For a solid eighteen months my son Pascal had a recurring nightmare that he called "The Moon's House." He described being on the surface of the moon, and the moon would suck him into a hole--the hole was where the moon lived--and inside of the house, the moon would get him. Interestingly, he knew he was going to have this dream as soon as he started falling asleep, because he would hear a sound, a swishing that he called "moon wind." Moon wind meant the moon was coming.

Eventually, after lots of effort and conversation, I figured out that the moon wind sound was actually the resonance you can make by cupping your ear in your hands. He was falling asleep resting on his hand, and aided by his particular ear problems (short tubes, frequent infections) he would hear this swishing intensely, cuing the dream. As soon as we had him fall asleep on his back, the dream completely ceased.

Something has stuck with me from that experience and has continued to influence my art heavily. I realized that the notion of childhood being simple and carefree was never created by children. This nightly horror, though difficult to tie to any real-life threats, was absolutely formative. No amount of effort on our part convinced him that the moon wasn't going to get him. The line about only a dream was meaningless. The pleasant circumstances of his life did nothing to shelter him from that period when he was alone with his unconscious.

This particular image and another that is its sister in one of my upcoming objects for Child's Play is rooted in the dream of the Moon's House. It's of Pascal at the Pacific Dunes, a moonscape if ever I have seen one, climbing up out of a deep ravine. I've used this image before, but never in this way. I'm really looking forward to getting my ink so that I can print it and see what happens.