Dream Log: February 15, 2001

I fell in love last night. Again.

I honestly believe my brain has some sort of protection mechanism built into itself. I have never been in love in real life, however I think have a good idea of what it feels like. Why? Because of these dreams. Since I've never experienced the emotion in reality, my brain concocts these situations to keep itself from going totally insane.

It seems to work, but waking up always sucks.

Anyway, she was a brunette. Short hair, tall (taller than me), slender, a nice smile. And to top it all off, her mother absolutely hated me, and forbade her daughter from seeing me. So we did what any reasonable loving couple would do. We saw one another in secret.

We were walking on Freeport Drive in Spring Hill, Florida. Her mother was about 30 paces ahead, and was pruning a bush. I made it a point to keep out of her sight.

Time Shift

I was sneaking through her house with her, attempting to avoid her mother. She sees me, and I run down a long hallway, her mother in hot pursuit. I burst through the door, and out into the driveway.

This dream had an extraordinary lack of detail, but it didn't affect me any less than the rest of these types of dreams. I miss her.

Damn.

I live on a dusty farm in Australia (In rl I've never been to Australia). My friends are a sheepdog, an old ram, and the farmer's son, who is a businessman now. I want to know why all the other animals are gone. I go inside the farmhouse.

I'm a girl. Two of my mother's friends are there to see my mother. I say, well, my mother isn't very well today, but she'll be surprised and happy to see you. One of the women, an Englishwoman, leaves. The other, a New Zealander, stays. We sit in a parlour room in the top floor of the farmhouse. The afternoon sun is coming in the windows, made visible by all the dust in the air. We are still in Australia. My mother muses about why the Englishwoman left. I venture that she felt rude to be dropping by unexpectedly. My mother snorts. "Just like a Brit to cause offense by being overpolite". She and her friend are laughing about all the things their mothers used to do. We all giggle as the New Zealand woman tells a story about how her mother used to deliver bread on a bike, all over the countryside.

I envision an old lady with goggles, long grey hair, missing teeth, on an old-fashioned bicycle, riding like the wind, grinning insanely. She has a parachute streaming along behind her as she pedals, and it's full of bread. That is how she carries it, in the parachute. She's thinking, she's as happy as Larry.

I'm in a subway tunnel in Toronto. I have to recycle some used oil that my drug dealer gave me, but I don't know where to take it. There are all sorts of other people in the tunnel illegally too. These two islamic guys are playing chicken with the train. I want to get out of the tunnel before the train comes, and I do, just barely. I miss a couple of trains but finally catch one. A family gets on the train with a half-grown white beagle. It jumps up at my legs. I'm scared, because I think I'm a duck.

I'm a duck, back on the farm in Australia. I ask the farmer's son why there are no animals left. He says, "go ask my father." I go upstairs to where my mother and her friends had been, and there is a man sitting at a desk, smoking a cigar. I ask him where all the other animals have gone. He seems wasted, dissolute, as he says, "They weren't viable.

Don't you know, you silly duck, it's all about oil now. Oil and cable t.v."

He gets out from behind the desk and advances toward me. He's going to wring my neck.

As a bit of a preface to this - my first - dreamlog…

Working at an ice company not only includes delivering the ice to fill the ice merchandisers, but also maintaining and repairing said ice merchandisers, when necessary. Since it's winter time, we're delivering less ice (although more than you'd expect), so we have time to get other stuff done. This past week (and all next week, and most likely the following as well) my 40+ hours have been spent running ice routes, and cleaning the condensers on all the boxes we own, along with cleaning the outsides of the boxes, checking for any mechanical and electrical problems, and of course, making a mental note as to how much ice is left. This sucks, quite frankly, and anything going wrong only makes it worse…

My first stop on Thursday morning was a Rutter's convenience store in Fayetteville, PA. I was just finishing up work when the lights went out. "This is unique," I thought. Everybody else apparently thought the same. The gas stopped pumping, the cash register wouldn't open. Thankful that I was done and could leave, I chirped in, "And I thought this only happens in California." I laughed. Nobody else did. Maybe because I was working in BFE.

Anyway, I carried the first load of stuff out to the truck, and come back for my ladder. The doors are locked, I can't get in. I knock, not exactly expecting anybody to answer. I knocked some more, and finally go back to the truck to retrieve my master route list, which I used to get the number of the place, and proceeded to call them with my trusty StarTAC. The conversation was short and to the point, since I was pretty pissed off.
   "I'm the ice man, standing outside your doors, which are now locked. You've got my ladder in there, and I want it back."
    To which she responded, "Okay."

Knowing this… it won't be so odd as to hear what I dreamt up that night.

I'm sure I was dreaming other things, but my remembrance starts somewhere around this:
    I'm in an old gas station, like those Gulf stations that dot the land. Big glass windows in the front, 2 pumps outside, really old pumps, with old people pumping gas into even older cars and trucks. The place was just plain old, and signs of its age where all over the place. Leaves piled around the edges of the lot, brown stuff on the windows, rust on anything that was metal, and white paint turned yellow with age. Lots of leaves too, there was a lot of leaves.

    I'm also a lot younger than I am now, and I have 3 friends with me. Nate, Allen, and Evan, the 3 guys I used to hang out with a lot back in my grade school days. My bestest friends, if you will. I'd guess I was about 12 years old in my dream, which would make everybody else 11. Despite our young age though, we're in charge of this gas station - but not really.

    We were all locked in the gas station.

    At some point, I was on the phone with the boss, telling him the place was locked, and looking at the bolt that locked the door. And people were still outside, pumping gas, and leaves were blowing. The people would come to find the door locked, and they'd seemingly think nothing of it. They all put the money they owed into a drop box near the door, the door I was standing behind, the door that was locked. I'm still on the phone with my boss, telling him the door is locked, and telling him that the people are still paying for the gas, like the good souls they are. But my boss doesn't seem to care either, he's lost in whenever he does when he's not at work. For some reason, I don't want the people to see me, or Nate, Allen, and Evan, so I'm ducking behind the door. As if that really made any difference… they knew I was there, they knew the place was locked, but they didn't care.

    Then, Nate, Allen, Evan, and myself, are running down the street, away from the gas station, having the time of our lives. Each of us carries some type of toy gun, mostly of the rubber band kind. We're shooting at each other, and yelling, and laughing, and leaves are still blowing, and there's an old man walking down the other side of the street, carrying a GAP bag (??).

    And the background music to all of this was "A Reminder" by Radiohead.

If I get old
I will not give in.
And if I do
Remind me of this.
Remind that
Once I was free
Once I was cool
Once I was me.
…

And then my alarm clock woke me up, as it always does, and I shook my head and wondered, just before my feet hit the cold, hard concrete floor.

How can you downvote a dream log? Is there such a thing as a dream not worth having? I think not. I think maybe you, whoever you are, don't dream enough.