Perchance to dream

Okay, a strange, but funny one today. My dreams are usually quite vivid and often surreal; many a painting has resulted from the imagery and many a laugh and shake of the head at their more quirky storylines. Sometimes I forget all about them until one of the lead 'characters' intersects with reality, which is what happened today. Walked into cash-job, minding my own business and a few hours later a female colleague greeted me, at which point I had a disturbingly real memory of my dream, in which myself and female colleague were, um, an item. Nothing rude or disturbingly sexual happened in the dream, what was disturbing as it collided with reality was the strength of the memory and its mundanity. I don't even really remember any facts about the dream's events, more just a feeling of 'closeness' to said character which does not exist in real life and about which I had never had a passing thought. Freaks you out though - a momentary inner reality check "no, everything is as it was, nothing has changed...", and then left to wonder at the power and strange ways of the subconscious mind.

I have frequently found myself back in unsatisfactory relationships in dream-time and woken with that sinking feeling before slowly becoming aware that I am back in another reality. A turn of the head to see Stu sleeping blissfully unaware of the deviations of my nocturnal mind.

Talking yesterday with Ritchie about the age old wisdom of a link between painting and madness, painting and autism, painting and any other crazy or borderline subnormal mental condition. I don't know about mad, but I am, and always have been a bit of a one for talking to myself and I have a permanent worry that I will end up as a 'cat lady' surrounded by animals who I prefer the company of to humans and converse with for hours on end. Other times I hope that is the case.

At the end of the day what do we know about each other's perception? I am still fascinated by the egg-eye discovery which means that my vision has been just a little bit 'off true' for my entire adult life. I am sure that we see colours differently; who's to say that what I call 'orange' is what you call 'orange'; in fact I am pretty sure orange is one of the worst offenders as it is so subjective a colour anyway. What is orange, what yellow, what red?

Now pondering the bewildering choice available to viewing pleasure in the Festival, which always intimidates the hell out of me. Having 'done' the Festival with a very arty ex-boyfriend who packed in eight shows and day plus the odd exhibition thrown in, I am horribly aware that there are some real clunkers out there, and I would not wish to find myself stuck in one. Having said that we also saw some really endearing yet quite bad performances which could well have been the beginning of great things and were certainly more interesting than the slicker, soulless offerings of others. I think at the end of the day I shall pass the buck a great deal and rely on luck and other people's judgement to find me the few events that I shall manage to attend. That way a wonderful find can be chalked up to serendipity and a lousy one can be blamed on the friend. I put Umberto Eco's book on serendipity on my Amazon wish list yesterday - the closest I can come to buying it at the moment - so I may get to have a read of it in more monied times (buy paintings Festival tourists -buy!). At least come Christmas and birthday I will have a whopper of a suggestion list for all the (two) relatives needing help in their gift choices. Maybe we should get married and put out a painting, CD and film wedding list - or even better, just pretend to get married and see who fell for the list anyway..?

Managed my run to Pat's Chung Ying, our fave Chinese supermarket yesterday, so tonights treat is a 'Jimmy's Satay sauce' chicken curry-like thing with coconut milk. The supermarkets have decided to use coconut milk as one of their main profit leaders for some reason and a tin of the stuff is up to £1.70 in places; in Pat's it is 85p which is still steep, but a darn sight more tolerable than the big boys. Can' t wait; it is one of those unrepeatable tastes that you never forget and get excited about as soon as you open a fresh jar - if, I hasten to add, you are a fan of shrimp paste. If not, I am afraid this one's not for you.

And so to the kitchen, and on to the studio for the last hours of the day; Stu will doubtless be late and broken by the cavalcade Sunday, but the positive is that I get an extra few hours work in..