Tag: Dream

The Dream the Night Before Last

This dream comes from the bizarro files.

I was with my wife. We were on a military installation. Walking around as we did while we were young, we were checking out the clubs and exchange. We then decided to leave to explore other places.

Promises of rain shaded the clouds’ colors. We started walking across a broad asphalt expanse. Partway across, I realized I had to piss. Telling my wife that I’d catch up, I hurried to find a latrine but failed to get there in time and pissed my pants. I left the latrine with pissed pants but seeing how I looked in daylight, I decided I needed to go back, remove my pissed pants, and let them dry. So I did.

The latrine was crowded and busy. It wasn’t like a latrine so much as community room with latrines and showers to one side, vaguely reminiscent of an Army place I once visited. Music played from boom boxes. Others watched sat on sofas and chairs or were on beds, watching television. The walls were painted cinder block.

While I was taking all of this in, my pants disappeared. Discovering that, I figured they were stolen. Whoever took them left fluffy gray sweat pants in their place. I had to wear something, so I put those on. With them were Ugg boots. I guessed they went with the sweats, so I put them on, too.

Then I left, walking across the asphalt to find my wife. Naturally, seeing me in gray sweats with Uggs instead of jeans and my regular shoes, my wife wanted to know what happened. I explained in a long, round-about ramble.

And there the dream ended, with me bewildered in a parking lot, explaining myself on a cloudy, windy day.

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Erotic Field of Dreams

Erotic dreams have been storming my nights. Last night’s was a doozy.

(Love the word, doozy. I think it originated with the Duesenberg, but I could be dreaming.)

It was all from a third person P.O.V., as if I watched through cameras. The dream picks up with me being at a place and this woman flirting with me. Dark of eyes and hair, voluptuous of lips and figure, she was tres provocative. The place seemed to be a residence where I was staying for a few days with others, for purposes that I don’t know. She was staying downstairs while the rest of us were being herded to upstairs rooms. Breaking off from the group, I stole back to her. She awaited me. That’s when the erotic part starts.

Afterward…

I was there to be a quarterback. This fact was expected. Instructions were given to me about where to go. I ended up in a well-lit building. Taller and younger than I am, I was dressed in a white tee shirt with gray sweat pants. Four other QBs were present. They were dressed the same. I recognized Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rogers. They each stood by themselves, throwing footballs to people I couldn’t see. I wanted to chat with them, but they were focused and intense. I started throwing the ball, too, ending up throwing at stationary and moving targets.

I did that for a while and then realized the others were watching me. We talked then in a sort of shorthand, with each of them visiting with me to tell me welcome, and then apologize for the hazing. One told me, “You’re one of us now.”

They left. I was alone, on a large field under bright lines. Exhilaration sizzled through me. I ran for a bit, and then threw the football more. The dream ended with me standing alone under bright lines.

I understood most of the dream, or assigned sufficient meanings that I can claim to understand them. It’s not that difficult. Most of us hope to be desired, wanted, and appreciated.

 

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The Help Dream

I awoke from this dream scoffing at my subconscious mind. Yes, I saw its point, delivered through a dream, but I wasn’t buying into it. Not yet, at least. Maybe after more thinking…and dreaming.

This dream found me in a large and busy city. My mother, wife, and sister-in-law (my wife’s sister) were with me. We were discussing my writing and selling books. While showing me what they’d done, the female triumvirate was telling me that they’d taken my books’ sections and created covers for each one. As I was looking at the foot-high high stack and what seemed like twenty books about three quarters of an inch thick each, they (I don’t know which, as they were rotating between explanation duties) said, “And then we combined them in one big book.” They showed me how they’d done that. The final cover was a blank, slightly shiny, tin piece.

Ummm.  I wasn’t appreciative. “Why?” I said, trying to look for other words. It wasn’t the sort of help I’d been looking for, and I didn’t know why they’d done it.

‘They’ continued explaining, “That way, people can take them apart and pass the books around.”

“How will that help?” I asked. “They’ll just buy one book, take it apart, and pass pieces around.”

“They’ve already bought two,” one of them said as people going by paused to look at the book.

I was shaking my head about the whole thing as the dream agenda shifted, with a change of scenery. Now located at Mom’s house (not any house that she’s ever lived in, BTW), in the basement, I’d come up with something. I don’t even know what it is now that I’m awake. In the dream, I called it a grill sometimes and a screen sometimes. It looked like a bed’s headboard, but none of us ever called it that. The others in the dream referred to it as a grill. I’d made them and painted them, and then added a saying. I’d done two like this. When I showed it to Mom and the other two, they were pleased and excited, going overboard with their enthusiasm. Could I make more? Of course, and I would.

Then they left me alone. I busied myself with other things. Mom came down to check on me. “You’re not making more sayings, are you?” she said. “We want to be there when you make more sayings.”

It exasperated me because she was hijacking my process and results, even though I’d done it for her (from what I understand). Plus, I preferred working alone. Always have. I was a bit short with her in my response.

Off I went to do other things.  When I returned, Mom proudly announced that they’d been helping. She led me along to show me the result. They’d painted grills that I’d already made. The results looked terrible. The paint was sloppy and incomplete, but had many runs and was too thick in many places.

I was horrified. Yet, I knew that expressing that would hurt her feelings. I said, “Well, thank you, but I think some of that has to be redone.”

She was saying, “I know,” but was meanwhile leading me to where my nieces and nephews were hard at work painting more grills. I felt helpless in the face of such a proud effort to help. My wife and sister-in-law came by, endorsing what was being done while I stood in the middle and wondered how I was going to regain control.

 

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Circle Dream

I was with my dad and lost in brown woods

and then we were on a boat and rowing

 

I kept asking him but he wouldn’t tell me

anything about where we were going

 

Feeling down

I was looking around

and wondering about the scene

 

didn’t know where I was

or where I’d been

or where I wanted to be

 

I thought I knew

and I thought I could

but nothing

was what it seemed

 

It was a circle of thought

and a circle of hope

a circle

going around a dream

 

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The Writing Dream

Man, it was something else. I dreamed that streams of words were flowing through the air around me. They flowed too fast for me to see and read them, except, weirdly, sometimes I could see mathematical formulas in them.

The streams came together and split apart in a random, haphazard manner. Sometimes they flowed on walls, but other times I saw them flowing across sidewalks, trees, parking lots, and the sky. At one point, I saw two streams running in parallel on a wall, and thought, they need to be brought together. Not knowing how to do that at the moment, I turned away.

Oblivious of the word streams, people walked among them. I was flabbergasted that they didn’t see them. Their behavior ended up exasperating me.

Aware of me, though, people would watch and talk about me to each other as they attempted to puzzle out what was wrong with me or what I was doing. Sometimes I tried telling people, “There are words streaming around you. I think they’re sentences and paragraphs. Can’t you see them?” Hearing that, many people said, “I think he’s on drugs,” or, “He’s crazy.”

My interactions with people were few and short, becoming less as I attempted to follow the streams of words. Then, instead of trying to follow them, I thought I’d go upstream to see where they came from. Selecting one stream, I traced it back along a street between two red brick buildings.

Paved with asphalt webbed with cracks, the street had cement sidewalks, curbs, storm drains, and doorways, but no signs. Although the street seemed old and unused, it was ordinary in every respect. The word stream rushed along the gutter, crossing from one side of the street to the other other.

I followed the stream up the street. Narrowing, the stream of words flowed faster, resembling black ink. The day grew darker. I wasn’t sure what caused that. Noting the increasing darkness, I tried to understand whether night was coming or a storm was imminent — or both. At that time, I realized the streaming words made sounds. At first I thought they rustled like leaves. Then, they seemed to burble like rushing water. Getting closer to the stream and straining to hear the sounds, they sounded like a crowd of talking people, but also typewriters.

Although nothing changed, the going became more difficult, like gravity fought to keep me back. I kept going. Exiting the space between the red-brick buildings, I saw that the stream came from a long, grassy hill. All the streams came from different directions, but they all came from that one stream of words rushing down the hill. separating into different streams at the bottom. Hidden by clouds colored like used charcoal, the hilltop couldn’t be seen.

I have to climb that hill, I told myself. It looked quite possible, steep and tall, but not impassible. That’s where the dream ended.

Despite all the details, the dream seemed short, but vivid and intense.  Even as I was in bed, awakening from the dream, I thought I saw streams of words on the bedroom walls.

Then they were gone, swallowed by morning sunshine.

***

I thought about the dream off and on all morning, and then typed this up. I thought about how I felt during and after the dream. After a long while, I realized that I’d felt intense, but otherwise emotionally neutral, as I feel when I’m in the middle of a project. There’s no hope or despair, bitterness or jubilation.

It’s just is.

 

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A Football Dream

I’d been part of the defense, set up to be an edge-passer on a high-school football team. Being a little guy, that surprised me, but I took to the role with the zeal I apply to things when I must get them done. Come game time, though, and I found myself lined up as a tight-end. Talk about confused! I had no idea about the offensive plays or blocking, but again, here I was, in a mess, so I would do what I had to do. Which meant, figuring it out as I went along.

They also weren’t including me in the huddle. Hello? Totally bewildered, I tried catching the coach’s eye to point out the obvious error of me being where I was. He told me to stay out there and do what I can. So —

I lined up, but it was an awkward position, because I was half-turned to see what the quarterback was doing. The ball was snapped.  Here comes the rush. I blocked a guy and cut into a middle open flat, caught a pass and was crushed in a tackle. Still, five yards were gained. On the next play, I saw a hand-off to the running back, so I picked up rushers and helped make a path for him, resulting in a first down.

The next play was bizarre. Lined up, I could hear the defense talking and see the quarterback. He planned to throw to me, I realized. I mentally set myself for the task. Then, the quarterback didn’t set. He kept standing up, moving around, and checking the defense. Time was passing, passing…I almost fell out of my stance. I kept wondering why the quarterback didn’t set us and get the ball hiked. I worried about delay of game.

Meanwhile, the defense had drifted off to the sides. There was a huge hole in the middle. If I released and the quarterback threw a quick slant, I could exploit this defense.

The ball was finally hiked. I snapped out into the flat and looked for the pass, but the quarterback was running toward me. I turned to make a block, but no defenders were in the area. The quarterback raced thirty yards into the end zone for a touchdown.

I realized that the quarterback was planning this all along, and that I’d been part of his secret scheme. It impressed me. Looking at the scoreboard, I saw that we’d now scored three times, and the score was 21-3.

Dream end.

I awoke thinking, take the opportunity when it comes, and make the most of it, but create opportunities. The quarterback on done both.

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The Golden Egg Dream

I started out with a dream about eggs. Not surprising, given that Easter is soon. Coloring eggs was an entertaining annual experience when I was a child. We always had a big bowl of colored hard-boiled eggs for Easter.

But my dream eggs weren’t colored. I was looking for eggs, first in the kitchen refrigerator, which was an old, white Kelvinator model. Not finding the eggs in the refrigerator, I went out a side door to where I knew there was supposed to be a chicken coop.

I stepped out onto a small porch painted gray and went down rickety steps to a green hillside. Cumulonimbus clouds were mounding against a blue sky, partially obscuring the sun. A strong wind was blowing, whipping my jacket around me. People on the dream’s periphery were trying to draw my attention to other things going on. They had somewhere they wanted to go. It seemed like they were back in the house. Exasperated, I kept telling them, “Just a minute, I’m looking for eggs.” I was becoming angrier as they kept heckling me, refusing to be patient as I searched for eggs.

Entering a sagging chicken coop made of old graying lumber (I’ve never been in a chicken coop in my life), I finally saw some eggs, and then I saw a dusty half-hidden egg. It looked like gold. Disbelieving, I picked it up. Amazingly heavy, it taxed my strength. I had to use two hands to hold it. Wiping the dust away by rubbing the egg against my shirt, I confirmed, yep, it’s gold. The more I polished it, the shinier it became. As heavy as it was, I thought, it has to be solid. I couldn’t imagine anything being inside of it.

Unsure whether I should, I took the egg out to show the others. It was sunnier, but colder and windier outside. Nobody else was out there and the house was silent. I realized the others were gone. The dream ended with me standing alone by the chicken coop holding a golden egg. I awoke feeling isolated and alone.

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Stabbing

You ever have an annoying epiphany that just keeps stabbing into your thoughts, like that shower scene from the movie, Psycho, complete with the music, despite all the effort you make to shut it out?

Yeah. More coffee?

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I dreamed last night that I was driving a convertible with the top down on an oceanside road. I was alone, and the weather was gorgeous. The road could been the stretch of Pacific Coast Highway between Big Sur and Carmel. I saw myself and the scene from different angles, like I was in a movie montage, but I don’t know what kind of car it was. No one else was seen in the dream, just me, happily driving. (Almost seems like a pretty metaphor for my writing process.) This song, “One of Us,” performed by Joan Osborn was playing on the car radio during this dream montage.

Cheers

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The Sick Dream

I love how my mind works through my dreams. It often surprises me, and frequently amuses me.

This was a few days ago. I was sick and feverish. My head throbbed. I couldn’t breath through my nose. My lips were dry and cracked, and my nostrils were peeling and raw from tissues. Light hurt, and tears frequently blinded me as the cold hunkered down in my eyes.

Falling into a fitful sleep, I dreamed I was in a computer video game. While most details are sketchy, I recall that I was shooting things. The things were about eight feet tall. They had short legs, arms, and torsos, but a huge head with a plain, blank face. Black hair sprouted from the crown of their head.

Running across open fields, laughing as I went under a sunny but cloudy day, I would see those things and shoot, and keep going. Upon awakening, I thought, yeah, I was fighting my illness through a video game in my dream.

Not quite The Illearth War, but what a trip.

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