I awoke in the dream in a bed. As I sat up, I realized a young cougar had walked in from outside. Before I could do anything, it jumped up on the bed and came to me. I was freaking but urged myself to relax and stay calm.
My wife entered the room and gasped. “That a cougar?”
“Yes,” I quietly answered. “Don’t move fast. It’s pretty chill. Don’t do anything to upset it.”
The cougar was sniffing me and sometimes licking me. Wasn’t real big, about the size of a small large dog, if you follow. It wasn’t threatening me.
My wife said, “I’m going to back up back into the bathroom and close the door.”
“Do it slow,” I replied.
She did. The cougar spent several more minutes with me and then left through the door. I gathered from what I saw in the dream that I was in a living room sofa sleeper and the front door was open on the other side of the room. When the cougar left, I hurried out after it with an intention of warning others. The cougar meandered along the sidewalk, literally sniffing the flowers, along with other things, and then went down a hill away from the place through thick foliage.
I went back and dressed, and my wife and I walked down the sidewalk to the dining room. My sisters and brothers-in-law were there, so we told them about what had happened. As I finished telling the story, my older sister came in and listened. Giving a hand wave, she said, “Oh, that’s just Leslie.” She explained that Leslie was a young cougar who lived here. He never bothered anyone.
I was mildly indignant that she was so blase about my cougar encounter and that she’d known about this cougar and didn’t say anything.
Weird one, where I had myself and another me. We were identical in every aspect, from age and size to clothes being worn. But, we were in two different locations.
We were much younger, like in our late twenties. Wearing off-white cargo shorts with a light blue button-down shirt. Brown hair military short.
‘I’ was supposed to be doing something to pave the way for the other me to arrive. But, panic in dream land! I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Wasn’t there something about pressing buttons and changing settings and selections? Yes, I was half-sure that was right, but what was I supposed to be setting? Was it the printer, television, home computer network?
None of that sounded correct and time was running out. Looking out across time and space, I saw my other self entering the room where he was supposed to be. Oh, no, but I’d not done anything yet. What was going to happen?
I awoke looking for the answers in the room. But this wasn’t the right room? What was this room?
Why, it was my bedroom. But was that where I was supposed to be? I didn’t think that was right. I was supposed to be doing something, setting things up for my other self…
As anxiety unspooled and seeped out, I calmed and remembered, oh, that was just a dream. A very real feeling friggin’ dream.
A long and greatly involved dream in three parts entertained me last night. It seemed like it was about hopes, expectations, and relationships.
Part 1: the Catholic family.
In this, Mom had to go away. Although I was an adult, she worried about where I was going to stay and what I was going to do, standard concerned Mom reactions to change. I ended up with an offer to stay with a childhood friend’s family. Neighbors. Haven’t seen the guy in almost fifty years, but here he was, in my dream, along with his parents. His parents have passed away some time ago, BTW.
In this dream, they had a huge home. I wouldn’t deem it luxurious but enormous with a byzantine layout. Some rooms were like huge cement auditoriums or gymnasiums; others were small but with multiple levels.
My friend’s mother told me, “Do whatever you want here. Just act like it’s your house. We’re happy to have you here.”
While I appreciated the sentiments, I was leery of making myself an unwanted guest, so I tried being circumspect. Weirdly I wore off-white pajamas with narrow blue pinstripes the entire time. I thanked her, of course. After casual exploring, I found a large room with a small student desk, the kind seen in elementary school, where I set up my computer and sat down to write.
After I set up, she came by with her family. Only she spoke, though, telling me, “We’re going out. We’re going to be gone a while, so the house is all yours.” It felt like a huge responsibility, almost a burden, but I thanked her for her trust and hospitality. They left; I kept writing.
At some point, I grew aware that it was pouring rain and the onset of dusk outside. I decided to leave.
Part 2: the Porsche rally and restaurant.
I went into my hosts’ garage and found a car. A small and older sports car of some kind, I knew it as mine.
I drove out into the rain and down a driveway to a busy, winding multi-laned urban street. Small sports cars were passing, dropping revs and downshifting, and sometimes sliding, drivers catching spins as the car’s back end swung out on the slick asphalt.
I recalled then, that’s right, the town was hosting a Porsche Rally, with special emphasis on older Porsches and the Porsche Spyder.
Well, that explained it! I also saw a circa 1970 Lotus Elan go by. I wondered if they’d allowed it to participate in the Porsche event, or if serendipity had brought it to this time and place.
Pulling out into the driving rain, I drove carefully, wishing I had a Porsche like the stylish little cars I saw. As I came up one hill, I needed to slow substantially because a Bugatti Veyron had spun across the middle of the road. I wondered, what is an expensive exotic like that doing here? I then saw three more going by in the rain.
Bugatti Veyron from the net — not my car.
It was almost dark and I reached my destination, a crowded old restaurant where I was meeting friends. The menu was American-Immigrant fusion. I began with pasta with tomato sauce and meatballs, and then switched to chicken fried rice. We stood as we ate, and my food tasted sensational.
As I ate, a tall, thin man walked by. “Guess what,” he loudly said, “I saw jars of Ragu in the kitchen. You’ve been tricked! This sauce is not made here.”
My friends and I shrugged it off. Wherever the food was from, it was awesome.
Part 3: the Revolution
I piled into a car with four other men. One of them was driving. One was armed with a gun which was part of his head. I could see that it was loaded with one round bullet, like something you’d fire from a musket. I was pondering the intricacies of how you’d aim a gun like that, especially if the target is moving.
We parked and entered a small, dim theater. A small stage was set up on the far end in front of rows of padded metal folding chairs. About twenty people, mostly men, were present. All were early middle-aged or older, and all were white. I milled with a few people, chatting for several seconds, and then one man began talking. They were there to overthrow the government.
Well, hold on, I thought, uneasy. I’d been invited to this gathering, and it’s not what I thought it was going to be. Something about the way they were addressed struck me as a religious group. I eased myself to one side, thinking, how am I going to get out of here?
At that point, the man with the gun head fired. He pointed it somewhere else and not at me. I watched the round ball leave its barrel with a plume of white smoke.
Many people, including me, have experienced an anxiety dream, the kind of nocturnal event that seems to feed on the things bothering them and causes them to awaken in distress, thinking about ‘this horrible dream’. Well, last night’s dream felt like an antidote to such dreams.
It began weird, strange, and slow, with me being given clothes. The clothes were bizarre, especially the pants. White with wide legs and gold piping outlining their shape, they were made of some stiff leathery material. I was barely able to bend them. And they didn’t fit at all. Way too large.
Out on a rocky outcrop, I was supposedly doing other things but couldn’t because I put these pants on and said, “No way. There must be something else I can wear.” So I took them off and held them up, looking around for someone to talk to about my pants. Nobody seemed interested in what I was saying. I reached a point where I thought, you know what, I’m just going to toss these aside.
Someone came by and took the pants away. I was expecting them to provide me with a different pair. When none were forthcoming, I resigned myself to the jeans I wore. They fit fine and were in good shape, so I was okay with that.
Then, crack, I was suddenly lifted by a whirlwind. I’d barely began processing that when it delivered me to a piece of white machinery. It needed repaired, I saw, so, click, I had it apart. Then, click — with a blaze of yellow and red light, the machine roared to life, fixed.
I laughed with glee. Because I didn’t think I could fix it. But I did! And it wasn’t hard at all.
Fixing gave me confidence. I looked around; what else needed fixed? Bring it on.
Then I wondered about my injured foot. It has a ruptured tendon. Need to be careful, I reminded myself. Yes, because it gives out without warning, hurts like fire burning the bottom of my foot when it does, and I don’t want to make it worse before I see my doc.
A deep male said, “Don’t worry about your foot. Do what you want to do. Your foot is going to be fine. Don’t worry about it at all.”
That’s when I awoke, probably because Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) was singing for his breakfast. I rolled out of bed, energized by the dream still clinging to my thoughts. It left me feeling so optimistic. As I went around the bedroom doing things, an odor struck me. I almost froze, smelling, thinking, what is that? I know that smell. It’s familiar, but —
Another dream fragment returned to me. I’d been in a white convertible with a tan leather interior. I don’t know what brand it was, but it was a luxury car, and I was proud and excited about it. The car top was down. I’d just bought the car. Brand new, it had that new car smell.
And that’s what I’d smelled while walking around the bedroom.
I never saw any person in this dream. At a high elevation, I was looking and across a shallow valley. It was hazy with distance but I made out places terraced with book stones. Ponds dotted the landscape, along with colored patches such as pink, magenta, yellow, and various greens and browns, where I knew things were growing.
A voice said to me, “Take what you want. It’s all yours.”
I replied, scoffing, “I don’t need all of that.”
They insisted, “Take what you want.”
So, I took it all. Then I broke it up and gave it away to others, including family, friends, and strangers. I kept one small piece for myself, and that made me happy.
First, I was working for a friend I used to work for, Laura. She was a terrific boss, perhaps the best I ever had. Certainly in the top three.
I was injured in the dream and forced to wear a cast on my left arm. It struck me as an unusual cast but I can’t provide any details. Encumbering me, it was forcing me to do things in unusual ways.
Laura was at her desk, watching and talking. I suddenly had a brainstorm about how the cast I wore could be modified to make it easier to deal with the limitations it imposed. Laura began talking about it a split second after the idea came to me. We both started babbling about with growing excitement. Calling me to her desk, she said, “Take out the notebook from the inside pocket on the left side of my jacket.” I did, and handing her the small brown book. She opened it to a blank page and started writing.
With a dream shift, I was now in line. I needed a new vehicle. Five people were ahead of me. A female cashier was helping us. I saw a white Jaguar convertible with a red interior. It seated four. I decided, that’s what I’m buying.
The cashier told the first person in line, “We don’t have any small cars left.” Then she called out to the rest of us, “Is anyone in line interested in any car besides a small car.”
Raising my hand, I responded, “I am. I’m buying that white Jaguar.”
The purchase was done with dream speed. As part of my purchase, I was given a model of the car. They went off to get it ready for me to drive away. I went to a coffee shop and purchased a cup of coffee in a paper cup with a plastic lid.
A hard wind was blowing. I needed to set my coffee down but worried about the wind blowing it over, even though I was in an office. I opened a file drawer and set the coffee in there, thinking that the drawer will protect it from the wind. Then I set the little white Jaguar on top of it.
The wind immediately blew the little car off the coffee cup lid. I wasn’t surprised. I said, “That’s exactly how I expected that to go.”
I dreamed that I was discussing the mathematical order of operations with several other people. Of all of the subjects, events, and worries I can remember dreaming about, this seems like one of the strangest. Sitting, I kept saying that it’s a matter of precedence and you start with things in parentheses or brackets first, as if that was in dispute.
First, I had this dream about sharing my apple pie with a young woman. As she was eating my crust, my wife came along. I went off to talk to her.
My wife and I ended up in what seemed to be a living room. Other family members were vaguely int the area. But my wife came to me and said, “I want you to look at my colors and tell me what you see.”
And I was all, “Huuuhhh?”
Other than being Caucasian as my wife, this dream wife didn’t look at all like RL wife, even though she’d started out as RL wife. Her hair was darker, heavier, and longer, and she had this pale, long, face with bright red lippy.
Second, she was dressed like a goth.
Third, she was holding up some kind of panel in front of her.
I thought the panel was a mirror at first. Then I saw that it reflected with nothing but swirled with images that reminded me of melting steel. I was trying to answer my wife’s request to tell you what colors I was seeing and describe her clothes, skin, and hair. She unleashed a heavy exasperated sigh at me and said, “Not those colors.”
Then I saw the mirror thingy was changing. Yellows and oranges were emerging, along with lesser spots of apple green and pine green. There was also a stretched out blotch of purple that was so dark, it was almost black.
I described these things to her, and then, somehow, I knew the colors had to do with her health, and told her, “I think you can change these colors. Just think of the color that you want to be, and that’ll happen.”
She was doubtful but almost immediately, a soothing fair blue swept across the mirror.
I had a cavalcade of dreams last night. One stood out more strongly than the rest. I was in the military for over twenty years. Not infrequently, I find myself in the military again in dreams. It was so again last night.
In this one, I’d been selected for a new position. I was an E7 master sergeant, which is what I retired as. My predecessor, training me, was an E9 chief master sergeant. He was telling me that this position was a catapult to promotion if I do it right, and he thought I’d do it right. Hearing all that pleased me.
Then he gave me a black attaché case. “You’ll always be carrying this,” he said. “You are now the Russian nuke guy. That’s what everyone will start calling you.”
I’d had some idea of what I’d be stepping into even though it’d been a pretty close-hold process. They’d checked my security clearance and records, noted that I’d been on the Personnel Reliability Program because I’d controlled nukes. My top-secret clearance with all the tags of SI, SCI, TK and TQ that came with being associated with a covert intelligence program pleased them, too. Now I got why.
The Chief was explaining that I would be regularly briefed about anything and everything associated with Russia’s nuclear weapons. Locations, capabilities, changes, updates, whatever. Everything from personnel, process, and equipment. I’d be told everything, constantly. The idea was that I would be the national command authority’s primary go-to if any questions about Russia’s nukes came up.
Then he began taking me around offices, introducing me as ‘the new Russian nuke guy’, explaining that I was replacing him. Everyone shook my hand and welcomed me.
The dream ended while I was still in that process.
I have no idea what it all means but I found it weirdly reassuring, because I’d been selected. I was needed. That kind of thing feels validating, you know?
I was in a small corner office with three other men. We were cold as hell and huddling for warmth. I’d made a sort of bed and had a thin blanket. One of the other men snuck in to spoon me. I was like, fine, I need the warmth, we need the warmth.
Feeling him shivering, I got up to find a better blanket. I’d just found a heavier one for him when the other two men returned. One told me that he’d lined up a job for me, so come with him. As he spoke, I was staring out a window. A gray dawn was breaking over a crusty snowscape
I went into the other area with him where I was surprised that it was teeming with energetic people mostly in their twenties and thirties. I was introduced to them as their new co-worker. But what was my job? They were going to figure that out. The man who hired me took me back to where I’d be working, showed me a modern desk that was my ‘station’, and gave a new iPhone. Then he told me to go with him for orientation.
We rushed around the busy building. Several stories high, it struck me as tres modern with multiple mysterious and exotic-looking projects going on. At one point, we entered what was some kind of space vehicle simulator. A cockpit was on one end with seating for about twenty. I walked around, and in doing so, it shifted forward, startling me. The others laughed, calling me a newby.
My boss disappeared into a noisy crowd. I realized that I’d forgotten my phone back at my station and wanted to retrieve it. I asked for and received directions but became thoroughly lost. As a crowd of people left a meeting room, one recognized me and asked if I’d been to HR yet. I admitted that I hadn’t, so she told me where to go. Once again, I became lost, and entered rooms where I was forced to ask others for directions. Everyone was unstintingly helpful, encouraging, and engaging.
Noticing signs I’d not seen before, I followed them back to my zone. Once there, I got my iPhone. My boss was there and told me that I needed to check my emails because meetings had been set up for me. Using the phone, I began reading my emails and learning where I needed to go, and then found that the phone would tell me exactly when to go, and where, but I still remained clueless about what I was supposed to be doing.
Michael Seidel, writer 