Waking Mind

I thought about keeping a hand-written journal of my dreams, but based on the experience I had recently of recording a dream on notebook paper, and then scanning it for a WordGoddess entry, I decided to just throw up a simple blog and spare my poor wrist.  I can type faster than I can write, anyway.

My dreams have been really screwed up for a while, now.  I don’t necessarily believe in dream interpretation or that my subconscious is trying to tell me something.  I don’t pick apart every little nuance and spend vast amounts of energy looking up the implications in the dream interpretation book my former boss once gave me (it’s really a silly book).  Mostly, I think that dreams are a manifistation of recent thoughts, conversations, television programs or movies seen recently, books read recently, and the like.  Yet, some dreams that I’ve experienced as of late have been completely out of the blue and unrelated to anything happening in my life at all.

Journals and blogs that include rambling descriptions of the dreams of the authors hold very little interest to me, which is why I’ve chosen to keep a separate blog, instead of including this on Colloquial or Snerkology. I feel that these dreams of mine have been so vivid lately, and I’ve woken from them with such profound feelings and reactions, that I really ought to record them.

So that’s the purpose of this blog.  If this sort of thing interests you, I welcome comments and feedback.  But really, I’m just using this area and this format as a form of self-exorcism.

I’m living in a dark and gloomy - and colorless - house with another woman my age, and a little girl of about six who is always holding a doll.  Neither of them are anyone I know “in real life”, nor people I’ve seen on TV or in a movie.  The woman and I share a room and sleep in the same bed - roommate style.  Except that there are two dead people - a man and a woman - who occupy the bed as well.  My roommate cuddles up to them at night, and I sleep on the other side of her.  I keep reminding her that we need to get rid of the bodies - they’re starting to rot.  I’m casual about this, like it’s a housekeeping task that we’ve been procrastinating about.

In the dream, it “feels” like we’ve been living that way for some time.  But a suspicion is starting to grow within me that something’s wrong.  The little girl, who used to play and move around, becomes progressively less animated, until she does nothing but sit in a chair and stare blankly ahead.  The doll she holds goes from being fresh and clean, to smelling damp, to becoming moldy and rotten.  I take up the practice of moving the little girl from room to room, sitting her in different chairs, and pretending that the little girl is normal.

I begin to wonder when the last time was that anyone went outside the house.  I begin to realize that we can’t leave the house.

The scene changes, and I’m standing in the bedroom facing the woman.  The corpses in the bed are severely deteriorated, now, and the woman has a wild and crazed look on her face.  I yell at her, “You knew!  You knew all along that we were dead and you didn’t tell me!”  I realize that I’m holding the little girl’s doll, and as I look at it in my hands, it rots and disintegrates before my eyes.

I look up, and I see the woman reaching into the mouth of one of the corpses on the bed.  She pulls away her flattened hand, covered with deep black and cloying gunk.  She steps toward me, reaching that hand toward my face.  I physically feel panic and I know I cried out or made some sort of noise as I woke up.

Last night I dreamed that I was attending a combination JournalCon and TUSCon. It was held in a place that was the mall and AcronymCo combined.  The AcronymCo employees kept trying to gain access to the cafeteria/bar, where the riotous convention was being held.  The journal/TUS-ers (including Ashton Kutcher, who kept flinging bar food at the folks holding forums, heh) kept deflecting them.  I sat at a bar table and tried (drunkenly) to explain the “why” of on-line journaling to my former boss (hey, how did she get in?).

Then, somehow, I was outside in the parking lot, and the entire building was under ten feet of water.  In order to get back in I had to hold my breath and swim underwater to the entrance, where my friend Dani was waiting to let me in.   Everyone was in a panic, because for some reason they feared that people wouldn’t be able to survive the atmospheric pressure at ten feet below the surface.

I love dreams about flying.  Last night, I dreamed that Calvin, Marie and I were in the back yard.  I was spread eagle, parallel to the ground, floating.  I used the breeze to waft higher into the air, and tilted my arms back and down to float low, close to the ground.  There were pinecones inches from my nose (pinecones in the desert?), and then I’d swoop higher and gaze down on the sea of rooftops below me.  Calvin and Marie were standing below, grinning up at me and thinking it was very cool that I could fly.  I remember thinking in my dream, “The secret of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss,” (reference The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).

As I floated higher, I looked at the horizon.  There were puffy white clouds, and the lighting said “evening” to me.  But as I gazed at the clouds, they gathered quickly and darkened, and started slowly swirling.  The swirling quickened, and I realized I was watching a tornado forming.  I remember thinking, “A tornado?  We don’t get tornadoes in the Phoenix area!”  I hollered to Calvin and Marie, and we all rushed into the house (I don’t know how I got down to the ground, though).

The house was dark, and it felt different than the house we live in now.  Narrower hallways, windows where there should be none.  I hollered at Calvin to wake up Marie (weren’t we all just in the back yard together?), and as he raced up the stairs, I told him to keep an eye out for the cat.  I ushered the dogs down the stairs to the basement (basement?  we don’t have one), and paused at the top of the stairs, looking across at a window.  It was completely silent and still, then all of a sudden the window burst in and shattered.  I scrambled down the stairs, and among the stuff down there was a box of books.  The cat was sitting on top of it, calmly washing himself.  I hollered back up the stairs, as Calvin and Marie started to make their way down, and said, “Never mind, here’s the cat!”

Then I woke up.

I can’t get any more detailed than this about last night’s dreams:

- Jason Priestly conducted an orchestra with a flashlight - shining the light on the different areas as they were supposed to come in.  There was an audience seated at tables, and two people trying to recreate some dance they learned in school (?) while the music was playing.

- Arizona Snowbowl - we were skiing and sledding there (in July?), somehow on top of these wine goblets.  The objective was to get to the bottom without breaking the goblets.  And there was a snowball fight.  And Clint Eastwood was there talking about some sort of kevlar vest he wears when he skis.  And he didn’t believe me that there was snow on the mountain.

- I baked two cakes to take to work - German Chocolate and Amish Pound Cake (is there such a thing?).  I put them on my desk and put up a sign at the end of my row telling people to take it.  Two ladies I work with took forks and each and eeeny weeeny nibbles off the corners of the cakes.

- Calvin and I lived in Grandma’s house - we were in the process of moving from the house that my friend Kim used to live in a few towns over.  Something about buying the house from Uncle Fred, and going through a lot of boxes of my Grandmother’s belongings.  I was very excited about it all.

That’s all I can remember.  I’ll keep adding to this if I think of more.

Last night I dreamed about a quest. The details are a little foggy, and I was more of an observer, like I was watching a movie, than a participant. There was a sense of a long journey that had to be made, among packed dirt trails and barren cliffs, and bad weather, and bare feet. There was some evil omnipresent being - female, like a witch - that could observe the progress of the quest from afar. Ala “Wizard of Oz” and the Wicked Witch’s crystal ball, I think.

Calvin was there at some point, and two other men. Both were considered trusted, but one of them turned out to be hiding his evil side. I pointed it out (I was now a participant at this point?) - the evil guy grabbed me or said something that tipped me off, or something. We were getting into a vehicle (limo?) at the time, and Calvin and the good guy pulled the evil guy out of the car and pushed him off the side of the road. Where we were going had something to do with the quest, and I remember a feeling of urgent excitement, but I don’t recall any details beyond that.

There’s something tugging at my memory, about a large skeleton of a building, with exposed support beams and open to the weather, containing huge mechanics and rusty, toothy gears. I was looking for something or someone in that building. I remember my point of view being on the outside, at the bottom and looking up and up and up.

I’m getting vague images of an office environment, too - bright and sterile, and something about Marie and I. It had something to do with school for her - we were lost in the building somehow, and hiding from authority figures? Something. This might not be the dream I had last night, though - I think this is a memory fragment of a dream I had in the past.

Trying to remember my dreams makes my brain strain.

Hello, somehow in last night’s dream I was Meg Ryan.

Calvin and I were driving down the road in the Avalanche at dusk, and we passed a group of four or five boys standing in the middle of the road. As we passed them, one of them threw a rock that went through Calvin’s open window and came across and struck me. I looked down to see a bruise blooming on my leg (I do have a bruise “in real life” that I have no idea how I got, so that’s probably where this came from). I actually felt RAGE, and wanted to turn the truck around and beat the crap out of those kids.

I’m supposed to meet my friend Dani for drinks, but she text messages to say that her husband Jon has sold a magazine article and they made $15,000. I don’t think magazine articles go for that much, do they?

I’m walking along a sidewalk of a quaint little village with Calvin, hand in hand. A co-worker from AcronymCo goes by on a bicycle too small for him. Calvin and I go into a small cafe - he sits on the hearth of a fireplace and I curl up, baby style, so that I’m cradled in his arms. He rocks me and tickles my face and back while he talks over me to our friends who are sitting at the tables opposite the fireplace.

Calvin and I are keeping our relationship discreet, so not too many people know. I’m a LAWYER, of all things, and I host a big dinner party to tell all my co-workers that I’m quitting to move to another country and represent Gladys Knight and the Pips. Calvin lives in that other country and I’m going to join him.

My boss gets wind of my relationship with Calvin, and goes off with an, “Oh sure, so when it doesn’t work out then of COURSE you can waltz right in and have your old job back.” Then the videophone (?) lights up, and it’s Gladys Knight calling to defend me.

Then the alarm went off.

I am an old woman, narrating a story and reflecting back on my life. I live in a huge house with three other old women, and some younger men and women which I get the sense are my children. It’s cold outside - there’s snow on the ground. And I own approximately a hundred dogs - sheep dogs and shelties and shepherds and labs, all different colors and sizes. And one huge orange tabby cat. Letting them in and out through the mud room of the house is the work of fifteen minutes, at least.

I’m just coming back from somewhere, and I go into the large dining room of the house. My whole family and the old women are sitting around the table, loaded with food and candles. One young lady (Winona Ryder?) says a half prayer, half incantation about family and life and goodness and light, and the candles light of their own accord. This is normal.

I sit at the table and everyone is happy. I look up and I see a ghost walking by… down the hallway toward the basement door. The ghost - a young woman, the ghost of my former self? - pauses and looks at me, expressionless. She opens the basement door and goes downstairs. I pray out loud, “God, show us the meaning of this visitation!”

The scene changes - a flashback to my former life. I’m narrating as the scene plays out. I’m a young woman - a teenager - working in a wealthy household for man and a woman. The sense is that I’m a nanny for their child. I’m also charged with painting murals of flowers on the windows of their house. Huge, tall windows that look out into deep forests. I’m unhappy, and nervous, and I want to leave the house before the man gets home. I’m climbing down from the ladder, and I hear him come in the house. I try to judge which direction he’d walk in, so I can go down another hallway and into another room. I rush into a room and begin changing my clothes. I try to rush, but it seems the more I rush the longer I take. Just as I finish tying my shoes, the man finds me.

He pulls me close to him, and tries to kiss me. I push him away, still trying not to offend, and make a fuss of tying the laces (?) on his shirt. His wife comes in, and I try to explain. She dismisses me - knowing it’s the man’s fault, knowing what he’s been doing, because this isn’t the first time and I’m not the first girl. I hurry out of the house, rushing through the snow.

Back to current time, and I’ve just finished telling the story to the people around the dining table. The conclusion of the story is that the man and woman were killed in a horse and buggy (?) accident, driving along the snowy roads and fighting about what had happened between me and the man.

The three old women and I walk to the basement door, and tell the rest not to open it again for any reason. We walk down the basement stairs, and at the bottom I turn and look into the room on the left. Instead of the storage room that was supposed to be there, it is a recreation of the man and woman’s living room. There’s a fireplace and two high backed chairs - he’s reading a paper and smoking a pipe, she’s sewing. I cry out, “Sir! Madame!” They look up, and their serene expressions turn fierce. Suddenly, other ghosts appear, and they rush at me and the other old women, attacking - shooting with “real” guns that have “real” bullets. We turn to the right and go through a door into another part of the basement. We split up and go into two separate rooms that are joined to one another by another door on the inside.

We fight magic with magic, seeing through the walls without having to be on the other side of them. We don’t realize that the people in the house above are also fighting against the demon ghosts. The girl who looks like Winona Ryder is in the kitchen, fighting them off. There’s a man who looks like the guy who played Connor on “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”, and as he’s fighting off one ghost, it becomes apparent that THIS ghost is on the “good” side. The ghost offers him a “ride” down to the basement to help me and the old ladies. “Connor” grabs the ghost’s wrist, and they go for a rushed and whirling ride through the floor, past the evil ghosts, and into the room where the old ladies are keeping sanctuary.

When it becomes apparent that we need magical supplies in the basement rooms, the people above send them through the floor in much the same manner the good ghost traveled. None of this seems strange to anyone - I guess this family (my family?) fights these kinds of battles regularly.

There’s no conclusion to the battle. I don’t know if I half-woke up or something, but a completely new dream starts. Calvin and I are in a parking lot with a bunch of other people, getting ready to leave some place and figuring out who is riding with who. I’m by myself near the truck, he’s with a group of people (hey - some of which are the old women from my last dream), and they all turn and look at me. Calvin comes over and says I have to ride with them, like I’m in trouble or something and need to be spoken to.

Then the scene changes AGAIN to something completely unrelated. Calvin and I are in a car with one of my girlfriend’s husbands, Robert. We’re driving together to go see a movie, and in the discussion that follows, we decide to go see Fahrenheit 9/11.

That’s it.

Just snippets of what I can remember, although the dreams themselves were very involved and detailed. In the first dream, I’m the second member of a two-person team, the other being an older man who served in Vietnam. We’re either the bad guys, or the good guys doing bad because it has to be done. Anyway, we’re being chased, and we acquire a super suped-up jet, the likes of which can’t be owned unless you belong to a special club that charges a 1.3 million dollar membership fee each year (told you it was detailed). AND in order to join this club, which is owned by a high-scale automobile company, each member has to purchase and/or own one of EACH model that the car company sells. Then they get the use of this jet, which is worth 10 million dollars.

So we take off in this jet, me behind the other guy, and we’re being chased by another jet. I can see on the display that the other jet is gaining fast, so we kick it into high gear and pull quickly away from them at the last second. Then we’re higher than the jet can handle, and we slowly reach the apex and rooooll over so that we’re headed back down again. We land, and jump into some sort of vehicle that has a surface-to-air missile weapon attached. The “bad guys” are coming toward us in some sort of Hummer-but-bigger, and I fire a missile at them and blow them up.

The dream changes COMPLETELY, and I’m dressed in Victorian-era clothing, corset and all. It’s my wedding day, and I’m getting married to a sophisticated older gentleman that I admire and respect, but more in a daughter-to-father sort of way. I’m walking along the grounds, with tall weeping willows and stone courtyards, bark paths with benches placed along it, vast green lawns, and an immense mansion with a yellow facade and 116 rooms. I know where that comes from, at least - last night I was watching a show on the History Channel about Vienna and it’s architecture.

I approach the older gentleman, who is standing in a circular stone courtyard, surrounded by wedding guests all dressed in Victorian finery. He holds his gloved hand out to me, I take it, and we begin walzing to the music of an unseen band. We’re both apparently very good dancers - he spins and twirls me, I always know where to find his hand again, and we move smoothly and elegantly. The wedding attendees applaud. I sing a song in French that I’ve learned. A matronly woman asks me if I know what it means, and I say no, I just learned it phonetically. The gentleman tells her that my tutor is impressed with the way I’ve learned the accent so well. Strangely enough, the local morning news anchor chickie attended the wedding.

The dream changes again, and the gentleman husband and I are standing in a warehouse or barn, stocked with wagons full of contraband material - food, alcohol, fabric, spices, etc. We, and the wagons, are surrounded by a crowd of men, who are interested in the items. My husband tells them that he had to pay higher than he expected for the items - $50 a barrel. The men express their displeasure, and mutter. They say they’re going to refuse to participate in the auction that the gentleman is putting on, but then the gentleman starts calling out the items in an auctioneer cadence, and the men start bidding as if they can’t help themselves. I put my hand on the gentleman’s arm, and beg with wide eyes upturned to him to be fair to the men.

Again with the dream shift, and this time I’m dating a young man, and he and I are sneaking around in an old library or monestary. At first I’m excited to be with him, and we amuse ourselves by finding the candy that the priests or monks have hidden in the stacks, cheating on their vows. Then the young man wants me to fool around with him in the stacks, and all of a sudden I’m not intersted in him at all, even though it *feels* like I’ve invested a lot into the relationship. So I tell him it’s not going to work out.

THEN the dream changes AGAIN, and I back in my old room at Grandma’s house in Maine. I can see my bedroom perfectly clearly, arranged the way it used to be arranged during the winter. Grandma kind of shuffles around the house, incoherent as she was during her last years, not able to communicate, and just moving from picture to picture on the wall and staring at them. I follow her, trying to get her to remember me (I think this comes from watching “50 First Dates” last night, and the scene where Adam Sandler asks Drew Barrymore if she knows who he is, or remembers him at all.) Then my Aunt Lee and Uncle Arnie arrive for a visit, and all of a sudden Grandma is the Grandma I rememberd from my childhood, singing in the kitchen while doing the dishes, teasing the cat and yelling at the dog, sitting around the table playing cards with my aunt and uncle. I go back into my bedroom, leave the door open to listen to them, lay on my bed and stare up at the ceiling.