Category: Dreams

One Of Those Nights

It was one of those nights. My muse didn’t recognize my need for sleep and refused to issue permission to shut down my brain and close my eyes.

Such times are productive, even though I feel like shit in the morning. I’m exaggerating for effect, of course; I really don’t know how shit feels. I feel guilty, implying that shit feels terrible. For all I know, shit feels great.

Sorry for the shitty detour. I know, terrible humor. Hey, I just confided that I had a rough night. Grant me some latitude.

Back to the muses’ nocturnal gallop through my mind. I’d just been complimenting my muse (or muses – I think there’s a congress of muses within me) about the pleasant week of systematic writing established and reflecting on the progress made. When last I left off writing yesterday, I had a damn good idea of where I was next going.

I’m still going there, but the dark silence of night brought out the muses like they were in heat. Instead of allowing me to sleep, wake up today, and go walk and write to work out details, the muses began shotgunning details into me. The people look like these. These are their names. They’re all women, and —

It’s not polite to ignore your muse, and it’s rude to tell them to shut up. I obliged them by listening. When I thought they’d finished, I attempted to use one of my honored processes to engage sleep. I thought it worked, too, but then, the muses thundered out anew.

When sleep and I finally met, quicksilver dreams rushed in, flashing kaleidoscopes of scenes and words. Awakening, I had a lot to think about between dreams and night writing, and a desire for about four more hours of sleep.

Got a big ol’ cup of dark, unadulterated caffeine loaded coffee steaming in a mug to my right. Time to write like crazy and get all this stuff down, at least one more time.

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Weird Tales

Into our lives come weird tales. Everyone has them. They don’t happen often for me, and I’m happy about that, and they’re not very weird. One happened last night.

I feel asleep reading and watching television in the snug. In the recliner, I was streaming “Case Histories” on Amazon Prime with the sound turned low. I’d seen it before, so I was also reading “The Lies of Locke Lamore”. We had a high-wind advisory in effect. I wasn’t worried. Two cats were weighing me down against getting blown away.

At two A.M., I awoke. The first thing I realized was that the cats had abandoned me. Second, I saw that the Roku had reset and was going through its update music. Interesting. Next, I saw with a glance at the modem that the network had reset. Well, I thought, the wind storm had probably caused some ISP issues.

Seeing the time, I decided to go to bed. Turning everything off, I left the snug, and then paused. The interior door to the garage was on my left. Not ajar, but not pulled tight, I could see that a light was on in the garage.

My wife or I must have left it on after going in there on an errand, I speculating, opening the door. But when I opened it, it wasn’t the garage interior lights that were on, but the garage door light. You know how that works? We have a garage door opener. When you press the button, a signal is sent. Receiving it, the garage door opener turns on a light and raises or lowers the door. That’s the light that was on.

That light wasn’t on before.

Being a cautious and paranoid person, I backed away from the door while keeping my eyes on it. Opening the coat closet, I took out the heavy metal flashlight we hang in there for emergencies. Not only does it provide a strong beam, but it has a solid heft to it, and can be useful as a weapon. See where my thoughts go?

Flashlight on, I first flashed it around the house, and then turned on the main hall light, and checked the front door. Locked. Okay. Going into the garage, I checked the side door. Finding it locked, I went around the garage to confirm nothing was out of place or missing, and everything was in order. Everything was as it should be. My mind dislikes vacuums, so I guessed, there must have been a power failure. I checked the clocks on the kitchen appliances. They were correct. Nothing anywhere indicated a power failure, except, perhaps the network and Roku. Going around the house, I repeated the process of checking doors and windows to ensure everything was closed and nothing was missing. Everything was as it should be.

The garage door opener light is on a timer. It now went off.

I couldn’t recall the garage door light going on after power was restored before. Maybe I had a faulty memory. Sleep and I had parted company at this point. I returned to the snug and read until I fell asleep. Then, awakening at three, I went to bed.

The garage door light entered my dreams. I was investigating it and testing different theories of how the garage opener light went on in my dreams. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, showed up to help, but he was useless. In some weirder parts of my dream, the garage door mystery was discussed on MTV and everyone started eating jelly beans.

As an aside to the jelly bean part, we put up an Easter tree using pussy willows. They were placed in a glass vase filled with jelly beans to hold up the pussy willows. Now that Easter was over, I was allowed to eat the jelly beans.

The jelly beans, made by Brach’s, were pastel colors, and pretty. Their smell was reminiscent of sugar and marshmallows, drawing Easter basket memories up out of my youth. I tasted some jelly beans.

OMG, they were terrible. They tasted like sugar with a small effort to have a flavor like blueberry or cherry. I tasted different colors to see if I liked any. They didn’t have any black ones, which are my favorites. Of the colors presented, the orange ones had the strongest orange flavor, actually managing to overcome that sense I was only eating sugar.

Anyway, that’s my tale of the weird. It’ll probably be a few years before there’s another one. At least, that’s my hope.

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The Writing Dream

Man, it was something else. I dreamed that streams of words were flowing through the air around me. They flowed too fast for me to see and read them, except, weirdly, sometimes I could see mathematical formulas in them.

The streams came together and split apart in a random, haphazard manner. Sometimes they flowed on walls, but other times I saw them flowing across sidewalks, trees, parking lots, and the sky. At one point, I saw two streams running in parallel on a wall, and thought, they need to be brought together. Not knowing how to do that at the moment, I turned away.

Oblivious of the word streams, people walked among them. I was flabbergasted that they didn’t see them. Their behavior ended up exasperating me.

Aware of me, though, people would watch and talk about me to each other as they attempted to puzzle out what was wrong with me or what I was doing. Sometimes I tried telling people, “There are words streaming around you. I think they’re sentences and paragraphs. Can’t you see them?” Hearing that, many people said, “I think he’s on drugs,” or, “He’s crazy.”

My interactions with people were few and short, becoming less as I attempted to follow the streams of words. Then, instead of trying to follow them, I thought I’d go upstream to see where they came from. Selecting one stream, I traced it back along a street between two red brick buildings.

Paved with asphalt webbed with cracks, the street had cement sidewalks, curbs, storm drains, and doorways, but no signs. Although the street seemed old and unused, it was ordinary in every respect. The word stream rushed along the gutter, crossing from one side of the street to the other other.

I followed the stream up the street. Narrowing, the stream of words flowed faster, resembling black ink. The day grew darker. I wasn’t sure what caused that. Noting the increasing darkness, I tried to understand whether night was coming or a storm was imminent — or both. At that time, I realized the streaming words made sounds. At first I thought they rustled like leaves. Then, they seemed to burble like rushing water. Getting closer to the stream and straining to hear the sounds, they sounded like a crowd of talking people, but also typewriters.

Although nothing changed, the going became more difficult, like gravity fought to keep me back. I kept going. Exiting the space between the red-brick buildings, I saw that the stream came from a long, grassy hill. All the streams came from different directions, but they all came from that one stream of words rushing down the hill. separating into different streams at the bottom. Hidden by clouds colored like used charcoal, the hilltop couldn’t be seen.

I have to climb that hill, I told myself. It looked quite possible, steep and tall, but not impassible. That’s where the dream ended.

Despite all the details, the dream seemed short, but vivid and intense.  Even as I was in bed, awakening from the dream, I thought I saw streams of words on the bedroom walls.

Then they were gone, swallowed by morning sunshine.

***

I thought about the dream off and on all morning, and then typed this up. I thought about how I felt during and after the dream. After a long while, I realized that I’d felt intense, but otherwise emotionally neutral, as I feel when I’m in the middle of a project. There’s no hope or despair, bitterness or jubilation.

It’s just is.

 

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A Football Dream

I’d been part of the defense, set up to be an edge-passer on a high-school football team. Being a little guy, that surprised me, but I took to the role with the zeal I apply to things when I must get them done. Come game time, though, and I found myself lined up as a tight-end. Talk about confused! I had no idea about the offensive plays or blocking, but again, here I was, in a mess, so I would do what I had to do. Which meant, figuring it out as I went along.

They also weren’t including me in the huddle. Hello? Totally bewildered, I tried catching the coach’s eye to point out the obvious error of me being where I was. He told me to stay out there and do what I can. So —

I lined up, but it was an awkward position, because I was half-turned to see what the quarterback was doing. The ball was snapped.  Here comes the rush. I blocked a guy and cut into a middle open flat, caught a pass and was crushed in a tackle. Still, five yards were gained. On the next play, I saw a hand-off to the running back, so I picked up rushers and helped make a path for him, resulting in a first down.

The next play was bizarre. Lined up, I could hear the defense talking and see the quarterback. He planned to throw to me, I realized. I mentally set myself for the task. Then, the quarterback didn’t set. He kept standing up, moving around, and checking the defense. Time was passing, passing…I almost fell out of my stance. I kept wondering why the quarterback didn’t set us and get the ball hiked. I worried about delay of game.

Meanwhile, the defense had drifted off to the sides. There was a huge hole in the middle. If I released and the quarterback threw a quick slant, I could exploit this defense.

The ball was finally hiked. I snapped out into the flat and looked for the pass, but the quarterback was running toward me. I turned to make a block, but no defenders were in the area. The quarterback raced thirty yards into the end zone for a touchdown.

I realized that the quarterback was planning this all along, and that I’d been part of his secret scheme. It impressed me. Looking at the scoreboard, I saw that we’d now scored three times, and the score was 21-3.

Dream end.

I awoke thinking, take the opportunity when it comes, and make the most of it, but create opportunities. The quarterback on done both.

3

The Management Dream

I dreamed I was in upper middle management with a large, international corporation. I was part of a team, and we’d just realized that we’d made a huge mistake. I don’t know what the mistake was, but major negative career, environmental, and economic ramifications were expected as a result of our decision and the corporation’s subsequent actions. It was going to affect the company’s stock price, bottom line, and people’s employment.

Worried, we were having meetings to work out what we could to do save ourselves and mitigate the impacts that we were projecting. I began developing an idea. As I explored it, I was uncomfortable with the moral and ethical side of it, because it meant sacrificing someone by using them as the fall guy. It would save my career, along with many others, and reduce the economic impact, but at a cost to my principles. I didn’t like that.

While exploring that option, I called and visited others, searching for another way. As that happened, I ran into the person who would be the fall guy. They were a young, positive, and optimistic person. They’d realized that blaming them would go a long way to helping many others, and was essentially volunteering to do that. “I’m young,” he said. “I’ll rebound.”

I was dubious. I didn’t want to be convinced. I felt his youth and inexperience was making him over-optimistic. Basically, as the dream progressed, the rest of the management team and this individual put the burden of decision on me.

Back in the building where I worked, I sat in a meeting with the rest of the management team. The agenda was about other things, and not this crises. They were speaking in low voices. I was by myself at the end of a long conference table. I was aware that they sometimes glanced my way. I was aware that they awaited my decision.

I decided. Placing a call on a cell phone, I told the person on the other end, “I have a way out.” I knew I was sacrificing the volunteer. I knew it would work. I didn’t like it.

Hearing me on the phone, other team members began passing on the word that I’d decided. Relief flowed through the room like water.

Turning away, I spoke on the phone and put the plan in action.

The end.

3

The Golden Egg Dream

I started out with a dream about eggs. Not surprising, given that Easter is soon. Coloring eggs was an entertaining annual experience when I was a child. We always had a big bowl of colored hard-boiled eggs for Easter.

But my dream eggs weren’t colored. I was looking for eggs, first in the kitchen refrigerator, which was an old, white Kelvinator model. Not finding the eggs in the refrigerator, I went out a side door to where I knew there was supposed to be a chicken coop.

I stepped out onto a small porch painted gray and went down rickety steps to a green hillside. Cumulonimbus clouds were mounding against a blue sky, partially obscuring the sun. A strong wind was blowing, whipping my jacket around me. People on the dream’s periphery were trying to draw my attention to other things going on. They had somewhere they wanted to go. It seemed like they were back in the house. Exasperated, I kept telling them, “Just a minute, I’m looking for eggs.” I was becoming angrier as they kept heckling me, refusing to be patient as I searched for eggs.

Entering a sagging chicken coop made of old graying lumber (I’ve never been in a chicken coop in my life), I finally saw some eggs, and then I saw a dusty half-hidden egg. It looked like gold. Disbelieving, I picked it up. Amazingly heavy, it taxed my strength. I had to use two hands to hold it. Wiping the dust away by rubbing the egg against my shirt, I confirmed, yep, it’s gold. The more I polished it, the shinier it became. As heavy as it was, I thought, it has to be solid. I couldn’t imagine anything being inside of it.

Unsure whether I should, I took the egg out to show the others. It was sunnier, but colder and windier outside. Nobody else was out there and the house was silent. I realized the others were gone. The dream ended with me standing alone by the chicken coop holding a golden egg. I awoke feeling isolated and alone.

2

The Australian Dream

It was another wild night of dreams, with this one making a deeper and more lasting impression.

I found myself in another land. After meeting a man and speaking with him, I realized I was in Australia. My wife was also present. No reason for being in Australia was given, but I was pleased. I’ve always wanted to go to Australia, and have just missed several times. I still plan to go.

Anyway, in the dream, I was given some papers that turned out to actually be a little book. I didn’t know what to do with it or why I had it. Reading it didn’t help because it seemed incomplete, and my wife couldn’t figure it out, either. Finding another fellow, I asked him about it, and he showed me how it was a continuation of other documents. He said they were living documents, and took me to a huge wall of like documents. After he explained it, I was excited and explained it to my wife. She wasn’t interested.

I was then informed I had to get to another part of Australia. I hopped into a car and began driving, trying to figure out where I was going as I went. The roads were holed and shoddy. Most of them were like slick mud. As I complained about them to myself and merged onto a highway that was also like slick mud, I was overtaken by cars. They passed at shockingly high speeds. “I forgot they don’t have speed limits here,” I said to myself in the dream car, accelerating to match the pace while I looked for signs and directions.

I found myself out of the car and running. Everyone was running. Instead of driving, we were running everywhere. I was still on the highway and looking for where I was going. Somehow, running, I found it and arrived.

People were there, but it was no one that I recognized. They gave me more books. Where all the other books were white, these books were red. I immediately understood that these were new books, and that I had to take them back to the other location, which I did right away.  That pleased the people on the other end. Understanding the books and system at a fast rate, I took on the role of explaining to others how these books continued the stories.

Everyone was told to line up to go somewhere else, part of some planned activities. I got in line and found that I was at the line’s beginning, with my wife beside me. As I started to go, I encountered the first man that had given me the books in the beginning. He and I exchanged some comments, and I told him that I knew how the books worked. That made him happy, and he let me go. As I walked through the gate with my wife into a green field bordered by a white picket fence, I realized that he’d been my teacher.

0

The Intersection

I dreamed about my work in progress last night, specifically about the story-line now being addressed. My mind, being what it is, inserted me sometimes, so that I was part of the story. My mind, being what it is, would see that I was dreaming about my writing and including myself as a character, and then try to untangle me from the fiction being written. “I’m the writer. I’m not supposed to be in this story.” That would lead to dream-confusion among the dream participants (dreampants?) about what was going on. It was really…interesting.

Which, after awakening to think about it, demonstrates an intriguing intersection between who I am and how much I put of myself in my writing. Even when I deliberately decide to have a character do or speak in ways that I wouldn’t, that choice is based on what I’d be doing. My characters are composites of other people, but I’m essentially imagining how those folks would respond. I don’t know, though. I don’t have a secret window into their lives. I guess at what they’d do, twisting their responses into madness and lies, and courage and hypocrisy, betrayal and honor, all based on what I think I’ve heard them say and do, and the character’s arc. You all know how unreliable we are as witnesses. We color it all.

But in there, in the intersection between my dreams and imagination, and my choices and decisions, is where my writing takes place. Sometimes it’s a large intersection – or even a roundabout, with too many cars traveling too fast, all trying to change lanes and enter and exit at the same time – and other times, it’s two small animal paths meeting in a quiet field. Whichever intersection it is, I sort it and write.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

2

Yeah, Another Dream

I’ve been doing a lot of writing in my head. When I sit down to write, I’m already spun up and ready to write. I’ve noticed that when I write in my head to such an extent, I also seem to dream more. It’s like some portal in me has been opened during that period, and imagination flows into my writing become diverted into dream flows when I sleep.

I didn’t star in this dream. I was there, and featured, but the stars were a young female tennis player and a wealthy country man.

It started out with country boy. I call him a boy, but that was the nature of descriptions in this place. Boy didn’t denote an age, but a style. Gregarious, beloved, and admired by his farm-based community, he asked me, out of the blue, if I’d like to ride in his helicopter. I was teenager. I immediately understood this was an honor and treat, and accepted. People were envious, but in a joking way, because they’d not been in his helicopter.

He and I did some errands in his truck. When done, we drove down to his helicopter. It was a little two-seater with a bubble cockpit. He was the pilot, and took us aloft on a aerial tour of the region. He regaled me with stories about his life as he did. When we landed, he offered me a ride in his burnt-orange Lamborghini roadster. We did that, riding through town and around the countryside. It felt like a special day for me, and I was flattered to be treated like this.

A young woman arrived. Actually, she was fourteen, so appropriately, she was a girl, but people in the dream referred to her as the young woman. She was small and slender, with dark eyes and hair. No one thought much of her. She was supposed to be some tennis star, but everyone was skeptical of her because of her stature and quiet demeanor.

A demonstration game was arranged, her against local pros. Suddenly, she was revealed as a different person. Her relentless speed, quickness, accuracy, and intelligence went on full display as she beat player after player. Everyone was talking about her long after the games ended, marveling that such a small person could have a powerful overhead shot and tremendous serve, and be so fast. She was going to be given the helicopter and Lamborghini rides, too. I unabashedly endorsed that, telling the wealthy patron she deserved such an honor more than me.

Late day found us eating a huge communal dinner. It was held outdoors. Everyone was sitting on pillows and blankets. The food was strange and exotic. I can’t begin to describe the eels, snakes, and shellfish I saw being served.

Then came a special event where the patron beat his white SUV. It was a new car. I didn’t understand the reasons for beating it, but he hit it one time so hard that the car was folded into two. We all thought it was an astonishing display of strength, but also a statement on his indifference to his wealth.

And there was where the dream ended.

 

0

Three Strange Dreams

Three strange dreams afflicted me last night, one after enough in a line of dreams.

  • I dreamed I’d removed my penis from my body and was making pencil sketches of it that I shared with others. There was no blood loss or discomfort. I was showing the drawings to friends and families, and was holding my penis in my hand. They never noticed that I was holding my penis, but were surprised and appalled by my sketches (which were very realistic, in that style of drawing that I used to do).
  • The second dream placed me in an uncomfortable backwoods setting. I was with people that reminded me of the folks I knew in West Virginia. These folks are hard, shallow, and bitter people, with little empathy. Their circumstances might make them that way (although I also think, if it’s so fucking terrible, why don’t you leave and find something better?). I was looking for change to make a call. They weren’t concerned with that, but instead obsessed with how ignorant I was. This was because I’d found change in a stream (a quarter and a penny), but a dead body was in the stream. They thought I was going to get sick by getting in water with a dead body. I insisted on doing it because I needed the change. I thought there was more there, so after looking elsewhere, I returned to the stream and searched. As I did, I looked at the dead body, which turned out to be a large, black dog. I wondered how he died and arrived in the water, and hoped that he hadn’t suffered.
  • In the third dream, I was in an all-white place, like a ship, wearing an all-white flight suit. Others were there, dressed in the same way. There was no one familiar to me but I knew them in the dream. We were concerned mostly with the toilets, and which toilet to use, and why the toilets was dirty, and whether the toilets worked. I was less concerned about this, and kept trying to direct the conversation and activity to something other than fucking toilets, but it was a challenge; these people were obsessed with the damn toilets. We finally got around to other things, like, hey, we’re supposed to be flying. An involved conversation about who was supposed to be doing what, like flying, developed. I was dismayed and perplexed by how the others all wanted to assign people narrow tasks. Moving off by myself, I went ahead and flew. That impressed others, who weren’t aware that I could fly, and peppered me with questions about how I’d learned and what else I could do. Their questions amazed me. I told them, it wasn’t hard, I’d always known how, people only made it hard for themselves by thinking they had to be special to do things.

Yeah, weird dreams. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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