It’s been building for a while now. Probably longer than I want to admit. This feeling of being on the brink, right on the edge of something that’s just out of reach. I try to think beyond the moment. What is the piece I’m missing? I can’t reason my way out. My inner child throws a tantrum over a pair of misdelivered shoes. Electric mayhem flares in the brain. Time to bring the energy down to a grounded, feeling place. I draw the curtains, close the blinds, turn off the lights and lay down.

I’ve been cooped up alone in the house for two, no three days. We had an ice storm here. There’s a film by that name, The Ice Storm, based on a book. Never saw it. The movie won some awards. For me, it’s like I’ve internalized the storm. Except there’s a fire underneath. Fire and ice. It’s not a comfortable place to be but it produced a memorable dream.

The dream was one of those expressive visual experiences I’d like to paint or write as a short film. Maybe both. There’s a record now of it in my dream journal. I call it Passion because the vision felt like a reawakening of it. I’ve held off buying paints and brushes because I couldn’t decide on watercolor or gouache. The dream made me pull the trigger. Watercolor it is! The supplies are en route. Let’s hope they arrive soon. I feel like I’ll explode if I don’t find a dramatic outlet soon.

Passion was as eloquent as anything I’ve yet experienced in sleep. The setting was an urban landscape in the gentrification process. A place poised in time. The action revolved around an invitational open house. The building was a long, low warehouse type structure, originally built in 1937. There were flowering pear trees that appeared seemingly randomly around it. I would later notice the trees were only in the time warp segments, several downshifts/flashbacks to a free-floating past.

Once a seafoam green behemoth, the place was now robed in crisp black and white. There were a lot of people milling around, like a cocktail party. Everyone was dressed in black and white. The interior space was large and open with sheets of wavy opaque glass as partitions. The only color was the brown of a stripped down back-stage section that exposed the warm, earthy smell of long leaf pine.

I ran into a man there who I didn’t really know but recognized from my Hollywood days, or somewhere in time. I was deeply drawn to him but he was distracted. Not yet finished with a divorce. I walked outside to leave but he followed me. He apologized. He was confused and kind of sad. We went back inside and found our way to the adjacent restaurant.

Jazz. A mellow, low key vibe. We liked each other a lot and had much to talk about. The ex-wife made a ghostly appearance. From out of nowhere. She knew she still had a hold on him but had extracted her pound of flesh. It was over. Still, the wound was still fresh. They had legal business to conclude. I went outside to somewhere back in time.

A sepia-toned alley with a gas lamp that shone down on me like a follow spot. Deja’ vu. My phone rang. A call from my agent. I looked down and found a libretto. That’s when I saw that I was dressed in a fiery chakra-orange skirt and silk blouse. I started to sing from a place deep within. The ice broke. I was ecstatic. I’d found my passion again.