Three Parts of Cilia: A Dream

Cilia is a friend. Retired from one profession, she’s now a professor and department head at a local university. I know her through my wife. She’s mostly her friend.

First, there was Cilia and the book. I was outside with a group, walking on a sidewalk downtown, when I encountered Cilia. She had a book. Tremendously old and maroon, with one of those warped cloth covers with its title in faded gold print, it was about almost four inches thick and six inches square. I’d heard of this old book. When she showed it to me, I asked with delight, “May I see it?” After she passed it over, I opened the book. The pages inside were very thin. Many were separated from the spine and loose. But there were also metal toys embedded in the book: a steam train engine, car, artillery piece, truck, along with others that I can’t remember. These simple pieces were painted with silver, black, red, green, and yellow enamel paint.

As everyone was looking at it, talking, they tried to turn pages or touch the toys. These was causing the book to come apart, forcing me to tell everyone to be careful before finally ordering everyone to stop touching it. As I returned things to their places and carefully closed the book to hand it to Cilia, noticed she seemed very upset. As I apologized, she departed, tight-lipped.

In the second dream with Cilia, I stopped by her house. She and her husband had friends over for dinner. I didn’t want to impose so I began to leave. Her husband came out and gave me a huge steak, telling me that it was extra, and since I was already there, I might as well have it. I sat down out in the living room and ate it with my hands as the rest continued eating in the dining room. I could hear parts of their conversation but nothing really concerning me. The huge steak was fantastic, cooked just right. As I finished it, eating aroun fatty parts, Cilia came out to ask me if I wanted to take the steak with me if I couldn’t finish it, then was surprised that it was already gone.

The third part of my Cilia dream had Cilia coming out as gay. She had a female partner in addition to her male husband. I was really surprised. Beyond that, she had striking green eye shadow on, very contrary to her usual reserved appearance, with a matching green shirt, with her hair cut in a Dorothy Hamil wedge, and dark red, both quite different from her actual appearance.

We were in her house. A dozen others were there, all women. I was the only male. The gathering had broken into smaller groups. People were talking about math or literature. A woman to my right was asking questions about sines and cosines. Someone noticed a painted ceramic plate hanging on the wall. The plate had four handles. I said, “Is that a volksmarching award?” Rising, I went over and confirmed, yes, it had the usual markings of a volksmarch on it, as Cilia confirmed that she used to volksmarch. I did, too, I told her.

Someone took the plate off the wall to look at it. One handle broke off. As I took the plate from that woman, along with the handle, I told Cilia, “Oh, no, your plate broke.” As I was speaking, a second handle broke off. While we reacted to that, the third handle dropped off. I said, “Cilia, the handles fell off your plate. We can probably glue them back on, but there’s only one left.” Then the fourth fell off in my hand, breaking into two pieces. As I gawked at that, I said, “Never mind. That one broke, too.”

Per the plan, we then left the house to go have something to eat. Then, like a play whose acts had changed, we were returning. Although I’d had a good time, I felt it was time to leave. Cilia though, presented me with two small glasses, declaring, “An aperitif for you, Michael.” It was pale green. I took the glasses, questioning, “Two?” As she replied, “Yes,” I asked, “Aren’t aperitifs served before the meal?” But I drank them, then prepared to take my leave. First, though, I’d apparently borrowed a light brown leather belt from her with a metal tip. I took that off to give to her. Then, also, I’d borrowed a matching light brown leather jacket from her which I’d been wearing.

That’s where the Cilia dreams ended.

Maggots in My Hair – A Dream

I was inside somewhere. After shaking my head, I looked down and discovered maggots on the counter. With a few seconds of thought, reconnecting what’d just taken place, I realized they must have been in my hair.

Horrified, I rushed to a mirror and confirmed, yes, there were maggots in my hair. I struggled to understand how they got there: from a cat sleeping by my head maybe? Then I rushed to tell my wife. Occupied with something else, she didn’t take notice. Dismissing her, I hurried to the bathroom to shower and wash my hair. When I checked the mirror again, all the maggots were gone. They’d fallen out onto the floor and counter. I started collecting them to dispose of them while promising myself, shower, wash your hair, hurry.

Dream end.

The Positive Energy Dream

Many vivid dreams were experienced and recorded last night, enough that I decided to take them in groups.

Most memorable was the positive energy dream, which is the second-shortest dream remembered from the night. It featured three young naked women of color and me. We were always in bed, not doing anything but touching and talking. The third segment was sharpest in recall.

The twenty-year-old woman, with caramel skin like those little wrapped, square chews, was softly rounded and sweet. She’d been telling me about her life and hopes. Telling her to turn over so I could do something, she presented her naked back to me. I ran my thumbnail along her spine from the top. When I reached her small, I stopped and pressed my index finger lightly against her while saying, “I just opened you up so positive energy can flow into you. It’s going to keep flowing into you, helping you in your life.”

That’s where the dream ended. Every time I recalled that sequence, I feel a new surge of energy and feel refreshed. It’s a wild sensation.

Tuesday’s Theme Music

I’ve been feeling a change in energy for some months. We’ll see whether this woo-woo sensation of being inordinately optimistic and hopeful is founded in reality or the first stages of dementia or senility. After a particularly rousing dream set, the sensations were sharper today, leading to lyrics from the Spacehog song, “In the Meantime”.

And in the end, we shall achieve in time
The thing they call divine

When all the stars will smile
For me
When all is well and well is all for all
And forever after
Maybe in the meantime wait and see

h/t to Genius.com

In the meantime, my mind proceeded to bring the song fully to stream. I hope you enjoy it and find a worthy choice as theme music for this Tuesday morning in 2021. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and vaccinate. Cheers

A Building Dream

I was in a busy, busy place. The people there were all familiar in the dream and yet nobody from this life. Most of us, including me, were working on computers, engaged in some mutual project. For my role, I realized that we were trying to establish a structure. Some other element was attempting to steal our work to undermine our goals. Realizing that, I had an epiphany. Working faster, I established a domain, “In my city”, set up protections and rights, and established myself as administrator. I attempted to communicate what I was doing to everyone else, but it was so noisy and busy that my information was lost in the wash. Feeling that I was right but ahead of the rest, I kept at it.

Then, someone else suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, no, the opposition has already taken that domain. They already have it.” As moans and groans blew across the room, I said, “No. That’s not them. I have it. I created the domain. Don’t worry.”

Three Mini-Dreams

The dreams had variety tonight. The essence of each:

  1. In a paddleboat on smooth water, circling a larger boat.
  2. Turned on by a gorgeous young naked woman.
  3. Tracking and registering the results of clinical vaccine trials.

The paddleboat one was shortest. It was also funny to me; I’d dreamed the other night that I was battling muddy water, a not-infrequent dream experience for me, but didn’t have any sort of water conveyance. Alone, I was in one of those little boats that you propel by cycling, as if you’re on a bicycle. Instead of turning wheels on ground, paddles through water move you on. It’s white and blue, in such good shape that it could be new. The water surface is a gorgeous dark indigo glass on a blue-blessed day. Sunshine and silence abound. A green tree line provides a distant horizon.

Paddling along without issue, I knew in the dream where I was going although on awakening, I don’t have any idea what the mission was. In the dream, I came alongside a structure. It’d arrive out of nowhere. I started paddling along the structure. White and red, it could have been a large, sprawling boat. Down by the water line, its structure offered a zigzagging series of platforms. As I took them in, I grasped that I needed to dock at one of them. Then I could just climb to where I wanted.

The young woman dream aroused me. First, I walked into a room where I found a young woman changing clothes. A big room, it was essentially empty and bland. Young, dusky, and voluptuous, the young woman’s thick hair hung straight down her back. She was totally naked. I was chagrinned to have come in on her. She was matter-of-fact. My wife was present and seemed indifferent to my arrival.

Later, my wife and I are in bed in our jammies. I’m spooning her. We say at the same time, “You’re so warm.” Feeling my erection pressing against her, she asked with an amused look over her shoulder, “Really?” Laughing, I answer, “Really.”

I’m then in bed with a friend, again in jammies. I’m spooning him. We both say, “You’re so warm,” and then laugh.

I once again walk into the room where the young woman has become naked while changing clothes. She’s alone. I smile at her and act flustered. She calls me on walking in on her, accusing me of being transparent and deliberate. I feebly try denying it, but can’t pull that off.

The final dream finds me in a secure building at the day’s end. It’s a cluttered and dark place. Secure filing cabinets with dials to open them are all over. Like others there, I’m getting ready to eave for the day when some shipments come in.

Two are for us. They’re vials. One set of vials have been used in clinical trials while the other are unused. Everything are numbered by lots. Both need to be signed into logs, which involves re-opening the safes. A woman, my boss, and I volunteer to do it. After the others leave, I tell her that I can do it all. Hesitating, she asks, “Are you sure?” “Yes,” I answer, so she leaves.

The vials are red, with a sharp needle attached to an end. As I handle the returned products, I accidently scratch my finger with one. Or did I? Even as I’m worrying, I’m not sure it happened. I’m also concerned about which set of vials it is. At first, I think that it was the used vials, which increases my anxiety. Then I investigate and conclude, no, that were the unused vials. Then, checking numbers again, I decide that it was the used ones, and then decide, no, they were the unused ones. I’m not sure at all but, again, there’s no real sign that I actually did anything to myself.

While I’m worrying and fretting, I’ve been working, opening the safes, making the entries in the logs, and securing the vials. But then, weirdly, I don’t know how to document that I opened the safes. I think I know what I’m supposed to do but can’t find the forms. I’m rifling through files, trying to find them. A friendly co-worker comes back in. I tell him that I can’t find the right forms. He starts searching; he can’t find them, either. As he’s looking, I’m babbling on about how I used to know this, and then recall more details. The co-worker has become irritated because he was just being friendly. Now he’s involved in a problem. Then I remember, oh, we’ve been looking inside the files when they’re attached to the outside of the safes, of course. Of course! How can you annotate what time you’ve closed the safe when the safe is already closed? How can it be verified as closed and locked if it’s not on the outside.

Others have returned to work and are asking what we’re doing. I shrug them off. By now, the co-worker is angry and embarrassed because he was looking inside. It makes him look like he doesn’t know what he was doing.

Dreams end.

Watery Dreams

Another night of crazy dreams. In many scenes, I was engaged in traversing muddy water. Sometimes I was in a car, other times I was swimming, but there were times when I was also walking. The water was consistently muddy, but was creeks, rivers, or floods. Past the water, the dream settings varied from streets to fields, but were mostly streets. I never felt threatened or disturbed, although I sometimes became lost and had to backtrack. My attitude was more of, “Oh, here I go again, well, let’s get this done with.” In fact, I seemed buoyant. (Yeah, sorry for that word choice. Clearly I’m not, right?)

I was mostly alone during these scenes. My youngest sister showed up twice, a cousin showed up once, and friends showed up a few times. Between coping with the fast-moving and often rising water, I would do other things: eat, buy a new car, look at a new house, and visit with people, talking about their jobs or their love lives. A strange mix. If you take the position that everyone and everything in the dream represents some aspect of me, then me mind was trying to address everything! After yesterday’s events in Washington, D.C., it’s not really a surprising flow of dreams. The water is muddy and it’s rising, but I’m okay, I’m telling myself.

Hope the rest of you are okay, too, though I have my doubts about the people invested in the Trump reality. They don’t seem okay.

Dream Slices

To say that I didn’t have dreams last night isn’t correct. Nor is it correct to say that I don’t remember them. More correctly, I don’t have sharp, coherent memories of them.

I have slices of remembered dreams. One involved cars. I’d gotten out of one car. We’re at like a busy outdoor fair. Someone had been driving me. Another couple arrived in a car. I notice it, a convertible. They have the top retracted. A man I meet says something about it being a special car. Someone else asked why. I replied, “It’s an expensive car, a Maserati, isn’t it?” The man replied, “Very good, you noticed. You know your cars.”

I’m then off to be driven away again. I comment that the car that I was in was a Jaguar. “I’ve looked into buying one,” I said to the driver. He’s become quiet. I wonder why. He was smiling and talkative before. When we walk around the car, I discover that the car I’m to enter is a glistening black Mercedes stretch limo. Then, taking a more focused look, I realize that it’s extremely long, maybe forty feet. I then realize that’s probably why the driver became quiet. How did I mix up a Jaguar with a Mercedes stretch limo?

In another slice, I want to order a beer. That beer isn’t available; “Only one kind of beer is available here,” I’m told. “I know, I know,” I reply, accepting an opened bottle of that beer.

Then there is a bizarre sequence involving a water spray, lush green grass, a water sprinkler, and a hose. I’m soaked. I have both ends of the hose, one in each hand; it seems like I’m holding both of those ends up to keep the sprinkler from running so that the giant water spray can do its job. I don’t know what its job is now, although I knew in the dream.

Altogether, it seemed like a lot of unfocused chaos. Maybe that’s because I don’t remember enough, or maybe it was just chaos. Seems odd that three different makes of cars were seen, but all of them were foreign luxury cars, one Italian, one German, and one English.

Another Writing Dream

This one was long, complex, and layered. After thinking about all of it (an exercise in itself), just sharing a few segments.

I was at a writing retreat on an island. At one point, I was in a room with other writers. We all stopped to take a break. Many were out on the balcony in sunshine, watching fog roll in. Thinking about joining them, I went to the refrigerator to get a beer. The frig was fully stocked but I decided to pass and went back to writing.

Later, I took a break from writing, left my room, and went running around the island. It wasn’t a big item and writers were everywhere. I realized that’s how I’d been spending my time, writing, with breaks to run/get exercise and sunshine, and I was enjoying it.

I decided it was time to leave the island. I was almost done with my work in progress and decided I’d finish it elsewhere. After making initial arrangements for my flight out, I followed up at the front desk. An old but big white man, who was the owner, worked the desk. He asked me if I wanted food for my trip out. He spoke in a low, garbled voice. I was constantly asking him to repeat himself, leaning forward to hear him. He shoved a piece of paper at me and a new yellow pencil. “Fill this out!”

Looking at the paper, I answered, “Fill what out? There’s nothing there.” After pulling back the piece of paper, he realized that a form that was supposed to be attached was missing, found one, passed it to me, and then turned to helping others.

I couldn’t complete the form because the pencil wasn’t sharpened. New, it’d never been sharpened. Instead of trying to get the old man’s help, I found a used pencil. As I filled out the form, I discovered the food I was ordering would cost $1500, an amount I found shocking. I asked the old man, “How long is this flight going to take?” He didn’t answer. I decide in the dream that it takes a lot to leave writer’s island.

Paperwork done, I walked out of the office and down an outside walk. A young female writer, white, short dark hair, short in stature, came up and put her arm around my waist. I reciprocated with an arm around her shoulder. She and I walked like this, with her telling me how much she liked my writing and admired me.

There’s a period of driving around. I’m a passenger. The young female writer is the driver. She keeps going the wrong way down streets, concerning me. It’s only after the dream that I wonder how there’s so many cars and roads there when the retreat was originally a small island.

I realize I’m carrying half a book. A classic, it’s literally torn in half, with the final half missing. Someone asks about it. I explain that it was a gift from a friend, a joke. He told me that whenever he asks me how I’m doing, I always answer that I’m about half finished. He thought it was finished to give me half of a published book.

Later, I’m worried. I don’t remember packing my clothes, computer, etc. I’ve already checked out but we’re back by the office. I stop by and ask the old man if I can check my room to see if I left anything behind. He gives me the keys and says, “Help yourself.” I go to the wrong room. Realizing that my room number was six, I find and enter it. It’s still the wrong room. I remember that my room was up two flights.

I go up to the right room. My baggage is there. Everything is packed. As I’m walking around, looking, just to be certain, another writer enters. We chat while I’m searching the room. I find a large cache of papers behind the desk. They appear to have fallen there. Drawing them out, I realize they’re old and handwritten, and they’re not mine. As I comment on that, the other writer starts crumpling them up and throwing them away. I ask him why he’s doing that, and then follow up, “Don’t you want to read other writers to see what they’re doing?” He stops trashing the papers and begins trying to uncrumple everything, which makes me laugh.

I decide to shower and change clothes, but I leave the room door open. After leaving the shower, while I’m toweling off, I discover a young doe in the room. It’s missing the top half of its head. It’s bloodless but like its head has been sawn off above its eyes and its brain scooped out. Friends enter to tell me good-bye. I wrap a towel around my waist. I’m about to warn them about the deer when one friend mentions it, making a joke. I’m surprised; the deer is completely whole and fine. I wondered why I thought it was missing part of its head, and then decide I’m always looking for the worse, even when it’s not there.

That’s where the dream ended. As mentioned in the beginning, it was complex, and offered a lot to unpack.

The Security Lawnmower

I was helping others create security devices. That’s how it was put in the dream. It was a firm, and we were working outside, in the world. My security device ended up looking like a lawnmower chassis, the sort with a little gas engine that you push and walk behind. There was no engine, handle, or wheels, just that shape, from below. Hope you get the visual from this explanation. The kicker was that it was huge, and high up in the sky.

I pointed it out to people, laughing about its lawnmower resemblance. “I didn’t realize that when I created it,” I said. Then I went on to tell them that it would perpetually filter the world against security threats, and never come down. Then they showed and told me about their security devices.

Weirdest thing about this dream is that I had three other dreams. In them, I’d look up, and there was my security lawnmower. I laugh even now remembering that.

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