You can enter rem states as you're writing. That is, you write from inside the vision. Or you can wake from the rem state and write as you slosh in the shallows of the remembered dream/rem sea. What keeps you from completely surfacing when you rise out of rem is the silver-fish of a phrase or scene you use as a portal back to the dream. Scribbling down this silver-fish-phrase can keep the dream from sliding away into opaque depths. That's why I have my log next to my pillow and a pencil there too. A pencil writes at any angle so you can stay pretty asleep or in rem. This cactus piece was a rem vision I had from semi-waking. I wrote it down as if I were writing a letter to you. I find myself talking to a cactus. (Since I was a child talking to trees before I learned that one did not talk about talking to trees, 'talking to' meant 98% 'listening to' trees.) Or in this case, cactus. This was a proper desert with dramatic hilly ranges of lion-colored sand. I felt like la petite princesse -- well, ok, la princesse tres rondelette. If I looked thru the earth, I saw the bottoms of kangaroo feet nearer to my right and less far than at home so tal vez or perhaps this immense sand sea was In America del Sur?   more »