshop-packed, organic-foodie, vaguely hippie oasis that you too can visit should you desire to develop your Tai Chi or poetry or alternative self-healing vegetarian baking skills.

It is situated in the glowy clifftop seaside heart of paradise. The weather is in a perpetual state of balm, the air is sweet with the smell of pine, hawks swoop balletically overhead, and there are butterflies flitting all over the place. I shit you not. It's like Legend.

Did you ever see that movie? It takes place in an Enchanted Forest so amazingly special that both unicorns and Tom Cruise dwell therein.

In order to create the proper ambiance of Enchantedness, the Legend production designers opted to fill the air with something magic-y in each scene. The fantastical butterflies of Esalen are clearly retired extras from that movie. Ahhhh, how I loved that movie when I was but a wee lass, too innocent to fully grasp the implications of Tim Curry's girthy goat horns. I loved all the magic shit floating through the air. Tom and Mia Sara would be emoting through copious motes of dandelions, say, or — my personal fave — bubbles. Yes, bubbles, as though an angelic choir of small children armed with dripping soap wands was standing just out of frame, joyously blowing iridescent streams at the virile locks of tree-scaling Tom Cruise's hair.

God damn, that was some good hair.

It didn't make a proper reappearance until Mr. Cruise's best role ever, as Asshole Motivational Speaker With Gigantic Daddy Issues in Magnolia. Which I digress towards in order to aside the following: before his current incarnation, in which he is known almost exclusively for PDAing the living bajeebus out of Katie Holmes and proselytizing a religion explained in far more thorough and hilarious fashion than I am willing to attempt by the writers of South Park? Dude could act. When he set his mind to it, he had the special genius.

No joke. I'm not trying to trick you here, then slam you with a punchline. I thought he should have gotten the Oscar for Magnolia. I wish he'd make another movie like that. He is really awesome when he's playing the type of bad guy he never ever plays any more.

Tom Cruise's insistence on only making giant blockbusters and implying not very subtly that several members of my family are evil simply because they have dedicated their careers to working with people so acutely mentally ill that if they aren't medicated they'll kill themselves (or whoever the voices are telling them to kill)? It saddens me.

It saddens me, because I'm about the art. I really could give a fuck about people's personal lives. Sure, I emailed with my old boss about Tom and Katie every single day of their whirlwind Parisian courtship, I deconstructed that "it's a baby bump-- no, it's a basketball" photo, I had a dream in which I found myself wandering a Scientology compound that turned out to be their home, and was invited to a casual lunch with the couple, whereupon I discovered that they actually were into each other. Okay, yes, I recounted this dream to several people the next day. Hey, get this, I had a dream that Tom and Katie were like a real couple! They loved each other and they, like, had tons of sexy sex and stuff! What do you make of that? Do you think they could be a real couple? I'm starting to think, maybe they're a real couple and they're just terribly misunderstood by the tabloid media. I think maybe the media has been tricking us! Tom and Katie are the victims here! Seriously, I feel bad for them. Shut up, no, I do!

But I totally don't care about that stuff at all.

Right-o. So, good segue to tell you, Esalen is not as culty as you may imagine. Yes, there's a fire pit, and guitar, and people in tie-dye who play said guitar sittin' around said fire. There's a workshop designed for your particular flavor of group therapeutic interaction, or drum-banging, or — in my own case — ecstatic dancing. But just because I like to dance ecstatically doesn't mean I'm susceptible to weird influences.

My roommate — because you must have a roommate, my friend, there are no single rooms at Esalen, for Esalen is about community — was a rare gem of a woman, a New York shiksa goddess businesswoman with an enviably yogalicious body who somehow made me laugh every time she opened her mouth. I don't know why this was so. She swears she's not funny. She swears the people in her life never tell her she's amusing in the least. And yet, when she told me, "Mr. X in our dance group was delightful this morning, but I have to warn you, Mr. Y is sporting some serious B.O., so try not to land with your nose in his pit," I found myself crumpled on the floor, heaving with laughter. Maybe it's all in the execution. Maybe I laughed so hard to relieve the tension of being in a place where everyone is working on themselves on this deep psycho-spiritual level, and they're serious as a Mac Attack about it. Whatever, point is, she told me not to mention her in this blog by name so I won't, but I will say she's one funny-ass chickie poo. Let's call her "The Lady With The Hot-Ass Condo That Sera Gets To Stay At Next Time She Goes To New York, So There." Or, you know, "P" for short.

"P" was also my roommate last time I scrubbed up my chakras at Esalen. We were randomly assigned that time, but decided to return together. This strategy guaranteed for each of us a roommate who showered frequently and with vigor, as well as a pal with whom to compare notes on the subject of who on the premises is most fuckable. Five days at Esalen: a little over a grand. Having a friend who warns you that the hot guy you're about to saucily chat up bats for the other team: priceless.

"P", as you may have gathered by now, is not a Jew. In fact, one of her relatives boated on over to New England on the actual Mayflower. She is rocking some serious gentiletude.

"P" recently entered into a business relationship with an organization which counts several Jews among its highest-ups. She's working some big-time project, and she is suddenly swimming in Jew. She confided in me that it was kind of weird, being the only non-Chosen in the room at these meetings. Like all the Jews were speaking a subtly different language. She felt slightly at a disadvantage, and it bothered her because she wants to do the best job she can for the organization. (Which involves telling the Jews what to do — that's part of her job. This has proved challenging.) She told me she was stoked to read my blog, because she's gathering intel on our people. Trying to decode Jewishness so she can nail this project.

A few things came to mind when she told me this.

1. We totally rock. We meaning Jews, but more specifically the Jews who are very hot and who write this blog. It is rockin' to babble on about whatever's clever, and inadvertently help a chic businesslady do her Very Important New York Businesswoman Job That Beneficially Impacts The Jews.

2. There is much still to be done. "P" is not living under a rock. She lives in Bagelville, USA, for fuck's sake. And yet, she admits to finding our people mysterious and unknowable.

So: the Very Hot Jews would like to help our goyische readers to know our people just a little bit better. How? By answering your questions. We hereby invite you to send in your inquiries into Things Jewish, and we will answer them to the best of our ability. Actually, we'll answer them beyond the best of our ability, because if we don't know the answer we're going to make it up. Consider us a resource, a veritable font of useful yet potentially erroneous Jewish information. Have at us. Nu? Ask!

We'll be posting our answers to your questions on no particular schedule, when we feel like it. On the plus side, we're not that busy, at least while I'm on hiatus. On the minus side, we're fantastically unreliable.

Oh, and one more thing about "P". She asked me, delicately, if I "really drank that much." Apparently the blog paints me as something of a lush. This puzzled her, because the one time we had wine, I didn't even finish my glass. I may as well tell you what I told her — I don't drink half the shit I claim to on this blog. I'm not sure I've ever had a watermelon margarita. What I am sure of is that I do not want you, my dearest reader, to expect me to produce writing in a consistent or timely fashion. I have therefore created a "Blog Persona" who drinks like the fifth ho on Sex In The City.

Though, come to think of it, when I really do get down and dirty, and drink like three or four entire servings of an alcoholic beverage? It tends to be when hanging with Sime.

We really do bring out the best in each other.

A Letter to My Unconscious Mind

Simon here. Sera's in Esalen, getting her aura massaged or whatever they do up there, so I'm posting this bizarre entry behind her back. No doubt many of our readers will be puzzled by the following; I freely admit that I share your confusion. But to those of you who ask "What does this have to do with being hot and/or Jewish?" I can only wearily reply that ... um ... did I mention that Sera's out of town?

To Whom It May Concern,

I write to express my supreme disgust and overwhelming disappointment at the quality of last night's dream.

I refer, of course, to the meandering tale of a man — evidently supposed to me, but someone I can only characterize as a repulsive boor lacking the faintest shred of the social graces — who urinates in the middle of a car-audio store and then adds insult to injury by telling a dismayed salesman, "You guys wouldn't have this problem if you had a bathroom."

Were this a mere "blackout" sketch it would be shoddy enough. But your decision to make such instances of public self-relief the basis of an epic dream, a sleep-narrative of Tolstoyan length, Rabelaisian vulgarity and Warholian tediousness, is unfathomable.

For shame, sirs and/or madams. For shame.

Why, I must ask, does the character known only as "me" have to pee constantly throughout this interminable story, informing all who will listen that "I have the bladder of a camel"? Why must he unburden himself on a series of in-dash stereo consoles before the stricken eyes of floor managers and audiophiles alike?

Perhaps some toxic mixture of boredom, malice and homosexual panic prompted this golden shower of the sandman — I can scarcely be expected to divine what goes on in the drunken halls of the id. But I hasten to remind you that while some people might enjoy a feature-length snooze-story about pissing endlessly and repeatedly on the linoleum floor of a downmarket retail establishment, "some people" don't dream my dreams. I do. And this one both offended my sensibilities and tasked my patience.

Have you given no thought to what it is like to wake suddenly from such a dream and realize, to one's horror, that one must pee? And then to stand drowsily and barefootedly on the frigid bathroom floor in the dawning light and relive the whole sodden fantasia while emptying oneself, ever so boringly, into the porcelain abyss?

This will not be tolerated. In point of fact, the quality of my dreams has been distressingly poor of late, giving rise to the nagging suspicion that you imps who populate the far shores of my psyche are, well, phoning it in.

I refer in particular to the obsessive recycling of the shopworn "I have a Spanish final but I forgot to study all semester" dream, with its predictably mortifying third-act nudity; last week's protracted and deeply annoying "driving around my neighborhood but I'm lost" dream (in which your creative bankruptcy revealed itself in the cheap shock tactics of me crashing into another car driven by ... me); and your arguable nadir, a scene-for-scene recapitulation of the movie Zardoz with Carrot Top in the Sean Connery role.

I would caution you to put more effort into the scenarios that flicker on my inner eyelids, or you will force me to send you packing. Opening up a new can of imps, I assure you, will be no big thing.

Sincerely,
Me