A Nightmare Project?

The Dreamdayproject Website is turning into a nightmare. After weeks of endless days by the computer I am still not even half-way through! The Pecha Kucha night in Oaxaca on the 23rd of April is approaching and I am wondering if it is possible for a dreamday worker to be burnt out.

My Video material from Gothenburg appears to be gone and the scanning and photoshop process of all my dreamday notes is taking forever. However our garden is looking nicer then ever:

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Fox and Crow Joining the Dreamdayproject

Does this look like a dreamday to you?


I guess it could be if your feet happen to look like this:


(Pictures taken by the Crow)

When I first started this blog I was hoping for strangers from all parts of the world sending me their dreamdays. I guess marketing was never my thing and it took me two years to receive the first one. (But then came a second one shortly after!)

However these two dreamdays are slightly different from the ones in the rest of the collection. They are the first dreamdays from non-humans.

Fox´s Dreamday:

To be in a place where I could see as many cats and chickens as I
wanted.

Crow´s Dreamday:

A Crow doesn't have a Dream Day.
All a Crow's days are Dream Days.
All are the best a Crow can make them.
All unique and every one perfect.

I am delighted to welcome the Fox and the Crow into my project!

Written to you from another dreamday office: My freshly painted Frida Kahlo inspired court yard with fire sculpture.





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Dreamweaver Becomes New Dreamday Friend

This is what my Dreamday office has looked like for the last couple of days:


And this is where I have been struggling to set up my Dreamday website. For those of you who just can´t wait to see it, I am sorry to say it is not going very fast. However, today I reached a milestone in the process; Dreamweaver finally let me upload my first Dreamday video to the website!

A small step for all those people giving free tutorials on the Internet (Thank you all so much for that!) but a big step for a Dreamday worker. 20 years have gone by, but not much has changed.



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The Perfect Book?

I have always been amazed by people who can swallow one book after the other. Who can take up one at any situation, at the bus stop, on the train, and just read and disappear into another dimension.

I was never much of a reader myself when I was younger. The books that I read as a teenager could probably be counted on one hand. However, if there was a book that I did in fact read, I would keep reading it over and over, until I knew it by heart.


One of them was the Aristocats. I think I must have been reading it still, even when my classmates probably read thick and complicated books with no pictures. I was so into that book that the cats in the story became alive and I think it even changed my reality a little. I guess that is also why my own cat ended up looking like this:


When I was in secondary school the whole class would be dragged to the library every once in a while to choose a "bänkbok". This would be the only book that you could choose for yourself and I guess this was seen as a little reward or something from our teacher. But I thought it was horrible to go into that library. All those books with no pictures. I had no idea what to get and in the end I would just pick one randomly and go back to the class room.

With our own book of preference we would then sit at our desks and read for the rest of the lesson. I remember looking at all my classmates with their noses in one thick book after the other. After a while I would hear the sound of my neighbour turning the first page. I can still remember that feeling. I wondered if that book was so much better than the one I had chosen myself. I looked at mine once again and I realized it was number three in series called Vi Fem. Obviously I hadn´t read the other two.

I worked as a teacher a few years ago. Whenever I would see a kid sitting by their desk looking stressed over their task, taking a peek at what the neighbour was doing, I would remember exactly what it felt like. And I would want to sit down next to him or her and say: "Hey, I was just the same, but don´t worry, let them read and do your thing. One day you will find your own way to that story. And if you don´t, it probably wasn´t worth the effort anyway." I should have done it.

But as much as I would dislike sitting at my desk with a book in my hands, there would still be some very beautiful moments that I will never forget that were created from books. Maybe that is why I do love books today, even if I still might not be one of those who can consume them, one after the other.

A moment like that would be when one of my teachers would turn off the light in the classroom, take a seat on top of the teacher´s desk with her legs crossed, and read to us. We would light a little candle on each one of our desks and then we would just sit there and listen to the story. Slowly all kinds of images were created in my head. Of people and places that I had never seen before. I would hardly notice my classmates anymore, eventhough I do have a vague memory of some of the guys burning pencils on their candles in those precious moments.


At home, my mum would sometimes do the same to me, even when I was old enough to read myself. One time she read the whole Kulla-Gulla series. It consisted of maybe 12 books and was about the life of a poor, orphan girl in the 19th century. My mum would lie on her bed and read it to me. I would stare up on the roof and imagen Kulla-Gulla and everything that happened to her. And afterwards I could brag about it to my friends in school. "Have you read Kulla-Gulla? Yeah all 12 of them..."

Yesterday I was in Mexico City again. After alot of walking we came to a beautiful bookstore called El Péndulo in the Zona Rosa. I was really excited to go there. Seeing all the books around me made me happy. They reminded me of all the stories that exist and the passion that so many writers had put into them. But when my boyfriend started taking up one book after the other, a vague but familiar feeling would come over me.




We had a coffee inside the bookstore and looked at all the books. It was nice. Then all of sudden, on a table with books on sale, a yellow book with the title "Un día perfecto" appears. The author was called Melania G. Mazzucco. I had never heard about her or the book before, but the title was indeed striking for the Dreamdayproject.

After finishing our coffees I walked down the stairs and picked up the book. I read the first few lines on the back. Then a better idea came up...

I took a quick look over my shoulder. The coast was clear. I streched for a Dreamday Sticker in my bag and quickly stuck it inside the book. (I never glued it!) What could be a better place for my question than inside a book with the same title? I pictured someone stretched out in a sofa somewhere in Mexico City reading the book when suddenly the little sticker would fall out. The idea was thrilling.

To be on the safe side I also placed a sticker inside "El amor en los tiempos del cólera" by Gabriel García Márquez on my way out. Just in case nobody would ever buy that book by Mazzucco. I walked out of the bookstore with a smile on my face. Not a word wiser but alot happier. And so was another mission completed in Mexico City.



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The Dreamdayproject in a (Soap) Bubble!

It is Monday Morning. I have no boss waiting for me to show up at a certain hour. No tasks that were given to me to finish this week. Nevertheless, I woke up this morning feeling I had no time to waste. The reason why? A Dreamdayproject graphical image is about to take shape.

While visiting Mexico City last weekend I happened to find myself right in a scenario that I didn´t think was anything more than a beautiful image at the time. It wasn´t until I looked at the photographs a couple of days later, that I realized I was looking at an embryo to a future Dreamdayproject graphical image. The image I had tried to evoke for weeks but with no success.

It was right in the middle of the Zócalo in Mexico City. The big Mexican flag was swaying above me. The sun had just come out when I caught sight of something moving. They were soap bubbles. A woman was standing somewhere on the square blowing them. They were so beautiful, shining and reflecting all the colours from the city around. I noticed a young boy trying to hit one. Other bubbles danced around for a bit until they slowly drifted away towards the sky.

And suddenly it became so symbolic. Every soap bubble was like a dream. Both difficult to reach and impossible to take into your hands. Mesmerizing you with their beauty and fragility. You can either smash them as the little boy or admire them from a distance, carefully, as they slowly drift away from you. I guess as we grow older we tend to do the latter. Even with our dreams.

Anyhow, the image of the Dreamdayproject has now finally materialized. And the new mission can finally start: To create the long awaited Dreamdayproject website. So get yourselves prepared for a site filled with old and new dreamday notes, lots of video material and many Dreamday surprises!




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Dreamday Sticker Becomes Eye-Catcher in Mexico City

Mexico City is the second largest city in the world. It is situated on an altitud of 2240 meters and it has a population of about 22 million. It might sound as a big and angry monster. But a walk in the downtown of Mexico is no more hectic than any other capital city that I have visited.


Right in the middle of the Zócalo, the main square in Mexico City, stands an enourmous Mexican flag. On a sunny day you can see people creating a line in the shadow from the flagstaff, slowly moving around as the hand of a big solar clock.

Around the square there seems to be a special energy in the air that just makes you want to stay there hour after hour. Maybe that is why the Aztecs built their pyramids on the very same spot before the Spaniords destroyed them in favor of a Catholic cathedral still standing tall on one of the sides of the Zócalo. Or maybe it is because of its long history, of all the people that have gathered here for centuries. Or maybe because the air here feels fresh and high, even if Mexico City is supposed to be one of the most polluted cities in the world.

I was filming dreamdays right here, behind the cathedral in the summer of 2006. But this time around I did not bring my video camera. Squeezed into my bag were instead a couple of Dreamday stickers. Right before taking the bus back to Puebla I took up three of them and placed them rapidly along my way to the bus. The first one I placed on the stairs just around the corner of the opera house. Then the second one on a wooden wall outside the metro station Bellas Artes. And the last one on a notice board while waiting for the metro.

I jumped on the bus back to Puebla with a feeling of fulfillment. I had left a small trace of the Dreamdayproject in a city where nobody otherwise would have noticed I had even been there. And even if it is just in my dreams, maybe one of the 22 million people will make a stop for a second reading Cómo sería Tu Día Perfecto ? and think about the question for a second before disappearing in the crowds of the second largest city in the world.





























































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Dreamdayproject Starts Sister Project

The Shoewitchproject


I always dreamt of becoming a fortune teller and I always thought I had a gift to see into the future. But reading palms was never my thing. However, little by little, this shoeproject started to grow into another kind of fortune telling. Every pair of shoes had a special meaning and pointed in a certain direction.

If you are interested to know where you are going, just send me a picture of your shoes and the Shoe Witch will give you new insights into your life.

Welcome The Shoewithproject to this world!

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A House of Dreams

Today it is time for a serious matter to be handled. It is written to you from a serious place; La Biblioteca Profética.




If you know me you might have heard this story before. For those of you who haven´t this is a story about a house. But it is not just any house. It is a house filled with dreams and hopes, like most other houses I guess, but at least to me, this one has a very special meaning. I have been walking around with this story in my head for a long time. Now it is time to write it all down.



I came to think of the house once again when sitting by the kitchen table in my new home in Puebla, Mexico. It is a similar kind of house even if they were built on different sides of the Atlantic and during different centuries too. The house in Puebla is much bigger and better preserved than the house I am about to tell you about. But they have the same masonry walls covered with cracks and flaking paint. They might appear rough and old to some but I think these cracks give the house a personality. They tell a story of a house that keeps a secret within its walls. A house where people have come and gone as the colours of the walls have changed. The secrets of my new house I might never know, but I am sure they are hidden somewhere in those cracked walls.






The house of dreams that carries the secrets of my family, stands on an island in Greece called Salamina. It is a small white house looking almost like a little sugar cube. It has two windows facing the road. They look like two big and brown eyes turned towards the street as if they were waiting for someone. This house carries many stories and memories, but most of all, it is a house of dreams that were no yet fulfilled. Or atleast that is how I often think of it.

One of my earliest memories of this house is from a summer when I was about five or six years old. We had just arrived to the island with our blue Volvo and I was sitting in the back seat with my brother, both very eager to arrive to our destination. When we drove up on the dusty road I had the little sugar cube on my left side. I remember asking my parents if the big house to the right of the street was ours. You see, from the summer before I had completely forgotten what the house looked like. They laughed and pointed towards the small house to the left instead.


I knew this house was special. But exactly why I didn´t quite understand at that time looking at the old house and the wild garden. There are some moments in life that you can never erase. This is one of them. The dream was not exactly what I had imagined it to be, yet many years later, this house came to be my own house of dreams. And that feeling has come to follow me all my life. That the dream itself is often a disappointment in the moment when you are standing right infront of it. Its greatness takes years to understand.




My parents bought this house when they were newly married. Or rather, they never bought the house itself but the land it was on. The house was a bonus. It did not have water nor electricity but still we used to stay there for a month almost every summer when I was a child. We had to carry water in buckets to use for cooking and brushing our teeth at night. I remember one summer it was so hot we even took our beds out and slept right under the stars. Can you really do that I remember thinking. But my mum said it was cooler outside and so there we were with our beds under the sky.

I remember playing with my toys, a big brown teddy bear and a red dog, while my parents were sitting around the table with their friends and my brother was reading comic books. I remember the cups and the porcelain as they were museum objects carrying their own stories and memories. Right between the two brown windows there was a purple bouganvilla growing on the wall. I got it from my grandmother when I was baptized. And it is still there actually, like a little piece of me still attached to the house even after 31 years.


I was back in Greece last summer 2008 and during the fall of 2003. During those five years, and during the 20 years that have passed since the last summer we spent there, many things have happened in my life. But the house looks all the same. The garden might be a little wilder, the trees are bigger, the walls look weaker, but still it is as if time stood still in there. New and modern houses have been built around the house. And the house of dreams stands there in the middle, surrounded by modernity like a reminder of another time.


When you step inside the house it first looks as if someone just walked out. The washing liquid is there, the cups that were just washed, are standing on the sink left to dry. A pile of magazines on a little table, as if someone just placed them there after finishing reading. The pillows on the beds. The white curtains with roses on that sway as you open the door. And there is the teddy bear and the red dog. After a while you notice a thin layer of dust covering everything and you notice time for the first time. I guess you could call this archaeology too. A modern Pompeji.








To me this house is a symbol of all the dreams of my family. The dream of another parallel life that could have existed. But things don´t always turn out the way you plan. And some dreams are never fulfilled. But sometimes the dream is a truth in itself and has its own purpose, being fulfilled or not. While dreaming of the future, we might have had our share of dream as it was, while living there, without water or electricity, brushing our teeth with water from a bucket under the stars at night. It might not be a sad story about dreams that were never fulfilled but about beautiful memories that once existed there. You can call them dreams or memories, but maybe they are the same thing. As the future and the past. And maybe time did in fact stand still in the house of dreams.





















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