Tag: Dreams

A Dream So Real

Do you ever have a dream so real that you’re certain it happened?

I had one of these last night. My eyes were extremely bloodshot in the dream. Looking at my eyes in the mirror in the dream, I thought, wow, what the hell is going on? What caused my eyes to be so bloodshot?

But when I brushed my teeth and saw my eyes this morning, they weren’t bloodshot. I was damn sure that they would be, and shocked and amused when they weren’t. I wonder from that, what other things did I dream that I was certain was real?

0

Dreams and Writing

My dreams and writing seem to be part of my creative and imagination mind system. I figure, as worlds and space has weather, so do our minds. When a high-powered dream system moves in, it always brings a strong imagination ridge, and writing levels rise.

I wish I could track it and forecast it. Imagine us having an app on our phones or computers that can bring up radar imagery of our mind systems, with some prognosticator telling us what it all means.

“You have an emotional front moving in. It’s going to settle on you for a few days beginning Monday, with Tuesday seeing the strongest activity before it begins to move back out of the area on Thursday, so watch out for those swing moods and crankiness. The front will decrease your physical energy, and increase your maudlin memories. This activity will probably call for some comfort food on Wednesday, which will wreck your diet, and a few glasses of wine or beer, but a strong will system will arrive on Friday, enabling you to get back into healthy eating routines. The ten day outlook calls for rising optimism in the following week, with some periods of intense exuberance.”

0

A Dream Pastiche

To begin, car and truck exhaust mixes with light snow flurries in a hilly town. Slurry covers broken asphalt. Wooden utility poles leaning at crazy angles hold up sagging lines. Snow and ice weigh down the lines. A maroon Honda Prelude, rusty and missing a door, with a broken tail light and dented sides, is trying to navigate a turn through the slush and go up a small hill when the engine stumbles and dies in a cloud of blue smoke. People stumble out of the car to help push it up the hill and out of the road. I run over and help, putting hands on the cold, wet trunk lid, and push, slipping and sliding on the broken, icy asphalt road. We do it. A small cheer goes up.

I know the people in the car. I wish I could help them more but I have problems, and wave good-bye, rushing on to school. The classroom is packed. I’m in fifth grade. The teacher explains an assignment. The students will be divided into teams. Each team will be given an article. They’ll read it as individuals, discuss it in a group, and then write individual essays about the article. Then she singles me out to tell me that she has a special essay for me, and I will work alone. My reading assignment is denser and longer than the others. I feel isolated and confused.

Taking the article with me, I head to my work. Two concrete buildings make up a small compound. I live there with others. Most are young, but a few are older than me, but I’m in charge. A storm is coming, but we also worry about attack. I explain that we have to secure everything outside so it won’t blow away, but also so we’ll be safe inside. I put Randy in charge of the rest to do this. Randy is upset because he doesn’t think others are contributing. I have to talk it through with him. Meanwhile, he and his team are doing a terrific job of moving things to make us safe and boarding up the place. I just need to keep encouraging him.

I discover a problem with our plan. The main room has a big window that overlooks the sea. It’s calm but I worry about that window. The rest is all covered, but all someone would need to do is circle the building. They’d discover that window and smash it in.

Options are discussed, decisions are made. Some of which we’ve done must be undone. Showing me what must be undone, Randy shows what they’ve done. I’m impressed, but I also spot weaknesses and explain that to them. They begin the re-work.

Going to the second building, I discover an old man living in the cluttered, windowless back room. The room reminds me of part of an old gas station. The old man is a friend and has a cat. I help him lock the cat up, but the cat is trying hard to get back out. We discuss papers that need to be read and written. Then I make sure he’ll be okay for the coming storm.

Returning to the first building, I check on food and supplies. We’ve done everything that we can, but anxiety that we’re not ready nags me. I can’t think of what else we can do. Feeling helpless, I try to think up answers but I don’t know the questions and issues.

I’m left waiting.

2

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.

 

0

The TV Dream

Last night’s vivid dream placed me as a minor actor on a science-fiction television series. The show runner came in and made big announcements that we needed to create a special, kick-ass show. He was running around with hyperbolic enthusiasm that spread like kudzu.

I decided I would be part of that. Seeing him crossing a broad, carpeted room, I intercepted him and regaled him about my desire to be a part of creating this special show. He said with broad puzzlement, “Who are you?” I explained I was a minor character actor on the show but that I had ideas for it and wanted to write. Then I told him some of my ideas.

It was enough that he didn’t shrug me off or chase me out. Nor did he endorse me. But I accepted that I was now part of the writing and production team. They were having an off-site. Finding out where it was, I crashed the site.

The place was chaos. Groups were entrenched around tables. Food was being served on a buffet table. The head writer and creator was walking around talking to people, but he wasn’t talking about the show. None of them were, as far as I could tell. I circled around the tables, looking for an opening to join. A few people knew me and chatted with me. A couple even introduced me to others.

Sometimes the groups would get up and move around. Each time this happened, I thought, here we go, now maybe we’ll start. But, no. They just resettled and continued chatting. Then, weirdly to me, it looked like they were breaking for lunch. They hadn’t done anything, in my opinion. By then I felt like an outcast and was dejected by their lack of direction and energy. I decided to leave.

Some who knew me saw me leaving and started talking to me, trying to convince me not to go, but I’d made up my mind. This was clearly not my scene. I’d go elsewhere.

Leaving required me to walk up a steep hill to a pedestrian bridge. The pedestrian bridge spanned eight lanes of traffic. Businesses like restaurants, stores, and gas station  bordered both sides of the road. I could see a long way from here.

Some of the people from the show caught up.  Several tried to engage me. I didn’t put them off, but I wasn’t interested in their entreaties. From the top of the hill by the pedestrian bridge, I looked for where I needed to go. It seemed like miles way. I would need to walk. The sun was hot, and the traffic rushing below increased the heat. Finding my destination, I resigned myself to a long way, and began making my way.

 

4

A Muse Rides In

A dream began and ended. I slipped between the cracks of being asleep and awake and considered the dream.

My muses rode in our horses. There were five, all women.

 

And David Bowie’s song, “Heroes,” began playing.

###

I’ve been having a series of nostalgic dreams about being happier and more contented. These dreams reflect my wry private observation about my life’s trajectory.  I’d followed an upward curve for decades, the kind that’s part of the mythology of working hard and being rewarded when really, it was partly being a beneficiary of being a white male with a modicum of sense in modern America. Sometimes there was a brief drop, and there were a few sharp spikes. Overall, it’d been up and steady. Now, I ride a plateau.

This dream was like that series, but sharper. It centered around me opening a business. I’d picked a location but was having buyer’s remorse and self-doubts. I walked around thinking, what to do, what to do. Was this really what I wanted to do? More, it didn’t seem like a good business idea. Friends, family, and business associates were present. As it grew clear that I was dissatisfied and bothered, they offered alternative ideas for the space and my business.

That triggered fond thinking about going to coffee shops and bakeries. I thought the space was perfect for that. Into the dream comes one of my old CEOs, enthusiastically reminiscing about life at a start-up, and coffee shops like this. Everyone was excited about that idea, and I awoke on the verge of a decision.

After thinking about that dream, I reordered myself to sleep.

Then the muses rode in.

###

The five muses rode in and stopped. I had a profile shot of them in a line. They were looking straight ahead. I don’t know what they looked at it. It was then I realized they were my muses. I recognized the setting from the scene I’m working on in my novel.

Bowie’s “Heroes” began playing. IT would play on a continuous loop in the background for the rest of the dream. The song  was a live version from one of Bowie’s last shows.

The woman in the center was on a light brown horse. She dismounted. Her horse and the other muses went away. She transformed into one of my novel’s characters. The story-telling commenced. As her story spread out like I watched a movie, she said, “No, further back. This series of scenes needs to begin further back.”

So back we went, resetting the start of her part in this series. She began telling it again. It was like I was in a movie watching her.

There’s a lot to write today.

###

As a final part of the dream sequences, I dreamed a dragon flew through me. Huge, it flew through my body and breathed fire, burning out any diseases in me.

As far as I know, I don’t have any diseases.

1

The Australian Dream

It was another wild night of dreams, with this one making a deeper and more lasting impression.

I found myself in another land. After meeting a man and speaking with him, I realized I was in Australia. My wife was also present. No reason for being in Australia was given, but I was pleased. I’ve always wanted to go to Australia, and have just missed several times. I still plan to go.

Anyway, in the dream, I was given some papers that turned out to actually be a little book. I didn’t know what to do with it or why I had it. Reading it didn’t help because it seemed incomplete, and my wife couldn’t figure it out, either. Finding another fellow, I asked him about it, and he showed me how it was a continuation of other documents. He said they were living documents, and took me to a huge wall of like documents. After he explained it, I was excited and explained it to my wife. She wasn’t interested.

I was then informed I had to get to another part of Australia. I hopped into a car and began driving, trying to figure out where I was going as I went. The roads were holed and shoddy. Most of them were like slick mud. As I complained about them to myself and merged onto a highway that was also like slick mud, I was overtaken by cars. They passed at shockingly high speeds. “I forgot they don’t have speed limits here,” I said to myself in the dream car, accelerating to match the pace while I looked for signs and directions.

I found myself out of the car and running. Everyone was running. Instead of driving, we were running everywhere. I was still on the highway and looking for where I was going. Somehow, running, I found it and arrived.

People were there, but it was no one that I recognized. They gave me more books. Where all the other books were white, these books were red. I immediately understood that these were new books, and that I had to take them back to the other location, which I did right away.  That pleased the people on the other end. Understanding the books and system at a fast rate, I took on the role of explaining to others how these books continued the stories.

Everyone was told to line up to go somewhere else, part of some planned activities. I got in line and found that I was at the line’s beginning, with my wife beside me. As I started to go, I encountered the first man that had given me the books in the beginning. He and I exchanged some comments, and I told him that I knew how the books worked. That made him happy, and he let me go. As I walked through the gate with my wife into a green field bordered by a white picket fence, I realized that he’d been my teacher.

0

The Intersection

I dreamed about my work in progress last night, specifically about the story-line now being addressed. My mind, being what it is, inserted me sometimes, so that I was part of the story. My mind, being what it is, would see that I was dreaming about my writing and including myself as a character, and then try to untangle me from the fiction being written. “I’m the writer. I’m not supposed to be in this story.” That would lead to dream-confusion among the dream participants (dreampants?) about what was going on. It was really…interesting.

Which, after awakening to think about it, demonstrates an intriguing intersection between who I am and how much I put of myself in my writing. Even when I deliberately decide to have a character do or speak in ways that I wouldn’t, that choice is based on what I’d be doing. My characters are composites of other people, but I’m essentially imagining how those folks would respond. I don’t know, though. I don’t have a secret window into their lives. I guess at what they’d do, twisting their responses into madness and lies, and courage and hypocrisy, betrayal and honor, all based on what I think I’ve heard them say and do, and the character’s arc. You all know how unreliable we are as witnesses. We color it all.

But in there, in the intersection between my dreams and imagination, and my choices and decisions, is where my writing takes place. Sometimes it’s a large intersection – or even a roundabout, with too many cars traveling too fast, all trying to change lanes and enter and exit at the same time – and other times, it’s two small animal paths meeting in a quiet field. Whichever intersection it is, I sort it and write.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

2

Yeah, Another Dream

I’ve been doing a lot of writing in my head. When I sit down to write, I’m already spun up and ready to write. I’ve noticed that when I write in my head to such an extent, I also seem to dream more. It’s like some portal in me has been opened during that period, and imagination flows into my writing become diverted into dream flows when I sleep.

I didn’t star in this dream. I was there, and featured, but the stars were a young female tennis player and a wealthy country man.

It started out with country boy. I call him a boy, but that was the nature of descriptions in this place. Boy didn’t denote an age, but a style. Gregarious, beloved, and admired by his farm-based community, he asked me, out of the blue, if I’d like to ride in his helicopter. I was teenager. I immediately understood this was an honor and treat, and accepted. People were envious, but in a joking way, because they’d not been in his helicopter.

He and I did some errands in his truck. When done, we drove down to his helicopter. It was a little two-seater with a bubble cockpit. He was the pilot, and took us aloft on a aerial tour of the region. He regaled me with stories about his life as he did. When we landed, he offered me a ride in his burnt-orange Lamborghini roadster. We did that, riding through town and around the countryside. It felt like a special day for me, and I was flattered to be treated like this.

A young woman arrived. Actually, she was fourteen, so appropriately, she was a girl, but people in the dream referred to her as the young woman. She was small and slender, with dark eyes and hair. No one thought much of her. She was supposed to be some tennis star, but everyone was skeptical of her because of her stature and quiet demeanor.

A demonstration game was arranged, her against local pros. Suddenly, she was revealed as a different person. Her relentless speed, quickness, accuracy, and intelligence went on full display as she beat player after player. Everyone was talking about her long after the games ended, marveling that such a small person could have a powerful overhead shot and tremendous serve, and be so fast. She was going to be given the helicopter and Lamborghini rides, too. I unabashedly endorsed that, telling the wealthy patron she deserved such an honor more than me.

Late day found us eating a huge communal dinner. It was held outdoors. Everyone was sitting on pillows and blankets. The food was strange and exotic. I can’t begin to describe the eels, snakes, and shellfish I saw being served.

Then came a special event where the patron beat his white SUV. It was a new car. I didn’t understand the reasons for beating it, but he hit it one time so hard that the car was folded into two. We all thought it was an astonishing display of strength, but also a statement on his indifference to his wealth.

And there was where the dream ended.

 

0

Three Strange Dreams

Three strange dreams afflicted me last night, one after enough in a line of dreams.

  • I dreamed I’d removed my penis from my body and was making pencil sketches of it that I shared with others. There was no blood loss or discomfort. I was showing the drawings to friends and families, and was holding my penis in my hand. They never noticed that I was holding my penis, but were surprised and appalled by my sketches (which were very realistic, in that style of drawing that I used to do).
  • The second dream placed me in an uncomfortable backwoods setting. I was with people that reminded me of the folks I knew in West Virginia. These folks are hard, shallow, and bitter people, with little empathy. Their circumstances might make them that way (although I also think, if it’s so fucking terrible, why don’t you leave and find something better?). I was looking for change to make a call. They weren’t concerned with that, but instead obsessed with how ignorant I was. This was because I’d found change in a stream (a quarter and a penny), but a dead body was in the stream. They thought I was going to get sick by getting in water with a dead body. I insisted on doing it because I needed the change. I thought there was more there, so after looking elsewhere, I returned to the stream and searched. As I did, I looked at the dead body, which turned out to be a large, black dog. I wondered how he died and arrived in the water, and hoped that he hadn’t suffered.
  • In the third dream, I was in an all-white place, like a ship, wearing an all-white flight suit. Others were there, dressed in the same way. There was no one familiar to me but I knew them in the dream. We were concerned mostly with the toilets, and which toilet to use, and why the toilets was dirty, and whether the toilets worked. I was less concerned about this, and kept trying to direct the conversation and activity to something other than fucking toilets, but it was a challenge; these people were obsessed with the damn toilets. We finally got around to other things, like, hey, we’re supposed to be flying. An involved conversation about who was supposed to be doing what, like flying, developed. I was dismayed and perplexed by how the others all wanted to assign people narrow tasks. Moving off by myself, I went ahead and flew. That impressed others, who weren’t aware that I could fly, and peppered me with questions about how I’d learned and what else I could do. Their questions amazed me. I told them, it wasn’t hard, I’d always known how, people only made it hard for themselves by thinking they had to be special to do things.

Yeah, weird dreams. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

1

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑