Tag: Dream

The Tiger Dream

It was another chaotic and hectic dream. 

I was camping with friends at a big music festival. The place was packed, reminding me of images from Woodstock back in 1969, but with better weather. Everyone was having a good time. As part of a group of ten to twelve people, we all had roles for setting up and sustaining our party. I was responsible for a cooler of beverages and ice, along with a sound system. I brought them, set up, and we had a good time. As night fell, I found a sleeping bag and crashed out.

The next morning, the celebration was cranking up early. I looked for the cooler and sound system. Neither were found. I told the others, “I asked you guys to look after it.” Laughing, they shrugged that off.

Okay, I had to find them. As I started out, I said, “I have two things to do.” As I said that, I realized that there was more to do, so I said, “No, I have four things to do.” Then I ticked them off my fingers. Unfortunately, I only remember looking for the cooler and bringing it back, and doing the same with the sound system.

I set off through the packed grounds. Sometimes I’d tell people what I was looking for, but mostly, I just wandered and looked.

As I did, I saw a young tiger running toward me. I’d heard rumors while I was rambling around that they had young, wild animals like cougars at the festival. As I saw the animal, I heard a young woman say, “Oh, look, a baby tiger.” I thought the tiger was young but not a baby.

A woman said, “It’s not supposed to be out.”

The tiger ran toward me. I prepared to catch it, but it veered at the last moment and leaped up a tall stack of shelves filled with cans, containers of ketchup, bags of flour, and jars of pickles. The tiger’s jump amazed me, but the tiger didn’t stick the landing. As I began reacting, it fell off the top shelve, which was over a dozen feet high, and landed on the ground. The woman came forward and scooped it up.

“Did you see that tiger jump?” I said, pointing at the shelves. “That tiger jumped to the top of those shelves. It was amazing.”

Although I said this several times, nobody else seemed to have noticed, and nobody answered me.

The dream ended.

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The Book Store Dream

There was so much dreaming last night.

One memorable part involved a back door where I checked on books. I don’t know why I checked on books there, but I would go out and look for books. It seemed to be by a garage door in my house. Returned surveys about books began arriving there. I struggled to understand what they were. My wife and some friends were in another part of the house. I took it to them but they were talking about other things and didn’t pay any attention.

I learned that the front of the house was a book store, but someone else owned it. I realized that the surveys were probably due to them but were being delivered to me instead. I found the owner, a woman, and told her that her surveys were being sent to me and that she needed to do something about that if she wanted to receive them. Another man, her employee, started talking to a group of people about the survey, and what they hoped to get from it. He was talking about the disappointment they had because so few had been returned. I interrupted him and told him they were being delivered to me instead of them, and gave them a stack of them.

Then I discovered an old Wizard of Oz DVD. Recalling how I’d come to have it, I went to return it to its correct place and discovered an entire stash of them.

Nobody else seemed to understand me, frustrating me. My wife kept leaving the back door open, and didn’t pay attention to my complaints about it. I finally told her that she couldn’t have those keys any longer. She and her friends decided to leave. She went to leave by the back door, discovered it was locked, and asked me if she could have the keys. That was a catalyst for sky-high frustration and irritation. I went through the same complaints and statements as before. She then left through the front, but still didn’t seem to understand.

Then I heard the book store owner, her employee, and several customers talking about the survey. The book store owner complained that they weren’t getting surveys back. The customers said they’d returned them. I intervened, explaining again they’d been sent to the wrong place, and that they were coming to me instead of the book store. I told the store owner that needed to be changed if she wanted to receive the survey. As I was now fed up with trying to get them to understand, I told her I’d no longer be an intermediary for ensuring her surveys reached her.

I left, but immediately regretted being spiteful. Outside, I walked down a large green hill. The hill was full of desks arranged like tombstones and grave markers. No one was at any of them. My desk, I knew, was at the bottom of the hill, where I was headed. As I was almost there, an old female friend, who I haven’t seen in twenty-plus years, joined me, talking and commiserating with me as we walked.

Reaching my desk, I sat in my chair and leaned forward in thought. She sat in a chair beside my desk, and then leaned forward and wrapped her arms around me. She was talking as she did, being very sympathetic, and then began kissing me.

The dream took an sharp, erotic turn after that.

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The TV Movie Dream

The dream felt like a made-for-TV rom-com. I was a clean-shaven young NCO in a pressed service-dress uniform and tidy haircut. Due to weather circumstances and other logistic problems, I was required to help a four-star general for an evening. The general was a notoriously finicky and critical man, but I accepted my assignment with an aw-shucks gulp.

He was at a conference. The evening didn’t go as planned but I managed to keep a step ahead, and it went well from the general’s point of view, if not to anyone else’s thinking. (Sorry, but details are lacking.) The general then wanted to leave – now. But his aide, chief-of-staff, and other personnel weren’t there. Nonetheless, he wanted to go now. So I led him out of the building.

It was late a cold and starless late night outside. It’d been snowing for several previous days but sunshine had prevailed that day. Much snow had melted, flooding streets with icy slush. It was messy and travel was limited. But no problem, I took to the general to my parents’ house. Previously in the evening, I’d come by and set up a place for the general in their sprawling split-level. After showing the general to his place, I went upstairs and told my parents about their house guests. They accepted it with a matter-of-fact shrugs and smiles.

After that, I checked in on the general. He was fine, didn’t need anything and stressed, he didn’t want anyone to disturb him. He had work to do and then was retiring for the night.

Good to go. I returned to the convention center and encountered the rest of his group, as hoped, because they needed to be told what’d happened. They demanded to know where the general was. I explained it all to them and answered their questions. Their hostility soothed, they admitted that I’d done well. One insisted that he wanted to visit the general. I told him the general said he didn’t want disturbed. I left them discussing what they were going to do and went home.

As I arrived home (my parents’ house), a car of young women pulled up. The neighbor’s daughter left the car. The car left with the young women leaning out of their windows hooting and waving at me. The daughter, a short brunette in her late teens whose father was in the military, came over and flirted with me, beginning, “I hear you kidnapped a general.”

I told her the story. We flirted and then I was temporarily called to the house because the general wanted something to drink. When I returned, the young woman’s older sister, a tall blonde, was there. She asked me, “What would you do with slush like this when you were a kid? Wouldn’t you build a dam?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

The older sister said, nodding, “You settled a debate. Good-night.”

She left us. The young women and I went for a walk along the slushy street, building slush dams, but also breaking one open.

The dream ended.

***

Somehow, from all of this, I ended up thinking that the dream was about the outcome was the only thing that mattered.

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The M.B. Dream

Someone from my past returned to me in a dream last night. They were helping me build a new home.

First, my wife and I discovered a place where we wanted to live. We were just out in another town having fun on a clear and sunny, pleasant day. We came across the house by accident. Partially constructed and all white with many arches, it struck us as gorgeous. We purchased it on the spot, eschewing all the standard real-estate requirements for buying a house. Excited, she went off with friends to move us to our new home, and I finished building it.

That’s when M.B. showed up. I haven’t seen him since 1990. M.B. was a friend, at first. We were assigned to the same squadron in Germany. A year older than him, I was a few ranks above him, and he was in a different section, but he lived across the street from me in military housing.

He was an interesting guy. Incredibly strong and athletic, his hand-eye coordination was fantastic. But he soon demonstrated unlimited arrogance, no empathy, poor communication and interpersonal skills, and was short on discipline and intelligence. He claimed to be an expert in everything and disparaged everything. We soon found out how little he knew, but since he didn’t want to admit that, he never learned. Besides all that, he was a reckless braggart. People were soon avoiding him. Although I tried being his friend, I began avoiding him. Being around him was exhausting.

It was surprising that he was in my dream, then. Not only that, but he was vastly changed and helpful. We worked on the house together. He knew what he was doing. The final touch was putting on a new front door. After going out and getting a door for us, surprising me, M.B. worked on squaring and installing it. I wanted to help but I was delayed by other things happening, and couldn’t assist. Then he had to leave. He left me with guidance on how to finish hanging the front door.

I was just beginning to do that when M.B. my wife and friends showed up with our furniture. Several of the guys helped me finish the front door and install it. I then began calling people on my cell phone to tell them we had moved. My first call was to our current neighbor. She asked, “Where did you move to?” I said, “Jacksonville.”

That was the first time that I realized that I was in Jacksonville, a small town a short drive from here.

The dream ended.

 

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The New York Dream

A brief snippet from last night’s dream stream.

My sister-in-law, a Florida resident and business women, President of a manufacturing company that she started, was visiting with my wife and me. My wife said, “You should go to New York with Kat (her sister).” Kat was enthusiastic, telling me, “Yes, I can show you around the town and introduce you to people,” while I was resistant, responding, “New York with Kat?” It didn’t make sense.

After a lot of cajoling, Kat left without me, but my wife was insistent that I should go to New York. I was starting to come around. A male friend – someone I don’t recognize from my life but that I knew as a friend in my dream – a dream friend, if you will – came by and told me, “I’ll take you to New York.” Kat called me on the phone then and said, “I’ve made the arrangements. You’re going to New York.”

The dream ended with me beginning to pack to go to New York.

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A Ferrari Dream

So many of my recent dreams have been like watching adventure movies. I can’t recall seeing myself in many of them.

I starred in last night’s dream, though. The dialogue was often too fast for me to hear and capture, and there weren’t any captions or replays available. But I was happy, cheerful, and, well, unstoppable, overcoming everything.

The dream took place outside in pleasant, balmy weather, and daytime. Accompanied by my wife, I was somewhere that seemed tropical, but I — we — had to get out of there. The question was, how? Other men, in suits, were trying to keep us there.

My wife and I were armed with small black devices. About the size of a television remote control (clicker, as my wife calls it), it had no buttons. Pointing it at people immobilized them. People with stronger wills could resist it, but they could be overcome by pressing the device against them. The stronger their will, the longer we had to hold it against them, but none required more than several seconds.

It was all kind of frolicky. The men in suits would say, “There they are, get them.” They’d come after that, but there’d be no rush. It was like they were going slow, trying to be clever and unobserved. But we saw them and knew what they were doing. Laughing, we pointed and stopped them without a struggle.

A stalemate delivered. We couldn’t leave, so we’re weren’t escaping, just keeping the others at bay. Along came a man and a woman. They were older than us and well-dressed. My impressions of them were they were wealthy and powerful, but also trapped. I didn’t know them, and observing their exchanges, I thought that they weren’t together but had recently met. I think she was called the duchess.

“Take the Ferrari,” the man said. He pointed.

An older white Ferrari was there. I hadn’t noticed it before. I thought the car was from the sixties. (I confirmed this after researching and finding the model. Here it is, a 1966 California 365, except my dream car was white.)

Ferrari 365 California - 1966

“I can’t take that,” I said, laughing at the audacity of it.

The man said, “Why not?” The woman said. “Yes, you can. Take us with you. Drive us out of here. You can do it.”

So we pointed and stopped the pursuit, got into the Ferrari, and I drove us up through some forest. We couldn’t get all the way out, though. “We need to stop and rest,” I said.

We did that. The dream showed us stopping and then awakening the next morning. Pursuit had caught up to us by then, but they weren’t energetic, and we had our remotes. After doing our point and incapacitate thing on those closest to us, we all got in the car. I was driving and my wife was in the passenger seat, with the other two in the back. I drove us up and out of the situation.

The end. An uplifting dream, it brings a smile to my face as I remember it.

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An Infuriating Dream

While most of last night’s dreams are strong enough to recall, one dream remains a tantalizing sliver. In it, I was either told or decided – not certain of which – to go to a certain website. The website has four words in its name. The dream is creeping as slowly as the time between since the last season of Game of Thrones, tantalizing me with just…a little…more…about every hour.

Then I’ll stop and think and almost have it, only to lose it.

It’s maddening. Out, out, damn dream.

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The Portland Dream

After a period of turbulent dreams at the end of 2018 and 2019’s start, my dreams have become amazingly affirming and uplifting. There’s not much to write about. Besides their positive aspects, they’re clear and unambiguous, except for one dream.

In this dream, I’m busy with my normal life when a voice tells me to go to Portland to buy a car. I know that they mean Portland, Oregon, two hundred eighty-six miles away. I respond, “Why?” The disembodied voice from up high explains that I can get better deals there, and then shows me five cars that it thinks I’d like. I’m amused, but check out the cars, and agree, yes, I’d like them and they’re great buys, but what about maintenance. I don’t want to do drive a long way for maintenance.

Persistence and persuasive, the voice keeps trying to convince me that I need to go to Portland to buy a car. I finally agree, mainly just to get it to leave me alone. We part amicably, with me going off to tell my wife that we’re going to Portland to buy a car.

As for the dream’s meaning, I have few clues. Something I’ll need to think about. As I think about it to type, it seems to indicate a large shift in directions, something unexpected, that pleases me.

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J’accuse Dream

First, this has nothing to do with Zola’s letter, except the title. This is about my dream, aspirations, and doubts.

As background, I finished writing and editing a series of novels called Incomplete States. With that finished, I was moving into the next steps of what to do when you’re written a novel and want to get it published. Options are available.

My dreamscape has been quiet for several days so I didn’t think my decisions would show up in my dreams. But, boom, they came. When I awoke and thought about it, I laughed about what I’d dreamed.

The dream began with a new venture. People were expecting me and had high expectations for what I would do. I was relaxed, going about getting acclimated. As the dream progressed, I learned that I was in the military (again), involved with command and control.

Awakening, I thought, “Of course the military would be included.” I’d spent twenty years in the military. The structure helped me succeed without stretching myself. It was a comfortable existence. I often retreat to it in dreams.

Things quickly began going awry in the dream. I felt constantly behind and a little bit lost. I couldn’t find my uniform. I discovered I was already supposed to be somewhere, and I was late. Scrambling, I rushed to find my uniform, shave, dress, and get to work.

I was naked when my wife came in. “What’s this?” she pointed at my side. I couldn’t see what she referenced.

“Have you seen yourself in the mirror?” she said, and then steered to a mirror. “I think you’d better take a look.”

She pointed out several boils on my side. Horrified, I tried lancing them, and failed. The effort put me behind. Now I really had to scramble.

Awakening, I realized that I was facing my anxieties. “Have you seen yourself in the mirror?” That question seemed like I was trying to pretend to be someone else, and that I wasn’t clearly seeing myself and the situation, that I was misleading myself. And look how I’m blemished and flawed, the things I don’t see about myself, how I’m fooling myself. I took all of that about my publishing ambitions.

Finding shaving cream, I hunted down a mirror and started applying it to shave. The shaving cream was thick and brown. Crude and unfinished, I thought after awakening and reflecting on the dream, just as I worry that others will think about the series. 

Another military member in uniform stuck their head in the window. “What are you doing?” I said.

“Looking at someone using a mirror,” he said. “I’ve never seen that done before. I was wondering what it’s like.”

How absurd, I thought, but, awakening, I realized that I was questioning even the most basic aspects of myself. I remembered reading about experiments involving animals mirrors. Looking in a mirror and realizing that you’re seeing yourself is used to explore animal intelligence and self-awareness. By implying that I (as another entity in the dream) didn’t know how to use a mirror was a question about my self-awareness and intelligence.

A phone rang and I answered it. “We have an inflight emergency,” a male voice said. “We need you here to decide what to do.”

I was appalled. “But I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Then you’re not coming?”

“No.” I hung up.

I didn’t need to think much about that aspect after awakening. The message behind the words seem nakedly clear, as did the next dream segment.

A chief master sergeant that I’d worked for during my first tour called me to him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but this isn’t working out. To be honest, I expected more of you. It didn’t work out so I’m sending you back home.”

“‘But Chief,” I protested, but he wouldn’t listen to me.

Yes, it was all there, all the doubts, uncertainty, and uncertainty, along with rejection by a person in authority who I admired.

I thought I’d mastered these things, demonstrating again how easily I can fool myself. Yes, those doubts exist. Hell, they exist with the majority of efforts that anyone does. To reach and succeed, failure, ridicule, and exposure must be risked. These doubts are always in me, no matter how many times I’ve succeeded, or how often I’ve been reassured by myself and others. That’s just part of who I am.

While it gave me a good laugh to see how earnestly my subconscious mind (and thus, me) attacked me, it hasn’t changed anything. It’s there, and I know it, but I’m stepping out.

Cheers

 

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Weird

I don’t recall any dreams from last night. Even when I don’t post about my dreams, I usually remember multiple scenes, if not entire dreams. (Or, maybe I convince myself that I remember them, and the muses feed details to fill in the vacuum.) After days of often chaotic, stormy dreams that battered my psyche, experiencing this lack of dreams calms and relaxes me.

It’s weird, though. I’m accustomed to waking up and processing dreams. Not having them to process leaves me with a lot of free time. It’s like finishing a large project and then looking around and saying, now what?

 

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