I was sitting at a bar with a drink when a fairly attractive gentleman sat down beside me. We started up a conversation about this and that. He had a smooth voice with an accent. He was charming. Then he said “Photography is irrelevant.” I gasped and replied “You are absolutely wrong. Photography is evidence of life, the beautiful gut wrenching painful parts of living. All of and everything to do with living.”

Then I woke up.

Later this week, I found myself at a high school graduation taking place at my old high school. I was tasked with photographing the new graduates. I had to fight my way through parents and family to get pictures of smiling nervous faces. Many of those parents happened to be people I had gone to high school with, their children now the ones to repeat history. The whole time I was balancing taking pictures with being polite to some of the people who still look down their noses at me. It was awkward and hard work and I longed for an ultra zoom lens so I could take pictures from the back of the room.

Thank the gods, I woke up.

I rarely remember the exact words spoken while I am in dream land, but I very clearly remember my response to Mr. NotSoCharmer. I also very clearly remember the feelings of inadequacy brought up from that second dream. I’ve been in a photography funk ever since taking my prints down from Westside Local months ago. I cart my camera around to places, but have no umph to pull it out of the bag. I’m just lugging around a heavy backpack. Last weekend, my sister and I took our mother to the Edith Head exhibit at the Oklahoma Museum of Art. I lugged my heavy backpack with us and took a few snapshots of the city. Later on, while I was processing the shots I started cropping the image so that only a bit of the structure was visible in bottom left corner. The rest of the image was open sky. I found the empty space appealing.

It was also expressing a feeling that I might have been feeling.

Now I have a new dream: my dream exhibit. It’s one that takes place in a real gallery and includes extra large prints of empty space. Right now, the idea of it feels just as hazy as regular sleepy time dreams. The only difference is that it has started gears in my head that feel rusted and stiff from sitting still for so long. It makes me want to just sit with this idea while those gears loosen up and form some kind of plan for possibilities. Dreams can come true. The big dreams just take some time and more work than the small dreams, but I’m ready to start rolling up my sleeves.

Today I am thankful for dreams.