Tag: car

The Camaro Dream

It was another odd dream. I think I have an odd dream one out of every three nights, at least a memorable odd one.

This particular dream featured the first car that I bought, a nineteen sixty-eight Camaro RS. The engine was the sweet 327 V-8. An automatic, it was a metallic copper color with black rally stripes and a black vinyl roof. It was a fun car to drive, and reliable as sunrise. Nothing fancy or power was on the car. It was simple, and it worked.

Besides the Camaro, my dream featured my father, my late father-in-law, and an older man who, in the dream, was known as a local criminal boss. As for me, I was the age that I was when I owned the Camaro, about nineteen.

The car looked gorgeous, as it did in real life, well-polished and maintained inside and out. With those details established, I was driving the Camaro when I discovered that the floorboards were gone. Rain mixed with snow was falling, and was spraying up into the car interior from the road.

Well, that’s it, my father and father-in-law each told me. They’d been good friends in life. I’d met my wife through Dad and his relationship with the man who would be my father-in-law.

You can’t drive that car like that, each told me. I think you probably need to junk it.

I didn’t. Taking my own route, I found someone to build me new floorboards made out of wood. That’s what happened. They did a beautiful job.

I showed my father-in-law and Dad the solution. They were astonished and amused. The crime boss appeared, because he’d heard about it. Although he laughed, he said, “I’m really impressed. Good job, kid.”

I then took the car on an inspection. Already familiar with the car, they were preparing to declare it salvage when I showed them my new wooden floorboards. All were flabbergasted and disbelieving. I took the car around and showed everyone how I’d had new wooden floorboards made for the car, and how well they worked.

Further, I said, I planned to drive it across country. Snow was falling, as were the temperatures. People shook their head at my apparent insanity, and dismissed me. With alternate periods of snowfall and sunshine, and slush and snows on the roads, I set out, certain in my decision.

That’s basically the dream. When I awoke from it, I found that it felt tremendously affirming. I thought the dream encouraged me, keeping doing your things. As a writer, I work alone. I hear others’ doubt; I worry about others’ doubts about what I’m writing, and how it’ll measure up to expectations. In the dream, I sought approval from the two primary male authority figures from my young life.

They hadn’t approved, but nor did they disapprove. They accepted and said, go on.

That’s why it feels so affirming.

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The Chaotic Dream

What an exhausting dream it was.

Being nowhere in particular, but planning to go somewhere, I was trying to pack and prepare myself to leave. People surrounded me. None of them paid attention to me, but kept walking around, having conversations and calling out to each other, or laughing. None of them addressed me.

Phones kept ringing. Weirdly, I recognized the phones from my life. Mom’s cherry colored wall phone, with its long cord, rang. Later, a beige Trimline with pushbuttons, of the sort my wife and I had in our house at one point, rang.  Another time, it was a green Trimline phone with a dial that rang. Cell phones and Blackberries would ring, along with black phones and red phones without dials used as hotlines in the Air Force.

I answered the phones but never heard anyone on the other end, something that angered me more and more as the dream progressed. “Why is the phone ringing?” I would ask aloud. “Who’s calling? There’s never anyone there.” I was trying to pack and would think that I had forgotten something, and then remember what it was, and go to get it, only to get diverted by a ringing phone. Nobody else would answer the phones.

While all of this was happening, I kept checking the weather, because I worried about it changing. Meanwhile, I kept saying, “Oh, I need to go write, but I don’t have time. I need to make time to write.” While I was packing, saying this to myself, checking the weather, and answering phones with people walking around and past me, I kept giving car keys to people. Different people, they needed the keys for different reasons. The keys didn’t look familiar, but I knew they were to my shiny red car, and they were my keys. I kept handing the keys to someone, and then someone else would approach me a little bit later and ask me for my keys. Every time I picked them up, the keys would jangle, and I’d check them to confirm they were the right keys.

All of this culminated in me waking up thinking that a phone was ringing. There wasn’t one ringing. The house was quiet except for rain falling on the roof.

Thinking about this dream now, I chuckle at what I see as its meaning, that I resent intrusions to my writing, because to go somewhere, I need to write, and I feel like it’s been a life interrupted. Yes, all the decisions made to bring me to this point were my decisions, but those decisions were all driven by other events and people.

Funny how my mind speaks to me when I go to sleep at night.

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The Control Dreams

Little late posting about this, as I dreamed it on winter solstice. 

It was a simple dream. I was driving one of three vehicles. Other people were driving the other vehicles. One vehicle controlled the others. I wasn’t in that vehicle, so I lacked control. But I wanted it. Lack of experience with the vehicle and ignorance about what was transpiring hampered me.

The cars were impressive. Closed cockpit, but definitely road cars, they were extremely low, powerful, silent and fast. They were also identical. I knew the other two drivers in the dream as people from earlier years of life.

We took off driving. I was third in line. In an interesting twist (maybe interesting only to me), I went from a close, over the shoulder point-of-view in which I saw myself, my controls and the road ahead, to a long, wide shot that featured the three sleek, silver vehicles silently racing along an elevated white highway.

Back in the car’s cockpit, I decided I wanted control. So I took it with by flicking a switch. Now I was the one driving as the other two chaffed about me taking control. But I had it and didn’t relinquish it, and they accepted that after their brief complaints.

That’s essentially the dream, but subsequent activity was interesting. First, I awoke on the day after solstice feeling like a tremendous weight on been removed. I felt lighter, stronger, and more energetic and optimistic.

Two, among several dreams was a repeat of this dream a few nights later. It went almost exactly the same way.

I thought it a good omen for a new year, but then, I’m an optimist. Have a good day.

Cheers

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His Legacy

He always kept a clean house and well-maintained yard. He cleaned his car inside and out in all the seasons, creating a shiny beacon to others. This would be his legacy, he realized, as death’s shadow shaded his light: a clean house, a clean car, and a well-maintained yard.

That’s how he’d be remembered.

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Game Dreams

So many dreams last night. One involved me driving a silver Dodge Charger. It’s the third time that I can recall driving a silver Dodge Charger in my dreams.

In this dream, I was driving it in a race. The race wasn’t on asphalt, but was on a white plastic track. Each race was only one lap. I was having fun, in a good mood, and doing excellent, placing at or near the top. I wasn’t at all concerned with the results. The race was always run with only two cars on the track. I didn’t know anyone else competing. I looked forward to the finish. I was younger, with thick brown hair, and much better looking than I actually am.

Oddly, though, another race was proceeding in parallel. I was informed that during my race. The other race in parallel involved animals. No animals were being harmed, but I took it that some animals were being raced. I was assured that I wasn’t involved, and it didn’t concern me. I didn’t feel concerned. The races between the animals and my series alternated. I didn’t see any of the animal races, though.

Then, in a shift, I dreamed about Chakras. I don’t know much about them. In the dream, they were like stations, and I was going about cleaning and re-charging them. It was all very matter-of-fact. The Chakras were like red cylinders mounted in a row on white pavement. Green grass surrounded the pavement under a cloudy but blue sky. A pleasant warm breeze accompanied my activity. The Chakras were labeled. I read the labels and learned they were about energy. One Chakra, for example, was about my creative energy. Another was labeled “Physical Energy.” I went to each Chakra to check their progress, humming as I did. When checking them, I’d check to see if a black hose was there, and confirm it was connected to the Chakra. I don’t have any idea what the other end was connected to.

Neither of those dreams ended with anything conclusive. They were just done.

 

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A Dream of Lost Roads

I experienced several dreams last night. I remembered three this morning, but lost track of two of them, because a third dream occupied me.

In the third dream, I was attending a symposium with a female friend, Joan. I don’t recall what the symposium was about. I don’t think that was ever stated. When it ended, I suggested that we go get something to eat somewhere. She agreed. We had separate cars. She would follow me. Cool.

I headed down the road. I was driving an impressively expensive, exotic sports machine. The vehicles around me were older domestic American vehicles. Many weren’t in good condition.

The roads were terrible, and seemed to be getting worse. Within a few minutes of driving, I noticed Joan turned off from behind me. Where was she going? Finding a place to turn around, I went back to look for her. The roads were rapidly worse, degenerating from pavement, concrete or asphalt into rudimentary grassy, gravel trails. Yet, I thought, wait…I know this place.

I parked my car and exited it, looking around as I did. Although still daylight, it was late. The sun had set and dusk was growing. Less people were driving; more people were walking. Those walking were white, older, and obese, often with gray hair. From things said and seen, I knew I was in West Virginia. I’d spent my final high school years there, and then lived there once, for a year. I sometimes went back there because my wife has family there.

Walking around, I began orienting myself. Yes, I was right, I knew where I was. I was in the area where I’d gone to school, but all the businesses and roads were gone. People were walking everywhere.

The sky was indigo at the zenith, with a single bright star over the silhouette of the trees. A cool breeze picked up. I walked up a dirt trail to a small house on a hill. Painting white, it was peeling, had dirty windows and leaned to one side. It looked like it might have been built in the nineteen thirties and then had received poor treatment.

The people inside vaguely knew me. I knew of them but didn’t know them. We chatted about a dog and its owner, a man who ate poorly, but always ensured his dog had the best fresh meat for his meals. We laughed about that. I realized that one of the others was Red. Red, an ex-Marine, had stood trial for murdering his best friend, and was acquitted, even though it happened in a place locked from the inside, with no one else present. He had no memory of the event.

I asked about where I was, to confirm my conclusions. Yes, I was where I thought.

Leaving the little dilapidated hovel of a place, I started down the hill along the worn dirt trail. Remembering Joan, I returned to the house and asked to use their phone, to call my friend and find her location. Calling her, I saw a panel to one side. It had a full map of the area. When she answered the phone, it pinpointed her location with a bright, white star.

I told her that I knew where she was and where she needed to go, and gave her instructions. Then I hung up, thanked the others, and left, going back down the hill to meet my friend. Looking down the hill toward where I’d been before, I saw that all the roads were gone.

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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.

 

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