Why can't drawing be as easy as writing?

    I probably shouldn't be surprised.  I've been writing for the last 20 years (two-thirds) of my life.  During that time I've produced maybe about 1% as much visual art.  Oh well, practice practice practice...  Maybe one day I'll be able to get drunk and draw even better than I do sober.
    Not that I write better after a few drinks... I just write about different things.  It's just that I've been writing for so long, I don't need to think clearly to do it.  Hell, I could probably write in my sleep if you put a keyboard under my hands.  Hmmm.... there's a thought.  I could call it RFM (Rapid Finger Movement)
    Yeah, I've been drinking a bit.  A did her usual drink heavily/pass-out early routine.  So in retribution, I'm using her computer to gripe anonymously about her online.  I generally try to keep my current relationship issues away from here, but I'm bitter and needed to vent.  Sometimes I wish I could play these stupid relationship games.
    I guess that's not quite true.  I can play the games when I want to, but that's all they are to me: games.  It's all too often that A and I are arguing and it devolves into this verbal duel over who's right and who's wrong, never mind whatever it was that we were arguing about in the beginning.  And inevitably I just make it worse by not taking it seriously enough.


Okay, that's enough griping.  Dreams!

    I was one of four archaeologists, exploring some kind of huge underground temple.  We were all completely kitted out with tools, weapons and body armor.  I wasn't sure at first what they expected ust to need body armor and weapons for, but as I entered a great hall, one of the massive stone pillars nearby suddenly broke at the base and tipped toward me.
    I was barely able to dive out of the way... directly into the path of another broken and falling stone pillar.  At the last second one of my team was able to pulle me out of the way before I saw fully crushed under the weight of all that stone.
    We looked ahead uncertainly at the dozens of grey stone piillars that filled the hall.  Another of my collegues shrugged and aimed a grenade launcher at the nearest pillars.  before I could stop him, he fired several shots off.
    "Some of those might actually be holding up the ceiling!" I shouted at him as all the nearby pillars toppled.  From the massive stone blocks that fell down from the roof of the hall with them, I could tell I was right.  The entire chamber was caving in.
    I and the other three teammembers quicklly secured our helmets and huddled in an alcove as stone and earth rained down on the tomb.  As sunlight began to spill down from above, I realized from the direction we'd been traveling that we were almost certainly underneath a populated area.  Dragging one of the other archaeologists behind me, I ran in the direction of the collapse.  We had to help the civilians as roads and foundations collapsed beneath them.  Then I woke up.
    Unfortunately, I never got the chance to help anybody.

Deep sleep paralysis

    I've heard of sleep paralysis before.  It's where your brain wakes up before your body does.  Somehow the mental block that keeps you from moving and walking around while you dream hasn't switched off yet.  You're fully concious, but you can't move.  Most of my friends who have experienced it say that it's very frightening.  It takes several seconds for the body to wake up, and during that time they lay there with their eyes open staring at the ceiling, fighting down panic because they seem to be paralyzed.  What I experienced sounds similar but it was much deeper.
    My mind woke up, but it was as if that was all that happened.  I couldn't feel my body or open my eyes.  I couldn't even remember who I was, or that I was supposed to have a body.  I didn't panic, because I didn't realize that there was anything missing to panic about.  The only way I can describe it is to say that I was like a speck of consciousness floating in an endless black void.  Like some kind of distilation of Descarte's famous statement, "I think, therefore I am."  I was unaware of anything beyond my own existence.
    I wonder if I would have eventually started to worry if I'd had enough time to think about it.  Or would I have been content to just drift through the nothingness without memories or thoughts, just awareness?  But the rest of me was slowly waking up.  The first thing I became aware of was my body.  I was laying on my back in bed with a blanket over me.  That's right I had a body, didn't I?  I didn't try to move, but I don't think I could have at that point.  The physical sensations I received from my arms and legs were faint and distant, as if they weren't really mine.
    Realizing I had eyes, I opened them and looked up at the ceiling.  The ceiling was familiar, because this was my room, and I was laying in my bed.  With that realization came the memories, and I remembered who I was.  It didn't come as a sudden revelation, just as if a door had quietly been opened in my mind and I was now free to enter it and see the memories within.
    As this was all happening the feeling was returning to the rest of my body.  I lifted my arm slowly until the covers fell away and I looked at it.  Yes, it was my hand, right where it should be.  Putting my arm back down I flexed my fingers and toes experimentally, as if they might not have been mine.  In another moment the strange unfamiliarity with my own body faded and I was fully awake.
    I keep thinking back to that moment just after waking.  Was I myself, when I was nothing but a point of consciousness aware of nothing but my own existence?  Did I have a personality when I didn't know who or even what I was?  At the very least I was self-aware.  Although everything else seemed strange and unfamiliar at first as I came awake and became aware of it, at no point did I feel like that core awareness at the center was anything other than myself.

Forgotten dreams

    I miss my dreams.  I barely remember anything any more.  Even while I'm still asleep, as I approach wakefulness I aready feel the memories of what I've been doing fading and becoming more jumbled.
    I remember driving through a mountain pass.  Reaching the apex, I started downhill again, but the road sloped sharply down to an impossible angle.  It was so steep I had no chance of stopping and just held on to the wheel and steered through it as best I could.  Incredibly, I made it to the bottom of the hill, only to see another car approaching on my side of the road!  I swerved into the oncoming lane to narrowly miss him.  There was a police car just past him, and the officer immediately pulled me over for driving on the wrong side of the road.  Not because it turned out I was in Europe or something, but for those few seconds I was in the other lane avoiding the other car.
    "What about the other guy?" I asked, pointing to the other car.  It was still in view, slowly climbing the impossibly steep hill, still on the wrong side of the road.
    The officer ignored me and handed me my ticket.
    My radio crackled to life and said I was needed in town to help with some kind of emergency.  I stamped down on the accelerator and raced toward town, ignoring the angry calls of the policeman behind me.  At this point I was coming close to waking up, and my mind was becoming jumbled.  There was some kind of fight.  I encountered a gang who I think helped me out somehow.
    The next thing I knew I was laying on a bed.  It wasn't my bed; I was still dreaming.  A woman was standing over me on my right.  I couldn't see her face, only her torso and arms as she worked on me.  There was a large fire very close to us and there were beads of sweat on her skin from the heat.  She was healing my wounds.
    How had I been wounded, I wondered?  The fight was hazy.  Something had grabbed my arm...  My arm was missing!  My left arm had been torn off by... something.  The woman leaned over me and I felt my panic fading as she tended to what remained of my left shoulder.  She could fix it, she assured me.  Science or magic, I didn't know how but I immediately believed that she would somehow replace/regenerate my missing arm.
    She continued to work, leaning over me to get to my arm.  Her skin seemed to glow in the golden firelight, and I watched the sweat run down her side.  She was sweating not just from heat, but from exertion as well.  I could feel my arm slowly regrowing from the shoulder down.
    It had just reached the elbow when somewhere behind me I heard a door kicked open and a woman scream.  I didn't know if it was the same things that had taken my arm or some new threat, but I immediately I reached up and wrapped my good right arm around the healer's waist and rolled to the left.  Pulling her with me, we rolled over and off the edge of the bed.  Once we were on the floor, she reached up and grabbed the sheets, pulling them down over us.  As we huddled under our camoflage, we heard more screams.
    I had to find out what was going on and help somehow.  I tried to get up, but the woman grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let me rise.  She wasn't afraid, only sure that if I tried to fight them here we would both die.  Our only hope was to hide until they passed by.
    Then I woke up.