The Sister Dream
Wasn’t sure what to call this dream but the sister aspect spoke to me more in reflection.
First, it was me as a younger man with a car I once owned, a silver 1985 Mazda RX-7 SE that I bought used in California in 1991. I had parked it at a familiar convenience store in West Virginia, where I was visiting. Dream perspective changed: I looked at the parking lot with the car parked and me walking away from it, toward the store, as it could be viewed from the store’s security camera.
Another car drove up and parked on top of my car. This car was an old maroon Datsun sedan. Beater was an apt description. A young woman drove with another young woman as passenger. Both were white. They were laughing, laughing at her parking effort, laughing at being on top of my car, laughing at wrecking my car.
I stormed over there and shouted at her in my coldest, angriest voice. I told her that I owned her. I would see her in jail. Contempt crackled through every syllable. The driver sat in the car, holding the steering wheel, and crying. Her friend tried to talk me into being more compassionate, but I remained relentless. I called the police.
Scene change. I was driving the same car. A young white man drove an old white car into the side of my car.
I was livid and incredulous, thinking, the same car has been hit twice. I stalked to the offending white car, yelling at the driver. My brother-in-law showed up. He told me he’d take care of it because the driver was his son.
I was stunned. That was his son? I didn’t recognize him. My BIL went on, “Your sister just inherited some money. It should cover the damage. I’ll sign the check over to you.” He took out yellowed parchment paper and showed me the check. It was for $950. “Will that cover it?” he asked. Yes, I replied.
My BIL signed the check and then used scissor and cut it away from the rest of the document. As this happened, I wondered, who die? Who did my sister inherit this from? I saw that the document was an itemized list of household objects in large letters.
I took the check and began crying. I stood in my dream crying my eyes out. Then I decided to go see my sister.
I found my sister at home. She told me she needed a ride to get somewhere. I told her that I would give her the ride. I took her someplace. A party seemed to be going on. After dropping her off, I returned home. I awoke later in a panic because I thought I’d overslept and needed to pick up my sister and bring her home. As I rushed about, scrambling to leave, another sister asked where I was going. I told her I was going to pick up S. She replied, “She’s already home. Someone else gave her a ride.” I went to find my sister and confirm she was there. On the way, I stopped and peed in the bathroom. Then I looked in a bedroom and saw my sister asleep in a bed.
Thursday’s Theme Music
Hello, sojourners, here we go, another Thursday, the final Thursday of December and 2021. That’s a lot to put on any day of the week, to be the last of its kind. Let’s hope Thursday endures.
It’s December 20 and 33 degrees F here in Ashland, up from the overnight low of 24. Snow…yes, we have some. Want some? Snow flurries expected today but so too is a high of 40. The sun popped in with an early morning show at 7:39 AM before yielding the sky to clouds. When we reach 4:48 PM, the world will turn away from the sun again, putting its reach beyond our horizons.
I’m singing along to “Coconut” by Harry Nillson as it plays in the morning mental music stream. The trigger was the breakfast oatmeal breakfast ritual where a last-minute ingredient was coconut. Coconut went quite well with the chopped figs and dates, cranberries, walnuts, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds already residing in there, along with brown sugar. The song is a fun novelty song about being sick, calling a doctor, and a lime and a coconut. Good singalong song as the lyrics are darn simple.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and the vax and boosters when you can. We still have 796 people requiring a shot to reach 80% in my zip code. It’s slowly trickling down as cases shoot up.
Here’s the music. Time for the coffee quest. Cheers
The Cougar Dream
My wife and I were in an austere but large, yet old, cement apartment. The walls were deep pink. So was the ceiling and furniture but the floor was burnt gold. Furniture was scant – bed, table, one stick chair. The ceiling was low and the lumens from the few lights weren’t high.
It was night. Awakening and turning on the lights, I discovered a huge cougar prowling the room. The animal’s presence shocked and terrified me. The cougar was closer to me than my wife. I told her, “Go open the doors so it can get out.” Meanwhile, I made myself big to keep the animal from attacking me, raising my arms over my head. Extending that thinking, I climbed backwards up on the bed. Picking up the pillows, I held them over my head.
The cougar watched all of this with quizzical interest. It was an enormous, healthy, beautiful animal. Meanwhile, my wife was walking around and talking. I kept telling her, “Open the door, let the lion out,” but she seemed more interested in trying to make friends with it. The animal moved away from me. With its back to me, I jumped down and shooed it toward a door. Just as I got it out, two men opened the door and let it back in. They were joking about letting my cat out while I told them, “No, no, no, we were trying to get it out.”
I then left. Outside was bright and sunny. I was on a narrow, sandy beach. Turquoise water lapped gently to my right. Nobody else was around. I walked a while, enjoying the breeze, sounds, and sunlight, before stepping into the warm, tranquil water and bathing myself.
I shared this dream with my wife. She noted the cougar never threatened anyone. I agreed; I saw it as a threat, but it never threatened anyone. She said that bathing myself was a sign of cleansing myself. I told her, after encountering that cougar, I needed to clean myself off.
A Short Tale
He sipped his beer, a locally brewed IPA, and then set the mug down. “I came to Ashland for love in 1972. I’d met this woman in Ohio. She lived here. So I followed her here.”
“Did you marry her?”
“No. We were together for ten years. Then she moved out and we moved on. She lives in Tacoma now. Married, with children.” He smiled toward the wall. “We remain on good terms. We talk to one another on the phone. Once in a while.”
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Welcome to Tuesday, December 28, 2021. It’s 28 degrees F out there, so wear your warmest sandals.
Sunrise came at 7:39 AM, showing that the snow is still out there. Had fifteen inches on the ground yesterday. We shoveled off the walk and driveway and removed the snow wall the plow had kindly built for us. This morning, all was covered by a fresh two inches. Everything was closed, canceled, or shut yesterday in our little town — well, everything except grocery stores, hospitals, and emergency services. They all functioned. It’ll get up to 36 F today, so we might get some relief if the weather system can move on the clouds and let the sun in. After sunset at 4:46 PM, the temperature is expected to drop locally to 19 degrees F. Yes, that’s chilly for us.
These snow levels are not consistent across the area. We’re in a valley. Houses are on the valley floor and up the mountain slopes. My house sits at about 1800 feet. Some friends higher than me reported that they had two feet of snow. Others who are lower in the valley received two to three inches. Up the Interstate twenty minutes where the valley is broad and wide, a buddy reported he had two inches. Three thousand feet higher than me, down the road ten minutes, they received sixty inches.
Weirdly, I have a song by the Beatles in the morning mental music stream. “I Feel Fine” came out in 1964. I remember neighbor girls playing a 45 RPM record of the song on a little pink and white portable phonograph on their back patio but that was a few years later, probably in 1966. I guess that because, while I was young, we’d moved to a new neighborhood then, our fourth one in five years. A lot of moves, houses, and schools, but it helps organize and structure my memories, if you know what I mean. I suspect the song is housed in the stream because my wife and I were talking about The Beatles with friends last week. My wife confesses that she didn’t like the Beatles. Never thought them that great. Which, shrug, is fine, because tastes are different, as are choices and circumstances. That’s life, which is another song now playing in my head (covered by Frank Sinatra), but we’ll go into that another day. I think “I Feel Fine” is in my head because I like that opening bit of feedback they incorporated. I’ve gone with a live version of the song so that feedback note is missing (ironic, right), but I enjoy flashing back to these live performances of groups and the changes between now and then so sharpy etched. Guess it feeds my nostalgia.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the jabs and boosters as needed. Speaking of getting, I’m getting some coffee. Make it hot and black.
Here’s the tune. Cheers
The Sex Connection Dream
I started out with a petite dark-haired white woman. She and I were going around on inspections of odd places. Two stood out: a giant mailbox — I mean, it was huge, we were little people walking around inside it — and a large cement room with a single metal door. At each place, we answered questions on a piece of pape. At the end, I was given my results, which was on a large scroll. I had missed thirty-one out of thirty-one questions because my response required me to include something of the subject in my answer. For example, I was told in the dream, if the question was about toilet paper, my answer must have a piece of toilet paper attached to it.
Well, I thought that was stupid. Then I was angry. Then I blamed the woman I’d been with because I’d been following her example. Then I accepted that it was my own fault because I have free will and should have done better. Then I said screw that.
Next, another woman and I were about to enter a room. We knew hostile people were within. The small-statured woman — middle-aged, blonde, and white — was armed with a small machine gun. I picked up a double-barreled anti-aircraft gun. Normally this would be a problem because it’s a big, heavy weapon and I’m a small guy, but for the dream I was suddenly four times my normal size, dwarfing the little lady with me. I told her that I was tired of those people and if they attacked me, I would shoot and kill them. Then I asked her to hold the door open for me so I could go in.
She had trouble with the door. I hovered by her, making suggestions about turning the knob, pulling the door, and how to hold the door open while she still held onto the machine gun. We entered the room; it was empty.
I then left and heard about these six people who claimed to drink an elixir and then travel telepathically to have sex with people in another dimension. I encountered one woman who was part of the six. “So you’re real,” I said, “and you can really do this.” As she nodded and answered, “Yes,” I went on, “I’d heard about your group, but I thought you guys were all just crazy.”
She explained to several of us how it was done and what was involved, and that is, while they’re in a meditative state on this end, they each inhabit another person in another dimension (or maybe it was just in another time period — they weren’t sure) while the other had sex. They said the others were willing participants because the travelers’ presence enhanced the sexual experience.
I had a number of questions and put them to her, like, do the hosts definitely know they’re there, can you experience things from the others’ perspective, and can you control them?
She told me that the others knew of her presence. She could feel them when she started getting close to them, then see them as shadows, which then transformed into figures of white light. She knew that they could control them a little but had never pressed the issue. She and her group had taught the others about the elixir and meditation so both groups could have sex and transport themselves at the same time, amplifying the effect. Yeah, that didn’t make sense to me.
But I was intrigued. The dream got a little weird, because I could hear this woman talking to other people, but I had gone off and was following myself. From the dream perspective, I sometimes had a ‘split screen’ while I otherwise swapped perspectives between me and her.
She told the others that I was going to try and that I would succeed because she’d felt me awakening as she explained what they did. Hearing that, I found some elixir. I was leery of drinking it because I didn’t know what was in it. She explained that to the others. After that, I took a small sip. As soon as I did, I became aware of shadows moving nearby. I was surprised at how quick and easy it was.
Dream end.
Michael Seidel, writer 