Category: Dreams

Coffee Dreams

A mug of hot coffee warms my hands against the April’s winter shadow. I sit with my dreams and myself to think.

My dreams took a different turn last night. It feels like a turn for the better. Although multiple elements seen in past dreams, like being in class to learn and working with technology, were present, the dream most sharply recalled featured spilled coffee.

A thirty year old version of myself, I was at a huge room. I thought of it partly as a classroom but also as a work center. It was enormous, as large as say, an NBA basketball area. It was dark, with low task lights doing most of the illuminating. Rows of consoles with work stations filled it. Each work station feature a personal computer but also a link to a master computer. They also had television monitors, telephones, and CD/DVD players and burners. Most were unoccupied.

I’d never seen them before but now was working at one, or trying to make it work. I was holding a cup of coffee. The cup was plain, low and white with a handle. It seemed to be ceramic, nothing fancy. Coffee kept slopping out when I moved. I became aware of this and mildly frustrated. Most of my frustration was that I didn’t want to spill on the work station. Magically, the cup didn’t seem to actually lose much coffee between drinking and spilling from it.

A man and a woman who I didn’t know came up behind my station. They talked about me like I wasn’t present, yet were watching my work and commenting on it, with the woman, slender and white, with dark hair piled on her head, and dressed in a pale yellow and white gown, was telling the man, a white guy in shirt sleeves, khakis and glasses, that she was thinking of helping me. She noted how I made some of the same mistakes that she’d made. This prompted me to focus harder and think more carefully about what I was doing, which was typing. The keyboard was wrong, with the keys spaced awkwardly, even haphazardly, forcing me to struggle and repeat the typing.

When I spilled coffee for the third time, she commented on it, almost as a joke. I explained that I knew why I was spilling coffee, observing that the handle was too small for my fingers but didn’t extend enough for me to grip with more of my hand, so my grip was precarious and not balanced. The cup had a shallow draft in my opinion, with a wide mouth, and that’s why the coffee easily spilled out as I moved around. She seemed impressed with the explanation.

Walking across the work space, I came to where a teach sat with students. The teacher wasn’t anyone I know, but was young, white with dark hair in a bob. She was talking to the students in a chatty, happy voice. The other students were my age or a little younger. I was dismayed that they all seemed to be on a break. She was using the break as a teaching and bonding opportunity. I heard her say, “We all have work to do but you can work at your own pace.” I was happy working, because I had a problem and I wanted to solve it, so I decided to return to work.

But then I thought that I’d watch a movie. I had a DVD in hand. I don’t know what movie it was. I realized, though, that I could put the movie on at my station and watch it there, while I worked, so I turned to do that. When I did, I spilled coffee a fourth time.

That made me smile.

Awaking this morning and thinking about the dream, I felt empowered, invigorated and optimistic. I can’t say why. Was it the spilled coffee? I put a lot of faith in coffee to help me think, focus and work, but that was usually around preparing and drinking it, and not spilling it.

Coffee is associated with get up and go with me. Drinking coffee is part of my rituals for preparing to do multiple things, from writing, cleaning and yard work to washing the car and traveling. So the coffee in the dream is about entering a new stage of activity. The moments of sitting and taking a few sips of coffee is always the cusp of a new beginning for me, a signal to start. Spilling it was important because it didn’t matter to me or anyone else. The cup was limitless; more coffee was always there.

From all that, I decided, I’m ready to step up my pace of work and activity. I have the coffee, now let’s get to it.

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Dream Magic

My theme music for yesterday was Seal’s ‘Crazy’. The recurring refrain, “Yeah, we’re never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy,” became my dream’s theme music last night.

Literally.

Last night’s dreams was like a television series. I binged on an entire season. Each episode followed its own arc. Each featured ‘Crazy’ as music after the episode’s climax.

The dreams began with one in which, I thought, how funny, I’m not even in this dream. I was witnessing a convention. It was a packed, happy, energetic crowd. Displays were being set up. Demonstrations took place.

I drifted into one demonstration, making my first appearance in the dream. It was about hacking. Interesting and amusing. No, not just about hacking, my dream persona observed, but hacking magic.

I was with friends. Everyone was perplexed about what was being demonstrated. Suddenly, I grasped it; when three cubes could be aligned and turned into one color, magic took place.

Like the old computer game, Tetris.

Okay.

But more magic hacking was being demonstrated. Fascinated, I separated from my friends to pursue learning this magic. Each episode took me further from there and deeper into a quest. By the season’s end, I was alone at a black magic convention. Other people were present but I didn’t know any of them. I was broke, gaunt, dirty and unshaven, with long, disheveled hair and threadbare clothing.

The setting was a dark, wet and decrepit abandoned arena. Others seeking magic and energy were present. An intense scene, we all knew of each other but didn’t know one another. We wanted to help one another but were also leery of the others. But this is where my quest for more had taken me.

Needing rest, I slept on the second floor, sharing a urine stained mattress and Army blankets with a stranger, another man. Although younger, he seemed in worse condition than me, sleeping the entire time while I tossed and turned. I was specifically seeking…a magic manuscript.

Three times, I tried finding and acquiring it. The fourth time, I succeeded.

And then I lost it.

The others knew this and were sympathetic. There were suggestions the manuscript had been stolen.

With some detective work, I found it.

But I was running out of time. The convention was ending. I wanted to present the manuscript to the convention leaders. A bus would take me to them. I missed the bus once…twice…. The manuscript disappeared again. I found it again but missed the bus again, even though others had helped me.

By this point, I was almost a filthy, barefoot beggar. On a tip from another, I learned that the convention leaders were coming through on their way to leave. I could intercept them. The rest encouraged me to do that. Which I did, presenting my manuscript.

It was a big, black, fat, unwieldy document. The leader, a suave man who looked like a young Jon Favreau, glanced at it as he walked by. “It’s not what we’re looking for.”

Yet, this was the magic. I knew it was.

Defeated and out of time, I headed home. I was broke and exhausted. It was a hard journey.

My wife was in the bathroom, getting ready for a party behind closed, locked doors. I could hear her humming. Others began arriving to set up. They were bringing in food and cakes. All were people I knew during my life, friends from other eras.

They were in good spirits, which spread to me. I began cleaning myself up to join the party. At that point, I knew the season was over, but the series was not. More was to come.

Cue ‘Crazy’ and the show’s ending.

I awoke despondent and sat alone in the living room for a while, watching the day grow brighter and thinking about my dream. Clearly, I thought, this was about my writing efforts and my career. I was seeking the magic. I’d missed.

But, it wasn’t over. As ‘Crazy’ streamed through my head and I began my daily routines, I took some solace from the hope, it wasn’t over.

There are more seasons to come.

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Dreams of Resistance

New, powerful dreams swept in to replace the soul-dragging sprawl of dreams endured my previous three nights. Now I was once again enabled and empowered. Confident in my understanding of what had happened and what needed to happen, I began installing order on others in my dream.

In one of the dreams, someone who was in charge and outranked me began chastising me for some bizarre local rule. I’d taken my boots off. As punishment, he’d stolen in, taken my boots, wrapped them up in a package and hid them. Now revealing what he’d done, he began lecturing about their rules and procedures in a galling pedantic manner. I gathered from his ridiculing subtext that he thought he would emasculate me and put me in my place.

I didn’t accept the situation. I waited until he finished. Then I politely replied, “But I just arrived here this morning, hours ago. I think you should have set up an immediate orientation for me to know what was going on, if you want me to know your rules and follow them. Otherwise, you would just playing a silly game of ‘gotcha’.”

A person beside me leaned over and whispered, “Right on,” in my dream. Two other dreams from last night were of the same ilk, encouraging me to stand up for myself. Together, the three instilled greater confidence in me. It’s a wonderful sensation to awaken with the belief I know what I’m supposed to do and will do it.

Happy Tuesday, writers!

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Dreams of Ineptness

What a night of dreams. Given scales of one to ten, where ten is the highest, these dreams were around eights on the vividness and intensity scales. They left me feeling emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted. Dreams of these types trigger speculation that I’m living in the dreams, and the dreams are the reality. So while I’ve been here, living with all of its entanglements and needs, I’ve actually been asleep there. Once I awaken there, I experience that life through my dreams.

Makes sense. In the dreams, I was bewildered about what was going on and expectations for me. Everyone liked me. Nobody was concerned about me. I was just there, part of the landscape. It was an incoherent landscape. Some others and I were in the back interior of a giant parked 1982 Camaro. It was so large, we were standing and moving around without being encumbered. Things were sometimes written on the car’s immense rear hatch window. But I knew I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. Fueled by guilt, anxiety burned through me. I was going to be found out at any moment. 

Leaving the Camaro, I raced around in a covert frenzy, attempting to cover my tracks and do what I was supposed to be doing all along. The office made no sense. Everything had been moved outside. Meanwhile, new instructions were being introduced. I struggled to stay abreast of the new ideas. I was supposed to be understanding this stuff, using it and explaining it to others. I had little idea of what was going on.

I sought out the people in charge and the files. The files were supposed to be locked up. I didn’t know the combination. One of those in charge confessed to me that the locks didn’t work. They were a facade. She laughed as she explained this. As I tried catching up on my tasks and correct everything, I began learning through intimate encounters with others, nobody else knew what was going on. It was chaos with a veneer of normalcy and knowledge. Nobody else was doing it correctly. Most barely understood what I talked about and laughed when I mentioned it. A series of giggling confessions were shared with me to that end.

Understanding that I wasn’t going to be discovered because I was an inept fraud, I began relaxing. My errors and shortcomings weren’t going to be discovered because everyone else had shortcomings and were making errors. None of them cared about it.

Writing about them, I chortle with insight. Ah, yes, the classic dreams of inadequacy and our latent, perpetual fears of being exposed as a fraud. Do writers ever experience anything like this? I suppose not. Most writers are powerhouses of security and self-confidence.

I should just move on. I would, but I feel too tired. I need to sleep to recover from my dreams.

Now there’s a metaphor if I’ve ever read one.

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Dream Web

A caterruption broke my sleep. I’d been dreaming of watching a high school play. I was part of a large audience in a small cafetorium. Most of the dream attendees weren’t watching the play but chatting as the play went on. It was a light comedy and I was watching and chuckling.

But now, awake, I thought about the dream’s meaning. I found nothing but dream strands returned me to high school. I’d been the lead in our junior year play, ‘Brother Goose’. At one point I was supposed to enthuse about winning a contest and a year’s supply of cereal. I always broke character in rehearsals when I said the detestable, corny line, and then, in the action’s climax, I kissed the female lead.

In rehearsal, I was aware I was breaking character. I didn’t during the performances. My ex-girlfriend was in the audience during the production for the school student body. She said that when I kissed the other girl on stage, she looked down at the floor. She could feel others in the audience looking at her. They knew we were broken up. It was a small school, with a few hundred students.

I had lunch with her yesterday after our protest against Trump’s budget outline. We’ve been married since 1975.

Meanwhile, dream threads pulled me along from the play to a creative writing class in Germany. The teacher wanted us to do a 1940s radio script. I was selected as the narrator and decided to channel Gary Owens. That surprised and delighted the class but it was a natural choice, given the exposure to him from my years of watching ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’.

I learned a great deal about creativity and active writing in that class. I consider it a breakthrough class for me. Yet, I can’t remember the teacher’s name.

That’s going to distract me all day.

I blame it on the dream.

 

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The Reality

Khalvin rolled out of his bed with a snort and dropped to the floor.

Something had awakened him.

Everything seemed normal.

He moved to the reveal and transparented it.

Starry skies held outside. The ship still moved. Moonlight lapped the dark sea. He pinged his Backhand for the ship’s location. Systems confirmed they remained over the California Sea. Airspeed was ninety. The outside temperature was eighty-four degrees. Their destination was forty-nine minutes away.

Ordering a water bulb, he plucked it out of the air as it arrived, massaged his head against lingering sleep, and considered what to do as he sucked up water. He didn’t know what had awakened him. A dream’s wreckage drifted through his consciousness. He’d dreamed he wasn’t himself, Khalvin, but another person. He didn’t know that name, and he didn’t look as he now looked, but he knew it was him.

He’d been somewhere he couldn’t fully perceive. It seemed like a shop. Others were there, but he didn’t know them and didn’t speak with them. Music he didn’t recognize played above burbling conversations and crisp clacking and clinking noises. His dream self barely noticed. Sitting and bent over a keyboard, he was busy thinking, typing and talking to himself.

The image lingered with him, powerfully real. Wondering it meant, he considered the California Sea and thought of the ruins purported to be under its surface. In many ways, being here on Earth, about to explore ruins, seemed more like a dream than the dream he’d just experienced.

He realized he’d been Human in the dream. He was a Cat. He’d always been a Cat. To be Human….

He smiled. That seemed like the strangest dream of all.

***

Sorry for the shaggy cat story. Blame it on my dreams. Cheers

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Pieces

In last night’s other part of featured dreams, I found pieces of blue, red, yellow and white. Large but lightweight, they seemed to be plastic. As I collected them, I noticed some fit together. 

I next encountered a plaza. After some exploration, I noticed it was a huge board and realized the pieces I’d found could fit on the board. I began organizing, sorting and testing pieces in the way of puzzles, but building structures as tall as myself. Each was either red, yellow, blue, green, et cetera; the colors weren’t mixed in the structures.

Stepping back to gain a greater view of my work, I saw that the pieces I put together had formed people. I realized the pieces were from people and that I could use them, put them together and fix the people. 

The epiphany sent me into grinning delight. I began noticing others walking around and saw I was in a busy city on a sunny day. The people walking around were strangers of all races and classes of life. I could tell which pieces belonged to which person. So I began calling to them, “I can fix you. I know how. I have the pieces that can fix you.”

Then it was on to the other dream, where it took a weird turn.

Perhaps the weirdest turn is that I suspect I’ve dreamed these dreams before. 

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A Turn Into the Weird

Once again, my dreams took a hard turn into the weird. The one dominates my waking thinking.

There are six lanes of highway. I’m overlooking them with friends. One of these friends is Randy Moore. Randy and I served twenty years in the U.S.A.F. and were together at Onizuka Air Station, Sunnyvale, CA, in the early 1990s. He passed away from colon cancer the month of his sixtieth birthday.

He was alive and the Randy I knew in my dream. The six lanes of traffic have five ‘support lanes’. That’s the only way I can explain it. It’s a fast highway. But, while studying it, Randy and I (and others) realize there’s a huge gap in the road. Basically, it ends in a black chasm.

Then we realize we’re in an enormous cave. Then, we find, oh, wait, the highway continues on the other side of this chasm. The catch is, that’s several hundred yards away. That’s a helluva catch.

So we’re chatting, what a weird design, is it by design, what else could have caused this, and end by saying, “We should stop cars coming down because they can’t make it.” But we were also noting, “They see it. They’re stopping.”

But the driver of an old van guns his engine. Tires screaming, smoke billows out and the vehicle launches down the road into the dark sky. “He’s trying for it,” either Randy or I say.

“He’s not going to make it,” one of us say.

“Oh, wait…maybe it will.”

The van flies through the air like a scene from ‘The A-Team’. We watch.

“He’s not going to make it,” I declare. As I make the statement, a red Ferrari screams past.

“What the hell is he doing?” Randy asks.

I’m amused and appalled. “He’s trying to save the van.”

The Ferrari catches the van as both land on the other side. They bounce and skew sideways before slamming into the cavern wall in a ball of flame.

Randy and I begin wandering the cavern lanes. Examining the structure, we wonder, how will we ever get to the other side.

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Today’s Theme Music

I awoke with this song stuck in my head. It wasn’t the song I had in mind for today.

Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote ‘One Less Bell to Answer’ in the 1960s. The ‘Fifth Dimension’ had a hit with it around 1970.

The 1960s and 1970s was a great era of music. We had surfer music, blues, R&B, folk, psychedelic, country and western, and the British Invasion all being blasted from our AM radios. Many of the acts appeared on television and music shows, like ‘American Bandstand’ with Dick Clark, or ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’. 

Oddly, the song is connected to a time of transition for me. That gives me pause as I wonder why the song is stuck in my brain today. My family lived in the Pittsburgh, PA, area, having moved to that area in the late 1950s. We had lived in a brick duplex in Wilkinsburg. My aunt and her family lived next door to us in a like duplex. Her son, my cousin, was my age. We were best friends for a long time.

His family moved to a new housing development in Penn Hills in the 1960s. We also moved there a few weeks later. I ended up living about two blocks from him.

Meanwhile, though, my other friends remained in Wilkinsburg. I made it a habit to return to visit them. I usually rode my bike the miles between the two locations. Then my bike was stolen and I walked.

But my friends changed. I no longer felt a part of them and moved on. That’s why it’s interesting this song is stuck in my head this morning. Between my dream and my writing and this song, I wonder what conference is going on in my subconscious mind.

Here’s Marilyn McCoo and the Fifth Dimension, performing ‘One Less Bell to Answer’ on Soul Train.

 

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A Laugher

One of last night’s dream makes me laugh whenever I think of it.

I was working. I can’t say the nature of the work. Seemed like I was conducting inventory. Whatever I was doing, I was busy, happy and fulfilled. A manager came by. He wasn’t someone I knew from my life but he was known by the dream me.

Dream manager told me they — the rest of the office or work place — were leaving. I was fine with that. While they were gone, they were expecting two people to arrive: Major Record and a garbled, unintelligible name.

Sure, got it. Understood.

The manager left and came back. Still waiting for Major Record and the other, whose name he screwed up. Although I can’t remember the other name, I corrected it in the dream for him.

A little later: Major Record arrived, along with X. X was another name. I asked about the original second name. That’s who arrived, was the reply. They came by another way. They’ll be coming this way.

The manager had continuously screwed up the second name until it became a joke. Meanwhile, the Major Record we’d been awaiting had already arrived.

Waking, I keep laughing about that. I’m waiting for Major Record, but he’s already arrived. And I just kept working, doing the same thing, the entire time.

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