Category: Dreams

A Writing Class Dream

Three classes were taking place in a large, modern building that reminded me of an egg because it had curved, white ceilings. I looked like I was twenty years old in this dream (I’m sixty-two and a half), and was in the advanced class. We’d finished our lessons. I was pleased by everything that’d happened. Now, I was basically waiting to leave and employ my new knowledge.

For some reason, I couldn’t leave just yet, so I went around exploring the other classes. Not too large, one class seemed to be people in their mid-teens. Walking among them, I noticed that they were writing letters, using pens. All of them had small computers with strange, springy raspberry, lemon, and lime-colored thin wires that dangled down. Checking, I found that they weren’t connected to anything. I asked one if they needed to be connected. She said, “Don’t worry, they’ll come and do it in a little while.”

 I went on. The next class was larger and filled with children. They were waiting for someone to give them their notebooks. Seeing a stack of notebooks, I passed them out to them, and then decided to join them. Taking one notebook, I opened it and saw that it’d already been written in. Every page had sentences, paragraphs, descriptions, or stories.

I checked other notebooks. They were written in, too. I said, “These notebooks are all written in.”

A child beside me nodded. “Yes, you just write some more. Just write around them.”

I was thinking that over when another child said, “Everything is already written but that shouldn’t stop you from writing.”

The dream ended.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Power ballads were streaming through me this morning, partly triggered by dreams, but also television shows I’ve been watching, like “Letterkenny”, “Future Man”, and “The Umbrella Academy” besides the latest season of “Vera”. Out of the songs I’m feeling, the old INXS standby, “Never Tear Us Apart” (1988) took the spot as today’s theme song.

The dream side of things featured a major devotion to writing, especially the final dream chapter. Working on April Showers 1921, I’m at a five-pointed intersection, asking myself, “Which way do we go, George, which way do we go?” The final dream had a very nice sit-down interview with myself in which I was two ages, one in his twenties and the other in his seventies. They were discussing the pros and cons of different ideas, along with the risks, and comparisons to other novels. Awakening from that chapter seemed seamless. They made a decision and finished the interview, and I picked up the germinating thinking when I awoke.

‘Nuff written. Cheers

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The Tiger Dream

It was another chaotic and hectic dream. 

I was camping with friends at a big music festival. The place was packed, reminding me of images from Woodstock back in 1969, but with better weather. Everyone was having a good time. As part of a group of ten to twelve people, we all had roles for setting up and sustaining our party. I was responsible for a cooler of beverages and ice, along with a sound system. I brought them, set up, and we had a good time. As night fell, I found a sleeping bag and crashed out.

The next morning, the celebration was cranking up early. I looked for the cooler and sound system. Neither were found. I told the others, “I asked you guys to look after it.” Laughing, they shrugged that off.

Okay, I had to find them. As I started out, I said, “I have two things to do.” As I said that, I realized that there was more to do, so I said, “No, I have four things to do.” Then I ticked them off my fingers. Unfortunately, I only remember looking for the cooler and bringing it back, and doing the same with the sound system.

I set off through the packed grounds. Sometimes I’d tell people what I was looking for, but mostly, I just wandered and looked.

As I did, I saw a young tiger running toward me. I’d heard rumors while I was rambling around that they had young, wild animals like cougars at the festival. As I saw the animal, I heard a young woman say, “Oh, look, a baby tiger.” I thought the tiger was young but not a baby.

A woman said, “It’s not supposed to be out.”

The tiger ran toward me. I prepared to catch it, but it veered at the last moment and leaped up a tall stack of shelves filled with cans, containers of ketchup, bags of flour, and jars of pickles. The tiger’s jump amazed me, but the tiger didn’t stick the landing. As I began reacting, it fell off the top shelve, which was over a dozen feet high, and landed on the ground. The woman came forward and scooped it up.

“Did you see that tiger jump?” I said, pointing at the shelves. “That tiger jumped to the top of those shelves. It was amazing.”

Although I said this several times, nobody else seemed to have noticed, and nobody answered me.

The dream ended.

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The Book Store Dream

There was so much dreaming last night.

One memorable part involved a back door where I checked on books. I don’t know why I checked on books there, but I would go out and look for books. It seemed to be by a garage door in my house. Returned surveys about books began arriving there. I struggled to understand what they were. My wife and some friends were in another part of the house. I took it to them but they were talking about other things and didn’t pay any attention.

I learned that the front of the house was a book store, but someone else owned it. I realized that the surveys were probably due to them but were being delivered to me instead. I found the owner, a woman, and told her that her surveys were being sent to me and that she needed to do something about that if she wanted to receive them. Another man, her employee, started talking to a group of people about the survey, and what they hoped to get from it. He was talking about the disappointment they had because so few had been returned. I interrupted him and told him they were being delivered to me instead of them, and gave them a stack of them.

Then I discovered an old Wizard of Oz DVD. Recalling how I’d come to have it, I went to return it to its correct place and discovered an entire stash of them.

Nobody else seemed to understand me, frustrating me. My wife kept leaving the back door open, and didn’t pay attention to my complaints about it. I finally told her that she couldn’t have those keys any longer. She and her friends decided to leave. She went to leave by the back door, discovered it was locked, and asked me if she could have the keys. That was a catalyst for sky-high frustration and irritation. I went through the same complaints and statements as before. She then left through the front, but still didn’t seem to understand.

Then I heard the book store owner, her employee, and several customers talking about the survey. The book store owner complained that they weren’t getting surveys back. The customers said they’d returned them. I intervened, explaining again they’d been sent to the wrong place, and that they were coming to me instead of the book store. I told the store owner that needed to be changed if she wanted to receive the survey. As I was now fed up with trying to get them to understand, I told her I’d no longer be an intermediary for ensuring her surveys reached her.

I left, but immediately regretted being spiteful. Outside, I walked down a large green hill. The hill was full of desks arranged like tombstones and grave markers. No one was at any of them. My desk, I knew, was at the bottom of the hill, where I was headed. As I was almost there, an old female friend, who I haven’t seen in twenty-plus years, joined me, talking and commiserating with me as we walked.

Reaching my desk, I sat in my chair and leaned forward in thought. She sat in a chair beside my desk, and then leaned forward and wrapped her arms around me. She was talking as she did, being very sympathetic, and then began kissing me.

The dream took an sharp, erotic turn after that.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music popped straight into the stream from memories and dreams. Here’s Rufus and Chaka Khan with a song that Stevie Wonder wrote, “Tell Me Something Good”, from the year I graduated high school, 1974.

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The TV Movie Dream

The dream felt like a made-for-TV rom-com. I was a clean-shaven young NCO in a pressed service-dress uniform and tidy haircut. Due to weather circumstances and other logistic problems, I was required to help a four-star general for an evening. The general was a notoriously finicky and critical man, but I accepted my assignment with an aw-shucks gulp.

He was at a conference. The evening didn’t go as planned but I managed to keep a step ahead, and it went well from the general’s point of view, if not to anyone else’s thinking. (Sorry, but details are lacking.) The general then wanted to leave – now. But his aide, chief-of-staff, and other personnel weren’t there. Nonetheless, he wanted to go now. So I led him out of the building.

It was late a cold and starless late night outside. It’d been snowing for several previous days but sunshine had prevailed that day. Much snow had melted, flooding streets with icy slush. It was messy and travel was limited. But no problem, I took to the general to my parents’ house. Previously in the evening, I’d come by and set up a place for the general in their sprawling split-level. After showing the general to his place, I went upstairs and told my parents about their house guests. They accepted it with a matter-of-fact shrugs and smiles.

After that, I checked in on the general. He was fine, didn’t need anything and stressed, he didn’t want anyone to disturb him. He had work to do and then was retiring for the night.

Good to go. I returned to the convention center and encountered the rest of his group, as hoped, because they needed to be told what’d happened. They demanded to know where the general was. I explained it all to them and answered their questions. Their hostility soothed, they admitted that I’d done well. One insisted that he wanted to visit the general. I told him the general said he didn’t want disturbed. I left them discussing what they were going to do and went home.

As I arrived home (my parents’ house), a car of young women pulled up. The neighbor’s daughter left the car. The car left with the young women leaning out of their windows hooting and waving at me. The daughter, a short brunette in her late teens whose father was in the military, came over and flirted with me, beginning, “I hear you kidnapped a general.”

I told her the story. We flirted and then I was temporarily called to the house because the general wanted something to drink. When I returned, the young woman’s older sister, a tall blonde, was there. She asked me, “What would you do with slush like this when you were a kid? Wouldn’t you build a dam?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

The older sister said, nodding, “You settled a debate. Good-night.”

She left us. The young women and I went for a walk along the slushy street, building slush dams, but also breaking one open.

The dream ended.

***

Somehow, from all of this, I ended up thinking that the dream was about the outcome was the only thing that mattered.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music is a surprising turn for me. I blame my dreams.

I had a cluster of dreams last night that shared the theme of saving. I saved some people and animals in a few dreams, but I was also saved, most memorably once by a Jack Russell terrior. The dog led me out of what appeared to be a benign situation. After I thanked him, he left.

Keeping with the weirdness of all that, I awoke thinking, “And it said so in my dreams.” I immediately knew that line from “Candida”, a hit song by Tony Orlando and Dawn back in July 1970. I never had one of their albums, but they were immensely popular in the early seventies. That popularity translated to a lot of AM and FM radio play and appearances on television shows — or did the radio play and appearances on television shows lead to immense popularity? Either way, I heard them often. Pop culture tends to be like that.

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Friday’s Theme Music

You’d think that today’s theme music originated with feeding the cats or something, but, no, this one started with a dream.

The dream had to do with a man that I’d met and the movies. Throughout the dream, he was either trying to get me to go to the movies with him, be in a movie with him, or make a movie with him. A cheery, energetic guy, I never quite understood him or what was going on. But I recalled him saying, “Just how deeply do you believe?”

After thinking about the dream and feeding the cats, that phrase started Nine Inch Nails, “That Hand that Feeds” (2005), streaming through me. “Just how deep do you believe? Will you bite the hand that feeds? Will you chew until it bleeds?”

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The Flowing Dream

Posting a great deal today, I know. I blame the dream. 

Last night’s dreamisode had me spilling out out of myself. See, I was me, and the hairy flesh-colored white male that I am, except I spilled out like mercury, flowing over sidewalks and streets, splashing around buildings, plants, and fire hydrants.

I’d been walking through a warm, sunny day in downtown Ashland when this began. I didn’t understand what was happening at first, and then, I panicked, because, oh my God, I’m all over the place. I worried about people walking on me, or having my liquid flesh clogging the sewer drains and drowning others. In a fit of Lucille Ball-like comedy, I scrambled to collect myself and return my mercury-ness to my corporal existence, scooping up handfuls of myself and shoving it into my shirt and jeans. But I couldn’t hold onto myself. It just flowed through my fingers. As my efforts to collect myself wasn’t working, I just let it flow.

Then I was sitting, trying to understand what was happening. Settling back, I watched me flow across the land. My body, like went around others, but didn’t kill them. They embraced it with surprise. As I sat on a chair by a table on a patio and watched myself flowing out, I saw that there was more, that I wasn’t everyone, that I was spreading, but I was still there. I wondered, how far do I go?

With more astonishment, I saw that where I flowed, other things grew and flourished. I wasn’t killing anything at all. Whether the light had changed or my vision was clearer, the day seemed brighter. As I watched, I realized that I was growing even as I sat. From where I sat, I began to see over trees and houses. Soon I saw across the valley and then over the mountains, to the beach and the sea.

Then, in a part that brought tears to my eyes in the dream, the sun was rising wherever I looked. Even as I thought, that’s not possible, I saw, but, yes, that’s what’s happening.

The dream ended.

***

I’d forgotten the dream until I was walking and thinking about my character, Anders, and who he was. In a flash I remembered the dream. I was walking in Ashland, and for a startling moment, I felt like I was in the dream, and experienced this bizarre sense of duality. As that passed, I sharply aligned with Anders and who he was. A black teenager in America, I was trying to get a handle on him, but then saw that I was tagging him through the prisms of my experiences.

He, though, doesn’t think like us, not because of his skin color, but because of his generation. His parents are black, and he loves and respects them, but their experiences don’t shape him. To him, that’s an old way of being. The new way is to shape himself. He eschews and shuns much of popular culture because of that because popular culture attempts to normalize him and push him to conform to a popular conception of who he should be, what he should buy, and how he should behave. Anders rejects and resists that.

As I explored him and his friends, I saw all of this, and how it applied to them. We have stereotypes of our segments of culture and society, from the one percent down to the homeless, from the self-proclaimed Greatest Generation through the Boomers and the rest. Anders and his friends are resisting being called a generation. They’re seeing and seeking fragmentation, breaking old norms and behavior. They don’t want to build something new; they just want freedom to find for themselves if there’s something new out there. 

They think there is something new. They can’t see it, but they’re looking through other’s eyes. It’s not until they can find their own way of seeing that they’ll discover their own country.

***

After all of that, it was a powerful and liberating day of writing like crazy. I know that it’s silly, but I felt privileged and flattered to have experience that dream, because it felt so empowering. I felt special, humbled, and amazed as I wrote.

The session is over. Time to go on to other things.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

After another night of multiple, interesting dreams (some involving playing games), I was mocking myself this morning. “These dreams go on when I close my eyes,” I said to the cats, who were not looking at me nor listening to me (because, the cats were all thinking — I could see it in the spread of their whiskers, the glints in their eyes, and the tilt of their ears — “The others are here, and who knows when one of those other cats will lose it and attack me, so I must stay vigilant!”), “but it feels like I’m thinking about them every second that I’m awake.” Of course, I was close to the song lyrics from “These Dreams”,  a 1986 Heart hit.

“These Dreams” sounded different from Heart’s earlier music, IMO, but I liked the song. (Confession: I like songs ’bout dreams. It might be because I dream often, and seem to remember them.) Of course, the band’s line-up had changed, too, another reason for the different sound. Not long after buying Heart’s album, I discovered that Martin Page and Bernie Taupin wrote the song. Ah, hah.

The other aspect of this song, heavily noted during the song’s time on the pop chart, was that Nancy Wilson sang lead vocals instead of Ann, even though Nancy had a cold.

Ah, trivia.

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