Sometimes, it all goes so well, and it’s such a glorious, uplifting, satisfying experience, that he’s amazed that he’s permitted to sit and explore ideas and characters, spinning lies, and calling them stories.
A Multi-layered Dream
I was young, middle-aged, in my thirties, happy, confident, relaxed. I encountered a diverse dreamscape of buildings, floods, people, and events.
A young boy saving kittens was met several times. He never spoke. Seemed perhaps four. His features and complexion changed. He was never of one color, one ethnicity, but different each time that we met. I worried about him so I would seek him out.
Because a deluge was underway. A swollen black and gray sky loomed above. Flood waters were rising through valleys and ravines. I worried about the kittens and the boy. Gray, black, white kittens. They were newborns, fitting into the child’s hand. At first he had four gray kittens. Then he had four gray and four black. The third time he and I met, he had three each, gray, white, and black.
I’d go find him and learned that he liked to hang out in shallow gullies. I talked to him, questioning what he was going to do, and told him my worries about protecting the kittens. He listened and didn’t speak but pointed. I realized with relief that others were caring for the boy. He wasn’t alone, and the kittens were burrowing into tunnels. I never seen anything like it, but I immediately understood that they would be safe.
Through it all, despite worries, I was relaxed, confident, happy.
Interspersed with checking on the boy and his kittens, I was embedded in a ramshackle, old, cluttered office building, a red-brick form follows function design three stories tall, with lots of windows. Situated on the third floor, I looked over a long, grassy lawn. A young woman out there took directions from people in the building. Waking has robbed me of understanding of her role, but at one point in the dream, I wrote lengthy instructions for her, using a large sheet of cardboard and a black magic marker. My plan was to go out there and post it by her, sticking in the ground so that it was vertical. These were supposedly providing her course corrections based on my observations of all transpiring.
After writing the instructions, I decided not to post them and set them aside. But, surprise, the young woman — white as Caspar, short, with curley dark hair and a warm smile — came up, talking to me, and then said, “Oh, you’re the man who wrote the instructions.” I asked, “How’d you know that? I never posted them?” Looking at them beside me, she said, “I saw them from where I was. They made sense. Thanks for writing them.” I was surprised and delighted that she knew of them and pleased by her comments.
I’d been doing other things, drafting missives and instructions, making phone calls throughout all of this, preparing, because we were going through the evacuation stages. One aspect was I was dealing with multiple issues and was achieving impressive results. By finding and contacting quality assurance in various departments, providing them feedback and suggestions, and sometimes making a complaint, things were being fixed for me.
Others had noticed and finally, a swarthy, slender man approached me. Much younger than me, in his early twenties, he inquired about how I’d fixed something. I told him that I’d lobbied the QA function in that department, and they’d worked with their people to improve things.
Other things went on — like the young woman approaching me and checking on the boy and his kittens — and then it was time for me to leave. As I prepared, the young man returned, pleased and proud, telling me about how he’d used my guidance to fix something, and how, now that he knew to do this, he was going to fix everything.
I educated him that you can’t go to that same QA for other things, explaining, “Every department has a QA. Each must be individually contacted and the problems for that department brought to their attention. They will fix them.”
He thought about this and then nodded understanding, a little down that he had much more to do than he realized. I told him that I had confidence in him that he would do it. He brightened at that, and then I picked up my black bag and set off.
Dream end.
Frieday’s Wandering Thought
He enjoyed people watching. Regulars were given backstories as their habits and details were observed and conversations they had with others were overhead.
One twentyish woman always wore a jean jacket lined with wool. An ordinary jacket except she wore it every day. This was during summer, during the day, during times when the temperature tiptoed up through ninety to one hundred degrees F. Yes, she was inside, where air conditioning sometimes made it feel like we huddled in shacks as we went ice fishing. But she never removed it, always wore it.
Imagination began fabricating reasons for her jacket. It could be fashion commitment. Perhaps a medical condition? Maybe the jacket provided her with extraordinary powers or protected her. There was also the possibility that the jacket gave her form. Removing the jacket would reveal that she had no body beneath it, exposing her as a neck with two hands and a lower body.
It was hard to say why she wore the jacket, but many possibilities existed.
The Coffee Moment
He enjoyed a long, intimate drink of coffee. The brew — temperature, flavor, highlights, smell — was perfect, encouraging him to drink longer, and then, to close his eyes and indulge in another long drink.
It was a gorgeous cup of coffee, and almost made up for the years of harsh, hot coffee he’d drunk in military facilities around the world at life dark thirty in the morning.
Thirstday’s Wandering Thought
After he and his wife were married a few years, she passed on the casual judgement that he had a flat butt. He’d never considered his butt before, imagining without thinking about it that he probably had a pretty nice butt, but the comment raised his butt awareness. He began studying other’s butts and soon realized that a large spectrum of butt characteristics exist – flat, round, broad, muscular, chubby, pert, drooping, and so on. So many ways to classify and categorize butts by shape, contour, and type are out there that he eventually developed a large index butt shapes.
He had, somehow, become an asspert, all because of his own flat butt.
Bewildering Red, White, and Blue Dream
I was staying in a two-story place with many other relatives. A diverse group, among the others were my father, two nephews, a sister-in-law, and one nephew’s wife and children. We were staying in the building temporarily. It impressed by being old and mundane, cheaply furnished with things which might have been procured at the curb on trash day or from secondhand stores and estate sales. It would only be for a few days. We understood and accepted its limitations.
One thing that did stand out was the owners’ use of red, white, and blue bunting and decorations. Much of it was worn and torn, and some of it was stained and moldy.So much of it in some many places, it was a great distraction. Especially, we noted to one another, since it’s not any sort of holiday that would call for decorations like that. It seemed like they wore their patriotism on their sleeves and by doing so much of it, they demeaned it. But it was their place, so WTH?
My nephew’s wife decided on another course. Without telling us, she and her daughters took much of the bunting down on the second floor because it annoyed them. I didn’t approve and told her so. Her husband, my nephew, defended her in his loud voice, joking about the whole thing. Dad agreed with me, it shouldn’t have been done, but shrugged it off, refusing to involve himself.
Everyone except Dad and I took off. A fuller understanding of the dwelling emerged. It was like a shoebox stood on one end. All the walls were white, except one upstairs, which was pink. The upper floor had a loft so you could look over and see about half of the bottom floor and the front entrance. No furniture was in that space. That floor was covered by a thin, worn, and soiled harvest-gold carpet with an extremely short pile, almost like indoor/outdoor carpeting.
Someone came to the door and then stepped in. Looking over the loft’s railing, I saw that it was a local police officer dressed in a black uniform. He said he was investigating vandalism. Going down and speaking with him, I realized that the owners had reported removing the second-floor bunting as vandalism. I told the officer what’d happened. While doing that, I indicated one wall to our left. Although white and broad, red, white, and blue ribbons covered the wall. These ribbons were like a blue ribbon given out as an award. There must have been thousands.
The officer considered everything and then said it didn’t sound like something he should be dealing with and left. I went back up and told Dad about this. As I did, the others returned. I repeated the story about what’d happened.
The others again prepared for an outing, and Dad and I again remained behind. Someone knocked on the front door, and then a state trooper entered. Looking up at me, he told me he was there to investigate reported vandalism. I laughed at this. Going down to talk with him, I discovered the ribbons gone from the first-floor wall, revealing a well-used and large corkboard. I asked the officer about the report, laughing as he explained that he was looking for missing ribbons, and then told him about the red, white, and blue ribbons which had covered the wall. The rest returned while the officer was there. Dad came down and told the officer that we’d pay for the missing bunting and ribbons. The officer replied, “No, the people wanted prosecution.”
The trooper decided it wasn’t his problem. He’d make the report and it would be forwarded to DA for further action.
Dream end.
Old Kibbles Blues
Old floof song, usually sung at night, often to the tune of a “I’m A Floof”.
Five o’clock in the morning,
‘bout more than a hour ‘fore dawn.
I’m staring in my food dish.
My kibble’s half gone.
Starvation is standing beside me.
It’s not a good place to be.
All I want is some kibble.
Why do they torture me?
Whoa, I got the kibbles,
I got the old kibbles blues.
If you had to eat ol’ kibbles,
You’d have the old kibbles blues, too.
Twosday’s Wandering Thought
Three young girls arrived. He’s not an expert in these matters, but their lithe size and small stature made him guess that they were probably ten to twelve years old. All were white and wore shorts, and four-to-five-inch-high heels with ankle straps. One of the pairs of heels had clear plastic. The other two were stiletto.
These, he was certain, were the youngest people he’d ever seen wearing high heels. He’d certainly never seen them on children this young before. It seemed like they portended something, but he didn’t know what.
Numbday’s Wandering Thought
One problem with using Purple Air to check his town’s air quality is that each time he checked, he ended up singing “Purple Rain” by Prince, but substituting ‘air’ for ‘rain’.
The Kissing & Dancing Dream
I wasn’t the person I am now, and I wasn’t married to the woman with me now. I still knew it was me but didn’t like the same, something known as perspective changed, as they frequently do in my dreams.
My wife and I were in a room with many others. Double beds lined the walls with the headboards against the walls. Every bed had a couple in it, including my wife and I, fully dressed with shoes on, under bed covers. Around the room were men and women, the men in either dark blue or white shirts, with loose black suits and hats, and the women in beige blouses, something with beige skirts, but sometimes with black skirts. Sometimes, the women wore a white bonnet.
The men and women not in beds were clapping their hands and dancing, thumping their thick-soled shoes against the wooden floor, chanting, “Kiss and dance, kiss and dance, kiss and dance.” Laughter kept interrupting as they focused on specific couples.
In bed with my ‘wife’, I moved close to her, getting face to face. Like most in the room, we were about forty years old, given one or two years either way. She looked white, wan, and tired. I asked, “What do you say? Should we kiss and dance?”
She answered, “No, I’m too tired.”
Disappointed, I snapped, “That’s what you always say.” Frustrated, I climbed out of bed and walked around the room as the “kiss and dance” chant continued. Other couples were kissing and several got out of bed and danced in the room’s center.
Another man climbed into bed with my wife. Outraged, I saw that she let him kiss her. At that point, a man called an end to the festivities and told us, “Everyone needs to go home now.”
My wife and the man left the bed. She came to me and said, “We should go.” Everyone else had already filed out.
Rage stoked, I replied, “No.” I took her by her shoulders, pushed her back against a wall, and said, “I have three things to say to you.” Her eyes were wide; she did not speak. “One, you never want to kiss me. Two, I saw another man get in bed with you, and I saw you kissing that other man. I am tired of all of this. We are done. I’m going home. You need to find somewhere else to do.”
I left.
Dream end.
I felt tremendously liberated and strong after awakening from this dream.
Michael Seidel, writer 