Car In A Dream

He awoke with a fast start. Pulse still hammering, heart palpitating in his chest, he kept still, eyes wide open, focused on the dark night around him, waiting for his eyesight to catch up.

Common sounds asserted themselves: others snoring throughout the house, including the dog on the floor and his wife beside him in the bed. Wind was kicking around something loose on the house, reminding him that he’d need to hunt the object down before it broke free. Something to do when daylight arrived, after the other winter chores were completed, something to complete while the sun shone and he paced himself until spring.

Sleep was not coming back soon. Lightly he unfurled the heavy blankets and quilts, untangled himself from his wife’s grasp, and slipped free. An icy floor met his soles. Shivers jumped through his body. Eyes finding form in the darkness, he eased out of the bedroom, past the old dog, and out into the kitchen.

A tabby was settled on the kitchen counter, watching him with still eyes. Drifting to the window, he peered out past the curtains and glass while he scratched the cat. It purred happy in response. He’d dreamed of cars again. The car in this dream had been from about 1980, although he thought he was living in 2021 when he dreamed it. Just speculation about that, as those dates felt elusive. He knew the car, though, green and low, was not like anything seen in this century. Cars were still to be invented. He shook his head at that. Cars were still to be invented, but seemed so real… If the car was from 1980, that was still one hundred twenty years away. Scratching his face, he prepared to return to bed.

He awoke with a fast start. Gaping at his familiar bedroom, he settled onto his side with a long sigh. He’d dreamed again that he was living on a farm in eighteen sixty. Breaking free of his wife and the cats huddling against him, he slipped out of bed and moved through the house. Night lights embedded in the walls helped guide him as he made his way to the garage and flipped on its lights. His BMW M1 reflected the scene in its gleaming green surfaces, including himself, staring at the car. For a moment, he saw himself as another person, the old farmer? And then another — the man from 2021?

Shutting the garage lights off, he returned to the house. Cats had followed him and now demanded food, attention, or both. Touching his wrist, he woke his Backhand. “Show me today’s dreams,” he said, amending, “from the last two hours.” The dreams paraded by until the green car arrived. “Freeze.” He drank it in. “Enlarge the driver’s face. Clarify and sharpen.” He squinted as it grew in size, trying to decide if it was him, the man from 1860, or the guy from 2021.

Were they — he — all the same?

He closed the dream. Either something — worlds — were coming together, or something — the divide between worlds? — was coming apart. Maybe something else, like his sanity, was coming apart. Padding down the hall, ambivalence slowed him. He wasn’t certain he wanted to return to bed, wasn’t certain if he wanted to return to sleep. For to sleep meant to dream, and he was becoming worried about where his dreams might next take him.

The BMW M1 Dream

I dreamed I was driving a BMW M1 in a dream last night. The road was slushy and snowy and the car was dark green. I was having a ball sliding the powerful, capable car around curves and slamming down straights, managing the direction as the car attempted to fishtail and spin.

Awakening and thinking about the dream kept a smile on my face. Although I know of the BMW M1, I’ve never actually seen one. It’s a rare model. Research shows it was produced from 1978 to 1981, with four hundred fifty-three cars built. A mid-engine mounted sports car, it was powerful and capable, with output coming from a straight six engine. Top speed was 164 MPH and 0-60 MPH was about 6.4 seconds. These aren’t brilliant numbers these days, but back then, that performance put it in a special category.

Of course, the query in my head is why that car in that dream? I often think of my dream cars as representing me. It’s pleasing now to think that I’m a rare but outdated exotic sports car who used to be capable of performance that impressed others. Carrying the analogy further, now I’m just an old rarity, long out of production, and infrequently seen.

I like the green in the snow though, you know? You can see why, right?

Korea & IBM Dream

My old buddy, Randy, was a dream guest last night. He passed away in 2016 from colon cancer so seeing him was a surprise.

The dream started with an IBM conference. I worked for IBM and sometimes dream of them. In this instance, I was at an annual meeting. A product announcement was made. IBM’s stock price jumped a dozen dollars. We were all happy, looking forward to the future. Then, hours later, it was back down to where it had been, $77 a share. I saw that in red on my phone and told everyone, “That’s what always happened.” That started a thinking process for me: maybe I should be shorting IBM. I continue thinking about that during the dream.

Meanwhile, we needed to go to another location to meet and eat. We were taking our cars. Mine was a dark blue Audi S7. I was so pleased to have it in the dream. An older woman had a dark blue car as well. She had a window cut out. A note written in black marker on an orange piece of paper was by the hole, along with a cup. The note said that she would appreciate donations for tolls.

We all took off driving. The woman left first. I was third in line. I knew the road. Realizing we were coming up to a corner that would be slick with ice where it’d be easy to spin out of control, I slowed down. Others passed me.

One of those cars crashed. Coming up on the scene, the other driver was laying in the ice and sludge, alive but injured. I stopped my car, put on my emergency blinkers, and jumped out to help him. Other cars were coming. Hurrying out to meet them, I used hand signals to warn them to stop, then I went back and helped the other person.

We reached the hotel restaurant. I realized we were in Korea. I saw Randy across the room. He looked just as he did the last time that I saw him. I called out, but he kept going. My co-workers and I got in line to order food. I was second in line behind someone whose order was being filled. For some reason, though, the servers ignored me and started taking others’ orders. That enraged me. I started to make a comment but the manager realized what was happening and had someone hasten over to take my order. I didn’t know what to order though. I eventually asked them for a food that I didn’t know. I thought it was potatoes but they told me no, it isn’t potatoes. They asked me if I wanted sauce and different things added. Since I had no idea what anything was, I told them, yes to everything.

Taking my food on a red tray, I went to find a table and saw Randy again. This time he saw me and came over to chat. I invited him to join my group and introduced him to a couple people. Reaching the table, I realized it was broken. Setting my tray off to one side, I turned the table upside down. The legs had come lose. The screws were there, so I said, “Screw it, I’m going to fix this.” After re-attaching the table legs and tightening the screws, I turned the table over.

We all put out food on the table and sat down to eat. That’s where it ended.

A Loaded Dream

This dream held so many elements. They happened in parallel but I broke them out to think about each nugget.

  1. I was preparing to travel and return home. I was visiting Mom and other my sisters in the east. Throughout, I was trying to determine what time I needed to leave. I was driving and flying. As I thought about when I was leaving, I thought in terms of minutes and had a stack of dimes. Each dime represented one minute. Did I have enough dimes? Stacking them, I had more than enough.
  2. My youngest sister (often referred to as my ‘littlest’ century, though she’s been alive for over half a century and have two sons in their teens) and her friend were missing. They’d gone on a walk. A storm was coming in and hours had gone by. As time passed and our worries increased, I tried calling her on her phone and sending her text messages. By the end, the messages were, “Call when you get this. We’re worried.”
  3. I’d bought land on top of cliffs. Located on the coast, growing ocean waves were pummeling it. I was thinking about building a seawall on top of it to protect it. I had a view out my window of the cliffs and the waves, which were about a half mile away.
  4. My car was located in a parking garage with others’ cars. At one point, heavy machinery came by and started tearing the parking structure down. Accosting the foreman, I said with some outrage, “My car is parked in that structure in a lower level, along with others.” The others had come out and were nodding and agreeing. The foreman mocked and laughed us while talking about how strong the structure was, that nothing would happen to our cars on the lower decks, but he stopped further activity and walked off looking concerned.
  5. Mom kept finding clothing and items left behind from other visits, such as a gray leather wallet, a black belt, and a pale gray sports coat. The coat was so pale, it was almost white. As I collected these things, I was trying to fit them into my luggage. Remembering the jacket, I decided that I would wear it on my travels home. The gray wallet was in excellent shape, but was empty. I knew it was mine, however, recalling when I bought it in Korea.
  6. A high school friend was present. He kept making suggestions about things to do. When he came up with something, he wrote it down and dated it so it’d be documented when he’d came up with the ideas, so he’d get credit. One of the ideas he’d come up with was building a sea wall on the cliff. I’d already come up with that idea, I explained to him, but it slide off like soft butter on a hotter knife. I started writing things down, too, backdating some of them, so I had proof that I’d thought of them first.
  7. As I packed, I kept trying to decide where to put things and what I wanted to have on me while traveling. While I did that, I found that I had three wallets. How’d I get three wallets? What should I do with them? Having three amused me but I wasn’t surprised.

A lot to think about with this one.

Trains & Cars – A Dream

I was a young middle-aged man, about thirty yeas old, I’d say. Outside was a place where organizers had built a huge platform for HO-scale cars and trains. These are the moderately small things but not the really small or tiny ones. The layout was huge. Workers were in a center pit. From there, they could go anywhere to reach the cars, trains, and track.

I ended up as one of the people allowed to play there. I first built cars. You These models were replicas of famous sports racing cars through the decades. My main car in the dream was a white Chaparral 2E.

Young people were there to help. A group of teenage girls controlled the parts stock. I’d go to them to request parts and supplies. Young boys were always willing to paint things for you for a small fee.

After perfecting my Chaparral’s looks and performance, I began practicing on the long track. The racing car controller was a pistol type, with a light trigger. That made it harder to modulate the speed through corners. I had all but section of track mastered within a short time. The one part was right by the end. I knew it was a curve but it wasn’t visible to me.

After wrecking out on that one place multiple times, I went up to take a closer look at that particular corner and discovered that it was like a parking garage corkscrew. It reminded me of Laguna Seca’s famous corkscrew, which had a blind approach before diving into curves and descending eleven hundred feet at speed. I told everyone there that’s what it reminded me of, then set it aside to deal with later.

For now, I’d play with my trains. A young boy had been painting them for me to forge detailed realism. It was with great pride that I set them on the track and started running it. This train wasn’t short, but was one hundred and two cars long. All went well for a bit, and then my train derailed.

A pit person went to retrieve my train and set it up again. The derailment had taken place at an area accessible to me, so I went there, too. As the pit man set it up, he gave one car to me, saying it was damaged. As I took it, another person came up. I recognized Jeff, a person I haven’t seen in thirty-five years. The man gave Jeff an identical car to my car. I believed it was my car, that I’d had two, but the pit person didn’t understand what I was trying to say. That’s where it all ended.

It was an interesting and vivid dream. My other sharply recalled dream was about a job I had counting prostitutes, but it’s really too weird to go into. For one thing, some of the girls would disappear into smoke when I would try to count them. For another, I didn’t know why I was counting, a question that I kept pursuing, without ever finding an answer.

Designing Cars Dream

Cars often show up in my dreams. I’m frequently driving sports cars such as Porsches (often), Ferraris, and Lamborghinis. Once in a while, I’m in a racing car. Today, as far as I remember, was a first, because I was designing cars.

They started as toys. I designed and built small toy cars, first from plastic, then from metal. They were impressive little futuristic designs, mostly in silver, black, or metallic red, with doors and hoods that opened, etc. They quite impressed people. After some conversations, a team was established building those. I then surprised everyone by designing and building several real cars based on my models. That impressed people even more.

Then we closed for lunch.

While we were closed for lunch, I decided to bake pastry and bread that looked like my toy cars. As those were discovered and people ate them, I made cars out of chocolate to sell and give away. While I was doing that, I discovered some of my workers asleep on their lunch breaks at their desks in my building. Most were female but all were young, and all were friends. After I asked them why they were sleeping there, several confessed that they had several jobs or were also mothers raising children, or they were going to school. My youngest sister was one of them. I thought, I have to change this, which was where they dream ended.

The Four Pies Dream

I dreamed I was to deliver four pies to people living in the woods. A young person was assisting me. I don’t know what flavors the pies were, but part of it was that I heat the pies and cut each into six equal slices, and then deliver them. The entire time that this is going on, “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd is playing. I don’t know the source of that.

Being a dream where things don’t always make sense, the pies were in a car, a light blue little machine of unknown name. Also in a car was a young white child. The child was a threat, others told me; don’t let him bite you, and don’t let him out of the car.

But I also heat the pies in the car, and could see them through two large side glass windows. I’d already cut them before heating them. Now they were ready.

My young assistant and I slide the windows down preparatory to opening the doors to get the pies. Here comes the kid! Oh, no! I was talking to him in a soothing voice, asking him if he’d like a piece of pie. He rushed forward. “He’s going to bite us,” my young assistant yelled. “Put the windows up,” I shouted. We slid them up.

Round two. “This is ridiculous,” I said, laughing. “Let’s try again.” We reheated the pies. How? I don’t know. It’s something I said in the dream, then waited for seconds, if that, and they were done. We slid down the windows. I talked to the child as I did. The child stayed back. We opened the doors and started taking out the pies. The child rushed us. We returned the pies, closed the doors, and shut the windows before he could reach us.

Others were concerned; that’d been close. He almost reached us. “Third times a charm,” I announced. “Let’s try again.” All progressed as before. We were able to get the pies out. I gave the child in the car a piece of pie. I think that was southern pecan. He sat down and started eating.

Success achieved.

Bonus dream: I was with my youngest sister, L. We were in her car, a blue Mustang convertible. The car was about ten years old. She was driving and I was a passenger. We’d stopped for her to talk with a friend. In the course of that, I got out to stretch my legs and was standing a few feet behind the car. The passenger door was open. My sister announced to the other that she was going to back the car up. I called out to her, warning her that her door was open, that she was going to remove the door.

She ignored me or didn’t hear…whatever, she backed the car up. The open door hit a brick wall and was torn away. Reacting with horrified dismay, she stopped the car. As I told her that I’d been telling her about the open door, we hurried to assess the damage. I expected the door to be gone but instead, the top layer of paint had been peeled off like it was molded part that fit over it, leaving the door intact — and still attached to the car — but a flat black color.

As I tried to understand how that had transpired while sympathizing with my sister, she mentioned that it bugged her because she was going to get a new car, and now her trade-in value would be lower. The whole thing left me subdued, wondering what’d happening, how it happening, and at her muted reaction.

The dream ended.

I could go on with the other dreams — oh, what a night — but those two were the prominent ones.

Another Lamborghini Dream

In this dream, I was taking my Lamborghini Huracán (I think it was a Huracán) in to be painted. It’d acquired some chipping in its travels; I wanted it to look better.

I drove it into the shop — a quick drive through highway traffic — and discussed colors with the staff. Each time a color was mentioned, the car changed colors in the dream: lemon yellow, neon green, bright red, hot orange, merlot, white. No, not a white car! I chose to stay with its original electric blue.

The Lambo shop where I’d taken the car tried selling me a mother-in-law seat. I’d never heard of it. They showed me a red one; it looked like a cross between a booster chair for toddlers and a saddle. The explanation was that it fit over the transmission tunnel to add a temporary seat for a third person. Amused, I declined. My MIL (who is deceased) showed up to declare that she would never sit in that.

I checked into a high rise luxury hotel to wait. When I arrived, Alec Baldwin offered me champagne. He wasn’t drinking any. Alec and I walked about, looking out the windows, chatting and joking around. A young server came by with champagne flutes of apple cider on a silver tray. I was interested but he said, “It’s organic.” I replied, “Oh, I always drink organic.” The server answered, “If you always drink organic, you can have some.”

I accepted the organic apple cider. Alec asked, “You always drink organic?” When I answered, “Yes,” he said, “Then give me the champagne, and I’ll drink that.” I agreed. Then, clowning around, he stuck the champagne bottle up his ass, neck first, so it looked like he was blowing a bottle out of his rear. He thought it was hilarious but I thought it was strange.

They announced that my car was ready. I prepared to leave. The dream ended. Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack in this one.

A Sisters-in-law Dream

The sitcom dreams have cycled out. Back to casual dreams, as I categorize them. This night featured a dream with my two sisters-in-law.

First, I’m facilitating a small group of people. I don’t know the group’s objective, but it did involve having to use clever means to bridge a fast-moving creek. A bridge was there but incomplete. I found a stretch of fencing and employed it. When others came, I had to show them what I’d done, laying out the fencing to bridge gaps, hold it up, and yet walk across it. That impressed them.

The older of my two sisters-in-law was there and requested a ride home. She was feeling ill. I wasn’t going that way but then discovered another who was. SIL had a baggie of treats. Some of it looked like white cake with raspberry jelly center layer and a coconut whipped cream top. Looked good! She said that I could have it but it wasn’t what it looked like. I took it and discovered it was hard candy. To which I was, bah, no thanks. She then went to get into a yellow SUV. I raised the rear for her. She put her things in but the woman driver started leaving with the rear still raised. I was incredulous but the woman turned and stopped. A short conversation ensued. Clarification achieved about what was going on, SIL entered the vehicle and it departed.

Act Two found me just completing another facilitating session, at a different location, with another group. I’d procured some treats for them. From where, they asked. We talked about that a bit, with me explaining that there was a candy store in a shopping center out on the highway. They said they’d gone there but didn’t find the treats that I had. I realize that they’d gone to another candy store, and then explained to them that there was a smaller shopping center in the corner of a larger shopping center. I’d gone to the candy store in the smaller shopping center. It helped that I could look out the window and see portions of both places, and put it out to them.

The group, probably two hundred people, arrived and settled in chairs. Although leading it, I was at the back, with my other SIL. I was showing an old movie to the group. My SIL wanted a ride home with me, which I agreed to do. The movie didn’t start as planned. I had to walk up as everyone watched, fix the equipment, return to my seat, and begin the film. Afterward, my SIL and I went to my car, the light blue 1985 Mazda RX-7 that my wife and I had bought new when we’d returned to America. I asked SIL if she minded if I removed the sunroof as it was a nice afternoon. She was okay with that.

The dream ended.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑