Dreams Do Not Lie

I was seven-years-old when I started recording my complaints, thoughts, and thankfully, my ideas and drawings in journals. My first journal was a small mango-colored diary in which I complained nonstop about my mother: she was mean, she didn't understand me, she liked my sister more, she made me brush my hair, go to church, eat lima beans, and so forth. About halfway through the book, I started writing, really writing, poems and stories, mostly in code, and my handwriting changed dramatically, (no more pleasing curlicues or standard,legible form, bring on the razor pen swipes). My grammar and vocabulary also changed, but not so dramatically, (I started punctuating and using big words like fatigued). My handwriting has remained, well, just terrible, and it's important to note that my worst grade in elementary was always in penmanship.

My father always complains that my handwriting is so bad it could cause terrible trouble for me, as in a bank might not cash a check because they can't decipher what I've written, (no problem ever cashing a check), that if I were a doctor the pharmacist wouldn't be able to read my handwriting and would prescribe the wrong medicine and what would I do about the malpractice lawsuit?nd a litany of other reasons why I should reform and learn to print and cursive properly. He usually ends up shaking his head in disappointment and muttering that I should have been a doctor. Wait, but then I'd be sued for malpractice! Handwriting is supposedly reflective of brainwaves, so I suppose this means I'm in a constant state of seriously ADD, rapid-fire, illegible scribbling.

I blame Leonardo di Vinci. Why? because after reading a children's book when I was in the 4th grade about his discovery of a dead beast in a cave, I latched onto him, and I believe I'm still clinging. I read everything the school library offered, as well as the local library. I didn't know about inter-library loan, and the Internet was a couple decades away, so the information was limited to what my small world offered. It was enough. As Leonardo as my inspiration, I resolved to be an artist, a writer,and a genius. Thinking about how serious I was about this goal just cracks me up. I really thought it was possible to aspire to genius, as if it were a major to declare, a vocation to pursue. In any case, I distinctly remember reading that Leonardo wrote backwards in the mirror to hide his thoughts. Since I grew up in a uber-patriarchal Mormon community and I wasn't particularly interested in anyone, anyone, knowing what I was thinking, I began mirror writing, which led to my own type of typography which looks very much like visual slurring. The problem is, unless I print, I often can't decipher my own handwriting.

The written post above is from a journal in which I began my first novel, the story of how a community secret, that however closely guarded it is, "the mighty weight of a secret can pester a soul into spilling all," to quote my own words from Chapter One: look into thier own dark secrets. Sometimes I still write my novel longhand, but it's less frustrating to just type, rather than spend time deciphering the original intent.

I draw in my journals, sometimes over whatever is written. The image above is a sketch from a painting idea titled, Dreams Do Not Lie, in which I plan to create as a mixed-media piece. As for the title of the piece, I think the dreaming mind uses metaphor and archetype to tell its truth.