Category: Dreams

A Dream So Powerful

Last night’s main dream started out exhausting. I think of it as the main dream because I seem to recall snippets of other dreams. I know from other times that I often have several dreams that I remember in a night.

This one was the last dream of the night. I know that because I awoke from it, and it was morning. Like many recent dreams, chaos flushed the first part. I found myself in a crowd. It was extremely noisy. Everyone was walking, including me, but anxiety suffused me from a dozen different issues. First, I panicked about having my laptop with me. Then, after a weird struggle of turning around and looking for it, I discovered I was carrying a bag. Stepping to one side, I opened the bag and confirmed my laptop was inside.

One problem was solved, but now I worried about the date and time. I started walking again, but I seemed to be walking against the stream of people. Making eye contact with others, I asked them, “What time is it,” or “What’s the date?” Some answered, but I couldn’t understand or hear the answers.

That cranked my anxiety to higher levels. Around that time, I found myself at a crossroads between several corridors. Walls and windows were on either side. I realized that I was in an airport. It shocked me that I was in an airport without knowing it. Then I remembered that I’d flown in. Knowing that, I realized I needed to get my bags and leave the airport.

Nothing made sense in the airport, though. The signs seemed contradictory, and it was more crowded and noisier than before. People jostled me and ran into me, pissing me off. Somehow, I found the baggage area, got my bags, and left.

I needed to go to a hotel. I thought it was close and decided to walk. With a hot, humid, and sunny day outside, I was soon sweat covered. My feet hurt, and I was tired and thirsty. I also wasn’t sure where I was going, stopping to look at signs several times. I remember thinking, I wish I had a map, and I remember thinking about setting up my computer and trying to get online to find where I was.

I didn’t do that, though. I kept deciding which way to to and walking. Eventually, I realized that I was close to the ocean, and that’s where my hotel was. That excited me and gave me new hope. Seeing a sign for the beach, I went that way.

The beach wasn’t busy. It was flat, with white sand, and a bright blue sea. Walking toward the crashing waves with my luggage, I reveled in the smell, sight, and sound, and then stopped to enjoy it. There was a large rock off the coast about a hundred yards. I thought I recognized from my travels, but I couldn’t place it.

Looking back, I noticed a man in a black suit with a white shirt and a blue tie step onto the beach. I thought it was strange beach apparel, and that a suit was too hot for this weather. No one else was on the beach, so I wondered what he was doing.

I realized he was coming toward me. His approach made me anxious. I didn’t know him or what he wanted. Coming close, he called me by name, and said, “I’m glad I found you. We’re ready to start.”

“Okay,” I answered.

He took my luggage but I kept my laptop. “Is it far?” I asked.

“No, it’s just up here, around the corner,” he said.

I felt good because that meant that I’d been going in the right direction even though I’d been clueless.

We went around the corner of a building. I realized it was my hotel. But we didn’t go there, which surprised me. Without saying anything, the man in the suit led me across the street. People were lined up by a building. As I approached, some clapped. That confused me, and then some engaged me. I realized from talking with a few and looking around that they had a book that I’d authored, and were talking to me about it. They wanted me to sign it. So I stopped and started signing books and talking to people.

The man in the suit tried interceding. “We should go inside,” he told me. “It’s time to start.”

Apologizing to the people, I followed him, and then woke up.

Surprise and confusion filled me when I woke up. I knew where I was, but I didn’t think I should be there. Sitting up, I looked for my laptop bag, panicking when I didn’t see it, and then sought the man in the suit. As I didn’t see him, either, I realized that I’d been dreaming.

It astonished me because it felt so real. After thinking about it, I decided, what a hopeful, wishful dream.

1

The Cat Dream

Seems inevitable that I’d have a dream about cats. Four cats deign to let me live in the house with them. All were strays or left another house by their choice to come live with me. Besides them, Pepper from next door stays on our porch and wants me to feed her (which I do), and two other neighbor cats seek me for hand-outs. I’m a soft touch.

But when I started writing about the cat dream, I concluded the dream wasn’t about cats. They were symbols being used. The words I chose to explain what was happening indicated the dream was about other things.

It was another dream of chaos (like, straight out of the courts). So much was going on, and my dream started in the middle of it. I was carrying a cat (not one that I have, nor have ever had) from one end of a busy, hectic place, to another. People kept calling me over to come and see or do something, or help them out. I ended up multi-tasking, and ending up losing the cat.

Now the dream became a story about a flooftective. Calling the cat, asking others if they’d seen her, I walked around shaking a kibble box, my agenda re-arranged. Thinking I’d heard it back by my place, I went there.

The dream gets weird. My place didn’t have walls, but was framed for walls. Doors and windows had been installed, but there wasn’t a ceiling. There was a fireplace, and a wall-less bathroom. Instead of using it, I chose to go up the hill to a public restaurant, clean, but not convenient.

My place was also unbelievably disorganized, with boxes strewn about, including empty cracker boxes. Anyone who knows me will recognize how different that is from my real life.

Without walls, people walked in and out of my place at will, exasperating me. I became stern about stopping people as they did that. A cat fight erupted, distracting me again. As I hunted down those involved, I discovered a cat that wasn’t mine as at the fight’s center. He looked like my current cat, Tucker, with thick, black and white fur and a bushy tail. As I was talking to this cat, asking, “Who are you?” in a calm voice, I heard a woman calling for Harold. While I called over to her, asking if her cat was black and white, the black and white cat left. I decided it was probably Harold.

The dream, or my memory of it, ended.

***

Writing about the dream, I found myself using expressions like ‘multi-tasking’.  I ended up applying it to my writing efforts.

Other clues were there, like being side-tracked, the missing walls, and the sense of chaos and disorganization. See, while writing this series this week, I became diverted into a fifth book in it. I soon recognized it would be a stand-alone novel that shared the concept and setting, much like the relationship between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Then, I realize how much I enjoy the creative side of writing. I dislike the rest of it. I don’t mind editing and revising – that’s like solving puzzles – but the business side is anathema to me. So, if I don’t finish, I’m working on a series, but there’s no pressure to finish and publish.

Cunning, aren’t I?

So, after thinking of the dream and situation, I knew that I had to stop working on the new, fifth novel, and finish the original series as envisioned. I can later go back to the fifth novel, if I want.

Right?

Right.

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A Superpower Dream

I dreamed I had superpowers. The background of how I acquired them wasn’t explained.

The dream begins with me in the ocean on a clear, sunny day. The ocean is calm. Without knowing how, I’m on the ocean’s surface, but dry, and discover, hey, I have powers. Exploring that a little more, I discover that I can transform things.

Shouting reaches me. There’s been a disaster. People need help. With some listening and investigating, I learn that refugees at sea are on a sinking ship. They’re going to drown.

I tell everyone, don’t worry. I can transform things. Nobody understands what I’m talking about. It’s not important that they understand. I know what I can do, and I do it. Like friggin’ magic, because I don’t know what I transformed, the refugees are saved.

Everyone is astonished. “How did you do that?” people are asking. I tell them, “I told you that I can transform things.” Understanding begins to dawn in some.

Arriving somewhere else, where it’s dark and sinister, I met with other people and explain my power. A woman accosts me. I know who she is in the dream; basically, she’s evil incarnate. She’s there to trick me into helping her so that she can destroy me. Yes, I know this.

“I know who you are,” I said. “And I’m not playing games.” She’s sitting on a wall with her legs crossed. A shiny red mask covers her face. “I’m going to destroy you,” I said.

She chuckled with doubt. I transformed her into something that I can break but the transform doesn’t hold. She’s too strong. But I know that I can keep transforming her, but I must be fast, to keep her off-balance. So I continue transforming her until she’s a fly.

She flies off. I can’t track her but someone else tells me, “I saw her land and squashed her.” He points to a fly smashed on a wall. I look at the spot and see pieces of a red mask. Accepting it’s her, I clean her body off the wall with a paper towel and throw her away.

Back somewhere else, I’m trying to explain to people how I transform things, and do demonstrations. During these, I begin learning that the more complicated something is, the more difficult the challenge of transforming it, and that it won’t stay transformed long. That’s especially true with mechanical and electronic devices, and less so with organics. It’s a lesson in limitations that I need to remember.

That’s where the dream ends.

What a fun dream, to transform things and help others.

3

The Try Again Dream

The dream’s setting was a chaotic quilt of thunder and lightning, and wind and rain as screaming and shouting people rushed around me. Through it all, I didn’t know where I was or what was going on. Sometimes I’d recognize someone and try to ask them, “What’s going on?”

Nobody would stop to tell me. I started trying to figure it out by myself, but I couldn’t find any clues. With a little walking on a narrow trail, I found myself in a forest. The wind was bending the trunks over, and the branches thrashed like grappling wrestlers. Sometimes the wind was so strong that all I could do was find a branch and hold on as the wind hammered me. Lightning seemed to be striking some trees, too. I decided that I needed to get out of there. Although branches slammed into my head and back several times, I bent my head and kept going.

I realized that I was going up. It was hard, because it was wet and slick, but I felt like that was the best direction to take. I often had to grab hold of branches and use them to pull me forward. During the final part, I ended up crawling forward on my hands and knees. After some exhaustive struggling, I cleared the trees.

Spent and breathing hard, I looked around. I was high on top of a granite mountain. It was bare. There was nothing to hold onto. I was afraid that the wind would sweep me away, but I was determined to stay there and learn what was going on. Other than the wind, I realized I was now mostly above the storm. With a little straining to see through the storm, I got glimpses of waves crashing far below in one direction. Almost everyone was heading that way.

Not thinking it was safe because it was so steep, I didn’t want to go that way, and did a full circle in place on the mountain top, hunting for somewhere else to go. I found a calm area in another direction where sunshine was spread over a green slope. I thought, that’s where I want to be, but it wouldn’t be easy to get there. Mountains, storms, and forests were in the way.

As I debated what to do, I looked back toward the beach where the others had gone. Something prompted me to look that way, but I can’t say what it was. What I saw, though, was a rising tsunami wave rushing toward the shore. Appearing like something copied from a disaster movie, I could see people thronging on the beach. I realized that they were all in danger, but I had no way to warn them. I tried shouting because it was the only thing that I could think of doing.

Then I realized, I could fly down. All I needed to do was throw myself into the air, and I could fly down to the beach and warn everyone. Looking at the approaching wave’s speed, I thought I could get down there with enough time to at least give people a chance. Yet, I hesitated because I would need to fly through the storm, and that was dangerous. I wanted to take myself out of danger.

With growing understanding that I could fly wherever I wanted or needed to go, I looked at the calm, sunny green space. Going there appealed to me. I could fly to it, but that would mean abandoning the people on the beach, and as much as I hated it, I couldn’t do that.

Searching the mountain top, I found a cliff where I thought it would be best to launch myself. A howling wind pushed me around. Heart hammering in my chest, I tried diving off. The wind threw me back onto the ground, driving me backward like a candy bar wrapper. Scrabbling to hold on, I dug my fingers into the ground and held on until I stopped.

Deciding the cliff might not be the best place, I checked other places to launch, but it seemed like my first choice was best. Accepting that, I planted myself about twenty feet back from the cliff’s edge and waited. When I felt like the wind’s strength had dropped, I ran forward and dove off the cliff.

The wind slammed into me like it had been waiting to ambush me, and pitched me against the granite mountainside. I managed to catch myself before the impact and lessened it some, but it still hurt like hell. That was a bad idea, I thought, and then, surveying where I was, realized that my position was precarious. I couldn’t climb down. I had to either climb back up, or try to fly from there.

Aware that I was high and it was a long way down to the forested mountainside, I thought it would be best to climb back up to where I’d been. But now rain lashed me. Swearing at myself for my stupidity, I grew hopeless. Nothing I could think of was going to work. I’d blown my one chance, but I hadn’t known that it was my one chance.

With all that going through my head, I saw myself in my mind. The me in my mind said, “Don’t worry. Try again.”

He sounded so confident, but it seemed so crazy that I scoffed at him, demanding, “How?”

He – me – answered, “Try again.”

His response didn’t inspire me, but I decided what the fuck. After positioning myself among the crags and rocks the best that I could, I threw myself off the mountain. Within a moment, I knew I wasn’t flying, and flailed at the air in fear and panic.

Then the wind calmed. It almost felt like a hand lifting me up. After a few moments of surprised thinking, I realized that I was flying.

Growing calmer and feeling more in control, I changed my body’s pitch so that I could climb higher, see where I was, and find the people on the beach.

That’s when I awoke to a cat’s whiskers against my cheek.

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The House Dream

My wife and I were just moving into a beautiful new home that was on the beach. Leaving the living room, I entered a courtyard that was part of my home. Cross it and go out a gate, and I was on the beach, about two hundred yards away from the waterline. I was quite happy with it.

Early parts of the dream were involved in moving in new power supplies. My wife had never heard of them. I had to explain that the small, red devices that I was sitting up in different places would supply all the electricity we needed. About the size of a plug-in air freshener or a night light, they had an innocuous small body. I was setting up two per room.

Besides that, we discovered a litter of kittens in our courtyard. We went to meet them. They took off in every direction, but we coaxed them back. Soon they were coming into the house to visit us.

Our new neighbors invited us to a party at their house so we could meet everyone in the neighborhood. They were ebullient and friendly people. Introducing themselves, each invited us for tours of their homes. We soon discovered our neighbors were wealthy and accomplished people.

I became envious of their places. While our house was nice, their houses were better. No one ever said anything, though, and they were all eager to meet me, the gifted writer, and talk to me. One in particular was a Jeff Goldblum look-alike. Telling us, “I want to spring some ideas on you, and hear your ideas, so we can partner together on some things,” he invited us to his house.

We met in his courtyard. It seemed huge, to the tune of about five thousand square feet. Filled with furniture that formed dining areas and conversation pits, the courtyard was attached to his large, red house. It looked like it was four stories tall.

The J.G. doppelganger was cordial, friendly, and energetic, but he had a weird affliction. Sometimes, he would stop and burst out in uncontrollable laughter. It was strange to see. Once I became used to it, it was okay, but it really bothered my wife. As we sat with the J.G. double drinking on his deck, I decided, I wanted a bigger and better house.

The dream ended with me telling myself that.

 

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The Camaro Dream

It was another odd dream. I think I have an odd dream one out of every three nights, at least a memorable odd one.

This particular dream featured the first car that I bought, a nineteen sixty-eight Camaro RS. The engine was the sweet 327 V-8. An automatic, it was a metallic copper color with black rally stripes and a black vinyl roof. It was a fun car to drive, and reliable as sunrise. Nothing fancy or power was on the car. It was simple, and it worked.

Besides the Camaro, my dream featured my father, my late father-in-law, and an older man who, in the dream, was known as a local criminal boss. As for me, I was the age that I was when I owned the Camaro, about nineteen.

The car looked gorgeous, as it did in real life, well-polished and maintained inside and out. With those details established, I was driving the Camaro when I discovered that the floorboards were gone. Rain mixed with snow was falling, and was spraying up into the car interior from the road.

Well, that’s it, my father and father-in-law each told me. They’d been good friends in life. I’d met my wife through Dad and his relationship with the man who would be my father-in-law.

You can’t drive that car like that, each told me. I think you probably need to junk it.

I didn’t. Taking my own route, I found someone to build me new floorboards made out of wood. That’s what happened. They did a beautiful job.

I showed my father-in-law and Dad the solution. They were astonished and amused. The crime boss appeared, because he’d heard about it. Although he laughed, he said, “I’m really impressed. Good job, kid.”

I then took the car on an inspection. Already familiar with the car, they were preparing to declare it salvage when I showed them my new wooden floorboards. All were flabbergasted and disbelieving. I took the car around and showed everyone how I’d had new wooden floorboards made for the car, and how well they worked.

Further, I said, I planned to drive it across country. Snow was falling, as were the temperatures. People shook their head at my apparent insanity, and dismissed me. With alternate periods of snowfall and sunshine, and slush and snows on the roads, I set out, certain in my decision.

That’s basically the dream. When I awoke from it, I found that it felt tremendously affirming. I thought the dream encouraged me, keeping doing your things. As a writer, I work alone. I hear others’ doubt; I worry about others’ doubts about what I’m writing, and how it’ll measure up to expectations. In the dream, I sought approval from the two primary male authority figures from my young life.

They hadn’t approved, but nor did they disapprove. They accepted and said, go on.

That’s why it feels so affirming.

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Depressing Dream

Last night’s featured dream was so depressing. I’d rather not recall many details. I awoke upset, and that’s enough.

The dream’s gist was that I’d been fired. I worked for a few years as a teenager, was in the military for twenty years, and then worked as a civilian for another twenty. I was never fired from anything, so being fired in a dream upset me.

Oddly in the dream, I did things to provoke them to fire me. And then I was surprised when it happened. After being fired, I had to go tell my wife. It gets weird, here; homeless, we were living in my office of the company that fired me. I had to wake her up and tell her that we needed to leave because I’d been fired. Then friends and co-workers arrived to clean out my office. As they did, they passed a wall where I was featured as employee of the month, quarter, year, etc. Although we were civilians in this dream, my boss in this mess was a former commander of mine. I was a senior NCO and he was a colonel, but we enjoyed one another’s company, often seeking each other out, so being fired by him made it feel harsher, and very personal. The words he used that stay with me was, “Get your filth out of here.”

Remembering and writing, of course, I’m calmer about it. Many psychological aspects of the dream are exposed. Calmer and more distant from it, I’m able to see the messages I’m sending myself, or the veins of doubts and anxiety being uncovered.

Later today, I’ll probably think more about it and even have a chuckle. I might need a glass of wine to reach that stage.

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The Chaotic Dream

What an exhausting dream it was.

Being nowhere in particular, but planning to go somewhere, I was trying to pack and prepare myself to leave. People surrounded me. None of them paid attention to me, but kept walking around, having conversations and calling out to each other, or laughing. None of them addressed me.

Phones kept ringing. Weirdly, I recognized the phones from my life. Mom’s cherry colored wall phone, with its long cord, rang. Later, a beige Trimline with pushbuttons, of the sort my wife and I had in our house at one point, rang.  Another time, it was a green Trimline phone with a dial that rang. Cell phones and Blackberries would ring, along with black phones and red phones without dials used as hotlines in the Air Force.

I answered the phones but never heard anyone on the other end, something that angered me more and more as the dream progressed. “Why is the phone ringing?” I would ask aloud. “Who’s calling? There’s never anyone there.” I was trying to pack and would think that I had forgotten something, and then remember what it was, and go to get it, only to get diverted by a ringing phone. Nobody else would answer the phones.

While all of this was happening, I kept checking the weather, because I worried about it changing. Meanwhile, I kept saying, “Oh, I need to go write, but I don’t have time. I need to make time to write.” While I was packing, saying this to myself, checking the weather, and answering phones with people walking around and past me, I kept giving car keys to people. Different people, they needed the keys for different reasons. The keys didn’t look familiar, but I knew they were to my shiny red car, and they were my keys. I kept handing the keys to someone, and then someone else would approach me a little bit later and ask me for my keys. Every time I picked them up, the keys would jangle, and I’d check them to confirm they were the right keys.

All of this culminated in me waking up thinking that a phone was ringing. There wasn’t one ringing. The house was quiet except for rain falling on the roof.

Thinking about this dream now, I chuckle at what I see as its meaning, that I resent intrusions to my writing, because to go somewhere, I need to write, and I feel like it’s been a life interrupted. Yes, all the decisions made to bring me to this point were my decisions, but those decisions were all driven by other events and people.

Funny how my mind speaks to me when I go to sleep at night.

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Recurring Topics

I was thinking about my recurring topics as I walked today. My blog and posts are mostly about me, and so is this post.

I have several recurring subjects. Daily theme music and catfinitions are my most consistent offerings. The first came about because I stream music in my head quite often. That’s my way of saying I remember music and hum or sing to myself. Memories of where I was, and who I was with are frequently affixed to the music, so the music trigger speculation about life.

I also stream music in my head when I write. Not all of it is pop/rock, folk, rap, etc. Some classical music seeps into the streams. I don’t use it as theme music. I always wonder with this, am I alone in streaming music in my head? No, I’m certain I’m not. It’s probably part of a condition. To be sure, I encourage it because I think it stimulates my imagination.

Catfinitions were born from perceptions. I have four cats. They all came to me as cast-offs from others. We know the background to two of them. One, Quinn, came running to me one winter night and then refused to stay with his people after they took him home. He preferred us. The other, Papi, belonged to a neighbor. So skinny, we always saw him outside, learned that his people didn’t let him into their house for reasons that weren’t disclosed, and fed him and took him in to keep him safe, warm, and healthy. They moved away and left him. End of story.

The other two, Tucker and Boo, showed up, hungry and hopeful. They were fed, so they stuck around. I tried finding their owners. Nobody confessed, so the cats are mine, now.

Living with these cats always provides a reason to come up with a word to help describe our relationships and cats’ behavior. Like today’s catfinition, cateral. My wife left the bed this morning. I stretched out. Cats joined me. They, too, stretched out. I got up to pee, and then decided, twenty more minutes in bed. Except, I could not return to bed without shifting two cats. Instead of doing that, I found a different position. Cateral, I realized, as I lay parallel to their positions, chuckling. I easily amuse myself. Several readers like the catfinitions, so I keep doing them. They’re fun for me.

Writing quotes is a favorite category. I started sharing them after encountering quotes on others’ sites. I think people in every occupation are unique to that occupation. Some occupations have people who are more unique than others. Most people are fortunate that they work alongside another person from their occupation. They understand one another. This gives them comfort and strength, but also gives them a baseline for comparison.

Writing, though, is often a solitary pursuit. Non-writers don’t want you to talk about your writing, and I don’t like talking about it, because I think it saps the writing energy.

I end up having conversations in my head. Sometimes I’m speaking to myself. Other times, I discuss things with the muses or characters. The question is, are these three categories actually separate, or are they all just me?

Part of writing is that it is a different process and experience for each of us. It’s a very individual and personal effort. We may share some methodologies and styles, but so much of writing comes from our private baggage. So many of us struggle in our solitude, and we wonder, is it like this for everyone, including all those who are the greats, and those whose words and ideas awe and inspire us?

So I look for quotes to reaffirm and remember, yes, all those terrific writers out there, in every discipline and category, endured the same damn self-doubt, criticism, and frustration. The only way past it is to persevere. That doesn’t guarantee anything, but you can’t be called a failure if you haven’t stopped, and as it’s often reiterated, you won’t get anywhere if you don’t write. Even garbage can be edited.

I post about bumper stickers frequently but less often than the first three subjects. Those are bumper stickers that I see on the passing cars that strike me as humorous or interesting. Sometimes, I just don’t see any new ones, not surprising, because this is a tourist town and a college town. The students usually don’t have cars, and the tourists only come during certain seasons. That’s when I see new bumper stickers.

My personal favorite posts are about writing like crazy. These vanity posts are about my writing progress, writing success, lessons learned, and struggles. I like writing them most because they help me think through things that I’ve noticed about my efforts to write. It’s therapy, and I share, because sometimes others comment.

Last are the dreams. I dream so often. I like dreaming. I like remembering them.

My dreams don’t always make sense. Hell, they don’t usually make sense. As a writer and human, I want to know what they mean and why I dreamed what I dream.

So, I write about it. Some of those dream writings are published as posts. One, I’m comfortable thinking while typing. Two, writing and posting about my personal dreams helps me overcome my wealth of self-doubts and anxieties. Putting myself out there helps me think about words and their meanings, but it also helps me develop a thicker skin, which I desperately need.

Those are my usual subjects. There are also sometimes minor and major rants, but they’re a spur of the moment thing. I also write once in a while about current events, food, beer, coffee, politics, walking, reading, movies, travel, Ashland, and my Fitbit, but they aren’t my usual subjects.

All this comes up now because I started writing this blog in May, 2016, so it’s been two years, if my math is right. (If I was a cat, I might call this my cativersary. Sorry.)

So, thanks for stopping by.

Thanks for reading and liking.

Thanks for commenting.

Thanks for the posts that you share. Your talent, knowledge, experiences, humor, stories, and courage amaze and inspire me. Keep it up.

Cheers

3

A Dream So Real

Do you ever have a dream so real that you’re certain it happened?

I had one of these last night. My eyes were extremely bloodshot in the dream. Looking at my eyes in the mirror in the dream, I thought, wow, what the hell is going on? What caused my eyes to be so bloodshot?

But when I brushed my teeth and saw my eyes this morning, they weren’t bloodshot. I was damn sure that they would be, and shocked and amused when they weren’t. I wonder from that, what other things did I dream that I was certain was real?

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