Dream Log: January 10, 2001

I was sitting at a picnic table in hell (yes, that says HELL) with a friend of mine, surrounded by other people at other picnic tables around me. It felt more like a bar than a fiery pit to me, but I don't ask questions when it comes to dreams.

Next thing I know, Jesus is coming up the stairs and asking in a loud voice if anyone wants to leave and go back to the world above. I think about this for a second, then look at my friend and say "What do you think - do you want to go back up?" He looks at me and says "I don't know, do you want to go back up?" and I say "Sure, why not?" and we get up and stand next to Jesus, who is patiently waiting next to what looks like some kind of a catapult. He shoves us in the catapult, presses a button, and BOOM!, we're flying at warp speed into the air. Somehow we ended up in an amusement park and hell was left far behind.

I woke up feeling better than I have all month. I've been really down lately, like really down, which made it even more surprising to be feeling so happy. I guess you could say that I feel like I've just been catapulted out of hell in a figurative kind of way. In honor of this occasion, I decided to skip out on my classes and sit in a coffee shop all day. Mmmmmm . . . . . just thinking about it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all over.

I think my mind was trying to tell me that if I just made the decision to start feeling better, to actually get off my ass and change things, then I could get out of the "hell" I've been sucked into much more easily than I thought. You can't start to feel better until you realize that it's possible.

I don't really know what Jesus was doing there, but he added a nice touch.

• The night before a big party of some kind (wedding? family reunion?), my mom is stressed out with preparations, etc. Bill and his parents are staying at our house, in my room. Bill and I are sleeping in the living room. My mom is very upset because people have been drinking and smoking gage. And just before we go to bed I get Bill in trouble by talking about "toking" in front of his dad. As we lay down to sleep, my mom practically has a nervous breakdown as her father's antique tea cart shatters spontaneously into wooden bits and glass shards (a message from his ghost). She runs upstairs to her bedroom in tears.

  The next day we're on our way to the party but I stop off at an old movie theatre for some strange reason. The building is for sale and there are people negotiating inside when I walk in. There are three crazy felines in there. One is super clingy, nearly impossible to extricate her claws from my clothing. Another is an attacker, biting my hand; and the third is super chill.

• I create an artificial intelligence and instruct it to construct its own biological body. Last scene: looking at four photographs of a subtley colored, glistening slug-like thing in a petri dish.