Tag: flying

Dark and Stormy Dreams

Last night was a serene, cool night but wild storms were on the dream menu.

One dream began with me outside, on a worn but mostly green hillock. I think I was in a park, as copses of trees grew around open spaces and statues.

Although bright afternoon blue associated with summer was overhead, dark clouds gathered, moving in like they were answering a whistle. People, including me, were anxious. Talking persisted all around me. All were strangers, though, and I couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying.

I was thinking that I needed to get inside and safe before the storm broke but I was worried about my friends and family. I was also puzzled; I didn’t see any of them but I was certain that they’d been with me. Looking for them, I became frantic as the temperature dropped and the clouds darkened into a fresh charcoal briquette darkness.

I started walking fast. Others were running. Growing drumming like a drum and bugle corp was approaching announced the storm’s beginning. Lightning licked from north to south in long and spectacular prolonged, brilliant slashes, captivating and frightening me. With a sharp suddenness, a wind howled through, knocking me over. After rolling and tumbling, I struggled against the wind to stand.

I heard rain hammering the ground. A deluge like a fire hose was being sprayed began. As lightning struck trees and thunder shook the air and explosions boomed, the wind tossed and slammed me, eventually shoving me against a tree trunk. Arching with pain, soaked and cold, I managed to hang onto the tree as the wind tore my clothes and hair. I was shivering with cold and fear.

With lightning striking everywhere around me, I thought, I can’t stay here. I need to get out of here. Nothing was visible for the heavy rain and dim light. I didn’t know where to go. Desperate for movement, I struck out blindly.

The wind drove me forward and then lifted me. I tried grabbing the ground but the wind took me on a ride toward the trees. As I spun and spotted the looming branches, I was sure that I was going to be impaled and killed, but the wind carried me above the trees.

In seconds, I was out of the storm. The wind calmed but still carried me. Feeling its energy dissipating, I was sure I was going to plummet to the Earth and die. As I looked down to see where I’d land and  what I could do about it, I realized that I was over the storm, and flying above it. 

A cat hissing awoke me then. Scrambling out of bed to confront the situation, I saw that Boo was telling Papi that he couldn’t come in through the pet door. Boo ran out of the room and down the hall and Papi sallied in. Since I was up, I went to pee and think about the vivid dream, as my mind stayed wrapped in it.

It’d been a shockingly vivid dream.

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The Fighter-jet Dream

Many recent dreams have been like movies or television shows. Often feeling they’re part of a larger series, I often don’t see myself in them. Instead, I’m a viewer.

So last night’s dream was a break from that routine. My and my jet were the primary leads.

Living in a huge, hyper-modern city, I became aware that it was going to be attacked. Warnings were going out. In response, me and another person climbed into our jet-aircraft. In design, they seem like single-seat twin-engine F-15 Eagles, but flatter and smaller, and dark, dark blue in color. Blue dominated the dream. Except for the jets’ exhaust flames, which were blue with yellow, and the final celebration rockets, everything was blue.

Incoming aircraft were reported. We scrambled, lighting a darkening dusk sky with our twin after-burners. I was lead. My wing-man was immediately attacked. Unable to lose his attacker, I stalked the aircraft, causing them to break off their attack on my guy. Flashing around the city’s sky, the other tried and failed to lose me. My aircraft was incredibly responsive, and I displayed a staggering mastery of its capabilities, so much , that in the dream, I thought, the aircraft and I are one.

Finally lining up a shot, I fired a missile at the attacker. It struck his aircraft, causing it to begin breaking up, giving him time to eject.

Afterward, I took my aircraft high over the city and throttled back. My companion joined me. The air was clear. It was night. It felt like we were on the edge of space.

Other aircraft were inbound to attack. He and I went at them. Multiple intense aerial combat scenes followed. Most vividly remembered is a scene where I was being chased. I took my aircraft down along the frozen blue river that bisected the city. My aircraft flashed under blue bridges at hyper-sonic speed. Unwilling to follow me there, the enemy broke off and climbed. Standing my aircraft up on its tail, I climbed up after him, and took him out.

That’s what was interesting about the dream. I was often in my cockpit as me. But other times, I could see myself in the cockpit, or I was watching the action from a third person POV. Whichever happened, I always knew it was me.

After we’d thwarted the attack, I radioed back to the command center to inform them that the city was safe once again. Feeling so brave and pleased with the result, I took my aircraft on a high-speed acrobatic flight over the city, and then, in a surprising twist, fired off colorful sky rockets to celebrate.

It was a damn good feeling.

I had no trouble relating this dream to my life, especially my writing and publishing efforts. My moods travel through a monthly cycle. I’m trending up this week. That translates to being incredibly optimistic and hopeful, truly on top of the world, ma. The dream reflects those emotions, taking off flying, being in control, and winning.

My last writing effort, Four on Kyrios, is out to several agents, awaiting their response. Meanwhile, the newest novel, April Showers 1921, is being dictated at breath-taking speed. I’m struggling to keep up with it. Its pace has startled me, and it’s twists and turns surprise me.

All of that fits with the dream. Even the dream’s blue coloring is cited as being optimistic by one source: “The presence of this color in your dream may symbolize your spiritual guide and your optimism of the future. You have clarity of mind. ” Of course, in their next sentence, they say, “Alternatively, the color blue may also be a metaphor for “being blue” and feeling sad.” But I like the first one better.

Time to write like crazy at least one more time.

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The C-130 Dream

It began with innocent travel planning with my wife and her family. One or her sisters and her daughter were there, but honestly, these folks changed throughout the dream.

First, we’d talked about where to go, details which I don’t remember. Then, we were trying to pile into a sky-blue station wagon. As there were so many people, this required some strategizing about how to pack the luggage and where everyone could sit. I was in charge.

Then, in an eye-blink, we were off, and then arrived at our next destination. This happened to be my military unit in Germany. We were there to arrange fight via a C-130 to cross the ocean.

First, though, we needed to coordinate with someone for support. Now, getting a little weird, I found a listing for a Major Ward. Major Ward was a U.S. Navy F-4 pilot, according to the listing in small, black, bold print. The problem there is that the Navy doesn’t own a major officer rank. That didn’t occur to me in the dream, and I contacted him via telephone for help.

After explaining that I needed clearance and refueling assistance, he curtly told me, “No. It’s a holiday.”

I said, “Okay, but I’m going to tell the higher powers that be that you declined to help because it’s a holiday.”

After a pause, Major Ward said, “Fine. I’m not happy, but I’ll do it.”

I then entered a series of delays trying to herd everyone together, get the crew going, filing flight plans, and getting launched. Discussions were undertaken about which of the three C-130s to take, 1819, 1822, or 1828. These are the real aircraft’s abbreviated tail numbers. With my patience strained, I was suddenly airborne in the C-130.

Looking out the windshield from the cockpit, I was flying over ocean. The sky ahead was darkening blue with dark clouds limned by the setting sun. Off to the right was a Navy aircraft carrier and another ship.

The flight was bumpy, and we were low. Wondering about the crew and pilots, I remembered different pilots from my assignment and knew none of them were flying the aircraft. Feeling surprised, I thought, am I the pilot?

I think I was. As I’m not a pilot, I worried about what was going to happen. As the aircraft was dipping and bouncing around, I also worried about being too close to the aircraft carrier and other ship, and basically commanded, “Pull up. Climb.” The aircraft did, but sluggishly. We passed those ships and flew on.

We arrived at a beautiful tropical destination on a bright and sunny day. From the water, it looked like the Caribbean. Excited, I followed the landing instructions. We ended up landing in the water about a hundred yards from the beach. Speaking with someone on the radio, I learned that this was because Major Ward had ordered it. He was behind these flawed landing instructions. I suspected he was being spiteful.

Going ashore and into the terminal, I met Major Ward, a square-jawed tall and broad white man with thick black hair. He said with a flippant air, that the landing site was an error, probably because it was a holiday. His pettiness amused me.

Returning to the aircraft, which was floating on the sea, bobbing with the waves, I decided I could take off by turning it into the wind and surfing across the water until I achieved the required air-speed. I executed my plan. The aircraft climbed and banked into the sky, carrying me on toward my destination.

The dream ended.

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Another Flying Dream

My first thought was, “Shit,” followed by my second thought, “Shit!”

Going backwards, I struggled to grab anything nearby, a futile effort because nothing was nearby. As I went backwards, I was turning my head, taking in my environment, and processing information. This led me to a realization that I was falling backwards.

The sky was dark. It wasn’t night darkness, but stormy darkness. My dream mind split between addressing what was happening now and worries about surviving, to a more intellectual approach that wanted to understand how I’d come to be falling backwards and where I was falling from.

The where part seemed visible as a dark gray castle on a high mountain crag. Some trick of light played with it because I also saw it as a rain-whipped white concrete building with tall, dark windows. The image duality confused me, but they reminded me of ivory tower and Gothic horror. The background for both were thick, charcoal clouds that promised prolonged and violent storming. I seemed to think or recall, my dream self didn’t know which, I’d been climbing, it’d been wet, and I’d slipped. When I did, I lost my grip and the wind blew me off the mountain.

Meanwhile, I was falling straight backward, going down. Knowing that behind (below) me was a steep, treacherous ravine filled with fir trees and boulders, I didn’t relish landing, because it was sure to be painful.

Then, I wasn’t falling down. I seemed to be hanging in the air on my back. I looked left and right, enjoying that. As I did, the wind picked me up and righted me, an action that spread a grin across my face. “Thank you,” I thought to whoever or whatever did that for me.

The weather had delivered on the promised deluge. Winds roared around me as lightning ripped the sky and lightning boomed in best Wagnerian manner. But I was cool with it, calm, but wet, and weirdly, grinning and happy. The dream ended.

I still grin as I remember it, because I looked so happy.

After awakening and cruising through morning routines while drinking coffee and mulling the dream, I thought, this represents the past and traditional ways of doing things (the dark castle), and the intellectual writing process (the ivory tower), and my usual fears of failing (falling), with efforts to reassure me not to worry (floating and then flying).

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Three Brief Dreams, One Night

The first dream was simple and peculiar. I was with male friends from different times of my life, but we were all young adults, regardless of how old I was or they were when I knew them. I think there were a dozen of us. All were people I haven’t seen in years. Some of them have died.

We were playing a game in the living that required us to bounce off the walls. I was watching, though, trying to remember the game’s name and the rules. One friend went into the kitchen. I went after him to ask questions, but the dream was interrupted, and that’s where it stopped.

My second dream was about land, property, and building. My wife and I had bought some property. The deal was set in motion, but was incomplete.

Visiting our property prior to taking possession, a sort of wooded country place of several acres and buildings, we encountered a group of young teenagers with a pile of remotes. They were taking turns hurling remotes at trees and rocks to break the remotes, an activity that fed giddy laughter. Talking to them about it, a smiling girl said that her father encouraged them to break the remotes like this to relieve stress and tension. Feeling that we could use a release, my wife and I threw some remotes and concluded, it is a great way to relieve stress. Meanwhile, I wondered how they’d collected so many remotes.

We went into a small house that was part of our new property. A balding, stocky man and several teenagers were busy working on it inside. An old building with white walls, tall, traditional windows made it a light and airy place. I somehow know that the layout was different than it had been. The man working on the place confirmed it, explaining what had been where and how they’d been moved. As he talked, I said, “That’s right, you’re the original building.” He confirmed that, but I knew that he wasn’t the person who sold us the property. He confirmed that, too, telling me that he’d been hired.

Then I remembered his name was Was, but then questioned myself on the spelling. Was it Was, Waas, or Wass?

In the third dream, I was flying in an aircraft. It seemed like it was an advanced technology. It lacked wings and was quietly traveling fast and high above a planet.

I thought the planet was Earth, but I wasn’t sure, and was collecting details in search of verification. A bright yellow-white sun shone in a blue sky. Only a few sketchy, high cirrus clouds marred the sky’s impeccable blue. The ground below was mostly sandy brown and flat with green and dark blue patches that sometimes looked black. I took the dark blue/black patches to be lakes or puddles. A haze-filled horizon seemed to veil mountains.

I tried understanding which way we were traveling, and the sun’s path, as a way to verify it was Earth. Therein was an interesting duality. I was in the dream with friends (although they’re nobody that I know from this life), discussing our plans (we were on a mission to find other people), but I was also aware that I was in the dream and was trying to understand the dream.

That’s where it ended.

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The Try Again Dream

The dream’s setting was a chaotic quilt of thunder and lightning, and wind and rain as screaming and shouting people rushed around me. Through it all, I didn’t know where I was or what was going on. Sometimes I’d recognize someone and try to ask them, “What’s going on?”

Nobody would stop to tell me. I started trying to figure it out by myself, but I couldn’t find any clues. With a little walking on a narrow trail, I found myself in a forest. The wind was bending the trunks over, and the branches thrashed like grappling wrestlers. Sometimes the wind was so strong that all I could do was find a branch and hold on as the wind hammered me. Lightning seemed to be striking some trees, too. I decided that I needed to get out of there. Although branches slammed into my head and back several times, I bent my head and kept going.

I realized that I was going up. It was hard, because it was wet and slick, but I felt like that was the best direction to take. I often had to grab hold of branches and use them to pull me forward. During the final part, I ended up crawling forward on my hands and knees. After some exhaustive struggling, I cleared the trees.

Spent and breathing hard, I looked around. I was high on top of a granite mountain. It was bare. There was nothing to hold onto. I was afraid that the wind would sweep me away, but I was determined to stay there and learn what was going on. Other than the wind, I realized I was now mostly above the storm. With a little straining to see through the storm, I got glimpses of waves crashing far below in one direction. Almost everyone was heading that way.

Not thinking it was safe because it was so steep, I didn’t want to go that way, and did a full circle in place on the mountain top, hunting for somewhere else to go. I found a calm area in another direction where sunshine was spread over a green slope. I thought, that’s where I want to be, but it wouldn’t be easy to get there. Mountains, storms, and forests were in the way.

As I debated what to do, I looked back toward the beach where the others had gone. Something prompted me to look that way, but I can’t say what it was. What I saw, though, was a rising tsunami wave rushing toward the shore. Appearing like something copied from a disaster movie, I could see people thronging on the beach. I realized that they were all in danger, but I had no way to warn them. I tried shouting because it was the only thing that I could think of doing.

Then I realized, I could fly down. All I needed to do was throw myself into the air, and I could fly down to the beach and warn everyone. Looking at the approaching wave’s speed, I thought I could get down there with enough time to at least give people a chance. Yet, I hesitated because I would need to fly through the storm, and that was dangerous. I wanted to take myself out of danger.

With growing understanding that I could fly wherever I wanted or needed to go, I looked at the calm, sunny green space. Going there appealed to me. I could fly to it, but that would mean abandoning the people on the beach, and as much as I hated it, I couldn’t do that.

Searching the mountain top, I found a cliff where I thought it would be best to launch myself. A howling wind pushed me around. Heart hammering in my chest, I tried diving off. The wind threw me back onto the ground, driving me backward like a candy bar wrapper. Scrabbling to hold on, I dug my fingers into the ground and held on until I stopped.

Deciding the cliff might not be the best place, I checked other places to launch, but it seemed like my first choice was best. Accepting that, I planted myself about twenty feet back from the cliff’s edge and waited. When I felt like the wind’s strength had dropped, I ran forward and dove off the cliff.

The wind slammed into me like it had been waiting to ambush me, and pitched me against the granite mountainside. I managed to catch myself before the impact and lessened it some, but it still hurt like hell. That was a bad idea, I thought, and then, surveying where I was, realized that my position was precarious. I couldn’t climb down. I had to either climb back up, or try to fly from there.

Aware that I was high and it was a long way down to the forested mountainside, I thought it would be best to climb back up to where I’d been. But now rain lashed me. Swearing at myself for my stupidity, I grew hopeless. Nothing I could think of was going to work. I’d blown my one chance, but I hadn’t known that it was my one chance.

With all that going through my head, I saw myself in my mind. The me in my mind said, “Don’t worry. Try again.”

He sounded so confident, but it seemed so crazy that I scoffed at him, demanding, “How?”

He – me – answered, “Try again.”

His response didn’t inspire me, but I decided what the fuck. After positioning myself among the crags and rocks the best that I could, I threw myself off the mountain. Within a moment, I knew I wasn’t flying, and flailed at the air in fear and panic.

Then the wind calmed. It almost felt like a hand lifting me up. After a few moments of surprised thinking, I realized that I was flying.

Growing calmer and feeling more in control, I changed my body’s pitch so that I could climb higher, see where I was, and find the people on the beach.

That’s when I awoke to a cat’s whiskers against my cheek.

2

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

The Rocket Man Dream

Dreamed last night that I had rockets attached to my back and was flying across the country with my arms stretched out like wings. The rockets appeared to be silver tanks. Dark goggles covered my eyes but I was otherwise casually dressed in jeans and a shirt. Wondering about my clothes was part of my dream, because I was surprised I wasn’t better prepared for flying by wearing something more appropriate for it.

As I flew, I’d get distracted by the views and forget where I was going. My outfit came back to bother me, too, and I considered landing to find something more suited for flying. I was high over mountains (and spent some thought on trying to understand what mountains they were) and thought, I should be colder. I was surprised and impressed that the weather and altitude didn’t bother me, even as I watched storm cells moving my way. It reminded me of flying over France once, where we had to avoid black cells wealthy with snakes of lightning. Our aircraft was a C-130, and it wasn’t capable of climbing over the storms. I wondered if my rockets could take me higher, but then realized that I might have problems with air pressure and breathing. At the same time, I thought, but I haven’t had a problem yet.

That’s where the dream ended.

 

2

The Trust Dream

Lately, my dreams have had their own unique brand. Except for one – where I was the General of Level Forty-three – the dreams were of me watching television. I would be in a chair, in a small room, facing a small television, watching shows. Most remarkable about the dreams were that the quantity, eleven in the last two weeks, and the surreal surprise when I awoke; it always felt like I’d never been asleep.

As for being General of Level Forty-three, only jumbled images and sounds are recalled, a surprising twist to someone like me, who often sharply remembers dream, or convinces myself that I do.

Last night’s dream broke the pattern. I dreamed I was in a room, part of a new home. Plants in pots and planters were nearby. The carpet was as green as Ireland in all those travel posters. Something else was in the room. I didn’t know what, and was trying to see.

Approaching the greenery, I tried peering past them. Movement before me caused me to stop. A snake slithered out from under the plots. I know little about snakes, but I thought it was a rattle snake.

I moved back from it. Simultaneous to this, a large dark gray rat emerged from my left. I attempted to split attention between the snake and the rat. Both worried me, but the snake worried me more.

The rat scurried in past the planters. The snake followed. As they did, a man appeared. Topless, had baggy pants and blue skin. He wore something like a turban. His hair was short and black. A thick mustache hid his mouth. He carried a scimitar.

His appearance shocked me. I demanded to know who he was, and what he was doing. With a look over his shoulder toward me, he raised his scimitar and pointed it in the direction the rat and snake had taken.

Another man, dressed like the first, appeared with a boisterous laugh. “Don’t worry, he’s here to protect you and watch over you.”

Confusion swamped me. Despite his reassurances, I didn’t understand why I needed protection, and why these people had blue skin. But before I could engage him, he whisked off to the right.

I still worried about the snake and rat. Thinking of them, I approached the green plants and parted them. Beyond were shiny, cherry-red objects. I thought they were large metallic balloons.

My perspective shifted. Flying over them, I looked down, and realized they were all small bright red cars. Parked in perfect rows, they were all shiny. I thought them new.

My wife arrived. I joined her. We were inside the interior of an old car, something with the spaciousness and finish of an American sedan from the nineteen fifties. There were seats, but no glass, steering wheel, or instrument panel.

My wife was seating on the plain bench seat. Trying to explain to her about everything I saw and worried about, I sat beside her, to her left, where the driver would sit.

She put her head on my shoulder. Her eyes were closed and her mouth carried a half-smile. “I’m not worried,” she said. “I trust you.”

The blue man with the scimitar re-appeared. Although he didn’t speak, he mimed that he’d taken care of the snake. His expression comforted me. He left us sitting in the car, and I thought, I have no reason to worry.

3

Strings

The strings are there, tying you up, tangling you up with effort, pain, memories, loss, frustration, and weariness. Others hold onto them, pulling you down, dragging you back, trying to steer you with their tugs.

Snip, snip, snip, cut them away. Free yourself and soar.

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