Category: Dreams

Monday’s Theme Music

A crazy dream finished my night. I’d been driving in a borrowed vehicle. It was in good shape, nothing special. Rain was falling. Traffic was dense. I was going a long distance.

We entered a wide tunnel lit with diffused dull yellow lights. More lanes were available. Veering into one, I accelerated, and caught a glimpse of a Chevy pick-up behind me. He’d apparently wanted into the space I’d taken. Now, filled with rage, he was coming up on my bumper.

Still in the tunnel, the road curved. We were going up a hill. I floored the accelerator pedal, keeping it down as engine, road noise, and speed built. Terrified by the speed, and barely in control, I was pulling away from him, and everyone else, when I rounded a corner and almost hit a van crashed on its side. There wasn’t time to stop but I managed to swerve around it. As I thought about stopping for the van and warning the other traffic, I discovered that boulders and rocks were strewn across the tunnel road past teh van. I drove around them, trying to grasp what was happening, and left the tunnel.

Rain was pouring. The day was fading. I reached my destination and pulled in, weary to the bone. It was Monday. I knew I needed to be somewhere else by Tuesday. More travel was ahead. I was with my father’s wife, and her family. Talking to others, she was planning a get-together, and I was there for it. But in flashbacks, I remembered that I’d left some things at my previous location that I needed. I grew conflicted over going back to get them – it had been such a long distance, and an exhausting drive – staying for the event being planned, or foregoing continuing on to my next location. Regarding the last point, I was attempting to understand, where was I going, and was there a need for me to go?

I awoke with this part of the song, “The World I Know,” by Collective Soul, playing in my mind:

So I walk up on high
And I step to the edge
To see my world below.
And I laugh at myself
While the tears roll down.
‘Cause it’s the world I know.
It’s the world I know.

3

The Connection Dream

My streak of dreams continue. I remember many. They generally flow into some semblance of meaning for me. I’ve had nothing disturbing. All are interpreted as useful, healthy, and reassuring dreams.

One of last night’s dreams was reassuring, but also amused me. I fell asleep in the office recliner after watching “The Friends of Eddie Coyle.” Tucker and Quinn joined me, sleeping on my lap and my legs. The lights were off, but the television was on. Once the movie ended, though, the Roku went into screen saver mode, displaying the date and time.

I dreamed I was being told, “Stay there. You’re okay. Don’t worry. Stay there. A connection needs to be completed.”

Drifting awake, I stared at the television. Anxiety trickled through my mind. I had the sense I was supposed to be doing something, and I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to be doing.

But the dream voice said, “You’re okay. Stay there. A connection needs to be completed.”

Hearing that pushed questions along about what connections were being made. Some sort of update must be taking place, I concluded.

That satisfied my anxieties. Calmed, I returned to sleep. A little later, the dream voice said, “The connections are done. You’re good to go.” Waking up, I got up and went to bed. Awakening this morning, and thinking about it, I wish I knew more about the connections being made.

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Prepped

I’ve been writing in my head all morning. Now, here I am, coffee at hand, computer set up, ready to write. I feel like a little stopped up from all the mental writing.

That’s a perfect lead to my dream last night. It was all about a foreign woman trying to marry me — though she was married to another man, and he was present, and I am married, and my wife was there — my efforts to dissuade her, and then, my adventures with a toilet.

My recent dreaming has been a dream process. For the last twelve days, I’ve been awakening, remembering my dreams, and then knowing what they meant. Some of them were very specific about what to do with health issues, such as a foot bothering me. Others were about writing, and what I should do about something troubling me. I can tell you, and you can appreciate, it feels amazing to have such dreams.

So, last night’s dream was a little bit of a letdown. What especially troubled me was the end, when I was sitting on a commode and using it, and it started going forward. It was like I was riding a riding mower, except it was a toilet. After rolling the dream details around in my head down halls designed by M.C. Escher, I told my spouse the dream. She instantly provided a very satisfying explanation.

Okay, got that out of me. Now, for the rest. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

1

The Air, the Fitbit, the Writing, the Dreams

Our outdoor air sucks. Need more?

Smoke from wildfires is filling our air. The Air Quality Index leaped to one hundred fifteen last night. DANGEROUS. It hasn’t been hot, only into the nineties. We open the house at night to cool it off, and then close the blinds and windows during the day. Opening the windows last night sent us into coughing fits as wet smoke smells wafted in. Eventually, we donned masks.

Today isn’t as bad. The A.Q.I. is in the fifties, and officially, moderate. Visibility remains down. It’s like a white-out beyond a a few hundred feet.

All this wildfire smoke has reduced my Fitbit activities. Walking is way down, to five miles a day average. It’s not as critical as many other issues resulting from wildfires. None of the fires are directly affecting our community. We feel for all those being evacuated in those areas, and appreciate the firefighters’ efforts. If this stuff is terrible for me, a guy in his early sixties who considers himself in good health, those with emphysema and other respiratory issues must be deeply suffering.

I took to the Orson Scott Card method for visualizing and organizing the novel in progress. O.S.C. talked about just drawing places, like a city, and then adding details. With each detail and area added or defined, entertain questions about why those areas and details exist. I’ve done this exercise before, with excellent results. I wasn’t disappointed this time.

I had been editing the novel’s first draft. Halfway through that process, I perceived a problem. A new ‘greater arc’ was required as the solution. I could be wrong, but this is how I decided to address the issue. It’s essentially an epic. I like epics. Bigger is better.

This was decided over a four day period. Then, after deciding it was necessary, I went on a reading sprint. I finished reading two novels, and read two others, in five days. I also read fiction stories and news articles online. This reading stimulated my writing juices and invigorated my writing dreams. I found myself re-committed to who I was, and what I was doing. It’s a matter of taking a deep breath, turning on the computer, and putting the ass in chair, and the fingers on a keyboard.

This new arc takes place on a planet where technology fails. An outpost is established using outdated technology. Suddenly, it’s like living in a frontier castle. I loved that difference in direction from my usual challenges of visualizing the far future and other intelligent races.

I drew the outpost on my computer, and brainstormed about how the lack of technology affects them, and solutions and work-arounds. The team living in the outpost are hunting for people, but can’t use their suits or vehicles. They fall back to horses. Having horses adds more problems and dimensions.

So do the powerful windstorms endured on the planet. That’s why the outpost becomes a castle; something stout enough to survive the windstorms are necessary. That’s the iceberg view of all the scenes, problems, and challenges realized. I don’t want to give away more. Drawing and brainstorming in this manner was a catalyst to my imagination. I scrambled to capture ideas an create an event timeline. It resulted in *shudder* an outline. 

As an organic writer, the outline overwhelmed me. Suddenly, there it all was, this part of the novel mapped out in all its complications and key events. I could imagine, see, and hear them. Writing them was required. It’s daunting for an organic pantser. I decided I would scramble to write key scenes and moments, and patch them together with bridge and pivot scenes, and build the story in layers, much like I used to do when oil painting, or writing a business case, or analyzing data.

I think that whatever opened my creative floodgates also turned the dream valves to full open. I had six remembered dreams last night. Friends from my past were featured. My wife also made an appearance. Of course, maybe it was the eclipse opening the dream and creativity gates. Who can say?

Trying to capture details this morning diverted personal resources already earmarked for other activities. I resorted to dream summaries. The dreams were wild. Once again, my muses were prominently featured. They were attempting to guide and assist me in different manners. Sorting the chaos was a fascinating exercise.

Having your muses show up in my dreams injects high confidence levels. I felt empowered and emboldened when I awaken. Yet, being me, the confidence evaporates to more normal levels by midday. Having your muses and some higher beings populate your dreams and offer encouragement has a good thing. I’m certainly not going to kick them out.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time. How about you, writers? Have you seen increased creativity? Maybe it is the eclipse.

Or maybe it’s the coffee.

2

The Trust Dream

Lately, my dreams have had their own unique brand. Except for one – where I was the General of Level Forty-three – the dreams were of me watching television. I would be in a chair, in a small room, facing a small television, watching shows. Most remarkable about the dreams were that the quantity, eleven in the last two weeks, and the surreal surprise when I awoke; it always felt like I’d never been asleep.

As for being General of Level Forty-three, only jumbled images and sounds are recalled, a surprising twist to someone like me, who often sharply remembers dream, or convinces myself that I do.

Last night’s dream broke the pattern. I dreamed I was in a room, part of a new home. Plants in pots and planters were nearby. The carpet was as green as Ireland in all those travel posters. Something else was in the room. I didn’t know what, and was trying to see.

Approaching the greenery, I tried peering past them. Movement before me caused me to stop. A snake slithered out from under the plots. I know little about snakes, but I thought it was a rattle snake.

I moved back from it. Simultaneous to this, a large dark gray rat emerged from my left. I attempted to split attention between the snake and the rat. Both worried me, but the snake worried me more.

The rat scurried in past the planters. The snake followed. As they did, a man appeared. Topless, had baggy pants and blue skin. He wore something like a turban. His hair was short and black. A thick mustache hid his mouth. He carried a scimitar.

His appearance shocked me. I demanded to know who he was, and what he was doing. With a look over his shoulder toward me, he raised his scimitar and pointed it in the direction the rat and snake had taken.

Another man, dressed like the first, appeared with a boisterous laugh. “Don’t worry, he’s here to protect you and watch over you.”

Confusion swamped me. Despite his reassurances, I didn’t understand why I needed protection, and why these people had blue skin. But before I could engage him, he whisked off to the right.

I still worried about the snake and rat. Thinking of them, I approached the green plants and parted them. Beyond were shiny, cherry-red objects. I thought they were large metallic balloons.

My perspective shifted. Flying over them, I looked down, and realized they were all small bright red cars. Parked in perfect rows, they were all shiny. I thought them new.

My wife arrived. I joined her. We were inside the interior of an old car, something with the spaciousness and finish of an American sedan from the nineteen fifties. There were seats, but no glass, steering wheel, or instrument panel.

My wife was seating on the plain bench seat. Trying to explain to her about everything I saw and worried about, I sat beside her, to her left, where the driver would sit.

She put her head on my shoulder. Her eyes were closed and her mouth carried a half-smile. “I’m not worried,” she said. “I trust you.”

The blue man with the scimitar re-appeared. Although he didn’t speak, he mimed that he’d taken care of the snake. His expression comforted me. He left us sitting in the car, and I thought, I have no reason to worry.

3

Today’s Theme Music

To counter our dry, hot weather, I thought I’d post something with precipitation.

First songs to stream in were, “Let It Snow,” and “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.” “Singing in the Rain” quickly followed. Songs by New Edition, Seal and The Rescues jumped in there. Tina Turner, “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” joined the queue, and then Blind Melon, “No Rain.”

Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” streamed in. Yes, that’s the one. Although it offers a lightly macabre vision of someone screaming and red rain falling, Gabriel’s dreams inspired the song, and I like its heavy percussion presence. We were living in Columbia, South Carolina, when this song was released. Columbia had fantastic afternoon deluges throughout the summer, and this song reminded me of sitting on our apartment’s balcony as the rain poured, chilling the air.

Here we are, from nineteen eighty-six, and the “So” album, “Red Rain.”

 

0

The H.S. Football Dream

I dreamed I was a teenager. It was bright and sunny outside, and I was inside a well-lit building. I learned that my high school football team was short of players. Coach Thomas came to me and asked if I’d play. I’d quit the team the year before, after an accident.

Pleased, I quickly agreed. He gave me some instructions. A game was starting soon. I needed to get there fast. “Don’t let me down,” he said, in a joking but serious style.

I raced to prepare. People were giving me things. It took longer than expected to get ready. A player – a real-life buddy from high school – came in. “Coach Thomas sent me in to see what’s going on. You need to get out there.”

I looked out a window. From there, I could see and hear things happening. Part of that was Coach Thomas talking to the ref, who was warning Thomas, “You need to field a team.” Coach Thomas was irritated and impatient as he asked for more time, insisting, “He’s coming, he’s coming. I need him.”

“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying,” I told the player. He left.

I don’t know what I needed to get. It seemed like that’s an extension of confusion I felt in the dream. Finally, I was out there, with the team, and in the line-up, nervous and uncertain. I had a piece of paper with instructions in my hand. The ref made me give that up. A player beside me, Daryl, told me he’d help me know what to do. A whistle blew as I jumped offsides. I wasn’t pleased with how it was going. I lined up again in a different position. The game commenced without any significant highlights, except players would suggest things to me. I’d do those things, and my confidence grew.

That’s how the dream entailed. I took three lessons from it.

  1. Don’t sweat the mistakes. You’re going to make them but you can overcome them.
  2. You have more to learn.
  3. Others will help.

A very positive dream to remember.

1

Shopping

I’d just been thinking, if a sales person asked me if I needed assistance, I would answer, “Yes, I’m taking up cross-dressing. Do you have suggestions on what I should wear?”

Running into another interrupted my innertainment. In the Eileen racks at Kohl’s in the women’s department, we were intent on the garments being offered, ironic, as we’re both sixty something white men. Yet, bang went our heads.

We drew back, rubbing the afflicted areas and gazing at one another. “Oh,” I said. “Fancy running into you here.”

Shrugging, smiling, and still rubbing his head, the bespectacled bearded fellow replied, “Yes, you never know what’ll happen in a dream.”

Then he went on.

0

Trust

Alan had a dream. He often corrected himself, calling it a “visitation,” when he shared it with others.

It wasn’t Alan’s first visitation with the dead. Others had come back to tell him something they thought he needed to hear them. The first came when he was seventeen. A dead aunt visited, warning him that his uncle was preparing to pass. Uncle Paul was his favorite, taking Alan on a fishing vacation every summer in an act of empathy that Alan didn’t appreciate for decades. Uncle Paul was so young, just forty-two, when he died of a heart attack while getting an Iron City beer from the frig. A Steeler game was on television. He wasn’t missed for almost a quarter. It was too late by then, back in that era. A snow storm was bruising the city, and the ambulance couldn’t get through.

There’d been other visitations since, but Granny’s visitation was one of the strongest, perhaps because he’d developed a comfort level with them by then. She’d only been dead for ten years, dying in nineteen ninety-six, a month short of one hundred years, yet, there she was, in one of her voluminous blue and white flowered dresses, in his room, accompanied by the smells from talcum powder and coffee. From Alan’s first memory on, she announced, “Let me make a pot of coffee, and we’ll sit awhile,” whenever his family visited her.

Addressing him in a stern but kind voice, she said. “Let Barbara do what she needs to do.”  Not permitting time for a response, she was immediately gone.

On awakening, Alan thanked Granny for the visitation. It took a morning of thought through two large mugs of coffee before he accepted what she was telling him. Though it was probably going to pain him, he’d let Barbara do what she needed to do, whatever the hell that meant. He would just have to trust Barbara.

Really, he was trusting two people, if you think about it, maybe three.

0

Mustard Dream

Now what was that about? If you have imagination and are familiar with the tune, envision Carly Simon singing, “You’re so vain.” But instead of the words, “I had a dream there were clouds in my coffee,” sing, “I had a dream there was mustard on the floor, mustard on the floor.”

Unfortunately, I put the mustard there, which mortified me.

It wasn’t deliberate. It seemed odd to me there was mustard present. The gathering, at an opulent palace, was for the elite and powerful. We were being recognized and honored, but were also there to learn more. I was flattered and humbled to be invited. Milling about beforehand, a large spread of food and wine was set up. Part of it was – *ahem* – a sandwich buffet. Yes, the elite and powerful are fond of sandwiches, I suppose.

I made myself a sandwich. As I did, a dropped a dollop of yellow mustard on the polished, marble floor. I was searching for something to clean the spill when we were directed to take our seats. I did so with the other hundreds of guests. From where I sat, I could see my spill, which sickened me. The spill seemed larger than I thought. Fortunately, no one else knew about it; that did nothing to assuage my guilt and secret embarrassment.

Then, though, the host staff were going to entertain us with a song and dance number. The staff were politicians, professors and teachers, scientists, artists, and celebrities. All were dressed in formal business attire. Everyone eagerly awaited this entertainment. When the performers lined up, I saw they were going to be on my mustard spill. Horrified, I realized, several mustard spills were there. I couldn’t be responsible for all of them, I was sure. I counted four large mustard spills on the glistening marble floor.

Private humiliation growing, I watched the dance number begin. The dancers were slipping on the mustard. Worse, it was frothing up, becoming an overwhelming mustard meringue. The dance number had to be stopped. I was shocked, yet, I knew I had a small part of the responsibility. Other forces were at work.

With the song and dance over, I was free to wander. I did, taking in the spacious grounds. Many rooms opened onto cool, shaded fountain gardens. I spoke to a few people, pleasantries, really, but wandered on my own, unfettered and free.

As dreams go, it was peculiar. Overall, I’d rate the mustard dream just a little higher on the dream scale over the previous night’s dream peeing dream.

But that’s another dream to tell.

2

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