Category: Dreams

A Momentary Lapse of Reason

You’re hungry and you’re in the middle of nowhere. The morning walk took you to places that you didn’t expect. But that was the plan: you wanted to surprise yourself.

Well, you have. Look east, south, north, west – baking hard cinnamon and sand toned ground. Far away to the north are low purple and blue mountains. Turning west, you see the sparkling Bay Dome, so you think yourself there, specifying, downtown Palo Alto. Your bioworks connect with your wetworks and even out here, five bars are experienced. Your thoughts are translated into digits, which become transmitted commands, and the Earth Teleport System takes you to the bay area. In effortless seconds, you’ve gone from one place to another.

It’s a beautiful day under the dome in Palo Alto, blue and sunny, a little chilly in the shadows with hints of burned off fog. Electric cars hum along University Avenue but most people are strolling. Designated as a California Historic City, it’s unchanged since the early twenty-first century. Finding a Peet’s, you think, I’ll have a latte and croissant. The order has been placed before you enter the cafe and the systems direct you to the table along the window where your beverage and pastry await. A cup of tea and a shot of espresso appear on the table’s round surface. As you realize friends are arriving, they’re asking via your friendnet, “Can we join you?” Laughing, you answer, “Your drinks are already here.”

They port in. Hugs are exchanged. Books and art are discussed. “There’s a new art gallery opening in Mars New York,” Silvie says. “Want to go?”

Yes, of course. You’ve never been to Mars so this will be a special treat. Enjoy the gallery, have a meal, maybe do some dancing. Should others be invited? They are via the friendnet.

Soon, you have a platoon of friends, destination, Mars. You all port to the Interplanetary Teleport System in Utah. Signs direct you to the various space station and planet plazas where you can port yourself off of Earth to these other places. There are also teleport stations for bigger domes – Paris, London, Moscow, Sao Paolo – where stricter controls are required to visit these city states. But you’ve been to all of them, and the Moon. You’ve never been to Mars. You’ve always had a fear of flying, and as you aged, you thought, I’ll never see Mars.

But, wow, technology is amazing. So here you are, one hundred years old and retired, the prime of your life, really, off to Mars for the first time, at last.

All for just twenty-five dollars.

4

Dark Day

Somewhere in the middle of the night, the black steamrolled me.

It may have started with a series of disturbing dreams. I was with a group, a class of sorts, and a woman poured coffee onto my computer keyboard as a joke. I cleaned it up as other actions began. Then, in dream fashion, I was vacuuming dry autumn leaves up in the living room with my father…what…? Then I sat on a sofa to rest, and felt a force trying to lift me up from the sofa and move me…. I decided to let it. It took me across the room and set me on the floor.

A cat puking on my chair and demanding let out at 4:15 AM disrupted the dreams and may have contributed to my black mood.

Stepping in the puke could have been a catalyst to further darkness.

Writing in my head as I returned to sleep became a slamfest. Self-esteem drained out as my inner critic took over. “That stuff you’re writing is unimaginative, weak and turgid. That crap you published is a disease to humanity. Chuck it all. Find a useful hobby. Knitting, or water painting. Take up baking. Don’t write, please, for all that’s bright and beautiful in the world, don’t write.”

Sleep was recalcitrant after that, telling me, “I don’t want to get anywhere near you, with that mood coming up. I’m reading the signs, and a bad storm is rising.”

This black is a greatest hits compilation. Low self-esteem, depression, weariness, anger, irritation, resentment, then another cover of depression.

‘It’s okay not to always write,’ I read in another blog.

Maybe I’ll take the day off. Either that, or open any vein, and see what comes out.

0

Variation on a Dream

It came again as I slumbered, montages of being swept up in wild currents. They carry me through channels and cataracts. I tumble over falls. Through it all, I’m battling for direction, enduring difficult circumstances.

Yes, it’s the flood dream.

The flood dream is one of several recurring dreams in my dream folio. I don’t know when it first developed and presented but I do know it frequently returns. I’ve never been able to pinpoint its return on any cause. I’ve only spoken of it to others a few times. Mostly, it renders me thoughtful and meditative when I awaken from it.

In its first iterations, I was young and the dream begins with me exploring areas of Wilkinsburg and Penn Hills, PA, outside of Pittsburgh, where I lived about ten years in my youth. The dream was an accurate reproduction of landmarks, events and geography in its early years, more like memory than dream. Sometimes childhood friends were present.

After dreaming it a few times, the flooding began. Typically, I was in the woods, on a recognized steep hillside of dark loam. The skies darkened. I knew a storm was coming. As I hustled toward safety, monsoon rains begin. Storm sewers and creeks overflow. Water engulfs everything. Raging with power, floodwaters pick me up and toss me like a cat playing with a toy. I’m rushing past fallen trees, rocks and boulders. Periodically, I emerged from the floods to stand on a broad, white dam, where I could look out over the floods and consider what was happening. Sometimes, then, I felt worried.

But the dream’s evolution continued. While I never died, nor even felt terribly exerted by the dream’s events, I learned to navigate the waters. I was never in full control in any sense, but was staying afloat, avoiding obstacles and riding the sinuous waves.

Eventually in the dream, I began reaching a calm zone. ‘They’ were waiting for me in the calm, they being people, just people, nobody in any way special. Typically they were a man and a woman. All I fully understood in the dream was that I’d managed to exit the stormy, turbulent waters and reached a special place.

It was twilight there, and placid, a relief after the trying flood waters. Strangely, the dream identifies it as the North Pole – the top of the world. Stars are rising to light the moment. I’m invited to float out on calm black seas to reach the ultimate top of the world. It’s peaceful, restful. And so, I enter the water, which is cold, but not numbing, and float on my back out to the North Pole, where I gaze up at rich spectacle of stars, galaxies and nebulae.

Last night’s variation added a twist. As has happened more recently with the dream, the first act, where I’m young, and the skies darkened and the rains begin, was cut. I was immediately being carried by the currents. This time, the currents raced through icy white chasms and tubes. And this time, I was leading a small group, telling them what to do and urging them to follow my example. Reaching rocky or sandy banks from time to time and pausing on the journey, they were breathing hard, coughing and choking, bent over with weariness from their efforts. Each time, I let them rest and then said, “Come on. There’s more.” Then we plunged back into the water and rode the waves.

But in this iteration of the dream, when I reached the special place, I was pleased, joking with the other travelers, “Okay, you’ve gone through some tough places, but this one is something else,” setting them up to believe that, oh, no, there’s more? And so they said, with disappointed and weary sighs.

I led them into the twilight stillness where the others waited, grinning as the others explained, “You’ve reached the top of the world.” Indicating the smooth black water to one side, they continued, “Get on your back and float out, and you’ll be on top of the world.”

Smiling as my fellow travelers expressed puzzlement and skepticism, I lowered myself into the water and floated toward the North Pole on my back. And then, my fellow travelers began to follow….

 

5

The Progressions

I awaken, and experience a progression of guilt.

I called Mom last week. Reaching her answering machine, I left a message that I would call again later in the week.

I didn’t call, hence the guilt. I haven’t spoken to her in several weeks. The exact date is progressing into the unremembered past.

But I’m in the writing zone. I’ve caught the big wave. Big waves are rare. I jealously guard the ride, not wanting to do anything to upset the balance. Sorry, Mom. I’ll call when the ride is over. She’ll understand.

Marking the sunshine’s progression through the blinds, I gather it’s time to leave bed. Feeding the cats take me through the next progression. I fill their bowls, and watch their behavior and motion, and then return to their bowls when they’ve walked away, to see how much they’ve consumed. Nothing triggers a worry watch.

Going through the morning’s progression of eating, cleaning up and dressing, I peruse a mental list of items. It’s a copy of a list my wife and I made the other day. We began a process of cleaning, organizing and simplifying last July, and listed what remains during breakfast last Friday. I compare the list with the weather forecast and other chores to decide what I’ll do this day.

The bathroom mirror takes me through a progression of assessments about my hair, weight, skin and body tone. I progress through disappointment and dismay to rueful chuckling acceptance.

The morning’s walk to the coffee shop takes me through more progressions. Regardless of what I saw in the mirror, I feel young, energetic and happy as I walk. Autumn has arrived and the air is progressively cooler each day, as the days are progressively shorter, with night arriving progressively earlier. The trees are proceeding through their own progressions, with the leaves changing color but not yet beginning to fall.

All the town’s schools are in session. Encountering university students, who just began classes this week, I judge from their expressions that they’re progressing from starting classes to being dazed or numb to their new adventure. High school has been in session for a month already. Their marquee announces the Homecoming Ball next month. That, and cigarette smoke clinging to other pedestrians, transport me to youthful memories of high school and smoking co-workers and friends. I progress to wondering where those friends might be now and what became of them.

Last night’s dreams return to me. I dreamed I was asked by others to drive their dilapidated bus. Their request amuses me. They seemed to think it was very important and challenging, while I took it quite lightly. I easily agreed. The subsequent drive was a dream’s blink between beginning and ending, with some short vignettes of visits with passengers asking me more about my background. Nothing untoward had happened. Being grateful for my service, they’ve prepared a gift basket and present it to me when we’re off the bus. The gift basket is a plastic storage container with a bow. Fun size candy bars have been collected and put into plastic baggies, along with other food stuffs, such as cookies, muffins and brownies, including red and green peppermint cheese pizza. I’m never had it before. There is also electronic junk and toys in the storage box. I’m touched because all of this means much to them. Telling them it’s too much, I ask them to take whatever they want. They close in and take many items. One man asks for the peppermint pizza. He explains, he has a sore throat, and the peppermint soothes it.

We then enter a city square of faded, low brick buildings. The community is poor and the town is sparsely populated. I join others at one cafe. Its decor amounts to an eclectic assortment of bare tables and chairs and robin’s egg blue walls. They’re eager to please me. Their eagerness and obsequiousness embarrasses me. I work hard to make us all feel at ease. A small but pleasant party begins as we relax. They pour ale into a jar for me. There is nothing more I remember from that dream.

My progress is tracked through landmarks. I’ve passed the one mile mark. One mile remains until I reach the coffee shop. My thoughts progress through my writing plans of where I was, what I dislike and like, and what I need to change and how I might change it. I progress from that back to other plans. Friends are meeting for beers at 4:30. It’s downtown, a two and a half mile walk from my house. I calculate what time I’d need to leave, and how much time I have for yard work after walking home after my writing session. The timing will be compressed but it is doable, if I’m disciplined.

I reflect upon the differences in energy requirements between having a beer with friends and chatting with my mother. It’s like accounting and budgeting, in that these energies come from different buckets. I begin writing this post in my mind.

I progress to an acceptance of being disciplined about the timing, and then I’ve arrived at the coffee shop. Business is light. Madi saw me coming down the street so she has my quad shot mocha prepared. We chat about her college classes. She’s majoring in poli-sci and history, and plans to be a lawyer and prosecutor. Naturally, we discuss the presidential debates.

Then I’m at my table, at my laptop, with my coffee, opening the document, embracing the moment. I compose this post. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

I’m making progress.

0

Too Personally

Some days I take it all too personally. Rejection of my writing, my words, my voice – it hurts. It feels like a personal rejection. I say things. A tenth seems understood. Grasped. I write things, more digital information in a digital swamp.

Some days I feel like I’m battling alone against bureaucracy, mediocrity, conformity. But I also see myself as those things – bureaucratic, mediocre, conforming. It strikes me that I’m battling myself as well as the world, which isn’t a comfort to realize.

A load crashes down. What am I doing it, and why am I doing it? Why don’t I just stop and live some other life? What is it in my nature that forces me into this hole where I don’t fit?

Some days I feel pitted against the world. The cats desire attention, which is good, isn’t it? But it stops me from advancing my plans – exercising, cleaning, writing. And there is another lost cat out there, crying for food but otherwise healthy, pretty, young and glossy, and well fed. But I take care of it, sneaking it food, telling it to go home, looking for posters advertising someone is searching for it. An hour later, it’s gone.

Even my dreams reflect all this. One out of two, maybe three, days, I experience a mega dream. The mega dream is your summer blockbuster movie, lots of hype. You don’t want to see it but you can’t escape it. Advertising and branding efforts push it on you through your drinks, television, internet, print media, in interviews, commercials, and ads. It cannot be escaped.

That’s a mega dream, too. It can’t be escaped. I awaken and it’s there, crowding out more coherent thinking, vivid, loud and real.

Last night’s mega dream came down to fighting evil. It started at a writing conference, because that’s where evil lurks, right?

Of course not. The writing conference was enormous. It was wrapping up. Hundreds of earnest writers in folding chairs sitting in a semi-darkened hotel cavern, trying to soak up the juice, the energy, the mystique, of one who made it and created a writing career. Got published. Made money. Won awards and recognition. Talks about their writing, their processes, the stories that they’ve published.

And I, in the dream, was in the back row. That’s me in the corner, out of the spotlight, hugging notebooks, a tote bag, and a computer, collecting my pens and writing exercise and handouts. That’s me, listening and frowning, not agreeing, hearing the same thing I’ve heard before, understanding it, yet still failing.

A guest speaker was replacing the guest speaker, and as it was the last day, we were going to socialize, because, as writers, we socialize too little. So let’s all collect our things and go off to the movie theater. We’ll need to brave the night air but it’s just around the corner.

Yes, I know where it is, I’ve been there.  Off I go, alone, as others break up into knots, groups and trios, chattering away in friendly, excited manner, while I, dour as Holden, wander off alone, to first stop and pee. In there is a man in a trenchcoat. Twentyish, of average build, clean shaven with neat short dark hair, about five feet ten, white face, dark eyes, tired looking, endlessly talking. No one I know. He’s following a women. Pestering her. Annoying her. Scaring her.

I tell him to leave her alone. He mocks me but continues after her. So, I push him. He falls off into a pit. He falls silent. We’re done, I think. The woman thanks me. Leaves.

But he arises again. Now, he’s following me. Pestering me. Annoying me. Angering me. So I push him off again, and again, move violently each time. Each time, he arises again. His demeanor doesn’t change. He knows he’s evil. My efforts amuse him. He knows he can’t die. He knows that I’m realizing it. He knows it’s getting to me.

I know it. I run from him. I realize more, like him, very similar, in trench coats, but always white, always male, sometimes taller and skinnier, are emerging, going after others. So I begin warning them. I realize the evil plans to escalate and that we can’t fight it but must escape. So I try warning the others but I won’t be heard. The evil begins pestering others. Annoying them. Scaring them. Panicked noises arise. I try to fight the evil. I explain to the others that they must stay calm. If they can’t escape, they must fight.

But I’m not heard. I remain alone, fighting evil, trying to help others escape, until, at least, the evil is in a restroom stall, and I’m pissing on him from across the room in a strange climax that we both recognize as absurd. I’m just pissing energy away.

Inside my brain of brains, I know others feel the same. I believe this is the stereotype of the lives of quiet desperation and fading dreams, that this blog, and this post, is one of many writing about modern angst, desperation, and frustration. They’re also searching for a way to cope, to explain, to call for help, reinforcements and reassurances.

My coping mechanism is my writing. I’ve always written for myself, but I always believed, as every writer does, that someday, someone will read what I wrote. Yet I’ve reached a moment when I stand alone and tell myself, that might not be true. Maybe you should stop writing, stop pissing away your energy. Quit fighting evil, bureaucracy, mediocrity and conforming. Eat the fast food and drink the flavored sugar waters and be as happy as the vape heads on tv and in movies, and not give a shit about dying bees, animal abuse, the murders, police brutality, privacy, the state’s power, workers’ rights, minority rights, equality, freedom, greed, global warming, unending war, and of course, zombies. Maybe I am the zombie, acting from some part of my reptilian brain that I don’t understand and can’t control.

Yeah, I take it all too personally.

Of course, I recognize that it’s my dark side arising again, I’m sliding from somewhere on my spectrum, slipping down toward the deep end. While I have an active darkside, it does also get sunny. And writing it all out, explaining it all to the unseen universe, relieves some of my imagined burden. With a deep breath released in a long sigh, I tell myself, “Go on. Get dressed. Clean up. Check the cats and brush your teeth. Time to write like crazy.

“One more time.”

4

178

One seven eight may be my new favorite number. This is a fickle thing so, maybe not. I’ll test it.

Five was my favorite number for the longest time. The problem with five is that it’s a simple prime number, and just one digit. Nothing to add. No other ways of looking at it. I do appreciate and respect that it shows up EVERYWHERE – five toes, five fingers, the Fab Five, five rings, five senses, you can create the list. Five has served me well.

But 178, that’s a number you can play with. First, 1 + 7 = 8. Isn’t that cool? Then 1 + 7 + 8 = 16; 1 + 6 = 7. Neat, right? Or is it just me?

It could be just me. I dreamed of 178 last night, part of a long, rambling dream (like this post, but in color) about delivering a wheeled case for an old man. He was in charge of a place and was wheeling it along, but he was old and the black case was large, and I was there and bored, so I offered to help him. He made some snarky retort and then told me to take it to 178.

Off I went, through a door. I picked up my wife as an assistant, but once through that door, we discovered we were in an airport. Announcements were echoing, people rushing along, as they do in airports during peak travel hours. The place was gray cement and full of ramps, so the sound traveled unabated. White signs with numbers in red were overhead. Where was 178? My wife took off, thinking she knew the way, but I went in a different direction.

Arriving at 178 shortly, essentially an alcove, I found an old white refrigerator. Somehow, I knew I was to unpack the black case. Opening the refrigerator, I found it loaded with cheese. Cheese wheels, sticks, slices. White, yellow, blue. Opening the case to unload it, I discovered more yellow cheese, sliced, in packages. Insufficient room was in the frig for the new cheese, so I re-arranged the cheese to make room and add the new cheese.

“Cheese,” I was telling myself in the dream. “What’s with all the cheese?” I was baffled.

Finishing that and looking around, I realized that I was in someplace from my military career. And somewhere around there had been a locker where I’d kept personal items and military gear. I just needed to find it. It was locker 178.

I walked around, orienting myself and searching, moving through a maze of military green and gray doors and walls, past military members, along cinder block walls with exposed pipes. As I went and remembered, I told myself I was close. It had been locked, I remembered — but I had the key. Yes, the small key remained on my key chain.

It was my real and current key chain, just the house and mail key, but now with the key to to lock to my old storage locker (a locker that never actually existed, except in other dreams).

I finally located where the locker used to be, but guess what? It was gone, replaced by a Base Exchange facility where new uniform clothes were racked. No sign of me or my life there existed.

I looked up 178 this morning, and found that when it’s reduced to 7, it’s a mystical number, the number of cycles, of beginning again.

Yes, I had begun again, a new life, life after the military, life after Silicon Valley start-ups, life after IBM. And I’d been feeling that sense of renewal the last several days, like a song playing through my head, or a lingering perfume after a tight embrace.

I like that, although my explanation for the cheese is rather lame: the cheese represents food for thought.

Yeah.

Don’t know if that’s true. But one good thing I take from it all is that I didn’t wake up a zombie. That has to count for something.

Of course, thinking of that, I immediately begin conceptualizing a story about people who are zombies in their dream – and what happens in their real life.

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

2

Bridge to Nowhere

Yesterday was a dark day but not of my usual sort. Pain of the exaggerated ‘don’t bother me, I’m dying’ breed began around the Sub-occipital muscles and stampeded my skull and my brain’s right hemisphere. Being the whiner I am, I wasn’t happy.

Suffering computer and writing withdrawal contributed to my low tolerance for pain. Hey, I’m STRESSED OUT! Writing on the old Thinkpad reminds me of traveling on an old coal fed steam locomotive. Lot of chug-chug-chug action to open windows, or even change words or write more than thirty characters in Word. Chug-chug-chug. I write in snapshots so I’ll have parallel scenes in development, requiring me to jump between docs. Chug-chug-chug. Looking up something on the intertubes…chug…chug…  Chug.  Chug chug chuuuuggg. Chuuuuugggggggggggg. The computer then paused, let out a gasp and wiped its screen, telling me, “Whoo, this is tough hauling. All up hill to get to the good data.”

So, while back at home, logging changes made and attempting more fixes, I sat back in the office chair, closed my eyes…and napped.

I dreamed during the nap. I was walking on gray asphalt. It was sunny and hot. My shadow was about fifteen degrees off true. Right was part of a bridge’s cement structure. Painted white, it was last touched up a decade or more past and its facade was worn.

All I saw was my shadow, my feet, the asphalt and the cement. Then I drew near the bridge’s end. Ahead was the gravelly dirt shoulder with heavy green weeds and brambles. I stepped off the bridge. While doing so, I looked down and saw I was stepping into a hole between the bridge and shoulder. I fell off into nothing.

Blackness rose before fear shook me awake. Telling my wife about it, she noted the bridge and it’s possible significance, and the fact that I was walking into the unknown, that I didn’t know it, and I was frightened. Yeah, but…isn’t the  future unknown? So aren’t I always walking into the unknown?

So, no simple interpretation arose, but my headache was gone, and that was worth the dream by itself.

 

2

Counting Waves

You know the words. You can write the cliches for me.

Talking about another, you note or say, “Oh, he/she is in one of those moods today.” Curl a little snark into your tone. We joke about women and their cycles, because that’s how many of us were socialized and conditioned. “Women’s cycles” are visible. They’re “emotional and irrational” when it’s “that time of month” or “they’re going through the change.”

Men’s cycles are more often ignored. But we talk about male bosses and spouses and how they seem angrier, more irritated, or conversely, they’re in a great mood. “Maybe now is the time to ask them for ____.” Fill in the blank of what’s been considered and rejected because of their mood, but now, it’s a possibility, because they’re cheerful today.

Or you notice it about yourself, but you don’t know why. You don’t know why you’re sad. You don’t know why you’re happy. You rationalize reasons, develop a logical explanation for why you must feel this way. We think we know ourselves best, but I know myself better. I have large, dark windows that I can’t see in. Monsters are back there….

Everything seems like it’s on a spectrum for me: energy, optimism, dreaming….

I dreamed many times and vividly last night.

I wrote with speed and intensity yesterday. And what I wrote? Honestly, I’m amazed that I’m so talented. What an imagination! I am fucking brilliant.

I’m optimistic, hopeful and cheerful. I look forward to visiting with friends. My body feels great.

I feel like I’m enjoying life more. Food and drinks taste better, and that sunlight, golden on those scattered soft gray and white clouds above the verdant tree filled mountains against an azure sky late yesterday afternoon, wasn’t that the most magnificent, inspiring sight? Did you see that soaring hawk?

But as I dreamed and awoke last night, considered the dreams and returned to sleep, I thought of how alike it was to being on beach at the ocean. Like waves, there’s a pattern to the dreams and the ocean’s movement, and there are high tides and low tides of dreaming. It’s not the first time I’ve thought this and written about it. Even now, it seems like deja vu. I dream; the dreams increase with strength, vividness, and impact as my cycle progresses through its spectrum. I wake up and write about it. Then the dreams peak and begin diminishing.

Ah, yes, you see that, how my mental acuity increases as well? I’m able to observe more clearly and understand myself better. I wonder, are Jeopardy contestants aware of this? Do their personal cycles affect their winning and losing? I really would like to study that, because, you see, I’m almost at the top.

During the rising mental, spiritual and physical energy cycles, I write, and the words come faster, clearer, more quickly and easily, and then I peak. I begin back down. Writing becomes a greater and greater challenge, until, down in the trough, it’s a slog to get to the coffee shop, sit in the chair and focus on the stories being told. My rituals and routines, and the tricks I’ve learned to encourage and engage my inner writer help them. But the stuff I write. Oh, God, help me, please. How could I ever believe I had any skills? I’m worthless, less than zero, with the creativity and talent of a gnat’s ass.

I know this week’s optimism and cheerfulness will crest. I will begin a slow descent into gloom. I will crave isolation. Small irritations are imagined to be major insults. I become a more aggressive driver, and a more bitter person. I’ll hunger for and reward myself with the junk foods, desserts and fried foods that I deny myself when I’m ‘up.’ Then I’ll bottom out, silent, weary, angry, self-loathing, and begin to arise back from the depths. I drink coffee but derive little energy from it. Even reading sucks. My needs and responses are wildest at the bottom. I’m more emotional, needier. I want to shop and buy new things, as a salve for how terribly I’m suffering, but I want to do it without others bothering me.

I know, too, how my cycles affect my world perceptions. When I’m rising, I’m more open. I post and comment more. More cheerful, I have greater self-confidence. When I’m in the pit, I disappear. I don’t check Facebook and don’t post, because it’s all the same jokes, I tell myself, the same crap, the same garbage from the same people, and the news? When I finally bottom out, I have a sense that the world is a terrible place of killing and brutality, our leaders are shits, and we, the common, the less than 1%, have no chance. I am resentful and hostile.

Being in the depths is miserable. I feel lifeless, a sawdust man, without purpose, direction or hope. Down in the trough, it’s hard to see my way through an hour. Food tastes terrible, and taxes are way too high. Everything costs too much then, and it’s all junk.

I wonder, how many people kill one another or themselves because they’ve descended into their pit. How many cops are more fearful and frightened, more ready to kill because of their state? How many others are more willing to take up a knife or gun and seek vengeance and make others pay because of where they are in their cycles and spectrums?

Now, climbing toward the peak, I’m on top of the world. The view is magnificent, and I believe that we can work together, change the world, and solve all the problems.

We just need to hurry, before I start down again.

 

 

0

Driving in my Car

I was alone. Driving in my car, a dark SUV, which is not my car, but I had procured it for a dream.

Attempting to park, I broke the driver’s mirror and scratched the passenger side. I tried leaving the car but couldn’t open the door sufficiently to get out. I was too close to the rest.

I backed up, trying to create another plan. A black child was in the back seat. I didn’t know them. Apologizing, I told them to get out but took them for a ride to help them reach their destination.

Parking elsewhere, I learned I had a temporary room at a temporary location. I was in the Philippines. I was supposed to be leaving. I entered the building, cement with several floors. Going to my room, a military style modern barracks room, I discovered a mess. I wasn’t ready to leave at all. Opened and unopened cans of Fancy Feast cat food was everywhere. Most were chicken flavor. I attempted to collect and sort them into bags, to dispose of them, while also attempting to pack my clothes. I also found half-pints of unopened milk containers around the room. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them. I had no refrigerator, didn’t have any need for them, and didn’t understand why I had them. I couldn’t remember buying milk or cat food.

I was running out of time but strangers kept interrupting, and distant relatives dropped in to visit. I was trying to understand, did I bring my car here? If so, how did I bring it? If it was my car, how was I going to get it back to where I came from? I had airline tickets. The car couldn’t fly with me, could it? I found a picture of myself from the previous year a relative had taken and left for me to see. My photo disgusted me.

Pro football players entered. One was Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers quarterback. The others were famous players. They nodded greetings toward me but were talking among themselves. I don’t think they knew me.

I needed more information to help me decide what to do but there wasn’t anyone to give any. I raced around, in and out of my room and up and down flights of stairs through the cement complex with the cans, the milk, my clothing, dodging people, trying to comprehend what was happening with my car, trying to decide what to do with it, wondering if I could get more time to deal with it.

I awoke with nothing resolved, with the dream streaming through my mind, filling me with thoughts about potential meanings.

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Dream Conflicts

They came while I slumbered, stealing into or from my mind, leftovers, prophecies, or beginnings, mysteries to study with eyes open. We call them dreams, and despite centuries of co-existing with them, we’re not sure what they’re about.

I attach significant interpersonal meaning to my dreams. They tend toward the authentic, but with elements of illusions. For example, scenes switch instantaneously, dissolving without even the notice of doors opening or closing.

First up was a snowy town outside. There I am, out there, but this POV is first person. I’m experiencing it and can’t see myself. It’s night, the snow is falling and has collected. Ruts on the streets mark how long its fallen and its resilience. Vehicles can’t pass and they’ve abandoned the efforts. Illuminated by yellow streetlights, a steady wind blowing, people go where vehicles can’t.

There is a cry, followed by a call, “Cougars.” Excitement rising in their voices, children call out to their parents that there are two cougar kittens running through the snow. I see the animals, tawny silhouettes  dashing through the grayish yellowed snowscape. They’re not small but they are juveniles. Others want to chase them. I protect them. Unleashing a snarl, the cougars race off and disappear around a snow rutted corner and up a hill.

I’m in a home with a friend. I know she’s a friend but she’s not anyone I know. She and I are waiting. We talk quietly. Coping with others’ illnessess, we’re sharing a spartan home while we visit them in the hospital. I don’t know who either of us visit nor what’s wrong with the others.

Awakening (in the dream), I walk through the house. I find my friend in one shadowy room, a chair with a blanket, a radio beside it, and a board game in a cone of light. The game is Monopoly. I’m quizzical. “I was playing,” she explains. “By yourself?” I ask. “Yes,” she answers, “I won two million dollars. I won it all.”

Going into another room, I sit on an old sofa and pull a blanket around me. Sitting on a small chair opposite, she motions toward me. I lean in. We tentatively kiss, and then kiss longer, but gently, and reach out to stroke each other.

An interruption breaks up the scene. I’m still with her but in another place. Daylight enfolds me. I’m a little confused. My house has disappeared, leaving only my bedroom items surrounded by a white picket fence and sitting on a large green lawn. Someone has stolen my house. It was children and young adults. Now they’re sneaking around, stealing other items, like my computer, and my bed and clothing. I’m angry but no one is around. I try learning who took my stuff, where it’s at, or the thieves’ locations, and how I can get my stuff returned. I complain to my friend but she’s distracted. Her patient has died. I’m sorry for her but then she is gone and I’m left to pursue collecting my stolen goods.

I’m in a small, older house with two stories where I believe the children have taken my goods. Young adults are present. They taunt me. I break up a chair and use one leg to threaten them. Some scatter but one smiles, bemused, arms crossed, dismissing me with insouciance that infuriates me. I poke at his chest and shoulder with the chair leg, issuing demands for my stuff, until he becomes uncomfortable. Swatting at the leg, he tries moving away but I keep him cornered.

Another young man watches and laughs. I turn to him, asking him what’s funny. We’re in a dining room. There is a table. He begins to dissemble. I threaten him more, then I begin hitting him with the stick, seeking an intelligent response, and I awaken.

 

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