Writing Julia and the Red Fox was a hoot, as we say here in the deep South. I really got into the dream world in which Julia finds herself with the enigmatic Mr. Fox.
I experimented with lucid dreaming in my high school years. There were different techniques, and I combined a couple to train myself to wake up. Throughout the day, I would raise my hands and ask myself, "is this reality or is it a dream?" Then, as I slept, I would casually look at my hands and automatically ask myself, is this reality or is it a dream? It was a dream! I was awake in it. I could fly, build machines, walk through walls, and do all sorts of delightful things. Once lucid, I marveled at the bright, vivid, and intricate quality of the world around me. A simple object, like a shoe or a glove, was imbued with an intricate and bejeweled geometrical complexity. Lucid dreaming felt similar to the psychedelic experience, but not as chaotic and intense.
Near the end of my experimentation with this technique, my dreams became more abstract, as if I was playing with the machinery of dreams itself. I could design the sets and put events into motion. Eventually, I stopped experimenting because I was only able to do it during afternoon siestas, and the dreams became too electric. Now and then, I wake up inside my dreams and delight in their wonder and magical reality.
Writing about dreams for this short story tickled my funny bone. I enjoyed the process quite a bit. I also painted Mr. Fox looking at Julia through the window, and this scene is now immortalized as an NFT in my NFT Showroom gallery.
