Category: Dreams

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.

0

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.

 

0

Dream Vehicles

Normally, thinking of dream vehicles, I fill my mind with sports cars or interstellar ships.

But I recall Quinn of the Black Paws jumping on me last night. He’s only eight pounds but is very adept at targeting and hitting my bladder. So up I went to use the can, with a chatty Quinn accompanying me. Sometimes I think he does this from boredom so he’ll have company.

The sleep interruption let me recall a dream fragment. I was outside, in bright sunshine, on a sidewalk, beside an asphalt parking lot. In the parking lot, parked close by, were cars as shiny as silver mercury. I don’t know what makes, models, etc, but all were sleek, new and exotic in my brief glance, and glittering with reflected sunshine that seemed so amazingly bright that my eyes, even behind sunglasses, were pained.

All of this was experienced as a close, personal POV, like a camera following me, but not from a first person point of view. I, in light colored shorts, a light blue shirt and sandals, light warm breeze blowing my hair, looked at the cars and guffawed, remarking, “Ah, my dream cars.” I was pleased.

And leaving the john and remembering them, with Quinn flying his bushy tail ahead of me as he hurried down the hall, I thought, “I get to pick the car for my dreams.”

0

So you’d like a new —

Head butting against my hand, Quinn challenged my sleep with soft coos. Gray light had emerged past the screened windows. The windows and blinds were open to release yesterday’s built up heat and permit the cool night air to saturate the house, preparation to coping with another day of heat. Sure, we could turn on the air con but isn’t it more challenging, more fun, and even nostalgic, to live the day without running the a/c, windows closed and blinds down, sweat beading up as the house’s interior temps climb into the mid 80s? Some would disagree, sure. Turn on the air conditioning, you madman, they order.

Dreams were fading, a snow storm moving on. I glimpsed facets of at least three dreams. One drew me in and held me longer, like a relative saying good-bye with an extended hug. I traipsed through remembered segments, amused and pleased by this dream. Then the realization bolted in, wait, hold onto this dream, this is important.

Shifting focus and effort, I tracked through the dream scenes I saw, heard, remembered, tracing back through sequence and organization, picking up details. The dream’s sequences were about moving into new places, acquiring new things – a new office building and office, a new car – with new computers and computer systems, new passwords, a new location, part of a new morning, and a new day. Excited and joyful I went through these new things, the first to arrive and explore my new digs, the leader of a smallish group, about the size of a high school class. And there, in the dream, shock of discovery took me as I grasped, I’m getting a new body. 

Oh, it’s my same body, but everything is brand new. Not brand new, I’d been thinking upon waking, but regenerated, which had triggered thoughts of the Doctor Who television series, which was where my thoughts were when I started moving from sleep into consciousness. I’m getting a new body, I’d been thinking, like Doctor Who. And I saw myself then being regenerated as the character had been, shifting from one form into another with a brilliant white glow. That was me. But this body looks exactly the same, yet it’s new. And that’s what had me chuckling myself into wakefulness.

Nor was I alone. The others were also new body recipients, but I was one of the first to receive my body and arrive, and was able to tell them, from my knowledge and experience, my expertise, what was going on and what was to be expected. The others began joining me, and then customers were arriving…what? And it was now business as usual.

Then, wondering about the time and accepting that only feeding Quinn would mollify him, I let myself fully awaken. Making to move and get up, I realized…I was curled up into the fetal position.

Ah, sweet dream.

0

Dream Fragments

Many dreams last night, very chaotic.

I arrived somewhere, a respected, highly regarded. This I knew in the dream, inside me, from experiencing and enjoying success, and from others’ demeanor toward me. People fawned over me as I arrived. I tried to be natural, approachable, accommodating, friendly.

The somewhere was a medium sized retail business. The managers and owner sought my advice on improving sales. I suggest marketing partnerships. They were selling hardware and things to keep homes safe so I suggested a partnership with people to keep other things safe, and offered them advertising ideas like, ‘safe and strong,’ and ‘secure through strength’. Continued on a tour, observing.

Now somewhere else, in a car, driving fast. Terrible, gray visibility, limited in the front and back. The observer’s paradox, I think in the dream. Weaving through traffic in this terrible gray visibility, passing other cars. Discover there are enormous accidents everywhere on this huge concrete Interstate. Vehicles are stopped. There are no dead nor injured, no fires or wreckage, but I know there are accidents. Yet, I hurtle on, guiding my car around the obstacles until getting free, into sunshine.

Back at the medium sales place. There is a huge sale going on. So big, it spilled over into the out doors. They’re doing as I suggested but I sense they did it on their own. Yet, they initiated the idea but didn’t seem to plan. People are holding onto purchases and queuing to buy everywhere. “Why didn’t they add more sales staff?” I wonder. “Why didn’t they plan ahead better?” Then I think, they did, but they were sloppy about it.

 

0

Dream Elite

Today’s Dream Begins….

What does snow and darkness in a dream signify? In this dream, there was a steel and glass building that was warm and lit, a haven against the darkness and nasty weather, but otherwise, this dream had no sunshine, no light outside. It was always cold, windy, snowy.

It began with my selection as part of an elite element. We were drivers. I don’t know the dream background but everyone had a role, either as part of management, as someone attending the cars, someone working in the world, or as a driver. I was pulled from the masses to be a driver.

Then, from the driving group, I was selected to drive a unique car, literally the only one we had like it. Turbocharged, it was started differently – you had to select fifth gear to start it – and I drove it on different missions than the ones the other drivers did. This car had more power and capabilities than the rest. I was pleased, flattered and honored, but I didn’t recognize what it did to my relationships. I no longer had to go outside, into the cold darkness where wind blew falling snow, and the accumulation, which never melted, created frigid, difficult decisions. That’s where I’d originated, and it was the place of my friends and co-workers, yet they always had to go back out there and never had time to stay and visit with me.

As for the other drivers, the other ‘elite’, they also had missions, but they did their missions in large groups. I always went out alone so I never really associated with them, either. They knew me, and mildly resented me, because I was elite among the elite.

So I was often alone, in the warm, lit building, surrounded outside by darkness and snow, where people waited, watching others go off on missions in their cars, while I drove my car alone.  Management was always busy, rarely glimpsed, with few interactions. I’d been given my assignment and was expected to do this.

Tiring of this, not liking this situation, I tried breaching the groups, inviting friends to come in from the outside and talk, trying to join them outside, but not fitting in, resented because I didn’t really have a reason to be there, giving my car to another to drive. But he couldn’t drive it, which exasperated me. It’s easy. I shifted to shunning my friends on the outside because they shunned me. I gave management little time because they gave me little time. And I looked for a newer, better car. It was out there, and I knew it. I just had to find it.

So the dream ended, on my determination to find my new, more powerful vehicle, certain it existed and certain I would find it, recognizing as I did, that I couldn’t go back to being one of the others.

I had gone on.

1

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