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scrawl
7 August 2011
nightmares
Now Playing: cocorosie - werewolf
Topic: divine diptychs

nightmares


Left: Me
Right: Pia

This round of The Divine Diptych Project, Pia and I were paired for the first time, and given the theme 'Nightmares' by geekgirly.

Those who have followed me for a while, will know I dream very vividly, and have quite bizarre dreams. Animals, especially strange ones, or animals behaving strangely, have featured in my dreams regularly over the years, but lately I've been having even more dreams and nightmares that have featured animals.

So when deciding what I wanted to do for this theme, something involving an animal was the obvious choice. The carousel in the square below Montmartre, re-visited on a recent trip to Paris, provided the perfect subject: a creepy, startled, angry-looking horse, which I've processed to bring out the colours to give that vivid, high intensity feeling I often experience in dreams.

I really like how Pia's choice of image of a Venetian mask reiterates the sinister feeling of exaggeration, artificiality, and creepiness. That mask hanging in a dark hallway, lit by the moonlight, would definitely give me nightmares!

For those who might be interested, here's a list of bizarre animals that have featured in my dreams over the years, in no particular order:

* a little black piglet that swelled when he got hot, and had to be splashed with, or submerged in, water to "deflate"
* a wolf with claws piercing deep into my back
* blue ants with whistles for tails
* an embryonic sheep with two heads emerging from a shattered eggshell
* dancing with a polar bear and a grizzly bear
* a praying mantis fighting against the pull of a vacuum
* standing still to try to trick a crocodile that I wasn't there
* a live platypus looking more like something made in a woodwork class
* a room full of animals, one of each kind
* a small, vicious kitten using nerves in my back as marionette strings
* two small, white, fluffy puppies, one called Lindsay, that's fur turned a dirty colour when they needed to pee, but returned to bright white when they had finished urinating
* small white termites or worms crawling in and out of holes in the back of a living girl's head
* poisoning a discarded cat by feeding it sultanas, which whilst not poisoned, cause it to convulse, though it continues to seek out more sultanas
* a large gorilla lifting a large cabinet onto a couch and balancing it there whilst he rummaged through the drawers
* a colony of ants feasting on a bag of raw bacon lying on the grass
* a kitten licking the pages of a small book, making an image of a landscape appear on the paper
* a Dachshund singing "I'm your rubby-tummy-baby" to me, as I scratched its belly
* the suggestion of leaping onto the shells of small tortoises that grew in size as they moved across a yard, as though the tortoises were makeshift roller skates
* tar-coated seals along the roadside as a marathon took place

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 01:03 BST
Updated: 7 August 2011 01:13 BST
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