Two Dreams

Both of these dreams intrigued me, but for different reasons.

In the first, I was visiting a place cohabited by many places. I knew this. I was in the kitchen, a square and white, cluttered, noisy room, but I was basically passing through while I awaited others. In there, I noticed this red plastic stuff. Even in the dream, I said, “I don’t know what this stuff is.” I didn’t; nor did I know their uses. Key to me then was that it was filthy, absolutely coated with slime and grease, and I was appalled.

“My god,” I said in the dream, “don’t any of you ever clean?”

A woman who lived there entered the kitchen at that point and answered, “They never clean.” She was busy making something and kept up a commentary about how dirty things were. Oddly, it was actually only the red pieces that were filthy. There seemed to be three of them.

“Let’s clean these off,” I suggested. Moving to the sink as she did, I began cleaning one while she prepared her meal. “Run some hot water over this,” I requested. She did as I used a scrub brush. The coat of grease and slime was being easily removed.

The others I’d been waiting for were now ready to leave, and called me. I told them to hold on so I could clean further.

After thinking about this today, I decided that this was in line with my recent line of dreams about lost identity. The aspect of my power being dirty and never cleaned followed the sense that I’d lost my way. Now I’ve cleaned it off. That’s exciting as hell.

The second dream, well, bordered on the unusual. It was about family.

I was driving my wife and mother-in-law to a store. We were in an older Blazer or Yukon, I’m not certain of which. We arrived at a cluttered and busy five and dime. As we entered, I thought I saw my wife’s sister and her husband walking away. This is where it became interesting. After awakening and thinking about that scene, I realized that the store was located by my mother’s house, and my sister-in-law and her husband were walking to mom’s house.

Meanwhile, in the dream, I wanted to confirm it was them. Without telling my wife and mother-in-law, I raced through the store to go back out. It was busy, though, and difficult to get through. When I finally reached an exit, I discovered that I’d taken the wrong exit. Instead of going outside, I was exiting into the mall.

Realizing my error, I hurried back through the store and found the right exit. Jumping into my vehicle, I drove down the road, but they were gone. I wasn’t surprised, because I believed they were taking a shortcut home, and had turned off onto one of the side streets.

Of course, the dream interested me for several reasons. One was the juxtaposition of family members and locations. The second was that my sister-in-law can’t, or won’t walk as seen in the dream, because of health issues.

These seemed like a cautionary dream for me not to confuse relationships and situations regarding my extended family.

Do you have any dreams to share? Cheers

 

Dream Mountain

It was, at once, the most innocuous and the most affecting dream I’ve recently had.

I dreamed it was a cool predawn day. I was climbing a mountain. I don’t know what mountain. I went alone.  Wearing the hiking boots and shorts that I often wore back in the early nineteen nineties, I mostly walked, but sometimes I had to crawl, or pull myself up. Sparse, large pine trees were sometimes encountered, and the wind sometimes blew, but it was silent.

The sun was rising. I grew hot and sweaty as I climbed, sometimes pausing to rest and look around. I don’t know why I climbed, but I reached the peak at sunrise, and stood, looking around. The wind blew more sharply. The rising sun illuminated some storm clouds to the east, and was warm on my face, while I saw the final stars of night to the west. Now what, I wondered.

When I awoke, I felt like I’d been crying. It wasn’t relief, pain, happiness or sorrow. The tears felt more like…tension.

Like I’d been expecting something else, and still waited.

A Dream of Reassurance

The dream leaped into chaos. ‘They’ were trying to become organized.

First, we were working in packed offices. All were dressed in dark blue utility uniforms and black jump boots. Men and women were present, but no children, and no elderly. Thirty people were using office space planned for ten people. I was upper middle-management, which afforded me more freedom and space. While the majority worked at two rows of tables, side by side by side, elbows to assholes, my space was in the back. But  the filing cabinets, telephones, and coffee fax machines were at the front. I was required to go forward to get what I needed, and then go back via a narrow row. The two people in charge would often be in that narrow row, talking, planning and consulting, forcing me to wait and fume with impatience.

So I began thinking ahead about other things that I could do. I knew, in the dream, we would be leaving soon. We would not be able to take much. There was something confusing in the dream about carefully cutting our pockets from our shirts to make quasi-gloves to protect our hands, and wearing strange netting as leggings to protect our legs.

The order came to pack up. Confusion and noise levels increased as we, and thousands of others, left our offices and crowded into a marshaling area. I followed all the instructions. Inspectors went through to see how everyone was doing. My activities impressed them, which amused me.

But horror struck me after a while. I realized that I’d done as instructed, and had packed my laptop into my luggage. My God, what a mistake, I thought. I was distraught, believing, people handling the bags will rip me off. I’d never see that computer again, and all my work on it would be lost.

At that point, I began stirring from my sleep, and the dream. As I did, a voice said, “Don’t worry. You’re not going to lose anything. You still have everything you need.”

Just before I left the dream, I was given my wheeled black travel bag. I opened it, and there was my laptop. I awoke, pleased and relieved.

The Dream Brief

I had to face the bald facts.

That’s what I saw in one of my dreams last night.

In it, I was looking at myself in the mirror. There, I discovered that I was balding in an area that I’d not noticed before. Technically, it would have been a deeply receding hairline on the left side of my face.

“I didn’t notice that,” my dream self said, turning my head and examining my hairline.

To which my awareness said, “You need to look in a new direction because you’re missing something that’s going on.”

Isn’t that the way it often is? You’re used to doing something in a fixed way. It becomes rote habit, conducted without thought. They can stale on you, but you can’t see it, because you’re always looking at it the same way.

And by you, I mean, me.

General Dream

“This is General Hamilton.”

Sure, I believed that. I was in the military again in this dream. My cell phone had rung. I’d answered. The other end had asked for Sergeant Seidel. I told them that was me. That’s when they identified themself.

Their voice was a pleasant tenor. Yeah, right, I thought, hearing that, and disconnected. I didn’t know a General Hamilton, and why would he be calling me? I was in the middle of some large, busy military complex. It was indoors and very modern. Everyone was in U.S. Air Force uniforms. I believe the location was in Florida.

I told someone else that a person had called and said they were General Hamilton. I didn’t know who that was. “It’s the commander,” they replied. “A five-star.”

A five-star? Seriously, a five-star calling me on my cell phone? Right.

The cell phone rang again. I answered. “This is General Hamilton.”

I answered with who I was and explained that we must have been disconnected. I remained dubious about who I was talking to.

“No problem,” he answered. “How do I get to the hospital?”

Was this a joke? I looked around. A large base directory, like in a mall, was mounted to a wall. “Where are you, General?”

“I’m in my office.”

“Where’s that?”

He told me. I traced it on the map. He seemed like he was two minutes away by car. The conversation continued, with me trying to understand why he was calling me, what his question meant, and what sort of help he was looking for.

“You’re the one responsible for coordinating activities, aren’t you?” he said.

Yes, that was one of my duties. As I was talking, I was walking and looking around, assessing where I was, trying to think through the issue and looking for anyone or anything that might be of help. His question completely baffled me. A five-star doesn’t have problems getting from one part of the base to another.

He had to hang up. He promised to call me back in a few minutes. “Thank you, sir,” I answered, and starting moving and thinking with more focused purpose. I’d made my way to the area he was trying to reach as I’d been talking to him. I’d realized he was going there to attend a ceremony taking place. I further knew who the organizers were, so I was heading there to talk to them. Most of the walls were glass. Although security was tight and I was often challenged, my security passes allowed me complete access.

Reaching the location of the ceremony, I entered and looked around. Although in a glass building, rolling, lush green grass dominated. Birds were singing, and it was sunny, with a warm breeze.

I saw the officer I sought. She was just concluding a speech. I hurried toward her. As I did, two heavily-armed security officers stepped up to her. They started talking. Thinking they were about to give her some problems, I hastened to them, because I knew that although she outranked me, I had a special position, and I could intercede.

I arrived at the end of their conversation. They were telling her, “We just wanted you to know that your story moved us, and we’re here to help you in any way that we can. We’re all here to help you.”

The officer was wiping off tears and sniffing. “Thank you.”

The security officers nodded and left. I gathered that her speech had been a moving one about loss, and they’d been moved. I just had that as an insight as I looked at her.

I started adding my condolences but was aware that time was short. She cut me off anyway, complaining about being emotional. I then began explaining my issue. I struggled to get the words out. As I did, I inadvertently called General Hamilton, General Mood.

I was correcting myself when she replied, “I know who you mean. That’s a good name for him. He’s really particular about how he travels. He has a phobia. That’s why he’s asking you for help. He wants to come here but he wants to walk.”

The explanation stunned me but as soon as I heard her, I knew what to do. It was just in time. The cell phone rang. I answered.

“This is General Hamilton,” they said from the other end.

I identified myself, and then began explaining what he needed to do. In the course of that, I realized that I called him General Mood. I immediately heard the mistake, apologized and corrected myself. He laughed. “That’s not a problem.”

Others came up to the officer I’d been talking to. They were concerned that General Hamilton hadn’t arrived. “I’m on the phone with him,” I replied, which impressed everyone. Then, as I resumed explaining how he was to reach our part, I looked up and saw him arriving.

The end.

***

I’ve typed the dream out to remember it so I forget as little as possible. In remembering it, some clues about what it’s about spoke to me, but overall, I need time to process it.

John C. Long

I don’t know who John C. Long is. In my dream last night, he was a billionaire lost in the matrix in space. I knew he was trying to become a trillionaire.

I was in space, along with others. Long was missing. They said he was in the matrix. The matrix was a blue structure of connected triangles glowing against the galaxies, stars and ink well of the region. I could clearly see it; I’m not certain if others could.

I was dubious about going after Long and kept pressing the others to tell me why they wanted me to go into the matrix, find Long and bring him back.

That’s all the dream was about.

Coffee Dreams

A mug of hot coffee warms my hands against the April’s winter shadow. I sit with my dreams and myself to think.

My dreams took a different turn last night. It feels like a turn for the better. Although multiple elements seen in past dreams, like being in class to learn and working with technology, were present, the dream most sharply recalled featured spilled coffee.

A thirty year old version of myself, I was at a huge room. I thought of it partly as a classroom but also as a work center. It was enormous, as large as say, an NBA basketball area. It was dark, with low task lights doing most of the illuminating. Rows of consoles with work stations filled it. Each work station feature a personal computer but also a link to a master computer. They also had television monitors, telephones, and CD/DVD players and burners. Most were unoccupied.

I’d never seen them before but now was working at one, or trying to make it work. I was holding a cup of coffee. The cup was plain, low and white with a handle. It seemed to be ceramic, nothing fancy. Coffee kept slopping out when I moved. I became aware of this and mildly frustrated. Most of my frustration was that I didn’t want to spill on the work station. Magically, the cup didn’t seem to actually lose much coffee between drinking and spilling from it.

A man and a woman who I didn’t know came up behind my station. They talked about me like I wasn’t present, yet were watching my work and commenting on it, with the woman, slender and white, with dark hair piled on her head, and dressed in a pale yellow and white gown, was telling the man, a white guy in shirt sleeves, khakis and glasses, that she was thinking of helping me. She noted how I made some of the same mistakes that she’d made. This prompted me to focus harder and think more carefully about what I was doing, which was typing. The keyboard was wrong, with the keys spaced awkwardly, even haphazardly, forcing me to struggle and repeat the typing.

When I spilled coffee for the third time, she commented on it, almost as a joke. I explained that I knew why I was spilling coffee, observing that the handle was too small for my fingers but didn’t extend enough for me to grip with more of my hand, so my grip was precarious and not balanced. The cup had a shallow draft in my opinion, with a wide mouth, and that’s why the coffee easily spilled out as I moved around. She seemed impressed with the explanation.

Walking across the work space, I came to where a teach sat with students. The teacher wasn’t anyone I know, but was young, white with dark hair in a bob. She was talking to the students in a chatty, happy voice. The other students were my age or a little younger. I was dismayed that they all seemed to be on a break. She was using the break as a teaching and bonding opportunity. I heard her say, “We all have work to do but you can work at your own pace.” I was happy working, because I had a problem and I wanted to solve it, so I decided to return to work.

But then I thought that I’d watch a movie. I had a DVD in hand. I don’t know what movie it was. I realized, though, that I could put the movie on at my station and watch it there, while I worked, so I turned to do that. When I did, I spilled coffee a fourth time.

That made me smile.

Awaking this morning and thinking about the dream, I felt empowered, invigorated and optimistic. I can’t say why. Was it the spilled coffee? I put a lot of faith in coffee to help me think, focus and work, but that was usually around preparing and drinking it, and not spilling it.

Coffee is associated with get up and go with me. Drinking coffee is part of my rituals for preparing to do multiple things, from writing, cleaning and yard work to washing the car and traveling. So the coffee in the dream is about entering a new stage of activity. The moments of sitting and taking a few sips of coffee is always the cusp of a new beginning for me, a signal to start. Spilling it was important because it didn’t matter to me or anyone else. The cup was limitless; more coffee was always there.

From all that, I decided, I’m ready to step up my pace of work and activity. I have the coffee, now let’s get to it.

A Laugher

One of last night’s dream makes me laugh whenever I think of it.

I was working. I can’t say the nature of the work. Seemed like I was conducting inventory. Whatever I was doing, I was busy, happy and fulfilled. A manager came by. He wasn’t someone I knew from my life but he was known by the dream me.

Dream manager told me they — the rest of the office or work place — were leaving. I was fine with that. While they were gone, they were expecting two people to arrive: Major Record and a garbled, unintelligible name.

Sure, got it. Understood.

The manager left and came back. Still waiting for Major Record and the other, whose name he screwed up. Although I can’t remember the other name, I corrected it in the dream for him.

A little later: Major Record arrived, along with X. X was another name. I asked about the original second name. That’s who arrived, was the reply. They came by another way. They’ll be coming this way.

The manager had continuously screwed up the second name until it became a joke. Meanwhile, the Major Record we’d been awaiting had already arrived.

Waking, I keep laughing about that. I’m waiting for Major Record, but he’s already arrived. And I just kept working, doing the same thing, the entire time.

Swinging Pendulum

Yesterday I awoke bitter, depressed, angry, and deeply enthralled with the dark side. Today, the pendulum has swung the other way. I’m optimistic, energetic, hopeful and happy.

I’m pleased this iteration of the dark period quickly ended. Perhaps the dream about cleaning, or the thinking about the dream, was a catalyst to regaining positive energy.

Something to think about.

The Note

I dreamed, of course, several dreams, but they’re broken today and heap in my head like pieces of broken glass.

One dream fragment is best remembered. It’s dim and busy with the red-black-amber noisy ambiance of a late night club. I’m handed a note. I don’t see who hands it to me but I thank them. The note is folded. My full name is typed in twelve pitch Times New Roman font in black on the front. I’m surprised, pleased, and giddy to be receiving this note. Unfolding it, I read my future history in typewritten paragraphs.

And that thrills me. I’m so excited. But now, I remember none of it. I only remember that I was handed a note with my name typed on it.

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